Monthly Archives: August 2025
A church music ministry for the moment
By Nicholas Gunn The music inside the sanctuary of the Church of the Advent Hope was a long way from the solitary organ and choir more typical of what’s been played at Seventh-day Adventist churches. “I’ve visited a lot of Adventist churches but the music often feels stuck in the past. No drums, no guitar, […]
Trauma as a tool to save lives
By Calvin Butts When Natasha Christopher talks about her son’s murder, she’s matter-of-fact. “That destroyed my life,” she said. “No parent should ever be home asleep and receive a call that someone shot your son,” she added. “But it also gave me a voice.” On June 27, 2012, her 14-year-old son Akil had been celebrating […]
Cadence’s vegan chefs reimagine soul food
By Jon David Regis Executive chefs Haley Duren and Shenarri Freeman place themselves and their East Village restaurant in a camp of plant-based eaters that extends back to pre-enslavement West Africa and, in the United States, includes civil rights and nutrition activist Dick Gregory, who died in 2017, and Queen Afua, a holistic health advocate […]
Sidewalk fridges for the food-insecure
By Joel Mitchell On an early summer afternoon, Asmeret Berhe-Lumax was doing what she often does at the nonprofit food pantry she founded five years ago: Unloading boxes of groceries from a truck and stocking them inside a see-through sidewalk refrigerator and the food crates beside it. “It’s a very simple and straightforward process,” Berhe-Lumax […]
Protesting NY Times’ LGBTQ coverage
By Gray Fuller Standing on the sweltering sidewalk at the entrance to The New York Times, a group aggrieved by the paper’s coverage of transgender people spelled out their complaint: Gray Lady Lies Trans People Die. In the bottom corners of the white poster board bearing those words, two handprints were pressed in red paint. […]
A life-saving, donated kidney
By Izzy Sy Lying face up and side by side on separate operating room tables, Dr. Alex Hilario and his sister, Elizabeth Hilario, were nervous. They were anxious. A surgical team would extract a kidney from her body to place in his. Her brother’s kidney function had been diminishing for at least 20 years. Two […]
Lessons to lessen Black drownings
Photo by Steward Masweneng on Unsplash By Jaden DeGruy When twentysomething social media strategist Paulana Lamonier was trying to figure out a side hustle, a conversation helped settle the question. “There was this young lady,” Lamonier said, recalling that small talk from several years ago. “She was, like, ‘Oh I can’t swim because my bones […]
Creating community at a drugstore
By Maurice Brown As a stranger tore past the pharmacy’s shelves, she insisted that the staff behind the front counter answer one question: “Who here is Thomas?” “Oh, *^!$,” Thomas James thought as he braced for a scolding. But seconds later, he saw the woman’s eyes begin to pool with tears as she made her […]
Prison experience infuses artist’s work
By Danilo Wrightsell Art-enthusiast Nastasia James did a few double-takes before she figured out just what kind of art she was looking at that evening in a Manhattan gallery. “When I walked in, at first, I was a bit confused [about] why I was seeing urinals,” said James, a jewelry designer, who was being introduced […]
South to North, chasing artistic dreams
By Corey Leathers Jr. Eighteen months. That’s how long it took a transplant from South Carolina to go from being a broke college dropout to paying New York City rent with what he’s earned selling his rap records, designing clothes for his BoofNYC brand and walking the runway at New York Fashion Week. He couldn’t […]