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The New Philadelphia
The face of the
It is the Mexicans who have settled in
These are the folks mostly responsible for the continued rise in the city's population.
The most recent U.S. Census Bureau data confirms it. The Bureau recently reported that
It's good news for the city. After 50 years of decline,
Beneath these latest numbers lie...well, more numbers that help tell the story. Here are the fundamentals of population dynamics in
1. More immigrants with higher birth rates
The latest increase is due to two factors: the number of births outpacing the number of deaths and the arrival of foreign immigrants to offset the exodus of people from the city. To generalize, the people who are leaving tend to be those who can afford to -- middle-class folks -- and those who are arriving tend to be poor.
In the last 10 years, Latinos were the group that experienced the most growth. Between 2000 and 2010, Latino Philadelphia grew from 130,000 people to 180,000, a 45 percent increase. As a group, Latinos are the poorest in the city, with household incomes far below the city's average of $36,700 a year.
In the last 10 years, Asians ranked second in growth. They went from 68,000 in 2000 to 96,000 in 2010 -- a 43 percent increase.
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Never Compromise
Rick Being Rick
Don't Think
Urban Revival: Report Card
By Elise Vider The winds of reform may be blowing, but it will take
Occupied by Uncle Dave
By Erin CheeverI met Dave at Dilworth Plaza at City Hall. For years , Dilworth
Don't Think
The Rev. Thomas Reese, the Jesuit priest who edited the Catholic weekly America, once quoted
The Tea Drinkers Manifesto
By Regina McHugh Forrence Popular culture is against us. Few in charge understand us. There's
The Case of the Curious Icon
By Christopher H. Baum It was just staring back at me, the small icon in
Freak Show
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I hear that an employee at philly.com played around
The Man Who Likes to Take Baths
By Andrew East Go ahead. Mock me. I know you want to. After all, no
The Customer is Aways a Pain
By Alaina Mabaso»
As Easter approached and visions of bringing the perfect split pea soup to dinner danced in my head, I went to a small meat market in the Philly suburbs for a ham shank. The cashier there was accompanied by a trainee. If you're going to start working at a meat market, I'm sure you're in at the deep end in the week before Easter.
"Thank you, ladies, I'll see you again," said the elderly gentleman in front of me in line at the register.
"Yeah, I'm sure you will," the cashier muttered, rolling her eyes at her companion before the man was even past the counter.
"You'll find that some customers, you love," the cashier announced to the new girl as soon as I had paid for the shank and wished them a happy weekend. "And some, you just can't stand."
I was unseasonably irked.
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Life in the Rearview Mirror
By Margaret E. Guthrie»
There are some pretty wonderful things about reaching old age that are little discussed; the disadvantages are far too well advertised to warrant further attention. I am officially old, I will be 75 in August of this year and learned recently that the "elderly" designation attaches when you reach age 72. So I think I have reached an age to be a reasonably good judge of the advantages of being old.
One of the advantages I like best is the ditching or overboard tossing. By that I mean certain things in your life that once seemed mighty important and now are not. Raising your children is one of these. By now, your children are middle-aged, have married or partnered well or not, are established in their career or profession or not, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about any of it. You have survived their adolescent
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Where Do I Belong?
By Shannon Lee»
Born in Canada, raised in Singapore, and now living in the USA. Three different countries in two decades. In today's globalized world, where traveling thousands of miles can be done in a few hours, stories like this are common. I have a friend who has lived in five different countries in 20 years, shifting each time his dad was posted somewhere.
"Where do you call home?" I asked him.
"Well, I kind of see myself as a global citizen now..." and then as a careless afterthought, "So, where do you call home?"
That careless afterthought made me wonder.
Is home Canada, where I was born? I was there for the first few years of my life, and while I return every year, the place feels foreign to me. Yet I know it will always have a special place in my heart, simply because I was born there. I often wonder
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Men Seldom Make Passes...
By Kiersten Ball»
I had glasses by the time I was three. Thanks for that genetics. So my 25-year-old self looks back at my six-year-old bottle glasses wearing self and wonders how I managed to attract all the little boys in kindergarten, but now can't find a guy to save my life. Okay, I'll admit, even with the humongous glasses, I was still a pretty cute six year old. I had my first roller skating party that year, and I ended up skating with four boys at once. I'm serious; they were fighting over who was skating closest to me. I'm not sure how no one ended up falling down and busting up a knee.
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The Last House on the Block
By Kathryn Jones»
Whenever I am in the supermarket, I am besieged by magazines at the checkout line. Invariably there will be at least three with cover stories about people who have lost massive amounts of weight. Talk shows parade people out as well, and while showing their before and after pictures. They praise them for doing it "the old fashioned way," without surgery. The message is clear; unless you've existed on tree bark and pine nuts, and jogged until you dropped somehow your weight loss doesn't count. When I heard it again on "Good Morning America" recently, I decided it was time to set the record straight.
I had weight-loss surgery and it worked for me.
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