(upbeat music) - A Haddonfield shop puts its spin on the all-American food we love.

- The most popular dog we have is called a Philly Dilly with crushed ruffles on top.

- Marian Anderson's voice wasn't the only tool she used to bring about social change.

- The African-American community took such great pride in the way she dressed and the style that she had.

- Plus, celebrating the American artists as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary.

- Freedom Dreams, a multimedia and video project featuring five incredible artists.

- Welcome to the show.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, The Barnes is showcasing the idea of America, seen through the eyes of the American artist.

Let's take a look.

- In commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, The Barnes Foundation set out a incredible year of programming focused on this idea of the American artist.

Freedom Dreams a multimedia and video project featuring five incredible artists and in Annenberg Court a new installation by the multidisciplinary artist Sky Hupinka.

Sky has created a incredible collection of 11 images depicting American topography.

He has taken photos from across the nation as he has traveled and presented a beautiful and reflective space for us to understand the millennia that Native cultures have occupied this land.

When we think of this idea of America, we are thinking about those who have been historically included in that narrative, but also what sits outside of more mainstream concepts of America.

We do that with Sky's project Red Metal Dust by thinking of Native histories.

In addition to Red Metal Dust, we are also presenting a exhibition called Freedom Dreams, which I had the pleasure of co-curating alongside Mayori Holm, who founded Black Star Projects.

The conceit for this exhibition was to interrogate or examine for whom freedom is possible in the United States.

And we settled upon a show that will focus on Black artists working in the United States who were examining this in their work and examining it in the pieces that we selected for the exhibition.

We in part started with Arthur Jafa's work "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" which premiered here in 2016 at the Black Star Film Festival and so ten years later this work returns to Philadelphia in a different context.

He's edited hundreds of images over a hip-hop score that also includes gospel music.

He's trying to encapsulate an experience of black identity, black embodiment in the United States over a period of time.

Visually and sonically the piece is doing that at a very rapid pace.

The next piece is a work by Jatavia Gary.

It's called As Quiet As It's Kept.

It's from 2023.

This piece takes its origin from Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye.

The main story is about a young black girl who wishes to have blue eyes and wishes to attain white beauty standards.

The third piece in the show is from an artist named Tourmaline.

The piece is called Pollinator.

Much of Tourmaline's practice is examining the life and legacy of the transgender activist and artist Marsha P. Johnson, who was someone who was present at the Stonewall riots in the late 1960s.

This piece Pollinator, she's actually embodying Marsha in costume.

David Hart on the other hand brings sort of a West Coast perspective with his work on his attitude and science, Watts.

The historically African American neighborhood in Los Angeles through the lens of Charles Burnett's work, Killer of Sheep.

The final piece in the show is Garrett Bradley's America.

It's installed in a very different manner than you experience it in the cinema.

It's shown on four panels.

It's a fabric sculpture.

Garrett calls them flags, so I think there's a very direct address to the title, also to the thesis of our show.

This piece begins with an archival film called Lime Kiln Club Field Day.

And we believe that this is the oldest known film to feature a black and brown cast from 1915 and also had an integrated crew.

Garrett was inspired by that film to imagine what would other footage look like if it was from the early 1900s of black people going about their daily lives.

Creating an archive where one doesn't exist or is no longer available.

She created 12 short vignettes to also imagine American life for these black people and brown people in the early part of the 20th century.

It's no mistake that there is an exhibition by a Native American artist in the court, that we have this piece by all black artists working in the United States, and that there will be a piece about Japanese internment after that.

We're taking this moment to not just celebrate the anniversary, but also to make sure that we interrogate where we've made mistakes as a country.

We have a quote in the show that talks about repair.

It's really important to attempt repair so that we don't make some of the same mistakes that we've made in the past.

Philadelphia's own Marian Anderson dressed as she wanted to be addressed.

It was a strategic tool she used for social change and acceptance.

A voice like this is heard only once in 100 years.

Miss Marian Anderson.

He's got the whole world in his hands.

He's got the big round world in his hands.

We honor Marian Anderson with the brand new exhibit Marian the American Story and these pieces are reflective of Marian Anderson's life's journey as an artist from America through Europe back to America and how they made an impact on her story and style.

This was her home.

From the time that Marian Anderson purchased it in 1924 and was able to provide for the first time for her family a home became home and home base.

No matter where Marian Anderson traveled in the world, this was her home.

They did not have a whole lot of means when Marian Anderson started out in her career.

Marian Anderson and her mother go to the fabric shop and pick out fabrics that they could afford that were pretty and modest.

They would come home to this house and they would get on the sewing machine upstairs and they would create these beautiful dresses to wear.

Out of all of the gowns and dresses that she purchased in her life she said the thing that she treasured most about her style was when she got the chance to make those dresses with her mother.

[music] Marian Anderson felt that she had a modest sense of style.

The roaring 1920s, the Jazz Age, you had a style, fringe dresses, garments, gowns, and Marian Anderson had to stand on stage dignified and sing before an audience.

She did not want the audience to reflect and look upon her legs showing in bareness, so she would have gowns and garments, or as Marian Anderson liked to call them, her work uniform, to be long in measure so that you could focus on her voice.

Marian Anderson felt particularly hurt when she was performing in New York at Town Hall at one point and some critics said, "Miss Anderson is wearing the same powdered blue dress or the same yellow dress or the same mint dress that she wore the previous season."

And they focused on it and tore it down in its simplicity and that was hurtful.

Marian Anderson is known as the woman of firsts.

She became the first African American to sign with the RCA Victor Recording Company in 1924.

The first African American to receive the Liberty Medals of Freedom.

The first to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, doing so in 1955 at Una Mera Invascara.

The first African American to have an open outdoor concert in the United States at the historic Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

The African American community took such great pride in the way she dressed and the style that she had.

They felt that they were coming not only to get a performance of a beautiful voice but that they could take pride in the way that their Marian looked and carried herself.

A new innovation by Penn graduates is connecting newborns with the heartbeat of their parents.

The reaction from the nursing staff was truly incredible.

We had the opportunity to shadow in the NICU.

And so this is really where we got the idea from.

Wow.

This is babies and it could have less stress outcomes and it's perfect.

There's been literature in the field that has demonstrated that when babies can hear their mother's voice and are in a reduced sound environment, they're calmer, they sleep more, they have up to 26% improved feeding, which has been really important for them to grow and thrive to get home faster.

Exposure to mother's voice and heartbeat along with sound reduction has improved growth outcomes for a lot of these infants.

This project actually started our senior year in Penn Bioengineering.

Sophie and I interviewed over 200 clinicians across the U.S.

to really learn about what in this problem they're experiencing.

We started in Penn Engineering labs in the biomaker space using a realistic infant doll.

One of our main priorities of this device is that it's comfortable for these infants.

These infants are very small, their skin is very vulnerable, so that was kind of our first goal in this.

The Sonora Beanie provides parental connection and auditory protection for premature infants in the NICU and the labs here on campus really helped us by allowing us to use their 3D printers, soft resin.

We probably made up to 17 prototypes before we were finally able to use one in the hospital.

In terms of the ear molds and cups we wanted to pick materials that attenuates those high frequency noises of those alarms.

My role is the principal investigator of the Sonora Acceptability Study.

It allows us to actually put the beanies on baby's heads in the hospital in real time and see the clinical acceptability.

A challenge that we ran into early on when we were interviewing the nursing staff at Penn Med was they signaled to us this really needs to be integrable with CPAP respiratory equipment and feeding tubes we had to quickly iterate our device alongside them to make sure that we could handle those devices.

When I was invited to participate after they'd already invented the Sonorabini we could purposefully develop a protocol that randomly has hats on hats off filters on filters off so that we can show indeed that the Sonorabini has an impact.

Winning the President's Innovation Prize we were given access to so many different Penn resources whether it was Penn Engineering Labs or even the Penn Med Hospital the network has been truly incredible.

We were able to buy those hats and integrate our electronics directly into them.

We have a mobile app that allows parents to record songs, stories, their heartbeat when they can't be by the bedside of their infant.

Our goal is really to mimic what it sounds like in the womb to calm the babies down.

We've had parents record things that they're excited to share with their baby.

Bedtime stories, they've gotten their families involved in their native languages.

To see these hats go on little baby's heads and see the babies open their eyes, stop crying and relax.

It's so lovely.

You can see it immediately.

Parents have been one of our biggest supportive groups.

So being able to share messages whenever they can is really important for them.

Being able to continue this from our senior year was truly life changing.

We're so lucky that they were awarded the prize and University of Pennsylvania offers that to innovators that have great ideas.

They're creative and to keep them engaged in science and keep them innovating so that they can make these amazing changes in our world.

Spring is the perfect time to shed some of those unused things.

One option is Good Haul, a service that'll come to you.

But first, Swedish death cleaning is a thoughtful and gradual way of decluttering your life so your loved ones don't have to.

The idea comes from Sweden and was popularized by the book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Here's how the process makes life simpler for you and your loved ones.

What is Swedish Death Cleaning?

Swedish Death Cleaning is a process in Sweden where people at midlife are taught to start curating their possessions and making decisions for their belongings so that when they pass away they will not burden their loved ones with that task.

It's not about cleaning and it's not about death.

It's creating a life that you can't wait to enjoy and do the things that you love.

So what does that mean?

How does it work?

The best way to think about Swedish death cleaning is to think about how a curator thinks about a museum.

Choose the things that work for you now that are in this season of your life to lighten your load.

Gifting talk about that aspect of Swedish death cleaning.

This is one of the best parts of the class that I teach for people because once they come to terms with how to do it then they embrace it and gifting is the number one way that they enjoy it.

If you gift something of yours to someone who you know will enjoy that thing, whatever it is, that that also in return will bring you some sort of satisfaction and joy.

Yes.

Tell me the story about the cashmere sweaters.

This wonderful lady had 40 cashmere sweaters that she collected over 40 plus years.

She took all the sweaters and she got little grocery bags, cute bags for them, and she assigned one cashmere sweater to every bag.

Inside it, she put a note of when she got that sweater or where it came from.

So 40 cashmere sweaters went to 40 very lucky people.

- Wow.

And the stories then are carried on.

- Yes.

- Which I think is kind of fun.

And then when you wear it, you think of that person.

The first step would be to start small.

So we're gonna start with your junk drawer.

- Yes, and this is my true junk drawer.

So if you're looking in your junk drawer, you are essentially gonna ask yourself a few questions.

Do I recognize this item?

Do I know what its purpose is?

If I were looking for this item, would I come to this drawer to find it?

And then it really opens you up to the possibility of thinking about your life along those lines.

You can empower yourself to go and have the confidence to go to the next thing.

Is Swedish death cleaning a form of decluttering?

Yes, it is a form of decluttering, but you set your pace.

There's no start, there's no end.

It's actually curating your life as you go along to surround yourself with the things you love most.

But the purpose is not to do it just to get rid of things.

It's to choose what happens to your things over time.

And the more you do it and flex that muscle, the more joyful it becomes.

- My name is Mark and I was a participant here for Panthways to Housing.

And then I got hired again when they opened up a company called Good Haul.

Good Haul was founded in summer of 2022.

It is a social enterprise revenue generator for the Philadelphia Furniture Bank.

Philadelphia Furniture Bank was founded in 2014, and we serve 1100 families every year by providing furnishings for their new homes when they're exiting homelessness.

We have done everything we can to keep the cost as low as possible, but that means that we are not generating enough revenue to cover our operations.

So we wanted to come up with something to supplement what's coming in through philanthropy so we would have enough money to operate and continue to operate for years to come.

Good Hall is the revenue generator to help us cover some of that operating expense.

There comes a time where you have stuff in your house that needs to go somewhere else and you have no way of doing it on your own.

So you would call Good Haul, set up an appointment and our team would come out and take whatever it is you need to be removed from your house.

It could be usable goods, it could be furniture, it could be whatever you want to get rid of.

And we will measure the cubic footage of your items on the truck to generate a price for you.

And we'll take away your stuff.

We will do the sorting on site at our warehouse.

And then we take care of the donations and the recycling and the trash removal.

Good Haul is a major part of this program now.

We have three trucks to go out.

We have two footers and a 20 footer.

In Good Haul it helps with the furniture bank.

When we get good furniture we bring it there.

The good stuff we get.

Sofas, even sofa beds, chairs, dining chairs, tables, dressers are major.

The certain size tables we need.

We'll look at it all and we'll see if we can fit it into someone's home.

We operate the Work First program out of our warehouse that houses both the furniture bank and Good Haul.

Work First is a transitional employment program.

So for people who are just getting back into the workforce after a long break, they've experienced homelessness or housing insecurity or they have some other issues that are going on in their lives, we will invite them in to the program where they will work part-time for wage paid work.

We have some folks that go out on trucks and do deliveries, some folks that focus on cleaning and organizing the warehouse, some people that help with personal shopping and help people at the furniture bank, clients come in and choose their furniture.

And at the end of a year, a year and a half, they've built up enough experience and life skills and work skills that they can then graduate and go on to full-time work outside of our organization.

And that's exactly what Mark did.

So Mark, he was actually one of the first people in our WorkFirst program probably eight or nine years ago.

And he graduated, he went on to be working full-time outside of our organization for years.

And in the meantime, he graduated from our housing program through Pathways to Housing PA, and he decided he wanted to come back and volunteer at the Furniture Bank right around the time we were talking about launching Good Haul.

So when we were deciding to hire a full-time mover to work for Good Haul, Mark was the first person that came to mind because he had worked with us before.

We knew he cared.

We knew he had a passion for the work, and he was volunteering with us already.

So it was a really easy conversation to say, "Hey, "Would you be interested in helping us to launch this new venture?"

And of course he said yes.

And it's been two and a half years.

We love working with Mark.

We're so glad he's here.

We're also really glad to see what recovery looks like for people who go through our programming and how it can really help to transform lives.

People helped me a lot through this company and through other organizations.

I love doing this.

It makes you feel better about yourself anyway, that you're helping others on the situation that you were in.

This is part of my life now.

This next story brings me joy.

It's about a partnership between a Bucks County farm and a Warminster food bank.

WHYY News reporter Emily Neal and videographer Kim Painter bring us the story.

I'm here at Warminster food bank, which serves hundreds of families each week.

They always try to provide the best possible groceries to their guests.

But sometimes the produce goes bad.

It used to go to a landfill.

But now thanks to a new partnership with Hidden Valley Farm, they're able to turn this into dozens of farm fresh eggs for their guests.

We try to distribute the food as quickly as possible so it's in the best quality condition but sometimes we can't get the food out fast enough.

It's either already coming in damaged or the food starting to spoil.

So in years past that would go into the dumpster and just add it to our bill of pickup.

Now we are donating all of that food to Hidden Valley Farms.

Hidden Valley Farms has chickens and pigs.

We take the spoiled produce to them and they're able to feed their chickens and pigs and compost anything they can't.

And in return they provide farm fresh eggs back to us that we provide to our customers who are coming into the Warmister Food Bank.

I just walked through their front doors and said, "Do you have any food scraps that you're not using or that are spoiled for humans that would still be good for the animals?"

And they said, "Yeah, we actually have a fair amount of them."

So they started donating them to us.

An apple slice?

Making a product and seeing eggs come off every day, you're producing them, you're packing them, we're selling them to our customers, that feels good.

It feels even better when we can donate a portion of that to people that need it and hopefully have the food bank save some of their resources that they would spend on eggs and be able to put that money to either serve more people or buy more things for them.

And there's another group that is really happy about this partnership, and that is the Chickens.

For WHYY News, I'm Emily Neal.

Haddonfield siblings are seeing their childhood dream come true as they put a European twist on an American classic.

Welcome to Helldog.

Have you been here before?

No.

For homemade toppings, I have a homemade chili, homemade pickle dip, homemade horseradish dip, homemade jalapeno pepper jelly, homemade meatballs.

The most popular dog we have is called a Philly Dilly.

It's the pickle dip, so it's cream cheese base with sour cream, dill, and pickles, and some proprietary seasonings, and then crushed ruffles on top to give it a little texture.

When we were little kids, we had like these hot dog spots that we would visit when we were doing family vacations.

Megan wanted to learn how to cook the things that our grandmother, Amy, cooked.

My family and I took months to get these recipes down.

I have like homemade sausage and peppers as well.

So it's not just hot dogs.

I pride myself on having a road-worthy meatball sandwich, which is, you know, you can't stay very often.

We actually serve the hot dogs in a charcuterie cup.

They're served vertically, and we like to say that you can walk and talk with them, that they're safe for being in the car.

We just had this dream that we would talk about.

We would plan out our restaurant name.

that we would want to have.

When COVID happened, my brother started cooking for family, for friends, and people kept asking, "Oh, can you make me more meatballs?

Can you make me another lasagna?

Can you make me that chili sauce again?"

And we just started being like, "Maybe we can do this.

Maybe this is the time for this to happen."

We found all these local companies that we can connect with, and we sell their jars retail here, so you can actually come here and buy Fishtown pickles.

We also bake fresh in-house cookies from Reading Terminal from Fourth Street Cookie Company.

- Famous Fourth Street cookies.

- Famous Fourth Street.

I think that Matt and I are really lucky that we've always had a good relationship and we've had a lot of people say that to us, like, "Oh, I feel like I'm at my grandma's house.

"I feel like I'm at my aunt and uncle's house."

Or, you know, so.

That's what that's exactly what we're going for.

And that's our show.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Have a good night.

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