- [Shirley] Here's what's coming up - [Regina] Next on "You Oughta Know."

Watermelon is a favorite summertime treat.

Local experts show me how to pick a good one.

- [Shirley] Summer in the city means heading outdoors and enjoying popups, like the Rodin Museum garden bar.

- [Regina] Plus, improving the health and wealth of neighborhoods one tree at a time.

- [Shirley] And we go inside the factory where artists, makers, and creatives come together.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the show.

I'm Regina Mitchell.

- And I'm Shirley Minn.

The most recent study of recidivism in Pennsylvania shows that 60% of released inmates wound up back in prison within three years.

Now, remember earlier this year, I introduced you to the folks at Bennett Compost, a private composting company that services Philadelphia.

Well, at the time, owner Tim Bennett told me about one of his employees who beat those odds.

And who's now in a position to help others do the same.

(gentle piano music) It's been three years since John Williams first started working at Bennett Compost.

- Compost give me a sense of hope.

I like that you can recycle a lot of things in the world.

And Tim have a good program going on here.

- [Shirley] Owner Tim Bennett hired John because he was highly recommended.

The 32 year old was in jail for 23 months, where he worked in the prison compost program.

- In any workplace, there's gonna be slackers.

And then there's people that really take pride in what they were doing.

And John was one of them.

- [Shirley] That's why program organizer, Laura Cassidy, reached out to Tim before John was released.

(upbeat music) - She reached out to us and was like, "I got a guy, a really good guy.

He's made some mistakes.

If you have an opportunity, I think he would be a great guy to hire.

- [Shirley] And Tim is so glad he did, which is why he's taking another chance.

Having John run the prison compost program.

This year, Bennett Compost has contracted with the city to manage the department of prison's compost facility in Northeast Philadelphia.

- We thought he would be the perfect person to help run it because part of that program is running it and doing the collections from the different locations and managing the material.

And also part of the program is interacting and working with the people who are still in the prison who are part of the program.

- [Laura] He would lead new people in the group and show them and explain how the process works.

- John collects the food waste from one prison for now.

- We trying to get all the prisons up there to get on board and also inmates going to start coming out and helping us compost up there.

- [Shirley] Together, John will teach those inmates how to convert those food scraps into nutrient rich soil.

(upbeat music) - It's not something that happens overnight.

We have to fill a bay up and it takes about four months to six months for it to turn all the way down in the comp.

So it is like a process.

And just to watch the process grow and turn over.

It was good.

- [Shirley] Correctional officer, Paul McCann, worked with John when he was incarcerated.

- He was quiet but he was a really nice guy.

And he had a great work ethic.

He would always be ready.

I'm out here at work at all the time.

- It is possible to beat the odds, but you gotta want it bad enough.

And it really helps coming from someone that has walked in their shoes.

- He was incarcerated and now he's running this program and that shows the other people that yeah, they have another option.

- He's just a pretty amazing individual.

We're very lucky to have him here.

- Composting helped me out a lot.

The same thing that they poured into me, I can help them pour into them.

- [Shirley] Transforming something raw into something so valuable, it gives back in more ways than one.

John is collecting food waste from one prison for now, with the goal being to collect from all five active prisons in Philly, saving the city $250,000 in tipping fees a year and helping the environment at the same time.

Now, rules dictate that the prisons can't accept food waste from outside sources, but they can give their compost to community gardens and city employees.

- Planting trees is a powerful way to enhance the health and wellbeing of neighborhoods.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society works with groups to plant trees throughout the whole region.

(gentle ambient music) - 30 Years ago, it occurred to me that the citizens of Philadelphia, if given the opportunity, if given the educational tools, if given the physical tools, would rise to the occasion of bettering their own neighborhoods.

And when it came to trees, they make us feel better.

They make us feel cooler in the summer.

They're a tool that helps kids with asthma or the elderly that have heart conditions.

They are a tool that helps to reduce the effects of urban heat islands.

And our summers are only getting hotter.

So we started the Tree Tender program because we wanted to empower people to do what they could do to help increase tree (indistinct).

We're able to now provide trees for free in the city and concrete cuts to physically improve the neighborhood.

- We work with dozens of groups all over the Philadelphia area.

They're local in their own neighborhoods in Philadelphia or in their municipalities.

And we provide trees for them.

We provide training.

We have over 6,000 trained tree tenders around the region, and each spring and fall, we work with them to plant hundreds of trees in their own neighborhoods.

This week, we're doing 1,550 trees planted in the ground in about five or six days time.

So all of the trees get delivered to a warehouse in the navy yard, where a huge team of volunteers sorts them out and puts them in piles for each of the neighborhood groups that's gonna plant them.

Then those groups come, they pick up their trees, bring them back to their neighborhoods, and get them in the ground using local volunteers.

Today, we're in Stinger Park in Grays Ferry.

And our Grays Ferry Tree Tender group has found sites for I think about 30 or 40 trees all around the neighborhood, including six here in the park.

- [Woman] My tree is happy.

- Our Grays Ferry Tree Tenders group and our East Passyunk Crossing Tree Tender group have been doing remarkable work.

East Passyunk Crossing actually became an arboretum.

That's something that's available to other communities if you plant the right trees, if you have diversity of trees, and provide programming.

- East Passyunk Crossing Tree Tenders, it's located in South Philly.

A couple years ago, we were at the Navy Yard, which is a level-one arboretum through Arbnet, which is international association, we learned that we could apply and become an arboretum.

So we did that in 2020.

We started with a list of 25 trees.

We came up with an arboretum plan.

Our civic association, which is a 501(c)(3) is our parent.

And we became designated as a level-one arboretum.

What it basically did for us is it made us more focused.

We've been planting trees here since 2010, but we haven't done a lot of follow up.

Now that we're an arboretum, we're actually paying attention to the trees.

We're going back.

We're surveying the trees.

We've started a pruning club.

So twice a year, we're going out with Harper's to help with training, to actually take care of the young trees we're planning.

The city has a very low tree canopy.

In some neighborhoods like ours, it's 5% cover for trees.

In places like Mount Area could be 20%.

So neighborhoods like us are basically heat sinks.

The lack of trees creates more heat, more pollution, and problems with water drainage.

So the trees are very important in providing us with a safe, clean, comfortable, fresh air community.

Any neighborhood in the city can organize.

It can be through a church.

It can be through a civic association like ours.

It can be through a non-profit.

Or it can just be a couple of people that get together and do it on their own.

- Planting and caring for trees are one of the most important thing individuals can do to improve and transform their community.

People who live around trees are happier and they're healthier and they live longer.

This is something that volunteers can do.

They can come together with their neighbors to plant those trees and care for them, and make sure they're thriving.

- If you would like to start your own Tree Tenders program, contact the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society on their website.

- The Rodin Museum garden bar is back by popular demand.

(thrilling violin music) Grab a drink and some tasty small plates at the open air bar located in the scenic garden of the Rodin Museum, on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

It's free to get in, an admission to the museum is pay what you wish.

So have a craft cocktail and then check out the art by master sculptor, Auguste Rodin.

The museum contains one of the largest collections of Rodin's works outside of Paris, including "The Thinker."

The seasonal popup is open to all ages, and leashed pets are welcome in the garden.

The bar is open through the end of September, between 4:00 and 8:30 PM, weather permitting.

For nights when the outdoor popup is not open due to rain, guests are invited to the Friday lounge at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Galleries will be open to explore from 5:00 to 8:45, and admission is pay what you wish.

- A Camden County business is turning urban timber into beautiful heirloom pieces, using repurposed factory machines.

But that's not all that goes on at The Factory Workers.

- This is The Factory Workers building.

We're located in Collingswood, New Jersey.

And this is what we do.

(uplifting music) My name's Tom Marchetty.

My family's business is Marchetty Machinery.

We service to all the factories in the tri-state area.

We've got a phone call from a client saying, unfortunately, after 40 years of business, we can't compete anymore and we're closing up our shop.

I started transforming the business to repurposing the machines.

You drive around Philadelphia and Camden you see all these old factories that are sitting vacant.

We're not building and making things like we used to.

We thought The Factory Workers would be a good name for it because it's a tribute for all the men and women that lost their jobs because of overseas competition.

The machines that we're using came out of factories that were going to go to the scrap yard, and we repurposed them.

I started bringing the machines and tools in here, and setting up our shop.

This building's got a lot of soul.

It was a 1920s movie theater.

Michael Landon, his father was the original owner of this.

We started revamping the building and bringing it back to life.

We do welding we do metal working, we do woodworking, and we're incorporating new technology with old school equipment.

Everything we do is in house.

We have a metal fabrication shop.

We cut the steel.

We weld.

We have a machine shop that we can drill out and make parts.

I needed a right hand man.

Dustin comes in and a lot of these tables are big, you know.

You need somebody on one end lifting it and carrying the other and gluing stuff up and running the machines with me.

It's good to have someone here that knows what he's doing.

And we work well together.

(gentle guitar music) I really was drawn to the idea of urban timber.

Instead of taking the tree and taking it to a dump, they're now taking it to a saw mill and repurposing the tree into a usable resource, which is lumber.

The way that we get is every piece speaks for itself.

It's got its own story.

It's got different grains.

You couldn't buy this at a lumber yard.

Kind of our specialty is trying to source these big slabs to build dining room tables.

We do tables for restaurants, breweries.

Every piece of wood, it looks different.

It's almost like art.

It'll speak to someone differently than it'll speak to someone else.

It's always important that the client's involved.

They're not just picking something out of a catalog.

They're investing in something.

They're investing into an heirloom piece that they're gonna have forever.

There's a lot of passion that goes into this.

You're creating something for someone else.

It's a rewarding process because you know that in 200, 300 years, somebody's great grandkids are gonna be fighting over one of these tables.

And they're gonna see that logo and that brand on that table.

And it's kind of cool that you're leaving something behind.

It's a good feeling when you work on something for a week or two weeks, and then the end user gets to see, and they're like, "Oh my God, oh my God."

It comes from nothing and ends with a beautiful piece.

- The Factory Workers also houses a co-working space for small businesses.

And at night it can transform into a party venue.

you can rent.

- Ray's Reusables is making shopping easy for eco-friendly consumers.

- My name is Ray Daly.

I am the owner of Ray's Reusables, which is a mobile refill station operating in Philadelphia and occasionally South (indistinct).

I have both cleaning supplies and body care products like shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent, things that you would normally have to throw away a bottle for every time and then buy a new bottle when you buy it.

It's really easy to get sucked into a convenience culture where it's something that comes to you and then you just throw away whatever is left over at the end of that.

But the amount of trash that we're producing, and specifically the amount of trash that is escaping into the environment is really staggering.

It's just really important in terms of maintaining our environment and making our connection to our environment, that stewardship of it, I think is really important.

So I love a first time refiller.

The most important thing to know if you wanna bring your own bottles is to just make sure that they're fully clean, dry, and empty, and that'll help preserve the quality of the product so that nothing is being introduced that can throw off the formulation.

So as long as it's fully clean, dry, and empty, you can bring it up.

I weigh the container so that you don't pay for it, fill it with product, weigh it again.

And then you only pay for the cost of the product itself, the weight of the product itself.

If you don't have your own bottle, or if you just want like a really cute one, I have some glass bottles with little aluminum screw tops and some aluminum bottles as well.

And that way you can have one maybe that you have out that's display and one that you refill so that you can easily clean it without fully running out.

I like being mobile because I feel like it makes sustainable purchasing really accessible to a lot of people.

(indistinct) it might not otherwise.

Philadelphia has something like 70% of the people without cars or relying on public transportation.

So any way that I can lower the bar to entry for eco-friendly purchasing, I really like that.

You can find me all over the place.

The best ways to know where I will be is if you go to my website, www.raysreausables.com.

There's an events tab that shows you a full month overview of where I'll be.

- Everything about this just makes sense, right?

In addition to the mobile unit, Ray's has a new storefront and you can learn more by heading over to their website.

- This next story comes from a familiar face, beer expert Gary Monterosso, who gives us a look at a unique brewery that's serving more than just beer.

- If you're like most people in the US, you probably have at least one cup of coffee each day.

That's over 400 million cups that are served daily, making it our most popular beverage other than water, of course.

Well, beer is the most popular adult drink in the country.

There's over 9,000 breweries in the US right now, with dozens close to the Philadelphia area.

And right now I'm at Death of the Fox Brewing Company in Clarkboro, New Jersey, that's in Gloucester County, where they brew beer and coffee, which is so unusual.

In fact, the only one of its kind in New Jersey.

Chuck Garrity is the founder and president of the company.

Chuck, thanks for having us over here.

And I'll tell you what, that is a lot of work doing both beverages.

- Ah, but we love it.

Let me show you inside.

- Let's go inside and take a look at things, beer and coffee.

So, Chuck, that means more than just getting a cup of Maxwell House or Folgers, is that correct?

- [Chuck] Yeah, actually we have our roastery right here on site.

So we roast the beans fresh.

We date our beans and they're ready to go instantly.

So, really, you can't find a fresher coffee anywhere.

- [Gary] Not anywhere in town we're looking at 16 beers on tap.

I know you have some of these beverages here poured to us in a flight.

- Yeah, speaking of freshness.

So our beers are all made here as well.

And freshly, we turn over every week.

Our first beer here is our cinnamon toast pale ale.

It's probably one of our most popular beers, made with 32 boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.

The second beer is our Voulez-Vous farmhouse Belgian ale.

We actually do seltzers as well, so this is our pure guava hard seltzer.

And finally our creme brulee amber, which is kind of paired very nicely with our creme brulee latte.

- [Gary] I'm gonna look at some of these packages of products here too.

Also 'cause a consumer can come in and buy obviously the packaged beans, fresh beans.

- Absolutely.

So we have single origin beans.

We have about seven or eight different.

Most of our coffee is whole beans.

I recommend that's the best way to have it.

But we've just, over the last month, released some specialty flavored coffees.

So this is our Camel Cookie Crunch.

And of course we talked about Cinnamon Toast beer.

Well, this is our Cinnamon Toast roast coffee.

- And I hear something interesting's gonna be taking place up at the bar, so let's move up here.

- When you're looking for a fresh cup of coffee, basically what we're looking is-- Maria is doing a pour over right now.

A pour over is really the preferred way of preparing coffee for those coffee people or coffee snobs, as you can say, because it's an individually poured cup of coffee that is so fresh, so delicious, and it's really perfect.

- We're gonna try that later on.

I wanna close up with something back here 'cause this is kind of unique and new.

- So we have have 12 ounce and 32 ounce cans.

So if you enjoy one of our beers, we can have one ready to go.

This is our Crowler machine.

So we just simply seal the can for you, pour it fresh.

And then it's ready to go.

This is our Charlie Irish red.

- A full service operation from Death of the Fox.

Chuck, thanks for letting us come in here and enjoy some of the products.

I think I'm gonna sit at the bar and actually have a coffee today.

So we'll see you next time.

- If you've got a visual story that you've shot and edited, reach out to us, so we might air it right here on "You Oughta Know."

- Hollywood's latest take on a Jane Austen classic leans into some modern day storytelling techniques.

Here's Patrick Stoner with Flicks.

- [Anne] I almost got married once.

There were no two souls more in rhythm than Wentworth than I.

And I was persuaded by my family to give him up.

I would've been a far happier woman in keeping him than I have been in giving him up.

- It's been seven years.

- Eight.

- Darling, at some point you have to move on.

- Jane Austen was one of the most popular authors of all time.

She had an interesting take on the world around her, especially about women.

Dakota Johnson plays her heroin in "Persuasion."

But this time, with a diverse cast breaking the fourth wall, and it gives Jane a modern view of women.

- She sees women in a way that I think when these books were released, they weren't necessarily used to being written that way.

- Never.

- And I think it sparks still a conversation of the agency of a woman living in a society that lacks lots of freedoms and lacks equality.

And her pros are delicious.

- Indeed.

Now, there have been many versions of "Persuasion" over the years.

This takes a bit of a modern twist.

When you and the director talked about this, why?

- I think we all just felt that it was time to bring some modernity to this story and-- It's like a cover of a song.

It's just artists taking a great work of art and appreciating it so much that you wanna play it your way.

- Talk about the world that she lived in.

It was a beautiful world.

It was a world with a lot of visual splendor, which is reflected in your show.

- The world I think is so visually stimulating.

So detailed, so ornate and vibrant.

And yet the thing that's the most enticing is Anne Elliot's inner world is even more vibrant.

- That I think really is the secret to Jane Austen.

I feel like I know Jane Austen's characters.

I feel like if I meet them, they would be people I already understand.

To what extent was the visual element helpful when you, and being in the moment?

- I mean, so much.

I think the locations we filmed in, but also the costumes, the shoes, the corsets.

It just informs everything, the way you move, the way you speak, how you hold your body.

And all of it was was incredibly-- Also seeing your castmates also in their costumes and in their physicality.

Everything informs everything.

- Dakota, thank you very much for giving us your time.

- Thank you so much.

- Picking the perfect watermelon can feel intimidating because the only way to know if it's good is to cut it open, and by then it's too late.

Luckily, our friends over at Weaver's Way in Chestnut Hill had a few tips on what a sweet, right melon looks like before you buy it.

(upbeat music) It's that time of year.

From May until September, this gourd will be one of the most popular vegetables on the fruit stand.

But to get the best one, you're going to have to look and feel for the right signs.

- The best thing to look for when picking out a watermelon is to have the largest yellow or orange spot that you would necessarily need.

Otherwise you wanna have a lot of webbing because that lets you know that you have a sweet watermelon.

So this one right here, this watermelon right here, is a perfect watermelon for us.

It has a big yellow spot and it has all the webbing that you want to let you know that it's a perfectly sweet, bright, flavorful watermelon for you.

- [Regina] You also wanna make sure it has a strong stripe pattern, with the green part being extra dark and the stripes, a cream yellow.

- So if you want sweet, I will go for a large and heavy.

And if you want more watery content, I would just go for elongated.

- To figure this out, give your watermelon a good tap.

It should sound deep and hollow.

If it doesn't, this could mean it hasn't fully matured and the rind is still really thick.

- It sounds like really juicy.

Like it has a lot of love to give.

(chuckles) So when you're looking for a watermelon, you wanna make sure it's really dull instead of shiny.

Once you have a shiny watermelon, it means it's not as ripe as it should be.

But if it's dull, it means it's had some time to ripen.

If you guys pay attention to these tips, then you'll always have the perfect watermelon for you.

- So Shirley, this is the watermelon that I picked up based off of their recommendations.

And I sliced it up.

I want you to try it because I want you to tell me if I did good.

- Okay.

- If I didn't, keep it to yourself.

(both chuckle) Is it?

See, see, thank you.

- Thank you, diverse way.

This is delicious.

And I've bought two watermelons so far this summer, both bad, so I definitely wanna put these tips to the test.

- Absolutely.

And it's the same thing.

It can ruin a whole picnic.

So hopefully you will try this too.

Take a picture, share it with us.

We'd love to hear how it worked out for you.

- Yeah.

This is a game changer.

Thank you, Regina.

(Regina laughs) And thank you for sharing your time with us.

- We'll see you next week.

Goodnight everybody.

Bye.

(upbeat music)