In the Gazette’s May|Jun 2020 issue, we published “The Edge,” JJ Tiziou C’02’s first-person account of a quirky endeavor he’d launched a few years earlier of making an annual walk around Philadelphia’s borders. In that first spring of the pandemic, his text and photographs provided a welcome breath of fresh air and freedom. Toward the end of the essay, JJ wrote briefly about his ambitions for using such walks as a way of bringing different people and groups together and added, ““I’m not sure where this project will go next.”
In “City Limits,” senior editor Trey Popp provides an answer, describing how the photographer and community organizer has developed Walk Around Philadelphia to the point that, in part thanks to a recent anonymous grant, he is contemplating stepping back from active management. Trey spoke with JJ for the piece, but more of the focus is on other walkers, including Lia Howard C’01 Gr’11, who adapted elements of the walk to her work as director of SNF Paideia’s Political Empathy Lab, and and her husband, University Chaplain Chaz Howard C’00, who has participated multiple times and reflected on being both the helper and helped (“now I’ve got a bad knee”) during the rougher patches of the journey.
It’s also a moment of transition of sorts at Kelly Writers House, which celebrated its 30th anniversary over Alumni Weekend in May. I mentioned KWH’s longtime faculty director, Kelly Professor of English Al Filreis, in the very first article I wrote as editor of the Gazette, and I believe I was among the first (few hundred) alumni writer-types to lament that Writers House wasn’t around in our day.
For “The 30-Year Squat”—you’ll get it if you read the article—I spoke with Al and KWH Director Jessica Lowenthal G’07 Gr’07, as well as associate professor of English Simone White, who took over as faculty director on July 1, about the origins, development, and future of the very well-used cottage at 3805 Locust Walk. I also sat in on some events this spring and for the anniversary, and the piece excerpts a few of the “Toasts & Reminiscences” shared by various students, faculty, and staff who’ve been part of the House across its history.
Since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics has been marshalling expertise across Penn schools to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and fairness of the US healthcare system. As Mary Ann Meyers Gr’76 points out in “LDI and American Healthcare” its scholars “face what are arguably unprecedented challenges in 2026.”
The article surveys work addressing the impact of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the complexities around incorporating artificial intelligence in patient care and administration, the rural healthcare crises, and a variety of healthcare access issues, a lot of it pretty grim. But despite all the challenges, outgoing LDI Director Rachel M. Werner M’98 GM’01 GrW’04, told Mary Ann that she still believes a “sustainable healthcare system that pays for better quality, equity, and efficiency” can be achieved.
Finally, please check out our annual photo gallery of this year’s (sunny!) Alumni Weekend festivities, and our Commencement coverage in “Gazetteer,” where historian Michael Beschloss offered the Class of 2026 a lesson in resilience from President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a speech he gave at Franklin Field in 1936.
—John Prendergast C’80
Editor
