Against an afternoon canvas of a gray sky, each store in the strip at 47th and Spruce streets bleeds into the next -- College Laundromat into Productos mexicanos y sudamericanos into Fast Printing into Penn Pizza and Restaurant. No, that's not quite right. There's something else squeezed between the printing shop and the pizza place. It doesn't have a sign or an awning, only a suggestion of three cardboard display cutouts of vitamin bottles in the front window. It's The Herb Nook and Center for Naturopathy and Vitality. Many a customer has wandered inside and demanded, "What's the deal, man? Where's your sign?" To these questions, Ron Norwood, the man who holds court behind this nondescript facade, always replies, "If you're supposed to find me, you'll find me." At the end of the 1970s, Norwood found himself running a ladies clothing store on 60th Street in West Philadelphia. He'd spent the previous few years on the road as an R&B guitarist, after leaving his studies as a voice major at West Chester University in his junior year. His mother lived in a West Philadelphia neighborhood and so, he decided to make it his home as well. In his store, he also sold cards, gifts and in the back corner, a few herbs. One afternoon in 1979, a group of women wandered into the store. One of the women, standing by the shelf of herbs, commented on the "strange mixture" the store had to offer. "You believe in this stuff, huh?" she asked. Before he even knew what he was saying, Norwood responded, "It believes in me." That was the critical moment when his life's purpose became tangible. It hadn't occurred to him while he was growing up in Durham, N.C., when his grandmother would make him drink catmint tea as a digestive aid along with his heavy Southern breakfast. It never crossed his mind when he returned to that four-acre farm each summer to gather samples of sassafras, sage and catmint to take back to his home in Philadelphia. It was that afternoon in 1979, when someone else asked him the question that made him defend his life, that Norwood finally understood what his life was all about. Herbs. "Nothing means more to me than my herbs." he says. "Until you start using them, experimenting with how they can work for you, you'll never know their power." Even at this new location, the fourth in 12 years, he is optimistic about the power of herbs in West Philadelphia. "I think this one is going to work," he says, leaning comfortably but carefully against a counter in his workroom. As a folk herbalist, Norwood is a bit of an anomaly at the store at 47th and Spruce streets that he opened in January. "Most of the businesses in this area are parasitic. They sell a lot of pizza, soda -- easy and cheap food that doesn't benefit the system. It's devitalized and not appropriate for people of African descent." Herbs, Norwood believes, are food the people of West Philadelphia need to eat. "A lot of black folks look at herbs and alternative healing and think it's exclusive white person stuff," he suggests, reasoning that coming to this literal divide between row-home stoops and manicured university lawns, is more comfortable for most of his customers. "People of color come from cultures with an innate ability to understand and use esoteric science. Now, people of a lighter hue are trying to sell our own traditions back to us." Norwood wants people to reclaim this innate ability. He wants his customers to find the nourishing "energy" of the store -- a combination of the energy of the herbs and the energy in themselves. He at least wants them to try. The greatest challenge for Norwood, however, is overcoming the pre-existing synthetic energy of the neighborhood. Many people wander into The Herb Nook expecting one of those "parasitic" operations that mar the West Philadelphia landscape. "Hey, even I get sucked into feeling that energy -- I feel it when I open up in the morning," and he gestures in the direction of the pizza place on the corner. "I suddenly find myself thinking I want a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. I never drink that stuff. llllllllll Norwood is a tall man, a self-described "gentle giant." He welcomes everyone who walks into his store with a hearty, "Hello, and what can I do for you?" He easily describes the transformation of alternative healthcare over the past two and a half decades: "During my first 10 years, I was actually dealing with preventative care. Then Time and Newsweek magazines published that it was a growing $26 billion industry. Now there's a whole new element of fads to fight." Over the past few years, however, Norwood has been looking for new ways to share his knowledge of herbs and healing. "I know I can't do this forever. I don't want to go out this way, with a store. It'll probably last another four or five years." In addition to running the shop, Norwood also teaches a class on herbalism at Temple University. Recently, he was a guest lecturer at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he spoke to medical school students about iridology, the concept of analyzing wellness through the iris of the human eye. On numerous occasions during the past 15 years, Norwood has lectured to Penn medical students about complementary and alternative medicine. The second half of the store's name further reflects his interest in teaching. "It's a center for healing and education," he says. Norwood even plans on writing a few books. "One will be called Disorder at the Border. It's about digestion and the stomach. Another is a recipe book that I'm co-authoring called I'm Tired of Brown Rice. Then there's Healing in the 'Hood'. I want to record my experiences as an alternative health practitioner in West Philadelphia, but it's pretty personal, which makes it kind of hard to write," he says. Norwood is not, however, a licensed physician, a point on which he is emphatic. He refers to those who come to him for advice as "clients" or "students," never "patients." Norwood does not "diagnose," "cure" or "treat." When making a suggestion to a customer, he uses himself as an example or reference, thereby avoiding the semantic traps set by Department of Health regulations. Norwood folds his plaid-shirted arms in front of his chest and looks around the back half of the 800 square foot space The Herb Nook now calls home. He doesn't seem too distressed by the disarray of this room, separated from the front sales space by a dry-wall divider. Boxes of supplies wait to be unpacked. Two perpendicular desks, covered with invoices, mailing lists, a computer and a printer, make Norwood's office space. A soft strain of jazz trickles from a small stereo. "There's still a lot to be done, but we're already getting a lot of foot traffic at this location. I'm not used to that yet. It's kind of nice." He moves slowly to the front room to help a customer who has just come inside. From the front entrance, one can see directly through a doorway, cut out from the dry-wall, into the back work area. The sickly gray walls are bare and the shelves are sparsely stocked with bottled herbs, organic shampoos and soaps. Norwood has plans for this space too. He wants to cover the ceiling and walls with various textiles and vintage kente cloth. He wants to display pieces of his African heritage -- the Senegalese warrior stature and long-faced tribal mask that he has kept in storage for so many years. "One of the main solutions for the problem of my community, the black community, is culture," he says. "As a people, we have been programmed to avoid cultural markers because they are stigmatized. But if you know who you are, you are stronger." In bringing all of these elements back together, perhaps Norwood can create an energy in The Herb Nook that is as glaring as the 15-foot brass cross that brands the Korean church across the street or as familiarly aromatic as the pizza that bakes just a few feet away. "You can't get city folk to change," he concedes. When he opened his first store back in the early 1980s, he catered primarily to a generation who, like himself, had been raised using herbs. Sassafras, dandelion root, comfrey seed and chamomile were in high demand, and Norwood was happy to deliver. But that generation seems to have forgotten to pass on the tradition and now, Norwood's customer pool is aging and shrinking. These days, younger customers, "come in, with five dollars in their pockets, and they want you to make a miracle," he says. Norwood's disappointment with this trend belies his flippant summation of cultural decay. Though the demographic of his customer base has remained the same, the 350 herbs that once lined his shelves have dwindled to just over 50. A waiting customer is getting impatient. She came into the store a few days ago and purchased a detoxification solution and wants to know why she needs to use the bathroom so often since beginning the regimen. Norwood quietly explains that the point of the solution is to clear out all the impurities in the body's systems. "Well, what about grapeseed oil? Will it do the same thing?" she asks. Norwood considers her question in silence and suggests she stick to the detox solution for the remainder of the treatment cycle. "Right. Well, I saw them selling the grapeseed oil at the food court at, um, at Strawbridge's. But I thought I'd check with you first," she says. Grapeseed oil, Norwood explains is used as a skin preparation and isn't meant to be ingested. "Why don't you sell books?" the woman inquires, insisting that they'd be very popular items. "You know, I tried books for a while, but it just didn't click," Norwood gently replies. llllllllll Two months go by after The Herb Nook's January opening and three of the businesses in the strip have closed down. A yellow curtain is pulled across the inside of the front window. The large vitamin bottle cut-outs are gone, replaced by a small sheet of white paper on which the words, "Herb Nook and Center for Naturopathy and Vitality" are printed in black. The already small front room feels cramped. Gone are the low-rising shelves and display cases. One is not welcomed by Norwood's sing-song baritone greeting, but rather by seven-foot shelves, blocking the former view into the work room. At least the walls, though still naked and gray, seem to have a slightly healthier glow under the fluorescent lights. Formerly bare countertops and shelves boast a growing, well-balanced-meal variety of inventory -- from the arcane (alligator balm) to the routine (stout, brown bottles of vitamins). Norwood sits behind his desk in the back room rather than the register. "Do things really seem like they're going well? Huh," he grunts, never raising his gaze, only his eyebrows. He explains that the new look of the front room is not due to an attempt to reorganize and revitalize, but to increase security. "We've had panhandlers up the gazoo. Selling hot goods and all that. They've developed a science for it. Walk right in, right into the center of the room and show us what they've brought," he says, demonstrating by moving his right arm away from his body, as if opening one side of an imaginary coat. Earlier in the day, a man had come up to the register and asked Norwood if he had any "kools." Norwood had no idea what the man wanted, but eventually figured out he was in search of cigarettes. "I really can't believe that he walked all the way in and never even saw what was on the shelves. I don't know if I can keep this up, I don't know if I can save the walking dead," he adds quietly. A new buzzer system will be installed in the front door so that no one, not even the most loyal and long-standing customer, will be able to just "walk right in." As for Norwood's original five-year vision for The Herb Nook: "Ha, after a week like this... let's just knock that down to three," he says. Two months after opening in his new location, Norwood's brand of energy still isn't quite catching on. He acquired a display refrigerator, bought cheap from another strip-mall neighbor who was closing up shop. "I was thinking of selling juices or something like that. I'd had that thing by the front door for a minute and these two hootchies walk in with their little blue drinks and just stared at it. I mean, it was empty, but they just stared at it. Scary," he says. The "hootchies," young female students at one of the nearby schools, are not atypical of the crowd that hangs around the strip mall. "I'll tell you about my people," Norwood bursts out. "We eat. We screw. We entertain." Norwood decides to talk about the upcoming article he's writing about touch starvation for an alternative medicine Web site. "I'm calling it 'A Call to All Arms.' You need at least seven hugs each day to maintain good mental and emotional health. There are so many people not getting that kind of interaction," he says, relaxing a bit more as the conversation moves away from the stressful situation that simmers in the front of the store. Norwood has already written one article for the Web site about the vibrations in food. He'd like to do more serious writing and give more lectures. He's going to keep visualizing that next step which will allow him to remain a teacher and a practitioner, remain the man who customers, out of trust and gratitude, call "Dr. Norwood." Suddenly, he switches back to the frustration that has likely been weighing his every movement around this store since January. "Why do I feel the need to be a saving grace, an educator? I could just as easily turn around and sell chumpies," he says, referring to the "little blue drinks," so symbolic of the parasitic energy that is overwhelming this neighborhood. The phone rings, but the caller just wants to check the phone number. "What's the phone number? How'd he call in the first place?" Norwood says, exasperated. A few moments later, a little redemption walks through the still unlocked door. "Hey, stranger!" Norwood happily greets a familiar face. "Dr. Norwood, this is my grandson," the woman replies, patting the shoulder of the little boy at her side. "I wanted him to see your store," she says. Maybe, just for a second, the thought crosses Norwood's mind that there is still hope for his kind of energy.

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