The good news: Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway will play host to one of five Live 8 concerts to be held worldwide (well, not really worldwide) on July 2.

The bad news: Scheduled acts include Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews, Jay-Z, Maroon 5, P. Diddy, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban, Il Divo, Rob Thomas, the Kaiser Chiefs, 50 Cent, and Sarah MacLachlan.

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Trent Eugene Robinson picked the wrong day to give up smoking.

News from Atlanta:

In the end, the need for a smoke proved just too hard to resist.

A man who climbed up a crane in Buckhead and kept police at bay for six hours finally came down on his own after running out of cigarettes early Tuesday morning.

“We obliged him by sending someone to get some more and eventually it seems he wanted another cigarette and he came down for it,” said a visibly tired Atlanta police Maj. C.W. Moss at 3:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Note to smoking crane climbers: Plan ahead.

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W. Mark Felt, the former number-two man at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, tells Vanity Fair he was “Deep Throat” the previously unnamed source for the Washington Post’s groundbreaking reporting on the Watergate scandal.

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A quick reminder: The Philadelphia chapter of Drinking Liberally meets -- or more accurately amasses -- this evening at Ten Stone, 2063 South St., Philadelphia, beginning at 6:00 p.m.

Don’t worry, they let you attend even if you don’t drink, liberally substantially or even at all.

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Strange the relative silence surrounding the Bush administration’s cover-up of the details, the truth even, of the death of Army ranger Pat Tillman, all the more surprising given the outrage of Tillman’s parents, Patrick and Mary Tillman, reported last week in the Washington Post (see “Tillman’s Parents are Critical of Army,” by Josh White, May 23).

A handful of pundits are breaking the eerie hush, including Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., who took to Friday’s paper with “Bush Team Blurs Fact and Fiction” (published in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer under the catchier headline, “Next on the Hit List: Tillman Family?”):

[I]t made for a good story, didn’t it? And in the current scheme of things, one never lets facts get in the way of a good story. More to the point, one never questions the great and powerful Bush.

Still, there’s a difference between the Tillman tall tale and many of the others we’ve been told over the years. In this one, somebody died. And that ought to mean something. Something more than a recruiting opportunity, I mean.

So what will be said of Patrick and Mary Tillman after their outburst this week? Will they be called “unpatriotic,” too? Or will that slur, finally and at long last, shame even the most ardent defenders of the misinformation age?

Surely, even they must realize that you shouldn’t spin death. Indeed, you shouldn’t even try.

And Robert Scheer asks in today’s Los Angeles Times (“A Cover-Up as Shameful as Tillman’s Death”): “[W]hy has nobody high in the Army chain of command . . . been held accountable for this cover-up?”

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The fall-out from the French referendum on the European Union Constitution has begun: As expected, President Jacques Chirac has dumped Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Raffarin has been replaced by the bête noire of the American right wing, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin.

Watch for a meltdown over at the America Allsters’ blogs.

[Post-publication addendum: I told you so.]

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The Financial Times reports Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may soon enter . . . India.

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I’m listening to President Mangle Mouth’s news conference (Don’t ask.) on KYW News Radio (AM 1060), and I swear he just said accusations regarding mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo cannot be trusted because some of them came from people who have been “trained to disassemble.”

The president helpfully defined the term disassemble: “That means not tell the truth,” he asserted.

When the transcript comes out, I’ll post this section of the conference.

[Post-publication addendum: Here it is in the word-for-word transcript published by the White House: “In terms of the detainees, we’ve had thousands of people detained. We’ve investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.”]

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Gee whiz, show a little restraint, would you?

Beverly Sills has been singing, loudly and long, to New York Times writers Kurt Eichenwald and Daniel J. Wakin as they report on the latest crash of financier and arts benefactor Alberto W. Vilar (“The Double Ups and Downs of a Philanthropist,” May 30). The Times reports:

“He was not, how shall I say, quiet, about his giving,” said Beverly Sills, the soprano and a former chairwoman of the [Metropolitan Opera]. “I think that was a turn-off for other members of the board, the fact that he wanted more attention.”

Ms. Sills said Mr. Vilar once proposed putting the names of donors, including his own name, on the subtitle readout screens that are installed on the backs of seats at the house, and even bringing donors on stage at the end of a performance. The ideas were rejected.

“His reasons that more-public donations give more encouragement to other people was not really accepted,” she said. “They felt it was a little bit of an ego trip.”

Hardly the model of discretion. I would expect such talk from someone like, I don’t know, Donald Trump, but . . . Hey, wait, here’s Trump quoted in the same article: “He spent money like it was water. Many people have fought me over the years, but there was something really missing with this guy.”

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Elsa Hilger, 101, of Shelburne, Vt., formerly of Philadelphia:

[T]he first woman in the world, other than harpists, to be a permanent member of a major symphony orchestra, died May 17 . . . in Shelburne, Vt.

Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski hired her as a cellist in 1934. She never missed a performance -- except the day her son was born -- until retiring in 1969. And she retired only because of union rules. […]

A child prodigy born in Trautenau, Austria, and the youngest of 18 children (only four survived), Ms. Hilger learned to love music while listening to famed violin instructor Ottokar Sevcik give lessons to her sister.

Impressed by the 9-year-old’s attentiveness and the reach of her long fingers, Sevcik persuaded her parents to buy her a half-size cello. He became her first teacher. […]

At 12, she made her premiere performance with the Vienna Philharmonic […]

[In] 1934 . . . she got a call from Stokowski’s first wife, pianist Olga Samaroff, with whom Ms. Hilger was friends, inviting her to audition. After she played solo pieces on the Academy of Music stage for two hours, Stokowski said, “You’re in.” […]

Ms. Hilger married Willem Ezerman in 1935. […]

Donations may be made to Vermont Youth Orchestra Association, 223 Ethan Allen Ave., Colchester, Vt.[,] 05446.

[Ed.: Hyperlinks added.]

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While catching up on back issues of the New York Observer, and more specifically, while reading Sara Vilkomerson’s “The Eight-Day Week” in the May 23 issue, I happened to learn I missed, if that’s the right word for it, something called “Mamapalooza.”

Maybe next year.

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Count me as a fan -- and a defender -- of Martha Stewart, founder of Martha Stewart Living magazine and much else, but a confused fan and defender nonetheless, especially when I read such items as this excerpt from “From My Home To Yours,” about growing flowers for cutting, by Ms. Stewart herself, in the book’s June 2005 issue (pp. 23-26):

I am really not as fussy about the color or variety of plant as I am about its growing habit, strength of bloom, and usefulness in arrangements. I used to be a bit more inflexible -- at Turkey Hill, I banned red flowers and preferred that nothing yellow except daffodils be grown. [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

Oh my. Whatever was that misguided tantrum about?

I can only assume Ms. Stewart eventually longed for the beauty of such gorgeous specimens, produced in red, accidentally or by design, of the rose, zinnia, gerbera, tulip, geranium, peony, anthurium, amaryllis, carnation, calendiva, kalanchoe, cyclamen . . . Could I go on?

Or did a kind friend -- no doubt not Mariana Pasternak, because we hate her -- just say, with some conviction, “Martha, snap out of it!”?

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Has blogging “jumped the shark,” as they say?

I’m not sure, but just today I learned RoZzzie O’Donnell has one, and that can’t be good for the genre.

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Thomas Frank, author of the must-read bestseller, What’s the Matter with Kansas? (now available in paperback), is scheduled to speak at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., on Thursday, June 2, at 7:00 p.m. Call (215) 567-4341 for more information.

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The International Herald Tribune is reporting, as of about five minutes ago, that French voters today rejected the proposed European Constitution by a margin estimated at 57 percent to 43 percent, that according to French Interior Ministry officials.

[Post-publication addendum: For more about the French vote see: “French Voters Soundly Reject European Union Constitution,” by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times; “Chirac ‘Prend Acte’ due la Victoire du Non au Referendum,” Le Monde; “Jacques Chirac: ‘La Décision de la France Crée Inévitablement un Contexte Difficile,’” Le Monde; “Les Français Torpillent la Constitution Européenne,” La Tribune de Genève; and “La France Dit Non, Jacques Chirac Prend Acte, l’UE s’Inquiète,” La Libération.]

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Frank Rich answers the question -- “Whatever happened to Ground Zero?” -- and I’m paraphrasing: not enough and all too much.

A pull quote from today’s New York Times essay (“Ground Zero Is So Over”) [Ed.: Hyperlinks added.]:

For New Yorkers this saga is a raucous political narrative whose cast of characters includes a rapacious real-estate developer, a seriously irritating architect with even more irritating designer eyeglasses, a governor with self-delusional presidential ambitions[,] and a mayor obsessed with bringing New York the only target that may rival the Freedom Tower as terrorist bait, the Olympics.

Almost worth the newsstand price in itself.

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File this under “Accountable, Someone Must Be Held.”

Remember the maroon and yellow cover of the paperback edition of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye? Of course you do, if you’re of at least a certain age.

It is no more.

And, to my surprise, it hasn’t been for some time now.

I learned that, also to my surprise and amid a remarkable personal coincidence, while reading today’s Philadelphia Inquirer wherein I encountered an excerpt of an article first published at Design Observer, “The Book (Cover) That Changed My Life,” by Michael Beirut:

[F]or me, the maroon cover of Catcher has a special place. Blank, enigmatic, vaguely dangerous, it was the perfect tabula rasa upon which I could project all my adolescent loneliness, insecurity, anger and sentimentality. It was as if possessing it provided a password into an exclusive club, even if that club existed only in your own mind. I wonder if a different cover, a more “designed” cover, could have been able to contain quite so much emotion and meaning.

Well, Catcher in the Rye has a different cover now. More than ten years ago, its publisher did what any intelligent marketer would do. They created a Unified Look and Feel for the Salinger Brand. Now all four of the paperbacks have identical white covers, identical black typography, and -- here my heart sinks -- a little sash of rainbow-colored stripes up in the corner. No horrible pictures of Holden and his hat, thank God, but those happy little lines just seem to be . . . what? I guess they’re trying a little too hard for my taste. As Holden Caulfield might say, the new covers just look phony. The old one was just so goddam nice, if you know what I mean.

We know. Believe me, we know.

Here’s a tip for any present-day high-school students now reading The Catcher in the Rye who want to shock their parents: Flash that white-covered tome in front of your parents. I promise at least one will keel over, or rage, in disgust.

Publisher Little, Brown has a little explaining to do.

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Just two and a half weeks after returning from a hiatus that lasted longer than expected may not be the best time to draw readers’ attention to the return of the “tip box,” but life, like blogging, must go on: rent to pay, utilities to keep running, even food to buy. From this side of the blog, there couldn’t be a better time than now.

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The latest issue of The Nation, the “Spring Books” number dated June 13, is out, and if Lee Siegel’s review of Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems by Camille Paglia, appropriately cast as “Look at Me,” doesn’t set tongues a-wagging and fingers a-blogging, well, it’s only because nobody really cares about Paglia anymore.

A few excerpts:

Worst of all was Paglia’s self-consciousness as a media personality. After a while, she was no longer taking positions in response to principles or ideas, but in response to her own positions. Her extreme rhetoric concealed a cautious tailoring of her image. For every step leftward, she had to take a step rightward; for every transgressive gesture she had to make a concession to middle-class mores, for every step down to pop culture, she had to step up to some exaltation of artistic greatness. It was like doing the last tango in Paris all by yourself, on “The Charlie Rose Show.” Shaped by the issues, Paglia reached the point where she could only express herself in the categorical language of the issues. As the issues that launched her career as a public intellectual gave way to different ones that were outside her arena of expertise, she receded from public view.

Until now. With her new book, Paglia has found a new emergency in American life. As if an unnecessary war, a sinking economy, a widening gulf between classes, a rampant commercialism like acid on the brain weren’t bad enough, America is now experiencing a crisis in . . . poetry. Resurrecting the patented alarmist language of Allan Bloom and all those culture warriors who marched across our television screens in the late 1980s and ’90s -- and in doing so created a cultural distraction while the right wing stole American politics -- Paglia has exhumed a dead herring. […]

The best way to think about an alarmist book like this one is, first, to try to figure out who might want to read it. The only people who truly care about the fate of poetry are the small, rarefied group of devotees who write and/or avidly read poetry. Needless to say, they are not Paglia’s audience, since the last thing that would attract their interest -- or their respect -- is an elementary, and exceedingly banal, primer on how to read a handful of poems from the distant to the recent past. […]

Writers and lovers of poetry would be aware, too, that the situation Paglia is describing is a figment of her publicity-deprived imagination. […]

There are probably no fewer worthwhile poems, novels and paintings now being made by gifted people than there ever were. But there’s a vast increase in desperate, ego-driven [expletive deleted], of which Paglia’s book happens to be a good example. […]

Paglia belongs to that group of critics who learned long ago how to satisfy the vanity of smart, culturally credentialed people who either no longer have the time to read or who, for one reason or another, are not drawn to high culture -- in this case, poetry. You tell such people in wry, ironic, cultured tones that there’s no longer anything worth reading. In this way, you reassure them that the classics they read in college, and perhaps graduate school, are all they need to know. […]

The irony of Break, Blow, Burn is that Paglia, the great defender of art against ideology and against tendentious multicultural agendas, drags just about every poem in this book -- from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” a poem of sorts -- into the realm of noisy, issue-driven debate. No wonder Auden is inexcusably absent from this slim selection. He famously wrote that “poetry makes nothing happen.” Paglia, by contrast, seems to think of poetry as a higher form of punditry, exhorting poets to “remember their calling and take stage again.” But she’s confusing her fantasy of poetry’s purpose with her own purpose in publishing this book, which is to re-create the kind of controversy that made her a celebrity. Nearly all the poems she’s chosen are sonnets or lyric poems. Neither sonnets nor lyric poems are meant to speak for their era. Few poets feel obligated to do so in any form.

But Paglia has to make her poets sound as big, world-historical[,] and urgent as she herself aspires to be. One consequence of this willfulness is to make Blake, Wordsworth[,] and Shelley sound like “The McLaughlin Group.” The other is to offer horrible, bombastic misreadings of the poems Paglia has chosen. […]

In her quest for relevance and urgency (an impulse she oddly shares with the student radicals she once berated for wanting to read contemporary black authors instead of “dead white males”), Paglia loads onto her readings the kind of submarine-sandwich-like Big Ideas with which college freshmen pad the final-exam essays they never studied for. […]

To invoke two other writers from the past, Paglia used to come on like Byron; now she is like some cynical version of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, trampling on her very own standards, stooping as low as she can go in order to get a second helping of attention from the public that has forgotten her. But bullies always end up being reduced to their inner weakling. It’s called poetic justice.

Delightful. Delicious. Deserved.

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For reasons both obvious (Martin Peretz, Andrew Sullivan, Fouad Ajami, Charles Krauthammer, Robert Kagan . . . ) and not, I no longer subscribe to the New Republic, but now and then, out of a morbid curiosity, I’ll flip through the latest issues when visiting the public library, as I did earlier this week.

Others who have abandoned the book can rest assured little has changed, and that TNR is maintaining its average: The magazine features at most one interesting article per issue. (Exceptions may be made for the “back of the book” as an imaginary stand-alone operation.)

Caveat aside, I can confidently recommend two articles to those with access to the magazine, whether in print or on the web.

The first is “Writers’ Bloc,” by Franklin Foer in the May 16 issue, about the all-too-cozy relationship of right-wing journalists, pundits, and think-tankers to corrupted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients. Pulling from the web site, the article begins:

In August 1997, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay traveled to Russia in the company of his frequent companion, the now-infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff. For six days, he huddled with government ministers and oil executives and golfed at the Moscow Country Club. Any pleasant memories of this tour of post-communist prosperity, however, have surely vanished. The trip now threatens the Texan’s political career and has placed Abramoff at the center of congressional inquiries. DeLay, though, was not the only prominent conservative to see Russia the Abramoff way. Two months before DeLay touched down there, Abramoff’s firm shepherded a contingent of Washington journalists and thinkers around Moscow -- an itinerary of meetings and meals designed to please the trip’s funder, a Russian energy concern called NaftaSib. This journey included Tod Lindberg, then-editor of [t]he Washington Times editorial page; Insight magazine’s James Lucier; and Erica Tuttle, [t]he National Interest’s assistant managing editor at the time.

The second article of note is “The Bookless Future,” by David A. Bell (May 2), about the effects of the internet on scholarship, scholarly publishing, and reading generally:

It is late at night, and I am at home, in my study, doing research for a book on the culture of war in Napoleonic Europe. In an old and dreary secondary source, I find an intriguing but fragmentary quotation from a newspaper that was briefly published in French-occupied Italy in the late 1790s. I want to read the entire article from which it came. As little as five years ago, doing this would have required a forty-mile trip from my home in Baltimore to the Library of Congress and some tedious wrestling with a microfiche machine. But now I step over to my computer, open up Internet Explorer, and click to the “digital library” of the French National Library. A few more clicks, and a facsimile copy of the newspaper issue in question is zooming out of my printer. Total time elapsed: two minutes.

Good stuff when they can get it.

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A Los Angeles Times editorial, “The Frist Problem,” today makes a strong case supporting the notion that the Senate, the Republican Party, and the nation as a whole would benefit from the speedy departure of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.):

The best thing a Senate majority leader with presidential aspirations can do is quit. That was Bob Dole’s strategy in 1996, when he resigned to run against President [Bill] Clinton. And it may be part of Bill Frist’s decision not to seek reelection in 2006. If so, Frist could hardly make a smarter move. […]

Dole quit in part because his evident mastery of its rules left the impression that he cared more about recondite parliamentary tactics than he did about the presidency. Frist, who many speculate plans a bid in 2008, has the opposite problem. The longer he tries to run the Senate, the more he looks like a bungler whose only principle is personal advancement. […]

Frist may be bringing trouble on himself by trying to satisfy the exorbitant demands of his party’s far-right wing, which, like the old Soviet Union, views one concession simply as an occasion to ask for another. Before Frist truckles any further to the conservative base, he would do well to remember that the Hippocratic oath should apply to the Senate as well: First do no harm.

Enough damage has been done. Do we really have to wait another year and a half?

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An irregular look at some of the unusual searches that brought recent visitors to The Rittenhouse Review:

broadcast funny news lady squashing grapes
This is a reference to Christiane Amanpour’s Lucille Ball imitation -- I think.

Dali show tickets
Well, the show, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, closes in three days, and it’s sold out, so take your chances with agents or scalpers, if there are any. Hell, what do I care? I snuck in under the wire on Monday afternoon.

example of a visual map of a literature review in a research proposal
It’s true: Some Rittenhouse readers are smarter than I.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants irritating chick flick
Please, no need to be redundant.

Why cows have tails
Maybe because they would look so odd without them?

large cyst on armpit
I’m not an expert on armpits, but I’d have that checked out.

Philadelphia or Pottstown and July 4th fireworks 2005
“Honey? Where do you think the fireworks show will be better? Philadelphia or Pottstown?”

how do you say he lives in Philadelphia in French
I think it’s “Il habite à Philadelphie.”

what happened to Neil Stein Philadelphia
Good timing! The Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday reported: “Stein intends to plead guilty Tuesday to all three counts of filing false federal income-tax returns lodged against him in September, his lawyer confirms. He was accused of skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from the till of his posh restaurants and larding corporate credit cards with personal expenses. Legal observers believe that he will get little, if any, jail time at sentencing, probably in August.”

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Okay, so it applies to any breed of dog, not just bulldogs, but it’s getting late and I can’t think of anything else at the moment, so let me draw your attention to “And to My Dog, I Leave a $10,000 Trust Fund,” by MaryAnn Mott in the May 22 issue of the New York Times:

Laws in 27 states -- including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey[,] and New York -- now allow owners to establish trusts for pets. These arrangements set aside money for the care of one or more animals in the event of an owner’s disability or death. . . . More states may soon allow it. Pet trust legislation is pending in Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island[,] and Texas.

Apparently it’s quite easy to do and can cost as little as a hundred dollars. And worth doing: “[M]ore than 500,000 pets are killed in shelters and veterinary offices each year after their owners die, according to 2nd Chance 4 Pets, a nonprofit organization in Los Gatos, Calif., that raises awareness of this problem.” (Hyperlink added.)

An example of how the trusts work: “For $500, [PetGuardian] enrolls its customers in a program that includes a comprehensive pet trust document, a cost analysis to determine how much money to set aside for the pet’s care and emergency identification cards for owners to post at home and carry in their wallets. . . . Best Friends Animal Society, a large no-kill shelter in Utah, finds homes for pets, no matter where they reside, if the caregivers named in the trust are no longer available.”

Owners can leave detailed instructions. One client of PetGuardian “stipulated that her dog be fed barbeque chicken in the morning and grilled ribs at night. Others want their pets to sleep only on beds of a certain density and to receive special squeaky toys.”

Don’t worry, Mildred, arrangements already have been made. The list of demands stipulations runs eight single-spaced pages.

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For all its faults, the New York Times still gets many things right, as it does with today’s special section celebrating the city’s Chrysler Building, a dazzling, entertaining, and informative collection of articles about the Art Deco architectural masterpiece including:

“Before the Crash: Bringing in the Blue Chips,” by Neal Bascomb.

“For the Architect, a Height Never Again to Be Scaled,” also by Bascomb.

“In the Background, but No Bit Player,” by Dan Barry.

“Juke Joint in the Sky,” by David W. Dunlap.

“The Chrysler After Party,” by Shelly Freierman.

“On Top of the World, Drafting, Dreaming and Drilling,” by William L. Hamilton.

“Dancing to New Rules, a Rhapsody in Chrome” by Michael J. Lewis.

“How It Sparkled in the Skyline,” by Elaine Louie.

“Leaping the Chrysler in a Single Bound,” by Bruce McCall.

“A Lunch Club for the Higher-Ups,” by Charles McGrath.

“For Chrysler, a Tribute to His Own Rise,” by Phil Patton.

Of these articles, I think I enjoyed McGrath’s best of all. It’s the poignant tale of the Cloud Club, the private enclave previously ensconced on the Chrysler Building’s top three floors, and a story that ends on this sad note:

The fortunes of the Cloud Club began to decline a little in the 50’s and 60’s, with the defection of some members to the nearby Sky and Pinnacle clubs, which were both newer and bigger. The whole Chrysler Building fell on hard times in the mid-70’s, and in 1977, Texaco, whose executives were then a mainstay of the Cloud Club membership, moved to Westchester. The Cloud Club closed for good in 1979, and various schemes to rehab and reopen it never came to much.

Tishman Speyer, which took over the Chrysler Building in 1998 and painstakingly refurbished it, has leased the top two floors of the Cloud Club space to tenants, while the first is still awaiting an occupant. The grand staircase has been yanked out, and the rest of the space has been pretty well expunged of ghosts and memories. Except for a marble floor and 54-inch-wide windows -- which on a clear day offer a view so expansive it’s like looking at New York on HDTV -- it offers not a clue to its former incarnation.

For some reason, airy views no longer seem much in vogue -- at least in public spaces. The Rainbow Room is closed except for parties; the Top of the Sixes, for so many years an obligatory post-prom stop, has been turned into a private cigar club; and Windows on the World, at the World Trade Center, was in decline even before 9/11. The only place where you can pretend to be a tycoon and sip a martini while looking down on the city is the View, the cocktail lounge at the top of the Marriott Marquis, a space so unglamorous that it makes you understand the current fashion for hanging out not at the tops of buildings but in their atriums.

Sometimes you don’t know what you had until it’s gone.

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Look who’s developing a collective spine all of the sudden: Senate Democrats!

The Associated Press reports:

Democrats forced the Senate to put off a final vote Thursday on John R. Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador, the latest setback for the tough-talking nominee President George W. Bush has called strong medicine for corruption and inefficiency at the United Nations. […]

Republicans needed 60 votes to end the Democrats’ procedural delays and move to an immediate final vote on Bolton’s confirmation. But the vote to halt the stalling was 56-42, four shy of that threshold. The final Bolton vote will not take place until at least June, after the Senate returns from a Memorial Day recess.

Well, many Democrats are getting spiny. Three Democratic senators joined Republicans seeking a final vote on the Bolton nomination: Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), and Mary Landrieu.

Am I the only person who thinks Sen. Landrieu is getting more than a little annoying?

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Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has been rolling around in the muck again: No, not cavorting with the most extremist elements of the American right wing (nor their dogs), but working on sewers in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

The Allentown Morning Call today reports Monroe County, Pa., commissioners yesterday “approved a tax incremental financing plan to help fund a $40 million central sewage system designed to keep the nation’s sole supplier of injectable flu vaccine in the Poconos.”

That would be Sanofi Pasteur, which, according to Matt Birkbeck’s report, “Monroe OKs Sanofi Sewer Financing,” “has an on-site sewer system [in Pocono Township] that’s near capacity. In December, the company threatened to kill a planned $160 million expansion of its vaccine facility unless the state and Pocono Township agreed to build new sewer capacity.”

Sen. Santorum is credited, along with Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R), for securing $10 million in federal funding for the sewer system.

Fittingly, given Sen. Santorum’s involvement, State Rep. Mario Scavello (R), called the financing a “no brainer.”

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Parents today!

So cute, clever, and so misguided when it comes to spelling their children’s names.

Case in point: Amaury Gonzales and Clara Rodriguez of Brooklyn, N.Y., the parents of three children, one of whom is named Anäis, a young girl destined to carry forever the burden of a misplaced diacritical.

Sic, as they say.

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On the one hand (“They Sell No Fake Before Its Time,” by Tracie Rozhon and Rachel Thorner, New York Times, May 26):

Street vending in New York is as old as pushcarts. But now, buying from Manhattan’s vendors has grown increasingly chic, especially among young people. Although there are no official numbers of shoppers or total sales -- vendors are not required to report such figures -- city officials and regulators agree: the number of street vendors has grown exponentially, the sellers have diversified their wares and business is booming.

On the other hand (“Fake Goods Benefiting Extremists?” by Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press, as carried by the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 26):

Buying knockoff designer handbags and Hello Kitty T-shirts on city street corners may ultimately be helping violent groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, law-enforcement officials and experts testified [in Washington] yesterday.

Profits from faux Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Prada purses, scores of pirated DVD movies, and counterfeited clothing and other goods have been traced to supporters of extremist organizations, the experts said.

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The Chicago Tribune today reports in “23 Charged in Discount Retailer Theft Ring” (hyperlinks added):

Charges have been filed against 23 Chicago-area people in an elaborate theft scheme allegedly targeting discount retailers Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan announced Wednesday. […]

The arrests were a result of a two-year investigation involving the U.S. Secret Service Organized Crime Task Force, the Illinois State Police, the U.S. Marshals Service[,] and the Calumet City Police Department after officials from the parent company of the two stores contacted authorities.

Stolen register tapes and tagging guns allegedly were used to return cheap merchandise with doctored receipts. For example, someone would purchase an expensive rug and return a cheaper rug at multiple locations for a profit, or someone would buy thrift-store clothes, attach tags from Marshalls or T.J. Maxx, and return the clothes, authorities said. [Emphasis added.]

Thrift stores must be moving up in the world.

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I can’t believe I missed this from more than a month ago, this being New York Press’s annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers. (Yes, they got it down to 50 in a city in which mere loathsomeness is considered both a character flaw and a personal failing.)

Rittenhouse readers perusing the list of the loathsome might find their eyes locked upon number 41, Norman Podhoretz, editor emeritus of Commentary, about which the Press writes:

It’s been a good millennium so far for the city’s most loathsome elderly intellectual. The Bush White House awarded ol’ Poddy the Presidential Medal of Honor last year for his decades of tireless support for arms racing, unprovoked aggression and death squads. His wife Midge Decter, meanwhile, was awarded a National Humanities Medal for her decades of faithful imitation of a menopausal Mathew Arnold. His leaden-witted son John finally escaped the shadow of fellow mini-con William Kristol and took over that sophisticated journal of ideas known as the New York Post op-ed page. Just half a bloodline away, son-in-law Elliot Abrams wormed his way back into the foreign policy establishment like Iran-Contra never happened. So you’d think Stormin’ Norman would be happy. Hell, last year the Free Press even published a 500-page Norman Podhoretz Reader. But Norman ain’t happy. Norman’s never happy. His latest piece in Commentary is one long cry of pain and hurt that his own designation for the Clash of Civilizations -- “World War IV” -- hasn’t yet become an international relations meme on par with Walter Lippman’s “Cold War” or the central, permanent organizing principle for Western Civilization, aka the American imperium, with him and Midge at the stormy helm. Someone needs to just die already.

And people think I’m snarky?

Also (deservedly) among the loathsome, several of whom have been on the receiving end of criticism at this site: Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair at No. 8; Andrea Peyser of the New York Post at No. 13; Ed Koch, former mayor and closet conservative, at No. 18; Katie Couric of “Today” at No. 24; Lawrence Kudlow, identified as an “economist” (?) and “pundit,” at No. 28; Bill O’Reilly of “The O’Reilly Factor,” at No. 29; Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim Museum, at No. 36; Karen Schwartz of the New York Sun at No. 39; Frank Bruni, food critic of the New York Times, at No. 40; Max Boot of The Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard at No 45; Judith Regan of ReganBooks at No. 48; and the guy in the number-one slot, but if I told you his name here you wouldn’t read the list over there, would you?

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The proverbial clock may not be ticking, but the pressure surely is building on Spokane, Wash., mayor, the conservative, anti-gay Republican Jim “RightBi-Guy” West, to resign in the face of charges of sexual misconduct and abuse of his office.

Reporter Mike Prager writes in today’s Spokane Spokesman-Review (“Council to Call on West to Quit”):

The Spokane City Council is expected to call for the resignation of Mayor Jim West when it meets next Tuesday.

All seven council members are now part of a growing chorus of community leaders who want West to step down over sexual misconduct allegations.

Council President Dennis Hession on Tuesday said the city “is now at a point where the mayor’s continued presence is an impediment to the normal progress of the city.”

At least six council members say they will support the nonbinding resolution calling for West’s resignation when it comes up for a vote Tuesday, and the seventh is reportedly leaning in favor of it.

Prager reports, however, that Councilman Brad Stark doesn’t believe even a unanimous resolution will lead West to resign. “As a result,” according to Prager, “several council members are talking about a charter amendment giving the council possible impeachment authority.” Such an amendment would require the approval of Spokane voters, at least one of whom, the Spokesman-Review reports, has filed a recall petition.

The best part of Prager’s article comes at the end, when he writes: “[Councilman Bob] Apple said the Republican Party ought to find West another job so he can resign. ‘I think they have an obligation,’ Apple said. ‘He’s a product of the Republican Party.’”

Oh, is he ever.

(For more about the West scandal, see the Spokesman-Review’s collection of past and ongoing coverage here.)

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The National Catholic Reporter has caught the Legionaries of Christ, the controversial Catholic congregation of priests, in a lie.

NCR Rome correspondent John L. Allen, Jr. reports (“New Legionaries Intrigue”):

In a potentially significant twist to the case involving the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, NCR has learned that the office that recently released a statement saying there is no case against Fr. Marcial Maciel regarding sex abuse accusations is not the office with responsibility for making that judgment.

On May 20, the Legionaries of Christ issued a news release stating that the “Holy See” had informed them that “at this time there is no canonical process underway regarding our Founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, LC, nor will one be initiated.” Subsequently, the Catholic News Service and other press agencies quoted the Vatican Press Office as confirming the statement.

That news startled some observers, since an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency charged in 2001 by Pope John Paul II with responsibility for the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, traveled in early April to New York and Mexico City to collect testimony from alleged victims. Those efforts by Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice within the congregation, suggested that a preliminary investigation was underway.

Most observers assumed that the new communication to the Legionaries must have come from that congregation, the office once headed by Pope Benedict XVI.

In fact, however, the communication came from the Secretariat of State, the department that handles papal diplomacy and acts as a coordinator for the work of other Vatican agencies. It came in the form of a fax, which was unsigned but bore a seal from the Secretariat of State indicating official status. Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, is a longtime supporter of Maciel and the Legionaries of Christ.

What this means is that the statement did not come from the Vatican agency that ultimately has responsibility for deciding Maciel’s fate. Officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have refused to make any comment on the recent news reports, but a senior Vatican official told NCR May 25 that the congregation has made “no statement” on the Maciel case, even to the Secretariat of State.

For their part, the Legionaries appear to be holding fast to the untruthful, or at best highly misleading, statements in the news release. The NCR reports a spokesman for the congregation “did not believe the distinction of which office issued the statement ultimately made any difference.” Says Jay Dunlap, Communications Director for North America, “We believe the Holy See is speaking with a unified voice on this issue. The way in which it was communicated was intended to make that clear.”

But Allen’s close and informed analysis of the language used in the communication from the Secretariat, written in Italian by the way, demonstrates that if anyone is confused, it’s the Legionaries and not the NCR, to say nothing of the Vatican itself.

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The U.S. Senate this afternoon approved the Bush administration’s nomination of Priscilla R. Owen to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, by a vote of 56 to 43.

The New York Times reports Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) was the only Republican to vote against the nomination. Justice Owen won the votes of two Democrats, Sens. Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.) and Mary Landrieu (La.). Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) did not vote.

There’s some solace in this: Justice Owen will have to spend the rest of her professional life in New Orleans.

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Go figure. The least-reliable and indeed worst-tasting of popular varieties of apples, the so-called red delicious, has been found to be the most healthful, at least as measured by antioxidant content. That’s according to a new study by researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Guelph, Ontario (a government agency), as reported by the Scripps Howard News Service:

Canadian researchers analyzing eight popular varieties found that the old standby, red delicious, and an apple called northern spy contain more disease-fighting antioxidants in their skin and flesh than any other studied.

Red delicious had more than twice the antioxidant activity as empires, which had the least activity of the eight.

The study included eight varieties -- red delicious, McIntosh, Cortland, northern spy, Ida red, golden delicious, Mutsu, and empire -- all grown under similar conditions on the same Ontario farm.

Helpfully, and thankfully, the study’s leader, Rong Tsao said, “Eating any apple is better than eating no apple at all.”

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Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld speaking in Philadelphia today denied to crux of a Washington Post article, “Military Was Set To Down Cessna,” by Spencer S. Hsu and John Mintz, in which he was reported to have given an order on May 11 to shoot down a privately operated Cessna that accidentally traveled over restricted airspace in Washington, D.C.

According to Philadelphia news radio station KYW (1060 AM), Secretary Rumsfeld, appearing at a function at the Park Hyatt Bellevue Hotel sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said: “It was two anonymous sources for the article -- and of course it wasn’t true. I never even got on the phone conference call to discuss the circumstance of the little plane.”

I’m not sure which angle is supposed to make me feel better: that Secretary Rumsfeld never gave such an order or that nobody thought it appropriate to include him on the conference call.

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Believe it or not, fingertips can be purchased, if not exactly on the open market, and for a mere 50 bucks.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today (“Conspiracy Charge for Finger Case Spouse,” by Alan Gathright):

Jaime Placencia was charged Tuesday with conspiring with his wife, Anna Ayala, to plant a fingertip in Wendy’s chili to squeeze the fast-food giant for a financial settlement. […]

A police statement last week accused Placencia of buying the fingertip from an injured co-worker on Dec. 20 and saying he planned “to create a lawsuit by planting the finger in food at an undisclosed restaurant.”

The mother of the injured co-worker, Brian Paul Rossiter, whose ring finger was sheared off by a truck lift, told The Chronicle last week that her son gave it to Placencia to erase a $50 debt.

Placencia and Ayala now both stand charged with felony conspiracy and attempted grand theft for allegedly concocting the tainted-food claim and causing Wendy’s to lose millions of dollars from bad publicity. […]

Prosecutors have said Rossiter will not be charged because there is no evidence he participated in the alleged conspiracy.

So, if my finger were severed due to an accident, I, what, get to keep it? Would I be required to do so? Questions linger.

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Just 18 U.S. senators mustered sufficient principle and courage to stand up and vote against ending floor debate on the nomination of right-wing proto-jurist Priscilla R. Owen to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Seventeen are Democrats: Joseph Biden (Del.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Jon Corzine (N.J.), Mark Dayton (Minn.), Christopher Dodd (Conn.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), John F. Kerry (Mass.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Blanche Lambert Lincoln (Ark.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Paul Sarbanes (Md.), and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.).

One is an independent: James Jeffords (Vt.).

(Source: The Washington Post.)

[Post-publication addendum: Don’t miss David Corn’s “The No-Nuke Deal,” the core of which relays: “[T]he Democrats did not walk out of the room with a hard-and-fast right to resort to a filibuster. With this compromise, they are only able to wield a judicial filibuster if seven Republican senators agree the situation is ‘extraordinary.’ In essence, a small band of moderate GOPers will now have veto power over the Democrats’ use of the judicial filibuster. Democrats and their allies in the judicial wars can point to the fact that one or two of the Bush nominees may be stopped and that the filibuster might be available in the future. But what they got out of this deal is more iffy than what the Republicans pocketed. True, they prevented Senate majority leader Bill Frist from pushing the button. But Ralph Neas, the head of People for the American Way, is overstating the case when he says, ‘This is a major defeat for the radical right.’ What has the radical right lost in concrete terms? One or two conservative judges.”]

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Eric Boehlert alerts Salon.com readers that my favorite senator (and you know you’re a political geek when you have a “favorite senator”), Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, is, like me, not too pleased with the much vaunted pact limiting the time-honored Senate tradition known as the filibuster.

Boehlert cites Sen. Feingold’s statement, available on the lawmaker’s web site, which reads:

This is not a good deal for the U.S. Senate or for the American people. Democrats should have stood together firmly against the bullying tactics of the Republican leadership abusing their power as they control both houses of Congress and the White House. Confirming unacceptable judicial nominations is simply a green light for the Bush administration to send more nominees who lack the judicial temperament or record to serve in these lifetime positions. I value the many traditions of the Senate, including the tradition of bipartisanship to forge consensus. I do not, however, value threatening to disregard an important Senate tradition, like occasional unlimited debate, when necessary. I respect all my colleagues very much who thought to end this playground squabble over judges, but I am disappointed in this deal.

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Just two and a half weeks after returning from a hiatus that lasted longer than expected may not be the best time to draw readers’ attention to the return of the “tip box,” but life, like blogging, must go on: rent to pay, utilities to keep running, even food to buy. From this side of the blog, there couldn’t be a better time than now.

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The New York Times today reports Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine F. Pirro may seek the Republican Party nomination to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in next year’s New York Senate race.

Or not.

The Times reports Pirro may run for governor instead.

Either way, this looks like some deep digging on the part of Republicans, though perhaps not as low as would be required to unearth the other potential challengers to Sen. Clinton: attorney Edward F. Cox and New York State Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello.

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Philadelphia Inquirer music critic Peter Dobrin today raises several timely questions about the near-term outlook for the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Christoph Eschenbach in an article the ostensible subject of which is the orchestra’s soon-to-depart president, Joseph H. Kluger (“At Orchestra, He Leaves a Mixed Legacy,” hyperlinks added):

Assessing Kluger’s achievements is easier. He leaves behind a senior staff that is industrious and optimistic, and he has instilled a governance philosophy that has musicians, staff and board taking a more egalitarian role in making important decisions. Both will serve the organization well as . . . the orchestra decides whether the players’ problems with Christoph Eschenbach can be fixed (Kluger says he makes the players feel “insecure”), or whether a new music director is needed.

The Eschenbach problem is the most urgent, even if the potential merger and question of Kluger’s successor demand immediate attention. Conductors are booked years in advance, and the orchestra does not seem to have a relationship even at the fledgling stage with a viable successor.

But all of these issues are interrelated. How can the orchestra decide who its next president will be if it doesn’t know whether that president will be leading just an orchestra, or both an orchestra and an arts center? Should Eschenbach participate in naming a new president if he himself won’t be around to work with that person? Or, conversely, is it ultimately productive for Eschenbach to name a close ally from his past -- if that ally will only face an uphill battle in getting musicians to take to Eschenbach? (His current contract concludes in 2008.) […]

Kluger recently expressed confidence in Eschenbach, claiming that the conductor is “misunderstood.” “I really believe in him,” Kluger said. “I think he is a different conductor from Wolfgang Sawallisch and Riccardo Muti. He has a Dionysian emotion that is the opposite from Wolfgang Sawallisch’s Apollonian musicianship. As a result, Eschenbach’s interpretations are different all the time. What our musicians respected about Sawallisch was his musicianship. There were no surprises after rehearsal. Christoph Eschenbach is all about surprises, which makes musicians feel insecure in performance.”

Or as I’ve heard it said from inside, uncertain about Eschenbach’s abilities.

And here it gets even more interesting:

Aside from making musicians feel insecure, Eschenbach may have another good reason to feel nervous. His biggest supporters are evaporating. Kluger leaves at the end of the season; principal violist Roberto Díaz, almost alone in assuring musicians they would grow to like Eschenbach, will gradually step aside next season to run the Curtis Institute of Music; Judith Karp Kurnick, Eschenbach’s hand-holder on the administration side, is leaving; and Richard L. Smoot, who headed the search that named Eschenbach, says he will make way for a new board chairman after Jan. 1.

Still more troubling:

In attracting new talent, Smoot acknowledged that there is a gap between what the orchestra pays Kluger, about $285,000 a year, and what other orchestra presidents earn. “I am not sure that we’re going to be up in that $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 range at this time,” he said. “We certainly want to get the right person. On the other hand we can’t put this orchestra in a situation financially that we can’t tolerate.”

Then Dobrin, who earlier in the article enumerated Kluger’s assets and achievements, points to more than one of his failings:

Kluger, in the end, was a kind of talent wrangler, and it is on these terms that his tenure must be judged -- getting musicians to understand harsh-world realities (or not), persuading rich and talented civic leaders to join the board (or not), wooing the best possible music director (or not), inspiring a staff with praise and an articulate vision for the future (or not).

Kluger sometimes said things that undermined his credibility.

He took a raise while asking musicians to take pay cuts. When the Philadelphia Orchestra lost its national radio broadcasts, Kluger claimed that all orchestras were losing their national radio broadcasts -- even though anyone with a radio could hear he was wrong. During contract negotiations, he sat by nodding as an underling blamed the orchestra’s financial problems partially on the Kimmel Center, which she said did not make good on its promise to provide office space to the orchestra -- a claim he later recanted. Such missteps hardly promoted an atmosphere of trust.

And, what with the orchestra’s past problems with the players’ union, Dobrin can’t help but note what could prove the most tendentious near-term issue of all: “In any case, musicians won’t have Kluger to blame for what promises to be yet another difficult contract negotiation (yes, it’s right around the corner).”

I wish that were good news for everyone concerned. Somehow, though, I doubt it will be.

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A week and a half ago I blogged about an op-ed piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a young Ugandan girl, Jennifer Anyango, written by Carolyn Davis of the newspaper’s editorial board (“About Uganda: A Sewing Machine is All,” May 11, 2005).

In a follow-up report in Friday’s Inquirer Davis wrote of the paper’s recent series on Uganda generally, and about Anyango specifically (“Readers Reach Out”):

Response was greatest to the story of 14-year-old Jennifer Anyango, whom I met in a displaced person’s camp. Horrible burns to her face have imprisoned this young girl. She is trapped by the stigma of her disfigurement and by the stinging in her eyes when the wind blows.

I’m asking readers who want to send money to be patient. Let’s hold donations until we have a direct and certain way to help Jennifer.

Like bringing her here for surgery. Some of us are trying to do just that.

Davida Berger of Philadelphia has joined with a lifelong friend, Barbara Lichtman-Tayar, of Huntingdon Valley, who has strong advocacy and organizing skills. They said they’ve contacted an attorney who has handled legal cases abroad and a plastic surgeon willing to donate services. Their goal: Get Jennifer here for treatment. (Davida can be reached at 215-886-2203.)

I have gotten [sic] touching offers of donations from single mothers, grandfathers and others, which [sic] could easily pay for Jennifer and a relative to come to Philadelphia.

Richard E. Caruso, founder and chairman of the Princeton-based Integra Lifesciences Corp., is willing to donate as much of the artificial skin product his company makes as needed. We’re talking about some $30,000 worth of generosity.

I have been talking with a local hospital whose officials have expressed interest in treating Jennifer -- but they want to know more about her medical condition before committing. If that hospital won’t agree, we’ll ask others.

I needed to make sure Jennifer still is where I saw her several months ago in Uganda, and to ask her family if they want our help.

Whom to ask? The best Uganda doer I know -- Abitimo [Rebecca Odongkara]. When I called her last week, she immediately started planning.

She said she’d send one of the staff members from her school on the 60-mile journey from Gulu to Kitgum, on a road that sometimes comes under attack, to look for Jennifer.

If necessary, Abitimo is ready to travel to Kitgum herself to talk to Jennifer’s mother about getting her daughter’s wounds treated.

Once the docs tell me what they need to know, we’ll get Jennifer to a doctor in Uganda for an examination.

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah’s office is standing by to help with a visa. I am told an official from a large bank may be willing to help establish an account for Jennifer's trip and treatment. We would need lodging for her.

At the very least, I’d like to see Jennifer attending Abitimo’s school, doing what most kids her age in Uganda do who have not been so visibly scarred by the war.

Helping Jennifer is tangible and decent and right. And helping her just feels more doable than taking on the whole war.

But another reader, Downingtown’s Jessica Ayres, is a 28-year-old college student focused on that broader goal. She plans to launch a petition drive to persuade federal legislators to make the United States the leader in resolving this conflict. Those interested in joining Jessica can reach her at princessetana@yahoo.com or 484-888-5040.

Thank God some little bit of good may come of all of this.

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A few days ago I happened to meet an Irishwoman, or I should say, an Irish-American woman.

“Where are you from?” I asked, after a few minutes of conversation.

“I’m from Ireland,” she answered.

Well, yes, there’s that, I thought, since her accent was an easy giveaway. “But from what part of Ireland?”

“Tipperary,” she said.

“Very nice. My mother’s family is from Ireland,” I said. “From County Mayo and County Roscommon.”

“Oh! Fine people up there,” she responded, in deepest, most melodic, brogue.

“I’m trying to remember the names of the towns. . . . . Oh, I know, Kilmovee and Ballaghadareen,” I added.

“You need say no more. As I say, there’s fine people up there,” she declared.

I couldn’t agree more.

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A beloved institution in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia before too long will be history: The General Store, located just south and west of the square on South 20th Street will be closing for good once the shop’s inventory is sold off at, at least, the now going rate of 50-percent off.

Joseph A. Slobodzian tells the story in “The General Store’s Last Markdown,” in the May 20 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The General Store is a great little shop. As Slobodzian puts it, the store boasts “a kooky, eclectic inventory that is part five-and-dime, part antiques and jewelry, part boardwalk, and all neighborhood institution.”

Better, the store is owned and managed by some terrific people I have had the privilege and pleasure of meeting just recently: Milton and Reba Wiener and their daughter, Patty Fox.

I picked up a few things at the General Store a week or two ago, keepsake sort of items that for me will carry forever an added element of poignancy given their provenance.

It’s just too hard -- impossible, even -- for an establishment like the General Store, unusual and unique as it was is, to compete with the giant retailers to which consumers flock in their eternal quest to get more stuff for less money. As the Inquirer reports:

Fox, who has managed the store for 10 years, said she, her mother and her father, Milton, made the painful decision to close after this Valentine’s Day when sales trends became clear. […]

Fox said she recently bought a small, sequined purse at Target for $4.99 and thought she’d carry it in the General Store.

“For me to buy the same thing would cost me $6 wholesale. Now how can I hope to compete?” Fox said.

Some day, though I don’t know when, we’re going to look back and wonder how and why we let such businesses go, perhaps on a day when we realize just how similar our kitchen looks compared with our neighbors’, or when we finally admit that Crate & Barrel’s unique signature style looks the same no matter where the merchandise is set down.

In the meantime, or at least until the General Store closes, why not drop in and take a look at an emporium the likes of which I guarantee you will never see in this country again.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an item like this -- the whole “additions to the blogroll” thing -- and usually when I do so I either repeat myself or leave out one or another blog. For each infraction, individually and collectively, I hope you will forgive me.

That said, a phrase I detest in both the spoken and written word for which you assuredly will forgive likewise, let me draw your attention to several recent blogs that have caught my attention, independent of any campaigning for such status on the authors’ parts:

Aggressive Progressive;

All Spin Zone;

Booman Tribune;

Chuck 2006;

Fake Plastic News;

River Tyde;

and last, but certainly not least: She Flies With Her Own Wings.

In the longstanding tradition of voting in Philadelphia, what with the primary election tomorrow and everything, allow me to urge you to visit these sites early and often.

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Returning to a perennial and self-indulgent subject, that being what or who I look like, previously addressed here and here, and probably elsewhere, let me relay now that earlier today I sent a terrible and poor-quality scan of a Polaroid of my bulldog Mildred and me to a longtime reader in Southern California with whom I both have corresponded and conversed by telephone.

The Polaroid, taken by a stranger -- for the privilege of five bucks -- in the summer of 2004 depicts Mildred and I eating soft vanilla ice cream in front of the Dairy Queen on the 500 block of South Street, Philadelphia, and is not of fine quality, by which I mean it’s not a particularly flattering shot of me.

And just to be clear: Mildred is the only one who ate ice cream that day. To which I might add a larger -- and I mean that -- truth: Mildred prefers yogurt to ice cream.

Anyhow, back to the central theme, the Rittenhouse reader wrote of me, in part: “Well, I must say not exactly as I had you pictured. . . . It’s great to finally be able to put a face to your voice. Very nice. And cute, in a rugged/handsome way. And definitely Italian.”

(Though half Irish.)

I admit I kind of really like the “rugged/handsome” thing. (But you know how I am. [Regular readers will remember the link. That in which I suggested Philadelphia magazine restaurant critics editorial scrubs Maureen Tkacik and Sasha Issenberg, to say nothing of their many supervisors, “should be ashamed” of their blatant homophobia.]

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Have you ever read an article in a newspaper, magazine, or journal that’s so weird -- so disturbing yet simultaneously so believable -- that it struck you like the proverbial train wreck? That is, so fascinating you had to keep reading (looking) as much as you wanted to toss it aside (turn away)?

Try this one: “Study Links Sexuality, Smell: Gay? Lesbian? Straight? It May All Make Scents,” by Faye Flam in the Sunday (May 15) Philadelphia Inquirer from which these excerpts were culled:

The lowly armpit may not seem the most likely spot to seek insight into the human condition, but scientists studying the scents emitted there have now shed light on one of today’s thorniest controversies: the nature of homosexuality.

The scientists, from Philadelphia’s Monell Chemical Senses Center, released the surprise finding last week that gay armpits smelled different from straight ones. [Ed.: Link added.] […]

The findings, to be published in September in the journal Psychological Science, have yet to be confirmed but if they are correct, they add to a body of evidence suggesting that homosexuality is not just a choice but something rooted in biology. [Ed.: Link added.] […]

Monell’s [Charles] Wysocki, a neuroscientist, and colleague George Preti, an organic chemist, have been studying armpit odors for decades. [Ed.: !] Preti discovered the main culprit in the pungent smell of B.O. -- a chemical called 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid. Not that it acts alone. “There are a good three to four dozen chemicals that make up the characteristic odor bouquet [sic],” he said.

Meanwhile, Preti and Wysocki found that the scent of male armpits caused a spike in women’s reproductive hormones and put women in happier, more relaxed moods. […]

The scientists found the genuine male armpit extract markedly elevated moods and certain fertility-related hormones for most of the women. But several women had a very different reaction: Their hormones remained flat, and their moods grew tense. A follow-up survey found that they were lesbians. That study led Wysocki to look directly at the relationship between body odor and sexual preference. […]

Gay male body odor caused an intensely negative reaction among straight men and women. The only group to rate it near neutral was other gay men. The straight men appeared the most squeamish about all body odors, including those from straight women, which they rated smellier than did the gay men.

I know this sounds trite coming from a blogger who makes a point of avoiding the sphere’s stock-in-trade phrases, but, really, go read the whole thing. And tell me, honestly if you can, you couldn’t look away.

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Speaking of Michael Graves -- and we were -- in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer there’s a report, in the paper’s daily “Newsmakers” feature, about the Princeton, N.J., architect [Ed.: See third item.]:

Architect and designer Michael Graves has returned to work full time, two years after meningitis left him paralyzed below the waist. “Right after it happened, I said, ‘Why me?’” said Graves, whose firm is based in Princeton. He soon realized that that was the wrong attitude because “who knows why you or me -- it’s not going to change.”

Graves’[s] meningitis developed out of an untreated sinus infection for which he delayed getting treatment because he was busy with work and thought it was just a bad cold.

Prospects of walking again are uncertain for Graves, 70, who was awarded the American Institute of Architects’ highest honor in 2001. But he says he has a new outlook on how design can make life easier for people in wheelchairs. “In no bathroom I was in,” he said of his hospital stays, “could I reach the faucets from my wheelchair.” [Link added.]

Gee whiz, I had no idea. I hope my post about toilet brushes conveyed no disrespect.

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Blinq, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s entry into the blogosphere under the direction of reporter Daniel Rubin began operations today. Welcome to the fray, Mr. Rubin and colleagues.

Rubin also has an article about the current state of blogging in today’s Inquirer: “New Blogs Seek Success in Numbers.”

Speaking of Philadelphia blogs, and we were, this old blog, the one you’re reading right now, achieved the ripe old age of three years during my recent hiatus, on April 14, to be exact.

Seems like just yesterday, doesn’t it? Actually, from this side of the screen it really doesn’t. Some days, given the effort required to sustain a respectable site, it feels as though it’s been forever. On other days I wonder how I maintained my sanity before beginning the endeavor. Still different days I think of and thank my readers for visiting, paying a little attention, sending a kind and supportive message, or sending along a gift most appreciated in smoothing out the ups and downs of the life of an aspiring full-time writer. Regardless of how I might feel from one day to the next, I hope all of you will continue to drop by now and again. I wouldn’t have lasted this long without you.

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There have been two articles in recent issues of the Philadelphia Inquirer that are likely to be of interest to fellow bloggers and blog readers: “Short on Bucks, But Long on Blogs,” by Thomas Fitzgerald (May 11) discusses the role local bloggers have played in promoting the candidacy of Seth Williams in the Democratic Primary race in Philadelphia County. (Vote Tuesday, May 17!)

And today Inquirer editor Amanda Bennett, writing in “A New Guide to the World of Blogs,” reveals the paper’s plan to enter the blogosphere with a unique approach to the blogosphere, Blinq launched at Philly.com under the direction of reporter Dan Rubin.

“Blinq will be a one-stop shopping place for bloggers to meet up,” Bennett writes. “A place for both experienced and novice bloggers to find each other. A quick way for all readers to learn what other readers are talking to each other about every day in cyberspace.”

Sounds intriguing, and for the Inquirer, altogether modern.

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Michael Graves, the noted architect who designed the watch I’m wearing on my wrist as I write this, has designed toilet brushes? Apparently so, and for Target stores, a chain that, frankly, has become all too tiresome with such gimmickry.

(But the watch is still nice.)

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I recently learned The Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville, Pa., will offer its first live theatre presentation since resuming operations six years ago. According to the company, “Visiting Mr. Green,” written by Jeff Baron, will be performed on June 10, 11, and 12.

“Visiting Mr. Green,” originally produced in New York in 1997, is a dramatic comedy about an elderly man -- that would be Mr. Green -- who wanders in to Manhattan traffic where he is nearly in New York City and is almost hit by one Ross Gardiner. As his sentence for reckless driving, Gardiner must visit and assist Mr. Green, a recent widower living in a fourth-floor walk-up, with household tasks once a week for six months.

The Colonial Theatre says, “What starts out as a comedy about two men who do not want to be in the same room together turns into a gripping and moving drama as they get to know each other, come to care about each other, and open up old wounds they’ve been hiding for years.”

The Colonial Theatre cast includes veteran actors Bernard A. Kaplan as Mr. Green and Edward Mastin as Gardiner. Director C.J. Young was the original Artistic Director of Central New York’s Appleseed Productions.

For tickets and additional information about the production call (610) 917-1228 or visit the company’s web site.

By way of full disclosure: Mr. Kaplan is a friend, but that’s not keeping me from seeing “Visiting Mr. Green” at the Colonial, so why should it prevent you from doing the same?

And if you’re a Rittenhouse reader planning to attend at least one of the aforementioned performances, drop me a line, and if we are to see the show on the same night, perhaps we might just arrange to say hello.

[Note: This post previously was published in slightly different form on May 10 at TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse.]

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Who’s the lamest of them all?

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), for saying of the VRWC’s nominee for United Nations ambassador John R. Bolton, “I won’t deny a lot of the information certainly brings great pause. But I fight the administration on so many issues; this is one of those that I’ve been with them on -- to appoint their team”?

Or Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who said of stonewalling by the Bush administration in response to requests for documents from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “I’ve been disappointed by it,” while simultaneously declining to press for a delay in the panel’s vote on confirmation of Bolton’s nomination?

Or Anne Gearan of the Associated Press, who yesterday reported, in an astonishing, even dishonest, understatement, “Bolton has been accused of being intolerant of underlings who disagree with him” (see “Key Senator Says He Will Back Bolton, Reluctantly,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11)?

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Believe it or not, I’m loath to make light of the Michael Jackson trial and the singer’s predicament, a subject about which I so far have had about nothing to say, not because of any particular sympathy on his behalf but mostly because I think the cheap shots aimed in Jackson’s direction are just that. Nonetheless, a report in Wednesday’s papers cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed, if only for its (supremely) notable camp value. As Nick Madigan reported in the New York Times:

[Neverland ranch manager Joseph] Marcus acknowledged under cross-examination that his boss had “special bonds” with certain children, friendships that he said applied to girls as well as to the many boys who visited Mr. Jackson at the ranch. But when asked to name girls with whom Mr. Jackson had such a bond in the years Mr. Marcus has worked at the ranch, he could name only two, sisters of boys who were also close to Mr. Jackson.

“So we’re up to two,” [prosecutor Gordon] Auchincloss said. When asked if there were adult women with whom Mr. Jackson was close, Mr. Marcus again mentioned just two: Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli.

I am not making that up.

I wonder how the gallery reacted to that remark. Something on the order of “David Gest, please call your office”?

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If you’re interested in keeping up with everyone’s favorite Stalinist self-styled anti-Stalinist, David Horowitz -- not the consumer affairs guy, I think -- be sure to check out the latest posts at HorowitzWatch:

“David Horowitz and Academia: An Overlooked Lawsuit,” by Scoobie Davis (April 30);

“Front Page Magazine: A Real Class Act,” by Scoobie Davis (April 26);

“The Two Faces of David,” by Roger Ailes (April 26);

“Oklahoma City: Ten Years Later and Some People Just Don’t Learn,” by Scoobie Davis (April 19);

“Roger Ebert and Mohammed Atta, Partners in Crime,” by Scoobie Davis (April 12); and

“Debating Tactics of the Masters,” by The Watchful Babbler (a/k/a “Doxagora”) (April 11)

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Let’s go ahead and do it because, well, it’s in the interest of, I don’t know, I give up, but I’m guessing almost nobody (“United Air Wins Right to Default on Its Employee Pension Plans,” by Micheline Maynard, New York Times, May 11):

United Airlines, which is operating in bankruptcy protection, received court permission yesterday to terminate its four employee pension plans, setting off the largest pension default in the three decades that the government has guaranteed pensions. […]

The ruling releases United, a unit of the UAL Corporation, from $3.2 billion in pension obligations over the next five years. The federal agency that guarantees pensions, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, will assume responsibility for the plans, which cover about 134,000 people.

Some retirees could see sharply lower pension payments as a result; others will see little change in benefits, depending on a variety of factors. Some retirees at US Airways, which has terminated its plans, have seen benefits drop by as much as 50 percent. […]

Along with raising that prospect, yesterday’s action has significant implications for the airline industry, which has lost more than $30 billion since 2000, and perhaps for other industries like automobiles, with similarly heavy legacy costs.

Analysts have predicted that if United won its case, there could be a domino effect as other airlines are forced to seek bankruptcy protection to bring their pension costs down to United’s levels.

That move would probably swamp the pension agency, which was created in 1974.

Oh, wait, according to the Times report there are at least two potential beneficiaries, namely General Electric Co. and American Express Corp., major short-term and junk lenders to Delta Air Lines, which is expected to follow its competitors in saddling the PBGC and American taxpayers with the results of what can only be described as pathetically inadequate management. Aw, what the hell, just blame the unions, right?

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