American Life

Glasnost is coming to Central Bucks East High School. Recently, Roman Grekh, 15, of Lvov, in the Ukraine, arrived in Buckingham Township on a yearlong student-exchange program sponsored by Rotary International and the Warrington Rotary Club. Grekh and 12 other youths from Lvov are in the first group of teenagers from the Soviet Union to participate in the program. Six of them will attend schools in Pennsylvania. Grekh is the only group member who will attend school in the Philadelphia area.

Last Friday morning, Cardinal Avery Dulles died in New York. Dulles was one of the world's preeminent theologians and intellectuals. As such, his absence will be noticed in the public square. His passing also marks the end of a very particular kind of American life. The Dulles clan was never quite royalty, but it was, in its way, an American version of the British nobility. Three of Avery Dulles' forebears were secretaries of state. His father had an airport named after him, and his uncle was director of the CIA. Born in 1918, Dulles was educated in Switzerland and then at Choate Rosemary Hall before being packed off to Harvard.

WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT O'GRADY? Nothing could better illustrate the neurotic inwardness of America today than the extraordinary reaction of the American President, the American media, and perhaps the American people (than the rescue of Capt. Scott O'Grady). Against the backdrop of a terrible war in which a quarter of a million people have already died, the U.S. celebrates the saving of one American life (an incident inflated) into an act of supposedly "American" heroism, to send its warming rays into every American heart.

RICHARD and Cynthia Murphy are the picture of suburbia. The couple suspected of espionage on behalf of Mother Russia were captured on camera seated at a table full of American goodies: Bud Light, Coca-Cola, Heinz ketchup, hamburger buns, paper plates and towels on a checkered cloth. Richard Murphy has a cheeseburger in one hand and a Coors Light in the other. His wife is putting the finishing touches on the food in front of her. The picture could've been taken anywhere in the country, especially around Independence Day. So how did two Russians manage to perfect American life all the way down to the details of a typical barbecue?

I came to the United States from South Vietnam. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, I could not continue to teach in a Roman Catholic elementary school. I worked hard, but with little salary, under communist control. I looked forward to one day living in freedom. In March 1982, the opportunity to come to the United States presented itself. I knew I had to take it in order to live the life I felt called to. When I came to the United States, I expected to be able to speak and act freely, using my God-given gifts and talents.

There was a time in American life - before VCRs, Little League baseball and weekend trips to the shore - when the big event of the summer was the arrival of the Chautauqua show. The traveling Chautauquas rolled through thousands of towns each summer from 1900 to 1930, bringing a potpourri of plays, music, carnival entertainment and lectures to the small towns of America. "It was sort of like the Today show is to us now. People would find out a little bit about a whole lot of things," said Greg Rowe, general manager of the People's Light and Theatre Company, which is bringing a Chautauqua show to Malvern this month and next.

Separatist that he is, Louis Farrakhan is often portrayed as a singular figure whose statements either rally or repulse people who hear him. But the Nation of Islam leader isn't alone. He's a significant participant in the de- centering of America. Increasingly, in various aspects of national life, we are being carried to extremes. Politics is becoming more and more polarized. Movements (of one kind or another) fixate on one issue or cause, disregarding other - and possibly related - matters.

Noting that Eric's will provided well for his children and his two ex- wives, Connor suggested Sheila might want to have a child with him. Meanwhile Eric told Stephanie of Sheila's no-strings divorce offer if it would make him happy. "What Happened on the Soaps" When Hamdi Abou El Hand Qenawi returns home to Cairo in three weeks, he will tell friends that life in the United States is not like The Bold and the Beautiful. The CBS-TV soap opera, which more than a few Egyptians think reflects American life, is so popular there that it is now on only once a week: The state television authority worried about the empty streets when the show was broadcast there nightly.

Ronald Reagan's Cultural Revolution continues. His Red Guard comptrollers range through the government sowing confusion in the name of changeable ideological purity. Certainty and safety are blown to pieces by automatic budget land mines sown by Capitol Hill and the White House alike. All of this is bewildering to me as an American. As a lifelong Republican, it is pure devastation. I registered as a Republican in 1966 in Silver Spring, Md., as a 21-year- old. From what I had learned in life and in books, Republicans stood for conserving what was best and most lasting in our free society.

IT'S BEEN nearly two weeks since the OccupyTogether movement hit Philadelphia. Yet, there have been reports that the movement will not succeed because there is no common goal among the protesters. Some cynical commentators believe that, at best, protesters across the country are loosely organized by the website Occupy Together.org. But do we really need a common goal to fight against what is wrong? Should certain demands be elevated at the risk of silencing others? The motivation for the OccupyTogether movement begins with a general distaste for what has become of American life.

Just before Christmas, Deveta Johnson saw something in the trash in Norristown that looked like an old pile of grocery bags. She looked closer and found a tattered photo album with hundreds of World War II-era snapshots of African Americans, in wartime Europe and going about their daily lives in rowhouse Philadelphia. "Wait a minute," mused Johnson, who had listened to her grandfather's countless war stories. "This shouldn't be in the trash. " Her decision to take the album home and show it to her mother, Valoree Nelson, has preserved for posterity what might have been lost to a landfill.

IT'S BEEN nearly two weeks since the OccupyTogether movement hit Philadelphia. Yet, there have been reports that the movement will not succeed because there is no common goal among the protesters. Some cynical commentators believe that, at best, protesters across the country are loosely organized by the website Occupy Together.org. But do we really need a common goal to fight against what is wrong? Should certain demands be elevated at the risk of silencing others? The motivation for the OccupyTogether movement begins with a general distaste for what has become of American life.

RICHARD and Cynthia Murphy are the picture of suburbia. The couple suspected of espionage on behalf of Mother Russia were captured on camera seated at a table full of American goodies: Bud Light, Coca-Cola, Heinz ketchup, hamburger buns, paper plates and towels on a checkered cloth. Richard Murphy has a cheeseburger in one hand and a Coors Light in the other. His wife is putting the finishing touches on the food in front of her. The picture could've been taken anywhere in the country, especially around Independence Day. So how did two Russians manage to perfect American life all the way down to the details of a typical barbecue?

Last Friday morning, Cardinal Avery Dulles died in New York. Dulles was one of the world's preeminent theologians and intellectuals. As such, his absence will be noticed in the public square. His passing also marks the end of a very particular kind of American life. The Dulles clan was never quite royalty, but it was, in its way, an American version of the British nobility. Three of Avery Dulles' forebears were secretaries of state. His father had an airport named after him, and his uncle was director of the CIA. Born in 1918, Dulles was educated in Switzerland and then at Choate Rosemary Hall before being packed off to Harvard.

The National Constitution Center will host the debut of a major traveling exhibition exploring the four-century sweep of the black American experience, from slavery to the cusp of the presidency, officials announced yesterday. America I AM: The African American Imprint was conceived by talk-show host and author Tavis Smiley, and organized by the Cincinnati Museum Center and Arts and Exhibition International, the private entity best known in Philadelphia for the blockbuster King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute last year.

Paco Underhill is a retail anthropologist, a curious line of work, though lucrative and illuminating. "The augur of our mass culture has always been retailing," he says. Our shopping tells all. Strip malls are for men, better suited for their search-and-destroy form of consumption, while enclosed malls - such as the Plaza at King of Prussia, where he's standing - are for women. Underhill, a self-described "tall, bald, stuttering research wonk on the cusp of his 53d year," is one of the few males here.

Broadband Internet use increased 50 percent in the last year, with nearly one-third of home Internet users logging on through a high-speed connection as of March, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey also found that cable-modem service offered by cable-TV companies such as Comcast Corp. increased its lead over digital subscriber line service, the fast-Internet technology offered by phone companies, including Verizon Communications Inc. As of March, 67 percent of residential fast-Internet users connected by cable modem, compared with 63 percent a year earlier.

No one knows what James Dexter looked like or where he was born. No one knows where and how he died or if anyone kept vigil at his bedside. But James Dexter made his mark on Philadelphia and the nation, and now, 200 years later, his name is emerging from obscurity and into controversy, thanks to construction on Independence Mall. The now-demolished two-story brick rowhouse on North Fifth Street where Dexter once lived witnessed planning for the nation's first black organizations.

Two judges in the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County - Joseph Melody Jr. and Lawrence E. Wood - recently announced their retirement. Both men were elected in the early 1980s and are longtime Chester County residents. Melody earned his undergraduate degree from St. Joseph's College and his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. After serving in the adjutant general unit of the Army, he had a private law practice from 1960 until he was sworn in as judge in 1981.

The Pew Charitable Trusts announced yesterday that it has funded a three-year study of how Roman Catholics engage in American civic life. The Philadelphia-based philanthropy has recently launched similar studies of how the Jewish, mainline Protestant, evangelical Protestant, Latino, African-American and Muslim faith communities contribute to the nation's political and cultural debates. The Catholic portion will explore such questions as such as how Catholic social and moral teachings influence the way Catholics vote, the depth of ethnic identity among Catholics, "and what obstacles, within the church or the culture, stand in the way of a more robust presence in the public square," said Luis Lugo, director of the religion program at the Trusts.