Bad Habits

"If we continue to do business the way we have always done it, we will get what we always got in Philadelphia. " Mayor Street got that one right. What has Philadelphia "always got" in recent decades? Population loss, a plague of vacant buildings, heartbreaking decay in once-vibrant neighborhoods. Mr. Street, who began his public career advocating for some of those rundown neighborhoods, has had enough. He has staked his mayoral career on an ambitious plan to do nothing less than reverse blight and repopulate the city.

It is generally acknowledged by historians that the steamboat was invented not by Robert Fulton but by John Fitch when he was living in this region. Still, because Fitch was never able to develop his invention commercially, he has remained a footnote in history. The Dictionary of American Biography says Fitch was born in 1743 near Hartford, Conn. His family owned a farm, and after a limited amount of formal education, he was put to work on it. But young John was not a strong boy and did not do well as a farmworker.

Justice rang forth from District Court yesterday after two months of silence. "It went very smoothly, actually," said Tracey Given, court senior secretary. "It's going to take people a while to get back into the habit of coming to Coatesville court, but we're back in service. " The court was closed for about two months to give workers time to sort through a backlog of cases. It was closed on Feb. 1 for one month, by order of Chester County Court Presiding Judge Howard Riley, at the request of Anita McDevitt, minor judiciary administrator for Chester County.

William Kurlish, 86, a retired engineer and all-American in football who was part of the University of Pennsylvania's "Destiny Backfield" of the mid-1930s, died Friday at Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Division, after a brief illness. Mr. Kurlish had been a resident of Springfield, Delaware County, for more than six decades. The son of Russian immigrants, Mr. Kurlish was born in Philadelphia and moved to Delaware County as a teenager, enrolling in Ridley Park High School, where he became one of the school's more celebrated athletes.

Eric Daly bursts into the room, drowning out "Sounds of the Rain Forest" and the soothing trickle of flowing water as he romps over the wooden bridge, passes through an ivy-draped trellis, and drops his backpack. "You can tell I have work," the sixth grader at Phoenixville Middle School says, rubbing his shoulder somewhat dramatically. Daly is one of 30 elementary and middle school students in Phoenixville who come after school to this rain forest/classroom hybrid in the basement of Barkley Elementary School.

He was celebrated in People magazine, Baseball America and the New York Times for his resolve. Curt Schilling was the poster boy in baseball's war against chewing tobacco last spring, saying, among other things, "I wonder how the tobacco companies, the people who do this, can sleep at night. " Well, Curt Schilling is dipping again. Before he sleeps. When he wakes up. Not in public, not at his locker, but almost as much as when he quit in March 1998, after he was told if he continued dipping, he would develop cancer in his mouth.

A former Holmesburg accountant was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for swindling about $1.7 million from 81 clients, leaving some almost destitute. Stephen F. Maertzig, 48, who had an office on Frankford Avenue near Rhawn Street, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Herbert J. Hutton to make full restitution. His victims' chances of getting much money back, however, appear slim since Maertzig claims he's broke. Maertzig admitted defrauding clients over a 10-year period that ended in November 1996.

He's on Time's list of America's most influential people. He's required reading at some Fortune 500 companies. Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, is credited with injecting hope and order into many untidy lives (not to mention millions into his tidy bank account). His book sits on my night table. Not that I've ever found time to read it. My wife, thanks to a training program at work, read a bit of it. She also got one of those "Covey planner" datebooks, the size and heft of an anvil, which supposedly enable the entropic spirit to ape the habits of the highly effective.

The look on Larry Brown's face wasn't one of contempt or disappointment. That stage was passed weeks ago by the 76ers coach, who seems so dismayed these days over his team's play that it's almost as if he's resigned to its ineptitude. Two days removed from a team meeting to discuss ways to simplify schemes handed down by Brown, and one day after playing impressive basketball to capture a rare win on the road over Vancouver, the Sixers reverted to old habits against Seattle on Friday night.