Breakfast

A luxurious breakfast in bed is a long-standing Mother's Day tradition. It rates higher than an orchid corsage, or brunch in a crowded restaurant sipping a flat mimosa. We prefer home cooking, anyway. Over the years we've each made many breakfasts for our own mothers, and our lovely daughters have paid us back in kind - the beat goes on. As it always has, going back to ancient Egypt, when spring festivals honored the female deities and maternal goddesses, symbols of rebirth and motherhood.

Joab Thomas, president of Pennsylvania State University, and James McCormick, Pennsylvania's chancellor of higher education, will discuss the need for a qualified workforce at the Eye-opener Breakfast of the Chester County Chamber of Business and Industry on April 28 at 7:44 a.m. at J&J Caterers in Exton. Madeleine Wing Adler, president of West Chester University, will moderate. The cost of the breakfast is $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers. For information, call 436-7696.

A record number of business people attended this morning's kickoff breakfast for Phila-a-Job, the city's summer jobs program. The breakfast is held about this time every year to get the city's businesses to begin thinking about providing jobs or money to the program. This year, Phila-a-Job is hoping to raise $7.3 million in private and government funding to provide jobs for 22,500 people aged 14 to 21. The summer jobs program runs for six weeks, beginning the week of July 6. David Lacey, chief executive officer of the Private Industry Council, the organization that manages Phila-a-Job, said 150 business people representing 100 corporations attended the breakfast at Three Mellon Bank Center.

Ovaltine and Space Food Sticks, for example. The era that is ending - the Lou Mitchell era - hasn't necessarily been the golden age of the American breakfast. The last 66 years have brought us Pop Tarts, Count Chocula and Tang, and an alarming number of complete meals are housed entirely within soggy English muffins presented in foam coffins. Yet through it all, Lou Mitchell has prospered, for he has the desire and he has the touch. "We do a sweet business," says the 79-year-old restaurateur.

STOP THE WORLD You could call this group people who don't need people. It's the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), pronounced "vehement," which favors the eventual phasing out of people, by unspecified methods. Fortune magazine reports that VHEMT acknowledges that the idea may give many people pause but says that "if you'll give the idea a chance . . . you might agree that the extinction of Homo sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions of other earth-dwelling species.

LAKE CHARLES, La. - What do you call a pairing of boudin and Dr Pepper? Cajun breakfast. Lane Sonnier, who owns Sonnier's Sausage & Boudin in Lake Charles, laughs when I share that story, relayed to me two days earlier in Lafayette. "It's true," Sonnier says, "except on Saturdays, when breakfast is boudin and Budweiser. " Sonnier speaks from experience, given that he was hand-cranking boudin - pronounced boo-dan - at age 12. "My right arm got so big from the cranking that people called me 'Half-a-Popeye,' " quips Sonnier, now 43. Traditional Cajun boudin mixes rice with finely ground pork, liver, green onion, and whatever other herbs, spices, and peppers evolve from the imagination or family tree.

  The Inquirer is presenting one profile a day of participants in the May 6 Blue Cross Broad Street Run. See full coverage at www.philly.com/broadstreetrun . Jeb Woody rolled into Philadelphia 11 years ago on a Greyhound bus. He was 23, with $600 tucked into his sock. He came from the dirt roads of small-town Texas because he wanted the urban life. He was an introvert, a man who didn't believe in exercise, who grew up in a Texas in which there were two kinds of men - football players and sissies.

When her husband, Jules, died last January, Barbara Dellostretto Pilch took over the Hatboro menswear store that bears his name. Today, she is president of Jules Pilch Menswear, which will mark its 45th anniversary on Sunday. The store on South Old York Road (Route 263) has expanded three times since it opened and now employs 15 people. Pilch, 48, a Pittsburgh native, joined the store's staff in 1974 and worked alongside her husband for nearly 25 years. "I learned how to run the business his way, watching him," she said.

No matter who was destined to win Tuesday's election, Jimmy and Helen Donaghy knew they couldn't lose when Bill and Hillary Clinton invited them to breakfast Monday morning at the Mayfair Diner. "Breakfast was on the house, or in our case, on the diner," said Helen Donaghy, 80, a lifelong Mayfair resident. Jimmy, her husband of 58 years, said history was made at the Frankford Avenue eatery which bills itself as "The Home of Quality Food. " "All those Washington big shots.

Rose F. Molinari, 84, a retired Philadelphia schoolteacher, died Saturday of pneumonia at the Artman Lutheran Home in Ambler. Mrs. Molinari taught English and reading in the district for 50 years before retiring in 1985. She spent the last 30 years at the former Thomas Junior High School, now a middle school, in South Philadelphia. "She was pretty strict. She wanted the kids to do their stuff, but she cared about them," recalled her son, William J. Molinari. Sandy Apa, a former colleague at Thomas, said Mrs. Molinari was a role model for other teachers.

A luxurious breakfast in bed is a long-standing Mother's Day tradition. It rates higher than an orchid corsage, or brunch in a crowded restaurant sipping a flat mimosa. We prefer home cooking, anyway. Over the years we've each made many breakfasts for our own mothers, and our lovely daughters have paid us back in kind - the beat goes on. As it always has, going back to ancient Egypt, when spring festivals honored the female deities and maternal goddesses, symbols of rebirth and motherhood.

New Jersey ranks among the bottom states for school-breakfast participation. And when Garden State schools do serve breakfast, it's typically at the wrong time. That needs to change. Across the state, 525 school districts provide the most important meal of the day to low-income students who otherwise might not get breakfast. But most serve breakfast before the first classes begin, and many students who can't get to school that early start the day hungry. Their learning often suffers as a result.

LOS ANGELES - The day starts out light for the La Salle Explorers as coach John Giannini knows the value of rest, especially at this time of the season. The team isn't required to be anywhere until a 10 a.m. breakfast in the basement of their hotel. While a lot of food does get consumed, the session primarily consists of laughter. Tyrone Garland, owner of the now-famous Southwest Philly Floater, cracks everyone up with some witty - and secretive - one-liners. His main audience is Ramon Galloway, who stands up to laugh loudly after a Garland quip.

Children who eat breakfast in school do better in math and miss fewer class days than those who don't, according to a new national study released Wednesday. "The simple act of feeding kids a healthy school breakfast can have a dramatic impact on their academic, health, and economic futures," the study concluded. The report was created for Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit working to end childhood hunger in America through its No Kid Hungry campaign. The study, called "Ending Childhood Hunger: A Social Impact Analysis," was done pro bono by Deloitte, an accounting consulting firm that also performs community-service work.

Children who eat breakfast in school do better in math and miss fewer class days, according to a new national study released Wednesday. "The simple act of feeding kids a healthy school breakfast can have a dramatic impact on their academic, health, and economic futures," the study concluded. The report was created for Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit working to end childhood hunger in America through its No Kid Hungry campaign. The study, called "Ending Childhood Hunger: A Social Impact Analysis," was done pro bono by Deloitte, an accounting consulting firm that also performs community-service work.

Although school breakfast is universally considered to be vital for health and learning, there is a wide disparity in the number of students who get served these meals in Philadelphia schools. At Moffet Elementary School in Kensington, for example, 92 percent of the students eat breakfast, the highest percentage in Philadelphia. But at Pastorius Elementary School in Germantown, just 12 percent of students eat breakfast, the lowest number in the city. The findings are part of an analysis released to The Inquirer last week by Public Citizens for Children and Youth, a Philadelphia children's advocacy group.

WASHINGTON - Breakfast at Tiffany's , Dirty Harry , and A League of Their Own will be preserved for their enduring significance in American culture by the Library of Congress, along with A Christmas Story and several pioneering sports movies. They are among 25 selections the library inducted Wednesday into the National Film Registry. Congress created the program in 1989 to preserve films for their cultural or historical significance. The latest additions bring the registry to 600 films that include Hollywood features, documentaries, independent films and early experimental flicks.

New Jersey saw a 21 percent rise in the number of low-income students who get school breakfasts, but it still lags far behind most other states, a report released Tuesday found. In South Jersey, seven charter schools or districts were among 64 high-poverty districts statewide where less than 31 percent of eligible students receive subsidized school breakfasts, according to the study by Advocates for Children of New Jersey, a nonprofit child research and action organization. On the plus side locally, the Woodlynne school district and Camden's Promise Charter School, both in Camden County, were two of 13 schools listed last year that worked their way off this year.

Seven South Jersey charter schools or districts were among 64 high-poverty districts statewide where less than 31 percent of eligible students receive subsidized school breakfasts, according a report being released today in Newark. On the plus side, the Woodlynne Borough school district and Camden's Promise Charter School were two of 13 schools were on that list last year but worked their way off this year. Woodlynne went from 28 percent of the eligible students getting breakfast to 34 percent.

What's cooking? A classic sandwich selection — from turkey and cheese on white bread to a hearty Philly cheesesteak. A line can be found at Gus's for breakfast, too. They're family: Gus Katseftis and his wife, Joan, along with various family members, fed employees of the Daily News, Inquirer and philly.com for 21 years from Gus' spot next to the company's former headquarters at Broad and Callowhill streets. Convenient, yes, but what kept people coming back was the menu. Satisfied customers: "It's old-school," said Craig LaBan, Inquirer food critic and frequent Gus' customer.