Buffs

Ray Cavalino bought the farm during a flank maneuver near the front line at the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek on Saturday afternoon. Separated from his unit, he joined up with what was remaining of the 56th Pennsylvania Regiment, pushed into enemy territory, and got ambushed by about 20 Confederate soldiers who stormed out of the woods at point-blank range. "Sometimes you just know you're dead," said Cavalino, 50, a structural designer from North Brunswick, who joined about 1,800 other Civil War buffs over the weekend for the reenactment of a battle that took place outside Richmond, Va., in 1862.

For anyone familiar with Colorado basketball, the scene in Albuquerque, N.M., was hard to believe. The Buffs leading UNLV, of all teams, by 20. Their fans standing in The Pit, of all places, chanting "This is our house. " Well, Colorado's first appearance in the NCAA tournament in nine years didn't turn out to be a breeze, but yes, maybe the Buffs could get used to this college basketball thing. Freshman Askia Booker came off the bench for 16 points and Andre Roberson had 12 points and 16 rebounds, as Colorado fought off a furious Nevada-Las Vegas comeback for a 68-64 victory late Thursday night in a South Regional opener at the University of New Mexico.

A group of Civil War buffs is heading to Chester County this weekend, and this isn't a bunch of reenactors, guys with beards and 1860s-vintage rifles. No, most of these Civil War buffs are women. The Society for Women and the Civil War will hold its annual conference at the Inn at Chester Springs tomorrow through Sunday. So far, about 85 Civil War enthusiasts from as far as California and Florida are scheduled to attend the conference in Exton. Walk-in registration will be available for those interested at the start of each day of the conference.

Ken Burns, whose PBS show "The Civil War" was only slightly longer than the real thing, plans to make a similar documentary about baseball, which should surprise no one. Baseball, as Burns noted, is a lot like the Civil War. Fans of baseball and of the Civil War share many of same qualities, most of them bad. They tend to be obsessive, trivia-mad and memorabilia-prone. They are people who ascribe all kinds of mythic qualities to the war and the sport, people who claim you can't understand America unless you understand the Civil War or baseball.

Steve Friedman, 62, of Malvern, a talk-radio host and film expert, died of kidney disease at home Sunday just hours after completing his Mr. Movie program on WPHT-AM (1210). On Saturday nights for the last 10 years, Mr. Friedman joined Steve Ross and Jimmy Murray on their Remember When radio show from 10 to midnight, and then continued with his own show until 1 a.m. Previously, he had stayed on the air all night. He loved that, said his wife, Michell Muldoon, because he could really get into in-depth discussions with callers.

He's called manic-depressive, a would-be hood, "a little twisted sexually" and "a real pusher, like his mom. " You can read all about it in the sort of kick-and-tell His Way: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley (Bantam, $4.95). We're talking about Frank Sinatra, of course. But the funny thing about this book is that his mother, Dolly, just about steals the show. She was a Hoboken, N.J., politico, midwife, abortionist and all-around hell-raiser who dominated her husband Marty, her son Frankie and most of Hoboken, according to Kelley.

Some guys are sports fans. Some are into cars, the Civil War, fishing, or golf. "We're Pitman buffs," said Michael D. Batten Jr., who, along with Ralph J. Richards Jr., has produced a pictorial book on the history of his hometown. Years of collecting memorabilia of the former Methodist camp meeting town peaked for Batten and Richards when their 128-page book was published last month. Their book, titled Pitman, is one of about 1,700 historical picture books about American communities offered by Arcadia Publishing.

It started as a game. Name the three future United States Supreme Court Justices who fought for the Confederacy. A harmless game. Which Confederate state was the least populated? Between two friends. Name the play Lincoln was watching when he was shot. But after years of trying to stump each other on Civil War-era trivia, Frank Young and Dan Rossi decided to let others play along. That was about four years ago. The upshot was The Civil War Trivia Board Game, a mixture of strategy, history and trivia that the pair created in Young's basement in Berwyn.

It's been a surprisingly long season for Colorado. Sure, the Buffaloes are 6-1-1 after starting their season in August against Tennessee. But before last Saturday, most of the focus had been on that disputed, controversial victory over Missouri three weeks ago. As they say, Colorado is 1-for-1 on fifth-down conversions. But seriously, folks, the 11th-ranked Buffs will get a chance to re- establish their national credibility over the next two weeks with a home game Saturday against No. 22 Oklahoma and a road test the following week against No. 4 Nebraska.

The name of the piece was "Fugue a la Gigue," and Kevin Chun's rendition would have made Johann Sebastian Bach proud. "The organ sounds fine," a bystander said. This caused Kevin Chun to nod and smile. "It should," he said, "after all the work that has gone into it. " This was last week in Irvine Auditorium on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where Chun and several other pipe-organ buffs were talking about the just-completed restoration of one of Philadelphia's greatest musical treasures: the 10,731-pipe Curtis Organ.

For anyone familiar with Colorado basketball, the scene in Albuquerque, N.M., was hard to believe. The Buffs leading UNLV, of all teams, by 20. Their fans standing in The Pit, of all places, chanting "This is our house. " Well, Colorado's first appearance in the NCAA tournament in nine years didn't turn out to be a breeze, but yes, maybe the Buffs could get used to this college basketball thing. Freshman Askia Booker came off the bench for 16 points and Andre Roberson had 12 points and 16 rebounds, as Colorado fought off a furious Nevada-Las Vegas comeback for a 68-64 victory late Thursday night in a South Regional opener at the University of New Mexico.

How was Anthony Weiner so easily able to find such willing sexting partners? Even conceding that Weiner's pecs were pretty impressive when he took off his shirt, this is nevertheless the embodiment of the geeky guy we all grew up with who struggled with girls. Sure, his quick thinking and tart tongue probably earned him a few points with ladies, but not to a level that could account for the online action he seems to have scored. What's more, each of the women identified thus far is relatively young and attractive, at least according to the photos they themselves published online.

In 1844, readers of the New York Sun were treated to a sensational feature story in which an adventurer flew across the Atlantic Ocean in a lighter-than-air balloon. Though it was presented in exquisite technical detail as news, the story's author, Edgar Allan Poe, had made it up. But the master of the macabre had to know a thing or two about science to have pulled off such a persuasive hoax, said John Tresch, a University of Pennsylvania historian of science. Indeed, Poe, who wrote about cosmology and the origin of the universe, is sometimes considered one of the earliest writers of science fiction.

BEING A skycap at Philadelphia International Airport was the ideal job for Christopher Salvatore Pattani. He loved people and enjoyed nothing better than meeting and chatting with strangers who, after a few minutes, were no longer strangers. "He was very affable and friendly," said his sister, Marcilite Pattani-Bussey. "He would say hello to you and ask questions and pretty soon he would know you. " Christopher Pattani, a history buff who also liked to keep up with current events on CNN, died under mysterious circumstances July 31. He was 56 and lived in West Philadelphia.

Because time constraints keep the Philadelphia Movie Sites Tour to a relatively small geographic area, a number of shooting locations aren't included in the itinerary. Among the most popular of these is 1818 E. Tusculum St. (photo below), in Kensington, which was where Rocky Balboa lived in the original "Rocky" movie. "People come from all over the world" to see the house - "Russia, Japan, China, Chile," said John Mitchell, whose mother, Rose, has lived there for about two years.

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Jeanette LaRosa Feeley, 92, a former longtime president of the Hammonton Historical Society who worked as a teacher and reading specialist at Joseph C. Shaner Memorial Elementary School, died Friday, July 2, at the Fairview Care Center in Philadelphia. Mrs. Feeley was a longtime resident of Hammonton and was known for her knowledge of the Atlantic County town's history. She wrote the foreword for The Italian on the Land , a study of the settlement of immigrant Italian farmers in the area, published in 1989.

Travis Roesler may have been educated in the Ivy League but he made a career out of weed, police said yesterday. Roesler, 27, a former football player for the University of Pennsylvania, a mixed martial artist and Wharton School grad, was arrested Wednesday night after police raided his University City apartment - which doubled as his martial-arts studio - and allegedly found $1.2 million worth of high-grade marijuana. Narcotics South Capt. James Kelly said Roesler is part of a growing number of college-educated youth and collegians who have been caught growing pot.He said Roesler's case was the sixth such one that his squad has handled this year.

William Goldstein, 91, of Willingboro, a radio and communication captain during World War II who for 30 years helped upgrade X-ray technology at many Southeastern Pennsylvania hospitals, died of congestive heart failure Monday in the Masonic Home of New Jersey. Following intense, yearlong training to be an operative for the Office of Strategic Services, Mr. Goldstein, known to everyone as Bill, decided he preferred communication electronics. He had grown up building radio sets in his basement, said his daughter Dena Goldstein Sharpe.

At least according to its own publicity, this year's Sundance Film Festival is all about rebellion. Exactly how that fits some of the innocuous romantic comedies and quirky dramas in the lineup is open to debate. But no one would question that Habib Azar's comic film Armless deserves the description. Michael Winterbottom's ultraviolent The Killer Inside Me and Gaspar No?'s postmortem drug trip Enter the Void may have provoked walkouts, but Armless has managed to scare away more than a few seasoned cinephiles based on its premise alone.

Jason Moore should have known that there's no crying in baseball. But then again, he is a Yankees fan. When a crowd in the parking lot of the Brick House Tavern, in Willow Grove, cleared out as an Upper Moreland police officer pulled in about 12:30 a.m. Monday following Game 4 of the World Series, Moore, 31, of Hatboro, didn't leave, police said. Instead, he allegedly ran up to the officer and complained that he'd been punched just because he was a Yankees supporter. The culprit?