Butterfly

As a gardener, Frank Victor started out like the rest of us. He planted things in the wrong place, stuff died, he soldiered on. There the comparison ends. From the looks of his Hainesport, Burlington County, garden today, Victor, 64, has zoomed ahead of the pack. His half-acre backyard, in the Sage Run development, was deftly thought out and planted to attract wildlife - mostly butterflies, and especially monarchs. "I'm a monarch guy," says Victor, who's been pretty much a full-time home gardener since April 17, 2009, when he was laid off from his management job at Unisys, after 40 years and five months.

White smoke from the small cooking fires rises lightly toward the tops of the tall Oyamel fir trees. Soda pops of every color are lined up precisely on the edges of primitive wooden picnic tables. Local peasant women, wearing bright checked aprons over clashing print dresses, slap-slap-slap their blue tortilla dough in anticipation of the many tourists who will soon come huffing and puffing up the steep hills on their way to see the spot where millions of U.S. and Canadian monarch butterflies spend the winter months.

Still in medical school and with just a month of solid training, Jenny Thompson of the United States claimed her first individual gold medal in a major meet since 1998 by winning the women's 100-meter butterfly yesterday in the Swimming World Championships in Barcelona, Spain. Thompson finished in 57.96 seconds for her record 11th medal in world-championship competition. Otylia Jedrzejczak of Poland was second in 58.22. World records were broken by Matthew Welsh and Leisel Jones of Australia and Kosuke Kitajima of Japan.

Marathon swimmer Vicki Keith last night became the first person to swim the treacherous Juan De Fuca Strait between Canada and the United States using the grueling butterfly stroke. Thousands of spectators waited on shore in Victoria to welcome the exhausted swimmer after her 14-hour, 20-minute swim from Port Angeles, Wash. Keith, 28, a Canadian, waved to the crowd but said nothing upon her arrival, more than five hours ahead of schedule. She appeared to falter and shake uncontrollably as paramedics carried her up a steep cliff to an ambulance.

David Henry Hwang's brilliant and complex drama, M. Butterfly, is so good it can survive Philadelphia Theatre Company's visually stunning but otherwise wobbly production. The play is based on a true story: In the 1980s a French diplomat was convicted of treason for having provided military information to the Chinese government through his lover of 20 years. That Song Liling would turn out to have been a man as well as a spy is only one of the play's elaborate duplicities. The many and devious ways politics, sex and race are interlaced is M. Butterfly's point and power.

Michael Phelps broke the world record in the 100-meter butterfly yesterday during the U.S. national swimming championships in Indianapolis, giving him five individual world marks. The 14-time Olympic gold medalist swam the two-lap final in 50.22 seconds at the Indiana University Natatorium. He lowered Ian Crocker's mark of 50.40, set at the 2005 world championships in Montreal. Phelps holds world records in the 100 and 200 butterfly, 200 and 400 individual medley, and the 200 freestyle.

HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania National Guard plans to offer free guided tours of a rare butterfly colony at Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County. The guard says the fort is the home of the only viable colony of regal fritillary butterflies in the eastern United States. The tours are to begin at 9 a.m. on July 4, 5, 14 and 21, and at 1 p.m. on July 13. - AP

Holy Ghost Prep senior Tim Melinson entered Friday's PIAA District 1 Class AA 100-yard butterfly as the eighth seed, a placement that didn't earn him a spot in the top-qualifying heat at the University of Pennsylvania's six-lane Sheerr Pool. So when Melinson ripped off a time of 53.48 seconds, he had to wait for the results of the final heat to see whether he won the event, even though his own time broke the Class AA meet record of 53.76. Melinson ended up with a second-place finish.

Matt Zelen dived into the pool to start the 100-yard butterfly, then remembered something. He'd forgotten to tie his racing suit. When the St. John's University junior felt his suit sliding off in the Collegeville, Minn., pool, he decided to kick it off and finish the race. Zelen, a contender for the 2000 Olympics, would have won the race at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University Invitational on Saturday night by more than two seconds. But Zelen was stripped of more than just his suit - he was disqualified for violating a uniform code.

Conestoga junior Kelly Brennan seemed to be a shoo-in to make the state swimming meet in her top event, the 100-yard butterfly. But a freak injury during the PIAA District 1 Class AAA meet Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania almost cost her that opportunity. "I had a wart on the top of my finger, and somewhere during the 50-yard freestyle, I hit and it started bleeding," Brennan said. "We bandaged it up a couple of times, and it still wouldn't stop. " Her butterfly race was coming up, and under PIAA rules, she would not be allowed in the water with a bleeding finger.

Dressed in clothing with holes and sweaters marked by yellow stars, the actors from the Wolf Performing Arts Center played out a children's story of fear, sadness, and hope while in the Terezin concentration camp. The words came from the poems and stories in the book and play I Never Saw Another Butterfly, based on the experiences of the children who wrote poems and made artworks to pass the time in the camp. The title comes from a poem, "The Butterfly," written by one of the children.

DEAD BUTTERFLIES, more colorful than any exotic bloom. Old oil drums and milk jugs, transformed into something new. But nothing at the Philadelphia Flower Show represents life's endless loop more than the giant, steaming pile of . . . "Mommy, it's poop ," a giggling little girl said Sunday, at one unique display. The large, cartoon-like pile of poop is part of the Philadelphia Water Department's award-winning "The Power of Poop" display at the flower show. The display is all about reusing waste to create power, from our own waste to the scraps we shove down the garbage disposal.

The made-up stories of the next five months are passionate, often international, sometimes (or are they?) occult. The short novel and short story are coming on strong again. Biography, autobiography, and history loom large, as always, among nonfiction titles. Butterflies and the Bible make an appearance, too. Plenty to keep a reader busy, from here to the summer solstice and beyond. - By John Timpane and Michael D. Schaffer, Inquirer staff writers Butterflies, the Bible, passionate fiction - the books of spring Fiction The River Swimmer: Novellas by Jim Harrison (Grove, $25, Jan. 8)

Flight Behavior By Barbara Kingsolver HarperCollins. 448 pp. $28.99 Reviewed by Judith Musser   For fans of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction, Flight Behavior will be a pleasant return to a familiar setting with recognizable characters, memorable dialogue, common themes, and well-written prose that has become associated with a Kingsolver novel. As in Prodigal Summer , Kingsolver revisits Appalachia and re-creates a plot imbued with ecological and biological importance.

STATE COLLEGE - Bill O'Brien told it like it is. "I will certainly have butterflies before this game," Penn State's first-year head coach said Tuesday at the news conference to discuss Saturday's season opener against visiting Ohio. "I mean, I'd be crazy to tell you otherwise. " After all, O'Brien's first real game at a stadium that holds more than 106,000 people is this weekend, and it comes after the most eventful summer Penn State has ever seen. But when game time actually rolls around after a summer of fielding all sorts of non-football questions, O'Brien will be ready.

TOKYO - Radiation that leaked from the Fukushima nuclear plant following last year's tsunami caused mutations in some butterflies - including dented eyes and stunted wings - though humans seem relatively unaffected, researchers say. The mutations are the first evidence that the radiation has caused genetic changes in living organisms. They are likely to add to concerns about potential health risks among humans though there is no evidence of it yet. Scientists say more study is needed to link human health with the Fukushima disaster.

LONDON - Dana Vollmer finished a blistering final 50 meters of the 100 butterfly Sunday, smacked the wall, ditched her goggles, and squinted at the clock. It took a moment to find it, then to sink in. She had done it: 55.98 seconds. A world record. An exultant smile spread, and she shot her fist in the air at the Olympics Aquatics Centre. Four years after missing the 2008 Beijing Games almost made her quit swimming, and eight years after winning relay gold as a 16-year-old at the 2004 Athens Games, the Granbury, Texas, native won her first individual Olympic gold in historic fashion.

OMAHA, Neb. - Conshohocken's Teresa Crippen tried to swim with the mind-set that this attempt at making the London Olympic team was just for her - not for her brother Fran, who died in a 2010 open-water swimming race, and certainly not for the heartening headlines she would have made as a 2012 Olympian. But the loss of Fran still is so palpable for the Crippen family, especially when they're on a big stage in the sport, when the announcer calls out the name "Crippen" and the audience takes extra notice.

Michael Phelps stayed on course to swim eight events at the London Games, pulling away for a dominating win in the 200-meter butterfly at the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., on Thursday night. Phelps has locked up three individual events for London and he's got two more to go. Combined with a likely spot on all three relay teams, the 26-year-old from Baltimore - already the winningest Olympian ever - would have a chance to duplicate his record from the Beijing Games if he doesn't stumble over the next three days.

It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important! Could it? ... "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we start over? Can't we —" ... He heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.