Connective Tissue

"Your looks are laughable," goes the old standard "My Funny Valentine," a theme song of sorts for the made-for-TV weeper, For Hope. The film is at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channel 6. After the first 10 or 15 minutes, there's very little that's laughable about For Hope, even though it's executive-produced by one of America's most recognizable funnymen, Abington's own Bob Saget. For Hope is the nonstop story of a funny, pretty and dynamic woman's agonizing slide toward death. Starring Dana Delany from China Beach as Hope, it's based on the life of Saget's sister Gay, who was diagnosed with scleroderma in early 1992, and who died April 10, 1994, at 47. She had lived in Newtown and taught at Council Rock Middle School.

Nothing, potentially, is more artificial than a Broadway singer unmoored from her Broadway show. Without context - a story, sets - a soprano bursting into song as she walks onto stage, microphone in hand, risks comedy of the unintentional kind. Of course, if it's the right singer, drawing you in with charisma and a smart feel for a lyric, suspension of disbelief is instantaneous. You're in love. Who asks questions at a time like that? Peter Nero is a regular importer of Broadway material to his Philly Pops stage in Verizon Hall, and the latest iteration, heard Sunday afternoon, uses revivals as its tenuous thread.

If you want to save money at the meat counter, you must get to know "Chuck"! Somebody said that once. (I think it was me.) "Chuck" is not the name of a particular friendly and generous butcher. It is rather the name of a large part of a beef carcass. For some reason, the front shoulder of beef is called the "chuck. " Every other animal in the world has shoulders, beef has a "chuck. " The chuck makes up about 26 percent of the total carcass weight, and for the most part has been considered a less tender part of the animal that generally requires long, slow, moist-heat cooking.

While the tragedy of Len Bias's death remains clouded with suspicions about drugs, University of Maryland officials are confident that Bias did not die of Marfan syndrome. Marfan's involves a weakening of the connective tissue of the heart that can result in a ruptured aorta. It is the disease that killed Olympic volleyball player Flo Hyman in January, and it is the reason Robert Liburd has not been allowed to play basketball at Temple. The reason the Maryland people feel certain that Bias's cardiac and respiratory failure were not caused by Marfan syndrome is because they test all basketball players for it. And the reason they test for it is because Bias is the third Maryland basketball player to die from a heart-related problem since 1976.

Elizabeth W. Bartle, 16, of Wynnewood, was killed late Friday in a one-car crash on a rain-slicked stretch of Route 401 in East Nantmeal Township, Chester County, police said. Miss Bartle, the daughter of Montgomery County Commissioner Chairman Paul B. Bartle, was headed home from a friend's house in Glenmoore when the car in which she was a passenger skidded off the road, rammed a fence and wedged between two trees. She was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 9:30 p.m. The driver, a 16-year-old girl whom police did not name, was treated for cuts to the head at Brandywine Hospital & Trauma Center in Coatesville, and released.

Deborah Ragland White, 46, assistant vice president for governmental relations at Temple University, died Saturday as a result of complications from scleroderma, a rare disease that attacks the body's connective tissue. Mrs. White, who died at Temple University Hospital, was the wife of John F. White Jr., outgoing executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority and a mayoral candidate. She started her career at Temple in 1988 as director of the university's Capital Campus in Harrisburg.

Vincent Schiavelli, the instantly recognizable sad-faced actor, considers himself incredibly fortunate that his childhood optometrist happened to be an Abraham Lincoln buff. Otherwise, the actor best known for portraying a dead man haunting the New York subways in "Ghost" might actually be experiencing that role. Schiavelli is affected by Marfan syndrome, a surprisingly common but rarely detected disorder. The disorder involves the connective tissue that holds together skin, muscles and other organs and is characterized by impaired vision, weakened arteries, a lanky appearance, and enlarged hands and feet.

Part of the appeal of running is its simplicity. Alas, that very quality seems to foster the urge to complicate. Hence the profusion of overengineered running shoes and sophisticated training schemes. So the publication last year of Born to Run , Christopher McDougall's rollicking best seller that makes the case for running barefoot and argues that high-tech running shoes may be causing more harm than good, was welcomed by many who believe that less is more. Across the land, thousands have shed their Nikes and Asics and begun jogging and running unshod.

In December, we unveiled our progress on plans for the Gateway Visitor Center, to be located on the second block of Independence Mall. Our objectives for the center are to provide both an informative, exciting and enjoyable experience, orienting millions of visitors to Independence National Historical Park, the city, and the surrounding region; and be a first class component of the spectacular revitalization taking place on Independence Mall....

Though conductor Charles Dutoit has long been known as one of the world's great colorists with the dense orchestral traffic of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, his more crucial skills at work in yesterday's Philadelphia Orchestra concert of Sibelius and Penderecki in the Kimmel Center (repeated at 8 p.m. today) allowed triumphs of coherence. Sounds brainy, I know, but that's actually the underlying reason one's ear tended to hang on each phrase in the less-than-fail-safe repertoire.

Part of the appeal of running is its simplicity. Alas, that very quality seems to foster the urge to complicate. Hence the profusion of overengineered running shoes and sophisticated training schemes. So the publication last year of Born to Run , Christopher McDougall's rollicking best seller that makes the case for running barefoot and argues that high-tech running shoes may be causing more harm than good, was welcomed by many who believe that less is more. Across the land, thousands have shed their Nikes and Asics and begun jogging and running unshod.

Nothing, potentially, is more artificial than a Broadway singer unmoored from her Broadway show. Without context - a story, sets - a soprano bursting into song as she walks onto stage, microphone in hand, risks comedy of the unintentional kind. Of course, if it's the right singer, drawing you in with charisma and a smart feel for a lyric, suspension of disbelief is instantaneous. You're in love. Who asks questions at a time like that? Peter Nero is a regular importer of Broadway material to his Philly Pops stage in Verizon Hall, and the latest iteration, heard Sunday afternoon, uses revivals as its tenuous thread.

Though conductor Charles Dutoit has long been known as one of the world's great colorists with the dense orchestral traffic of Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, his more crucial skills at work in yesterday's Philadelphia Orchestra concert of Sibelius and Penderecki in the Kimmel Center (repeated at 8 p.m. today) allowed triumphs of coherence. Sounds brainy, I know, but that's actually the underlying reason one's ear tended to hang on each phrase in the less-than-fail-safe repertoire.

Next By Michael Crichton HarperCollins. 448 pp. $27.95 Michael Crichton has made a career out of taking hot-button scientific or political topics and spinning them into fast-moving, high-concept adventure novels. He did it with cloned dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, global warming in State of Fear, and time travel in Timeline. Now Crichton has given us Next, a blockbuster science thriller that tackles the subject of genetic manipulation. With stem cells, embryonic research, and predicted miracle cures so much in the news, the topic is great fodder for headlines.

In December, we unveiled our progress on plans for the Gateway Visitor Center, to be located on the second block of Independence Mall. Our objectives for the center are to provide both an informative, exciting and enjoyable experience, orienting millions of visitors to Independence National Historical Park, the city, and the surrounding region; and be a first class component of the spectacular revitalization taking place on Independence Mall....

As a child, Karen Czerpak enjoyed the reaction her unusually elastic body got from the other children. She could put both feet onto her shoulders and pop out her hip joints at will. But the fun of those parlor tricks wore off as she got older and her joints became more unstable. By the time she was 14, it felt as if her hips were on the verge of dislocating whenever she walked. She bruised easily, and wounds healed slowly. She knew there was something wrong with her. It took doctors four years to put a name to her condition: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Deborah Ragland White, 46, assistant vice president for governmental relations at Temple University, died Saturday as a result of complications from scleroderma, a rare disease that attacks the body's connective tissue. Mrs. White, who died at Temple University Hospital, was the wife of John F. White Jr., outgoing executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority and a mayoral candidate. She started her career at Temple in 1988 as director of the university's Capital Campus in Harrisburg.

"Your looks are laughable," goes the old standard "My Funny Valentine," a theme song of sorts for the made-for-TV weeper, For Hope. The film is at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channel 6. After the first 10 or 15 minutes, there's very little that's laughable about For Hope, even though it's executive-produced by one of America's most recognizable funnymen, Abington's own Bob Saget. For Hope is the nonstop story of a funny, pretty and dynamic woman's agonizing slide toward death. Starring Dana Delany from China Beach as Hope, it's based on the life of Saget's sister Gay, who was diagnosed with scleroderma in early 1992, and who died April 10, 1994, at 47. She had lived in Newtown and taught at Council Rock Middle School.

A large Harvard study has failed to find a link between connective-tissue diseases and silicone breast implants - the subject of hundreds of thousands of lawsuits. Using data from 87,501 nurses in the continuing Nurses' Health Study, researchers said that 516 women during a 14-year period were confirmed to have a connective-tissue disease such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma or Sjrogen's syndrome. Of these, only three had breast implants and only one had a silicone breast implant, according to the study to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Talk to most infectious-disease experts and they'll shrug their shoulders. Necrotizing fasciitis has been around for a long time, they'll say. And besides, there are other icky diseases to worry about. "Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands," said David Condoluci, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's Stratford campus. They come in all forms. Some are caused by viruses, some by bacteria, some by parasites.