Dome

Night baseball is coming to Chicago's Wrigley Field, the last major-league ballpark where the boys of summer kept the game an afternoon affair. When the lights go up this summer, the Cubs will thus shed one of their two distinguishing attributes (the other being a tendency not to win). Now some see in this the End of Baseball As We Knew It, and they are right. Others, those sly victors, use phrases like "20th century" and "anachronism" and "inevitability. " The actual battle before Chicago's City Council pitted neighborhood prerogative (if you lived virtually next door, as a great number do in Chicago, would you want a stadiumful of people clotting the night streets?

Red dome at night, commuter take flight. White dome at dusk, raincoats a must. Blue dome till dawn, clouds all gone. Who knows what new sayings may be inspired by the blinking dome of the New Jersey State Aquarium. For nearly two years, it has predicted the next day's weather with solid red, white and blue lights - 220 of them lighting up the 38-foot-wide dome. Red for storms, white for clouds, and blue for sunny skies. Red blinking lights warned of severe storms. But come 11:15 p.m. tonight, you won't miss the aquarium weather report - if you're along the waterfront.

Here, in the City of Philadelphia, I honestly do not think you could find anyone with more of an appreciation than I of our historical significance. I have read the books, studied the background and visited the shrines hundreds of times. I am a Philadelphian who knows where the Liberty Bell is, and looks forward to being asked directions. Impressive as the 200th anniversary of our Constitution is, I am underwhelmed by the celebration plans, especially the major silliness of a domed pavilion near Independence Hall.

A 40-story office tower and retail complex may one day loom behind "the Dome" at Broad and Chestnut Streets under plans being discussed by the companies that own the property. After five years of planning and buying up land on Chestnut Street, Berwind Realty Services Inc. said it had asked Mellon Bank to become involved in its plans to develop the block that the two companies own on Chestnut Street between Broad and 15th Streets. The two companies are in preliminary talks about Berwind's plans to build a high-rise office tower at 15th and Chestnut Streets and connect it with a public walkway to One Mellon Bank Center at Broad and Chestnut.

During the 15 years that he has lived close to the township's public-works yard, Donald Richardson has never been too upset about looking out his front door and seeing a mulch pile that rises above a chain-link fence with heavy machinery leaning against it. "At least you could see a horizon of trees," Richardson said. Not for much longer. Despite the vehement objections of neighborhood residents, the township Board of Commissioners decided Monday night to continue construction of a 33- foot-high dome for the storage of street salt in the yard.

In 1792, President George Washington and his secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, were in Philadelphia, pondering a question of extreme symbolic importance: The design of the U.S. Capitol. Determined to send a message that, although a fledgling democracy, America commanded respect, Washington decided upon a dome. "It gives beauty and grandeur to the pile [building]," he wrote. Now, the world's most visible symbol of democracy is getting a face-lift, a $30 million repair job that will seal cracks and other problems in the 135-year-old, cast-iron dome.

It could be the biggest magic trick New Jersey has ever seen. The rusty, 109-year-old cast-iron dome atop the Statehouse is disappearing behind a network of steel beams and heavy-duty vinyl sheeting - a temporary outer building of sorts, designed both to withstand hurricane-force wind and rain, and to provide a climate-controlled environment for the most delicate of historical-preservation work. A year from now, the curtain will be drawn back, so to speak, to reveal restored cast-iron fittings, a new copper skin, and a fresh layer of whisper-thin gold leaf.

When city firefighters rushed to the Statehouse on March 21, 1885, flames were illuminating its windows. But a cold snap had frozen the fire hydrants, and it took 15 precious minutes to thaw the plugs out. The delay was crucial. In a photograph taken after the fire, children wrapped in huge scarves shiver before the gutted Statehouse shell. The roof had fallen in. The walls had cracked. A nearby tree looked like a delicate glass sculpture, encased in frozen water from the fire hoses.

Something between a sigh and a gasp escaped Caroline Wolonaski yesterday morning as she watched a massive golden dome descend from a crane onto the top of Presentation of Our Lord Ukrainian Catholic Church. "It makes me proud, so proud to see this," said Wolonaski, a 77-year-old native of Romania. "I sang in a choir as a child. I was raised Catholic. It has meant everything to me all my life. " About 50 congregation members and neighbors took time off from work or allowed their children an intermission from school to see the octagonal dome, swaying slightly in the autumn wind, lowered onto the roof of the church.

Not every church finds its foreign mission touching down within its borders. But St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church has much of the world at its doorstep and spends lots of time welcoming it in. Poised for its second hundred years - a concelebrated mass led by Archbishop Anthony J. Bevilacqua officially closes the centennial on Dec. 2 - the University City parish encompasses people from 22 nations . . . and counting. The parish school, centerpiece of the church's community outreach, has students from Ghana and Panama, Bangladesh and Korea.

The name Yosemite conjures images of granite peaks and spellbinding wilderness. Half Dome is the most recognized granite monolith in the national park, rising almost 4,800 feet from the valley floor. Climbing to its summit had always been a dream - a feat once considered impossible, but made feasible when an entrepreneur laid a set of cables to the summit. Since then that stairway to heaven has taken many to the heavenly views up top, and, unfortunately for some who fell, to their heavenly abode.

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BEERSHEBA, Israel - Israel deployed a cutting-edge rocket-defense system Sunday, rolling out the latest tool in its arsenal to stop a recent spike in attacks from the Gaza Strip. Israel hopes the homegrown Iron Dome system will provide increased security to its citizens, but officials warned that it cannot do the job alone. The system went into operation shortly after an Israeli aircraft struck a group of extremists in Gaza, killing two. Israel said they were about to fire a rocket. The Iron Dome system has raised hopes that Israel has finally found a solution to the years of rocket fire from Gaza.

It wasn't pretty. Late last February, a Villanova team that eventually would get a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament headed to Syracuse to play a squad that ended up with a 1. It was over almost before it got going. The final was 95-77. It was the Wildcats' fifth loss. They won only two of their remaining five games, by four points 3 days later at Cincinnati and by three in overtime over Robert Morris in the opening round of the Madness. Who knows? Maybe they already were beginning to lose their mojo by the time they touched down in upstate New York.

Lee moves closer to making his Seattle debut Cliff Lee took another step toward joining the Seattle Mariners' rotation, throwing 45 pitches off the bullpen mound before Sunday's game against the Rangers in Arlington, Texas. Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said he was encouraged by what he saw from Lee, who is on the 15-day disabled list with an abdominal strain and is expected to miss the first month of the season. "He feels like he's ready to go," Wakamatsu said. The 2008 Cy Young Award winner, obtained from the Phillies in December, will throw a 60-pitch bullpen session on Tuesday and a 35-40 pitch simulated game on Friday.

The Carrier Dome will likely be jammed with the largest on-campus crowd in the history of NCAA college basketball. ESPN's GameDay will be in town. The Syracuse fans will wave orange mini-towels furiously, trying to generate the world's first indoor funnel cloud. Seventh-ranked Villanova will be in the middle of it all tonight, facing fourth-ranked Syracuse in the game of the year in the Big East, and maybe the country. The Orange sold all 34,616 tickets more than a month ago, and the crowd could top 35,000 by the time everyone gets in out of the snow.

MY FAMILY went to Rome this summer, and we spotted the scene in the photo above in front of the Pantheon, which captures the theme of my new Daily News column. Don't panic. Paying tribute to some important building is the opposite of what this column is going to be about. The Pantheon was built by the Romans 1,900 years ago as a pagan temple and converted into a church in 609 AD. For 13 centuries, its famous dome, 142 feet across, was the largest in the world, only surpassed in 1436 by the Duomo in Florence.

Les Bowen I think for the home team to win, the Vikings need to make this something like the 10-3 game the Redskins won against the Eagles 2 weeks ago. It's possible - you've heard the nightmare scenario all week, Andy opting to pass, pass pass, loud dome, no offensive rhythm. But from a distance, I am not carried away with the NFC North champions. A lot of that No. 1 ranking against the run comes from early and midseason games; the last five weeks, they've allowed 456 rushing yards on 122 carries, 3.74 yards per carry, which is very good, but not as good as their overall mark of 3.3. The biggest worry I see for Eagles fans is that the Birds' offense has tended to be much more inconsistent on the road, but really, if the Eagles somehow get to 20 points in this game, I'll be really surprised if they don't win. EAGLES, 20-16   Ed Barkowitz The Vikings are a little like the Redskins, a team the Eagles struggled against twice this year.

A severe storm ripped away two panels in the side of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta during the Southeastern Conference Tournament last night, sending debris falling from the ceiling, halting the Alabama-Mississippi State game and prompting fans to flee for the exits. The teams were sent to the locker rooms, while those who remained at their seats looked anxiously toward the roof. The game was stopped with Mississippi State leading by three, with 2:11 left in overtime. The game resumed after a delay of about 50 minutes, with Mississippi State (22-9)

The timing might not have been right for Villanova to pick up its first Big East road victory of the season yesterday, not in the cavernous Carrier Dome, where the noise descends in wave after wave to the basketball court. But with Scottie Reynolds directing the offense, Corey Fisher nailing big free throws, and Dante Cunningham fighting inside despite the flu, the Wildcats picked up the elusive win, knocking off Syracuse, 81-71, before a crowd of 26,494, the largest to watch a men's college basketball game in an on-campus facility this season.