Echo

The echo boom (those born from 1977 to 1997) is 80 million people strong, the largest generation ever. Well informed and media-savvy, echo boomers display a strong work ethic and have grown up understanding the new digital economy.. . . More than any previous generation, they are becoming conversant with a communications revolution transforming business, education, health care, entertainment [and] government . . . Surveys show them to be strong advocates for social responsibility.. . . These young people have $150 billion in direct purchasing power today, and about $500 billion in indirect purchasing power.

you're carelessly turn ripping open calendars like a box of cracker jacks i say turn "it's not the end of the millennium there's one year to go" you turn say, "do you claim you were born on the year of your first birthday?" turn to let november turn december turn the weather's not paying attention and i am practicing 2000 in curly script we'll go to new york city turn new ball drop turn watching on the tv set turn too much traffic turn new years day december echo turn The author is a junior creative writing major at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the glory days of post-punk, Liverpool's smugly psychedelic Echo & the Bunnymen had it all. Lyricist Ian McCulloch cut mumbling monotone vocals with clarion yelps of ire, while guitarist Will Sergeant warmly sliced through the doomy ambience of catchy melodies. McCulloch and Sergeant, Echo's only two remaining original members, sold out the TLA on Tuesday, with younger accompanists to help out. At first, the two needed all the help they could get. McCullough's moaning through the jerky pulse and overly spacious arrangement of "Going Up" should have been triumphant.

What becomes an '80s post-punk legend most? A graceful retirement, if Echo & the Bunnymen's arthritic Friday night performance at the TLA is any indication. The Bunnymen were in town to support their new record, What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? (Sire), which would have been more appropriately titled What Else Are You Going to Do With Your Life? Back in their mid-'80s glory days, Echo & the Bunnymen were a heady tangle of Goth and psychedelic sensibilities, a dynamic that wedded singer Ian McCulloch's Jim Morrison croon to the sound of Will Seargent's sleigh-bell guitars, reaching their stylistic apogee with 1984's Ocean Rain.

LONG AFTER HE'D sandbagged the doors to a bar that's been a second home for decades, Joe Rullo tried to sandbag Hurricane Sandy on Sunday with superstition, laughter and a cold beer. A $1 bill he'd placed on the cash register at Echo's, in North Wildwood, was the "Hurricane Dollar" that had helped thwart Hurricane Irene last year. Outside, in black and orange spray paint, Rullo had written Go Pound Sandy on the fresh plywood that covered the doors, alongside a makeshift jack-o'-lantern and ghost.

Once again, we get a punch to the solar plexus. Once again, the gasping shock of unbelievable news - JFK Jr.'s plane lost in the ocean off Martha's Vineyard carrying John, his wife and her sister. All weekend, we maintained a now-familiar vigil: unable to stay away from the television, not wanting to miss any details, any facts. Suspended in a long unreality of waiting, whose sad highlights came as the detritus of three young lives began washing up on shore. A luggage tag. A prescription bottle.

Three dogs walk Heather Tillette near Montgomery Avenue in Bryn Mawr. Taking advantage of the warmer weather yesterday to give their best friend some exercise are (from left) Kaya, Echo and Gothick. Today, they may find human companions reluctant to walk for long; rain is predicted.

She was blind and emaciated when she was stranded three years ago on Long Island. But Echo quickly adapted to her new home at the New Jersey State Aquarium - and thrived. The only harp seal on exhibit in the country, she learned voice commands from the trainers and used her sensitive whiskers and memory to negotiate the pool. But this week, after delighting thousands of visitors over the past three years, Echo died of undetermined causes. Frank Steslow, curator of living collections at the aquarium, said the seal began exhibiting symptoms Wednesday night and was moved to a holding area for treatment.

The thin column of vibrating air that is the recorder's sole resource is sometimes mistaken for poverty of expressive breadth and recessive projection. Neither is true, of course, and Elissa Berardi, recorder soloist with Philomel, made the ensemble's weekend concerts a showcase of the recorder's wit and range, its theatricality and surprising depth. No surprise here, because Berardi, a founder of the baroque ensemble, has devoted 26 seasons to widening her audience's perceptions of an instrument with modest decibels, but a long history of musical exploration.

Ever since Jake Gyllenhaal pedaled his bicycle through the doomed, pre-apocalyptic wastes of suburbia to the portentous strains of "The Killing Moon" in 2001's Donnie Darko, Echo & the Bunnymen have been on the slow train back to relevance. Judging by the one-third empty house that greeted the band's performance at the Keswick Theatre Sunday night, the train has yet to arrive at the station, but you could hear it coming around the bend. Running down numbers from their largely excellent back catalog with moody elan and precision, Echo & the Bunnymen - these days reduced to singer Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant, backed by hired guns - tickled the early '80s post-punk nostalgia bone of the mostly fortysomething faithful on hand.

WASHINGTON - Many of the same social problems highlighted in a landmark 1965 study on black family structure have only worsened over the last 48 years and are now causing similar hardship for white and Latino families. That's a major finding of a new report by the Urban Institute, a liberal think tank, which reexamines the circumstances of black families nearly five decades after former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored the controversial report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.

By Fouad Ajami 'We swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone: We must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. " This was Michael Adebolajo, age 28, born in the United Kingdom to a devoted Christian family of Nigerian background. His hands covered with the blood of a young off-duty British soldier, Lee Rigby, Adebolajo and a younger accomplice made no effort to flee the scene of the crime last week in London.

Although orchestra programs are set years in advance, they sometimes presage events in a way that makes them frighteningly relevant by the time they reach the stage. Rudolf Buchbinder's appearance Friday night with the Philadelphia Orchestra so soon after Wolfgang Sawallisch's death brought symbolic as well as practical significance. After the conductor became too ill to return for his laureate duties, the Viennese pianist, a close Sawallisch associate, would often arrive here as soloist with the maestro's greeting in hand.

In fall 2004, Ashley Brown, a 5-foot-4 sixth grader, was days away from lacing up her cleats and throwing on a helmet for the football season. She had a permission slip to join the Catholic Youth Organization team at St. Laurence School in Upper Darby and was salivating over the prospect of lining up at left tackle or nose guard, two of the sport's grittier positions. "I wasn't going out there to be twinkle toes," Brown, now 20, said in an interview last week. "I was going out there to play.

Lucia Bone is one of the few people who knows exactly what the family of slain Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti is going through. Her sister, Sue Weaver, was raped and murdered in 2001 by an air-conditioner repairman, who then set fire to her Florida house in an attempt to destroy evidence. "There are no words to describe it," Bone said in an interview. "It's the most horrific thing anybody can ever experience. " Ketunuti, 35, was found strangled, bound, and set on fire in her Graduate Hospital-area home Jan. 21. Police have charged Jason Smith, a 36-year-old Levittown exterminator.

As the search continued on Tuesday for a popular New Hope bartender who went missing early Saturday morning, many local residents were reminded of a strikingly similar incident that happened in this close-knit riverside community more than a decade ago. In 2000, local musician David Anderson went missing after spending a Friday night at John and Peter's, a New Hope bar. Anderson, according to an Inquirer article from the time, walked across the...

Does it matter why we hear the musicians we do? With its deep relationships and pedagogical bloodlines, Philadelphia risks a certain provincialism and clubbiness every time an artist steps out on stage. Astral Artists, though, is a vital hedge against that dynamic, expressed most recently on Sunday afternoon at the Trinity Center in the Philadelphia recital debut of Romie de Guise-Langlois. Where we're used to hearing refinement across all registers, this clarinetist argued for variety of tone.

They were 23 miles apart in driving distance, but light-years apart in their views of President Obama's speech Wednesday - a gun-control advocate in Philadelphia and a foursome of shooting enthusiasts in the suburbs. At midday, as Obama went on the air, Shira Goodman, executive director of CeaseFirePA, paused from planning an anti- gun-violence rally and opened her laptop to watch the live stream. She was glad to hear Obama, together with Vice President Biden, pledge to try to stop the manufacture of military-style assault rifles, ban large ammunition clips, and require universal background checks for gun purchasers.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban on Wednesday likened the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan to America's pullout from Vietnam, calling it a "declare victory and run" strategy. A statement from the extremist group said the ongoing transfer of security operations from U.S. troops to Afghan forces was merely a retreat similar to the American withdrawal from South Vietnam before the communist victory there in 1975. American-led NATO troops are scheduled to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, although the United States will leave a residual force behind and other NATO countries have pledged continuing support for the Kabul government.

WASHINGTON - Mayor Nutter, standing outside the White House Thursday evening, delivered a message that echoed the one coming from his ally inside: Ensure middle-class tax cuts stay in place, before the country heads over the fiscal cliff. "Taxpayers making less than $250,000 should not see their taxes go up," Nutter said after he and 13 other mayors met with Vice President Biden. "If you have one thing that everyone agrees on, there's no reason not to do that one thing now. " Nutter's comments as he stood outside the West Wing highlighted his ongoing role as one of Obama's most visible allies, having served as one of the president's top surrogates during the election.