Filth

My friends and I in the Legion of Mary at St. Rose of Lima Church are so delighted that more stores are closing their doors to adult magazines. We thank all the stores that have put themselves on the line, money-wise, to get rid of the filth. We will be proud to patronize the stores that do not deal in the degradation of our society. God bless all their owners. Catherine Farrell Haddon Heights, N.J.

NEW LONDON, Conn. - Officials turned off the water at the city's new waterfront fountain over the weekend, because people have been using it as a toilet. The fountain was activated last month and features a sculpture of a whale's tail with water spilling over it, which visitors are encouraged to run through. City Councilor Michael Buscetto III said that since the fountain opened, police have responded to calls of people urinating, defecating and showering in the fountain water.

You go up a stairway deep in gloom and gritty with ancient dirt. The air is thick with a stench almost too foul to breathe. Swarms of flies drone in the dusty darkness. The stairs take you to a scene of amazing clutter and filth, the third floor of the crumbling house on 19th Street near Cecil B. Moore Avenue in North Philadelphia where police have found the remains of seven people. The rear apartment, which police say was occupied by Harrison "Marty" Graham, looks as if it has been the repository of household rubbish and discarded furnishings for decades.

What contortions the communications business goes through in defending a sewer-mouthed comic with a predilection for four-letter words! All knee-jerk, the contortions; by now, the act's as automatic as a go-go dancer answering the bell for another bump-and-grind. Let the Federal Communications Commission dare to object to the likes of Howard Stern polluting the ether, and the communications people lapse into gyrations that would shame them if they could see themselves as others do. How did we get grooved into thinking that Howard Stern's dredging the cesspool has to be protected as a First Amendment right?

Philadelphia police, investigating a report of squatters occupying a Northeast Philadelphia apartment building on Saturday, found four mentally-handicapped adults being held chained in "deplorable conditions" in a basement storage closet. The three men and a woman, all in their 40s and said to have the mental capacity of of 10-year-olds, were malnourished, said Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman. Two people were being questioned by police Saturday evening. "It's obviously very unsettling - it's very disturbing," said police Capt.

Several weeks ago I arrived in Philadelphia to teach at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. For months the prospect of returning to this city of beautiful parks, historic squares and gracious neighborhoods excited me. However, upon arrival here I was stunned by the blight of trash strewn throughout the metropolitan area. During my 20-year absence from Philadelphia, extensive travels have taken me to many cities around the world. Never before have I seen a city drowning in its refuse as Philadelphia is. How can this cradle of American civilization allow itself to be consumed by its own excrement?

AS A RESIDENT of this city for 54 years, I am totally disgusted with the filth on our highways, byways and residential streets. There is trash and filth everywhere you look. Where is the civic pride that was once a part of our culture? It is no wonder that it has gone by the wayside, as so many moral issues have. I have seen young children, teenagers and adults discard potato-chip bags, plastic soda bottles, candy wrappers, etc., right on the ground. This happens even when there is a litter basket but a few feet away.

WHILE WATCHING my favorite news channel, I listened as the anchor stated something about an old tradition regarding the first sailor off the ship greeting a loved one with a kiss. Well, what I saw next sickened me to the point where I almost threw my shoe at the television screen. How could this network air such filth - two women kissing? This was not news, it was an abomination. My son witnessed this filth and Lord knows how many other children saw it. There are a lot of people who are not down with this Adam and Steve or Jill and Jane mess.

RE YOUR editorial on Sen. Spector and the NRA (April 30): The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms bill will not exempt manufacturers from lawsuits alleging a malfunction of the product, i.e., guns. It will only protect the legal manufacturer and distributors of firearms when they have not done anything wrong. If their product malfunctions, they are still liable to a suit. To hold the manufacturer of a legal product responsible for the criminal misuse of that product by a third party is ridiculous.

The news that Cigna Corp. is thinking of moving as many as 4,400 workers out of Center City is like a cold splash of reality on Philadelphia's fantasies of a new Golden Age. It appears that building all those classy new office towers - reaching higher and higher toward the heavens - is not the same as filling them with tenants. Nor is there any guarantee that the occupants of the more prosaic older office buildings are planning to stick around to see how everything works out. Executives of Cigna, one of the nation's largest insurance companies, no doubt are playing a clever game.

WHILE WATCHING my favorite news channel, I listened as the anchor stated something about an old tradition regarding the first sailor off the ship greeting a loved one with a kiss. Well, what I saw next sickened me to the point where I almost threw my shoe at the television screen. How could this network air such filth - two women kissing? This was not news, it was an abomination. My son witnessed this filth and Lord knows how many other children saw it. There are a lot of people who are not down with this Adam and Steve or Jill and Jane mess.

Philadelphia police, investigating a report of squatters occupying a Northeast Philadelphia apartment building on Saturday, found four mentally-handicapped adults being held chained in "deplorable conditions" in a basement storage closet. The three men and a woman, all in their 40s and said to have the mental capacity of of 10-year-olds, were malnourished, said Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman. Two people were being questioned by police Saturday evening. "It's obviously very unsettling - it's very disturbing," said police Capt.

Police with the PSPCA on Wednesday revisited a house on Chadwick Street in South Philadelphia, where a woman lived without electricity in deplorable conditions with more than 20 sick and malnourished cats. They were trying to determine how many more animals were left inside the home near Passyunk Avenue after the woman, who was reportedly covered with fleas when officials arrived, was hospitalized Sunday. "The house is filled with debris," said Wendy Marano, PSPCA spokeswoman, adding that the house was declared unfit for human habitation.

NEW LONDON, Conn. - Officials turned off the water at the city's new waterfront fountain over the weekend, because people have been using it as a toilet. The fountain was activated last month and features a sculpture of a whale's tail with water spilling over it, which visitors are encouraged to run through. City Councilor Michael Buscetto III said that since the fountain opened, police have responded to calls of people urinating, defecating and showering in the fountain water.

'Because I have survived with neurotic happiness for 40 years, I believe that I can guide other people to a life of happy insanity," John Waters bubbles by phone from San Francisco. The moralist, mischief-maker, filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist refers to his one-man show, This Filthy World, which comes to Bryn Mawr College's Goodhart Theater at 8 tomorrow night. It's always a gas to speak with Waters, 63, maker of cult movies including Hairspray (the 1988 original that inspired the recent Broadway musical and film adaptation)

An increasing number of people are fed up with the airing of sexually explicit, violent, degrading, stereotypical music videos on TV, especially during hours when teenagers haven't turned in for bed. Citizens are fighting back by filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, demonstrating in front of the homes of network executives and, more recently, targeting television sponsors. Having edited Emerge magazine, a former publication owned by Black Entertainment Television (BET)

Raking like a man possessed, 49-year-old Dennis McNeil tore into the grunge along a fence near the homeless shelter at 13th Street and Ridge Avenue. An hour into yesterday's "Love Where You Live" citywide cleanup drive, involving more than 10,000 volunteers, McNeil and 40 of his shelter mates had filled 50 fifty-gallon bags with the noxious stew of sandwich wrappers, wet weeds, plastic bags and the occasional syringe. The antilitter offensive bagged trash throughout Philadelphia.

AS A RESIDENT of this city for 54 years, I am totally disgusted with the filth on our highways, byways and residential streets. There is trash and filth everywhere you look. Where is the civic pride that was once a part of our culture? It is no wonder that it has gone by the wayside, as so many moral issues have. I have seen young children, teenagers and adults discard potato-chip bags, plastic soda bottles, candy wrappers, etc., right on the ground. This happens even when there is a litter basket but a few feet away.

Sue Camilli knew there was a problem 12 years ago when she saw about 30 stray cats roaming her well-kept West Deptford neighborhood, feasting on handouts from a couple who lived on Harker Avenue. She said she had called the township's animal control office, which dispatched officers to whisk away several cats. Apparently they missed some. After years of what neighbors say were vain complaints to township officials about the growing number of cats, SPCA officers and Gloucester County Animal Control agents raided James and Rita Penney's ramshackle house Monday night and discovered 45 cats and eight dogs in a squalid mess of stink and excrement.

For a junk man, Eric Humphrey is conspicuously neat. His hair buzzed, his mustache trimmed close, his spotless white polo shirt with hardly a wrinkle, Humphrey exudes almost military confidence. Inside a small warehouse in Northeast Philadelphia, the dizzying miscellany of items the former bookkeeper has amassed is meticulously arrayed. TVs line up on one set of shelves, vacuums on another; couches are stacked on a series of platforms; unsorted material - including comic books and a duffel full of Playboy magazines - is on the floor by the door.