Followers

Jim Wise thinks about Phil Bengtson. "Most people never heard of us, Phil Bengtson and me," he says, "because there is no slot in the record books for what you might call famous followers. " Phil Bengtson, you may not remember, was coach of the Green Bay Packers for three years in the late '60s and early '70s. All he had to do was follow the legendary Vince Lombardi, whose teams won league championships in each of the three years before Bengtson's takeover. Bengtson never made the playoffs during his three years as head coach.

ISEE THE leftists are screaming about Christine O'Donnell's "shady past. " Maybe they should look into Obama's past, and the czars he has around him. Ayres. Holdren. Holder. Jennings. Lloyd. Dunn. Jarrett. Sunstein. Nice Marxists, all of them. Pat Dougherty Philadelphia

Three former Church of Our First Love members say church leader Anthony Marcolongo has an unquenchable desire to control the lives - and minds - of his followers. The three, who spoke on condition that they not be named, say Marcolongo, who started his church in 1983, made rigorous demands on his group. Marcolongo, a 33-year-old Glenolden native, demanded that followers fast Wednesday through Friday, attend one-hour morning prayer sessions five days a week and evening prayer services three times weekly, they said.

Jingduan Yang's mother wants him to shut up. Stop talking, she tells him in her phone calls from China. Her youngest son, a Thomas Jefferson University Hospital psychiatrist, is only getting his big sister in more trouble. "She's in again and it's all because of you," Yang said his 79-year-old mother, Sun Yixia, told him. "Don't say anything. Be quiet. " But Yang refuses. The 40-year-old native of Hefei, in China's Anhui Province, wants anyone who will listen to know that his sister, Jingfang Yang, is imprisoned in China because of her belief in the spiritual meditation practice of Falun Gong.

Her devotees believe she is the Hindu goddess of knowledge: a reincarnation of Divine Mother Saraswati, consort of Brahma. But officials at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wynnewood say Hindus have no business using their Christian campus to promote their beliefs. Yesterday, the seminary canceled tonight's scheduled lecture by Indian holy woman Sri Karunamayi, who is in her late 30s and is nearing the end of a 13-city U.S. tour that began April 5 in Dallas. "It is our understanding that this woman is representing Hinduism," said Scott Rodin, vice president for advancement at the 460-student seminary.

It seemed like the first day of school. A beaming, well-dressed woman stood at the front of the room, taking things out of a bag, arranging her desk. She centered the flower arrangement and plugged in the CD player and speakers, facing them out into the nearly empty classroom. She said her name was Joan, and offered a smile that would remain on her face for most of the one-hour "meditation workshop" at Temple University, Center City. A dozen students began feverishly copying the "truths" written on the board, while Joan talked about having fun and being happy.

Death seems to follow Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman like a distant echo - there often seems to be a connection to his words, but it's never quite clear. There was the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, which reportedly came after the blind Muslim cleric issued a decree denouncing Sadat's negotiations with Israel. There was the 1990 slaying of radical Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York. There was the killing two years ago of a Muslim man in Brooklyn who had clashed with the cleric.

Last Sunday morning, Alexander Menn, one of the most beloved Russian Orthodox priests in the Soviet Union, set out on his accustomed route to church. It was 6:30 a.m. The stocky, handsome, gray-bearded priest left his wooden house, set in a grove of birch and pine, and headed for the train station of this country town. His route took him through a 300-yard stretch of forest cloaked in early morning gloom. The train would take him 15 miles to the village of Novaya Deryevnya, where he was a fabled preacher during the long years of Soviet religious oppression.

David Brandt Berg, leader of the embattled Children of God religious sect, apparently has died the way he lived: shrouded in mystery. His followers say they don't know where or exactly when he died, or under what circumstances. But spokesmen for the sect in the United States and Europe say Berg's wife notified them Tuesday - in a letter from an unknown location - that their 75-year-old leader, in hiding since the early 1970s, had died. If Berg is gone (international police authorities are expressing doubts)

Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, a national leader for African American Muslims who preaches personal responsibility and brotherhood between the races, urged his followers yesterday to practice love in the family and in government. "No one can become a believer or have faith until he practices love between his brothers and sisters," he told about 400 African American Muslims who gathered in the auditorium of Willingboro High School. The event was sponsored by eight New Jersey masjids, or congregations.

Question: I have a home, built about 1950, that has tin siding. Can or should this siding be repainted (and how?), or is it best to remove it and install new siding, such as vinyl? Answer: I've seen a lot of evidence that tin siding can be repainted, although I haven't found much information on how to do it. I had tin gutters — actually terne, a zinc/tin alloy — on my turn-of-the-20th-century former house. The experts recommended Tin-O-Lin, which I bought at a Philadelphia roofing supplier, a slow-drying linseed oil-based primer and finish coat recommended for spot priming exposed and rusted areas.

A fire that consumed 741 acres of French Creek State Park after burning for five days and nearly reaching two dozen homes and a fireworks manufacturer may turn out to have been a good thing for the popular Berks County recreation area. "Understory fire is actually beneficial to the ecology of oak," said Marc Abrams, a professor of forest ecology at Pennsylvania State University, referring to the ground-level growth beneath the forest canopy. "It gets rid of competing plants, it keeps the forest more open, and oak can regenerate better in those conditions.

  THAT SIX DEGREES of Kevin Bacon game is about to get a lot easier. The Philly-raised Bacon, who's famously worked with at least half the actors in Hollywood, will be tracking a vast network of serial killers in "The Following," a new drama from Kevin Williamson ("Vampire Diaries," "Dawson's Creek") that Fox's entertainment chief calls "our next ‘24.' " Premiering at midseason — where Fox is still at its strongest — it has Bacon playing a former FBI agent brought in to help deal with a death-row escapee (James Purefoy, "Rome")

EVERYONE brings something different to Twitter, and TV writers are no exception. Here are 10 I follow, and why you might want to: @DamonLindelof What's "Lost" co-creator Damon Lindelof doing since the show ended? Well, besides writing movies — "Prometheus," for instance — he seems to be watching a lot of TV. King of the 140-character one-liner. @HartHanson Hart Hanson, Creator of "Bones" and "Tce Finder," mixes promotional and personal tweets with sprinklings of funny.

By sheer numbers, the caped crusaders, masked crimebusters and spandex-ed superheroes lining up at the movie box office for the summer season — which begins Friday when The Avengers opens — has to be the largest gathering of comicbook-spawned dudes (and dudettes) in the history of summer movies. In The Avengers alone, there are, of course, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor, brought together by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to save the world from a demented Norse god (Thor's evil sibling, Loki)

It was Joyce Parker's final wish. As the original Miss Tootsie — whose premier soul-food restaurant at 13th and South bore her nickname — lay dying of pancreatic cancer last year, she made her son, Keven, promise to "get the work done. " Keven understood exactly what she meant. Giving back was always in Joyce Parker's DNA. Even before there was a Miss Tootsie's — which Keven has since expanded and transformed from a neighborhood spot into the luxe Miss Tootsie's Restaurant Bar Lounge — Joyce would find a way to help those in need.

MONEY, LIKE a piece of abstract art, can mean different things to different people. One person's small pittance is another's idea of a nice chunk of change. Take, for, instance, John Craig, founder and chief executive of the Philadelphia-based Frontier Virtual Charter High School, which laid off its teachers on March 9 and still owes the staff back pay. "We do receive a small stipend. I don't even know what it is . . . it's something very small," Craig told the Daily News last month, when asked what he and the school's executives were paid.

MOSCOW - Tens of thousands prayed outside Moscow's main cathedral on Sunday to show their support for the Russian Orthodox Church in a controversy over a punk rock protest that has added to political tensions in Russia. Christ the Savior Cathedral was the scene of a brief surprise performance in February by a female punk rock group protesting Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. Three members of the band Pussy Riot remain in police custody and face up to seven years in prison on charges of hooliganism.

There are great plays and then there are plays that announce greatness. Claude Giroux's premeditated playoff killing of the Pittsburgh Penguins was the latter. "When the best player in the world comes up to you and says, 'I don't know who you're planning on starting, but I want that first shift,' that says everything you need to know about Claude Giroux right there," Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said after Sunday's 5-1 rout of the Penguins in their NHL Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.

JEROME ALLEN got an intriguing call from Larry Brown early in the week. Brown was closing on a deal to coach SMU and he wanted a younger head coach with recent college experience to join him as an assistant and perhaps as a head coach in waiting. Allen, just finishing his second full season as Penn head coach, listened to Brown, who once coached him with the Indiana Pacers. He took the possibility under consideration while also, according to several close friends, realizing he was given a unique opportunity at his alma mater and had already brought the Quakers quite a long way in a very short time.