Glass

I CAN'T BELIEVE that idiotic couple were having sex against the window in a high-rise building not worrying about caving through the window and falling to their deaths. Don't they have anything better to do than possibly spreading STDs, HIV and AIDS, which have killed a lot of young people as well as older people? Talk about college education. Robert F. Schaffer Philadelphia

The first time I ate at Villa di Roma, that 9th Street institution, I assumed that my "house red" was served in a water tumbler because all the wine glasses were dirty. A few glasses later I realized a water tumbler was a wine glass at the venerable Villa. But by that time, I didn't care. I just knew the wine tasted good with my mussels in red sauce. I've never been too picky about my choice of chalice. One of my most memorable imbibings was a late spring Saturday, sitting in an Upstate New York woods, sipping May a wine fragrant with woodruff and eating fresh strawberries.

A proposal to establish curbside pickup of glass for recycling has been presented to the Sharon Hill Borough Council. During a council caucus meeting Thursday night, Councilman Ralph S. Brower recommended that the borough consider purchasing a truck to collect glass at residents' homes rather than have residents bring the glass to receptacles at the borough hall. Brower said the borough would receive additional revenue if it picked up the glass and transported it to a glass company, or had the company pick it up at the borough hall.

Three businesses here, and in one in Buckingham, were burglarized Tuesday by someone who likes to remove glass from windows or doors. Police also are investigating two other commercial burglaries that occurred here three days before as possibly related. A window pane had been removed in one of those incidents. At least $2,200 in cash was taken in the four most recent incidents, along with some other valuables. Some cash and a commercial license were taken in one of the other burglaries.

Latest project for Channel 3's indefatigable Nancy "Who Needs Sleep?" Glass is Avenues, a woman-oriented show on cable's Lifetime network. It will debut Oct. 6 and air weekdays at 1 and 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 11 a.m. Glass will host the hour-long show with Linda Dano, the flamboyant Felicia Gallant on NBC's Another World. Avenues is the brainchild of Lifetime programming chief Chuck Gingold, Glass' former boss, and mentor, at Channel 3. Twice a week, after finishing her duties with KYW-TV's Evening Magazine, Glass will spend eight hours in New York taping two segments.

Wine glasses facilitate the ritual of wine tasting: judging the color, swirling, smelling and sipping. The ideal glass is clear and thin, making it easy to control the flow of wine into the mouth. RED WINE Red-wine glasses are larger than white and usually curved slightly inward at the top so the bouquet can collect above the surface of the wine. Fill the glass only half-full so there's room for the bouquet (and so your nose won't get wet when you sniff it.) WHITE WINE White-wine glasses are smaller than red, though an all-purpose glass with an 8- or 10-ounce capacity may be used for both.

It's been a tough year for Marietta Oscapinski, all because she lied about shards of glass in an unopened box of Kellogg's Raisin Bran. She lost her job, her self-respect and her self-esteem, she said. She looks over her shoulder in public. She says she is scorned. Yesterday a Montgomery County judge sentenced Oscapinski to one year of probation after she admitted filing a false report to authorities about the glass that cut her 2-year-old daughter's mouth. "It's been one investigation after another," Oscapinski said yesterday from the stand during her sentencing.

Even in the darkness, you could hear and feel the glass cascading all around. "There was just this shower of glass," said Jane Mitchell, a library employee at Haverford College, who was on her way to the 69th Street Terminal. "I just felt this very strong swerve, and then glass. " Kimberly Worthen of Logan, also on her way to 69th Street, was in the second car, she said, when she felt the train go off the tracks, and then she saw sparks. "People were screaming," Worthen said.

The tattered index cards that Alex Kinnier and Russ Walters have been carrying in their wallets since the night before their graduation from Lehigh University in 1998 are still intact. And so are the rules, goals and time line that the two chemical-engineering majors, now 27, jotted on the cards that night in hope that those thoughts would help them stay focused on their dream of launching a business together one day. The index cards "kept us aligned," Kinnier said. "We took them out every time we talked.

A memorial service will be held Saturday for Joseph Diano, an artist in stained glass, who died Thursday. He was 83 and lived in Southampton, Bucks County. "He never thought about retiring," his daughter, Patricia Tougas, said yesterday. Tougas said her father still went regularly to the Willet Stained Glass Studio in Chestnut Hill, where he had worked nearly 45 years, until the Christmas before he underwent open-heart surgery two years ago. Diano, an Italian immigrant, came to this country with his mother in the early 1900s to join his father, a stonemason, and grew up in South Philadelphia, around 6th and South streets.

IT TOOK SEVEN punches on a SEPTA eight-ride One Day Convenience Pass ($7) to see 10 Art in Transit projects — a three-hour journey on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street lines, with a stop at Suburban Station. Many of the projects are beyond the ticket gates and thus viewable for paying riders only. The projects vary widely and although they all succeed as public art, some can't compete with SEPTA's overwhelming infrastructure of walls, exposed beams, platforms, stairways and gates.

At 5:30 a.m., the rain was letting up, but it was still dark as the two men began their rounds of Center City's skyscrapers. They started with a particular alcove, bordered on three sides by glass. Pretty. But not for birds. "They get trapped into this angle," said Stephen Maciejewski, scanning the sidewalk for victims. Confused by all the reflections, "they don't know to turn around. " So they fly into the glass, and they die. As they walked from building to building, he and Keith Russell, Audubon Pennsylvania's science and outreach coordinator in Philadelphia, checked spots where they usually find birds - along sidewalks, behind signs, in stairwells, under cars, atop ledges.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But what if people create a show for ABC called "The Glass House" and it's surprisingly like a show called "Big Brother" on CBS? Can CBS throw stones? Can the network sue? Attorneys for CBS have sent ABC executives a letter warning that "The Glass House" is "strikingly" similar to "Big Brother. " CBS also notes that ABC may be benefiting from the fact that 18 former "Big Brother" staffers and executives are now working on the planned ABC show.

Artist Judith Schaechter's stained-glass windows are lauded throughout the world for their beauty, decorative charm, and edgy take on the darker aspects of the human condition. This month's debut of 17 new pieces at Eastern State Penitentiary is the Philadelphia-based artist's return to the local spotlight with her first solo exhibition here in 10 years. Working with the nonprofit preservation group behind Eastern State Penitentiary, the artist pushed herself to create an ambitious piece in a large archway above a door in Cellblock 11. "The Battle of Carnival and Lent" contains 90 human figures in a complex composition that depicts a mythic battle between good and evil, piety and debauchery, crime and remorse, despair and hope.

The project that Philadelphia stained-glass artist Judith Schaechter proposed to Eastern State Penitentiary in June 2010: To fill the skylights of its moldering prison cells with a series of stained-glass windows. Period. It offered none of the usual pedantry that Sean Kelley, Eastern State's director of programming, and his committee had come to expect in artists' proposals since launching the penitentiary's exhibition program in 1995. "We had discussed her work in the past, saying that it would be ideal for the space, but it was still a hard decision to accept her proposal," Kelley says.

We've been focusing lately on finding products to accommodate "improvements" in technology. What that sometimes means is that ideas make it to the market before they are ready for prime time. The latest of these, of course, was dishwasher detergent. Makers reworked their formulas a couple of years ago to be phosphate-free, but the result was filmy glasses. I took all your recommendations to heart, and we began using one, Cascade Complete, when we ran out of the Wegman's-brand powder.

COMEDIAN Todd Glass has a theory about gay people. "Every person on this planet comes out at exactly the same time: When they're ready. " For Glass, 48, that time was Jan. 16 when he outed himself on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast . Glass, who grew up in the Philly suburbs and came up through the city's comedy scene, was out to a few select friends and family members. But many of his comedy colleagues didn't know Glass was gay and he often referred to his "girlfriend" during his comedy routine.

ALEC STAVETSKI'S pregame ritual for basketball contests not played at Archbishop Carroll High involves all kinds of z's. "A few of us are like that," he said. "There's a lot of talking when we first get on, then some of us just fall asleep. Like me. Always. " Tap, tap, tap. At some point during the ride to Coatesville High, site last night of Carroll's game vs. Octorara in the second round of the PIAA Class AAA playoffs, Stavetski felt the hand of teammate Lou Dominique, followed by his excited voice.

Perhaps alchemist is the best word for artist, writer, and musician Paul Evans Pedersen Jr. After all, this is a man who digs up discarded chunks of vintage South Jersey glass and transforms them into "Pine Barrens Diamonds. " Pieces of jewelry featuring his man-made gems will be displayed next Sunday at Lines on the Pines, an artists' showcase in Hammonton. The annual event features about 50 local residents, working in a variety of media, who are inspired by the distinctive history, landscape, and culture of the Pinelands.

One of my favorite lines from television was delivered by Jonathan Harris, who played the diabolical yet cowardly Dr. Smith on Lost in Space. He and Will Robinson were out searching for iron pyrite, and as Will scanned the horizon with binoculars, he reported that his mother and older sister were doing laundry. "Spare me the dreary domestic story," Smith told him. Well, what Dr. Smith would consider dreary, we here at "Your Place" consider our meat and potatoes. So, when we write about dishwashers that produce glassware with a filmy coating, a tidal wave of e-mail leaves us floating in possible solutions.