Handouts

Mayor Rendell figures he used to dig down into his pockets and hand out about $2 a week in quarters and dimes to Center City's panhandlers, finding it hard to say no to those so obviously in need. But the mayor has now thrown his weight behind a new brand of compassion that urges Center City pedestrians to give panhandlers cards referring them to social-service agencies instead of change. Rendell yesterday touted the public education campaign - soon to make its debut on SEPTA buses and Regional Rail lines - based on a single, catchy phrase: "The more you give change, the more things will stay the same.

This would surprise Mrs. Herman, Mrs. O'Malley and all the other grammar school teachers who winced and looked pained at the watercolor drawings I produced in class. But it turns out that I am a natural-born artist. They'd have trouble believing that back at the Chase School. When they exhibited our works in the hallway, mine always wound up next to the janitor's nook. The problem, as I have now learned, is that I was ahead of my time. In fact, I didn't know I was an artist until a few days ago when I read about a federally-funded arts project in California.

Recently, on a radio program, I suggested that those minorities who live with the perpetual hope that "the system" will save them are wasting precious time and energy. Why would the system that enslaved us provide an easy escape to freedom? The answer to overcoming the rampant racism in America is to rise above it and to develop more of the very best within the community. I said those things because I am convinced that though blacks believe whites and their institutions are deliberate in maintaining racism, African Americans can defeat the defenders of unfairness by improving themselves.

Christianne Lapierre, dressed as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, hands out free samples yesterday at 5th and Market streets atop her horse, Autumn. The promotion was to publicize the debut here of a Canadian candy bar.

A visitor's peanut proved deadly fare for Kutenga the elephant. A necropsy, or animal autopsy, on the remains of the African elephant that died July 31 after a fall at the Philadelphia Zoo has determined that the 6- ton beast couldn't arise, even with the help of a tow-truck winch, because she was suffering from severe degenerative arthritis of the left front leg. Zoo officials said Kutenga's medical records showed the arthritis stemmed ...

Once upon a time, boys and girls, there was no Social Security or Medicare. At the time, experts were saying government had no business guaranteeing income or medical care for its older citizens. The experts were wrong. Now no one messes with Social Security and Medicare. We even call them "entitlements. " We should also call them the first steps toward a national family policy, although few in authority dare make the connection. There is an important lesson here for helping the 130,000 Philadelphia families headed by single mothers - families spotlighted in Tuesday's Daily News supplement, "Women and Children Alone.

If you're like many people who frequent Center City, you've become so fed up with panhandlers that you rarely give them money anymore. And if we're all being honest here, you also find that you're less and less sympathetic to their plight. Besides the relatively few panhandlers who are persistent, obnoxious and even physically aggressive, there's the fact that homeless advocates tell us most of our spare change winds up at the liquor store or on the city's drug corners - not in providing food, shelter or clothing for the needy.

The divisions of more than a century ago were recalled Saturday at the Northeast Regional Library through a Civil War art and history festival called The Blue and The Gray. Men and women in garb of the time played instruments in front of the library at Cottman Avenue and Oakland Street. Spectators watched videos of battlefield re-enactments, viewed slide presentations and received handouts dealing with the clash between Union and Confederate troops in the 1860s. They could also keep an image of what they might have looked like had they lived then: Stephen Schwartz of the Frankford Community Arts Cultural Program drew chalk portraits of people in period dress.

It was just before 4 p.m. Monday when the son of Springfield school board candidate Ann Marie Hill arrived home from Scenic Hills Elementary School. The second grader was carrying a letter passed out that afternoon to all 479 students. A letter recruiting workers to defeat his mother at the polls on Nov. 7. Unfair, Ann Marie Hill decided. "I'm outraged. . . . I just feel it's totally wrong," said Hill, 30. "I do not think it is the right place to hand out political information, and this is definitely political.

Watch it! The shambling, rambling wreck headed your way is going to ask you for money. What will you do? You can't escape them. Philadelphia's homeless - drunken, demented or just plain hungry - seem to be everywhere. There are an estimated 1,400 homeless people in the city, about a quarter of them mentally ill, and you can't walk far in some parts of town without having one of them ask you for help. Since you can't avoid them, some strategy must be decided on, and strategy is generally based on a point of view, an attitude.