Hermit

Richard Withers is a top-notch bell ringer. He's also a modern-day urban hermit. Withers does his bell-ringing on Sundays at St. Malachy Church - one of the oldest churches in the Philadelphia Archdiocese - at 11th and Master streets in North Philadelphia. He rings it because he fixed it. Withers lives a little farther north in a once-abandoned, dilapidated house near 10th and Cumberland. He fixed that, too. In keeping with the life of a hermit, Withers has no car, no television, listens to the radio "maybe once a year," reads a newspaper "occasionally" and gets around on a bicycle he put together from parts he found in the street.

In a curious moment for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua will elevate a freelance urban hermit to be its first "canonical hermit" this morning. The chosen one is a gentle soul named Richard Withers, 46. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Withers has lived alone since 1984, the last 10 years in North Philadelphia, under his own private vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Withers had petitioned the church for the official status, citing 1983 canon-law changes that restored the ancient category of lay hermit.

Sparky was about to become a member of the Jones family of Harrisburg. Amy Jones picked him up and plunked him into her terrarium at Hoy's Department Store. Just days before, the terrarium had held a fellow hermit crab named Shiney. And on earlier trips to the Jersey Shore, it had housed Stripey. And Peppy. And Blue. "We figure on at least a crab a year," said Mary Jones, 8-year-old Amy's mother. "We keep falling for the little guys. I guess we just like to have our memories of the wonderful times at the Shore with us, and the hermit crabs serve the purpose.

Imagine the pitch meeting: "We pit the two biggest monsters in film against each other. " "Eisner and Weinstein?" "No. Science fiction. " The idea may not be original - it's been played out in Japanese B-movies and comic books and video games - but it's a natural, like a title bout between unbeaten heavyweights. Unfortunately, Alien vs. Predator's title is far better than the movie. Two thousand feet beneath the polar ice cap, a mysterious pyramid is discovered by wealthy industrialist Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen, who played the android in the Alien trilogy)

There was the crab beauty pageant, the contest to see who could bite a pie into the most artistic shape, the Baby Parade, the Doo Dah Parade - featuring the ever-popular Precision Beach Chair Drill Team - and other zany events all rising from the fevered brain of city publicist Mark Soifer. But now Soifer may have outdone himself. Seeking relief from summer traffic jams, blasting horns and the shrieks of children romping in the surf, he has created the Quiet Festival. "I was getting tired of the events," Soifer said.

As an ornery hermit who has long-inspired legend and dread among the populace of a Tennessee town, Robert Duvall, in the down-home period piece Get Low , delivers another of the ineffable and a little-bit-nutty performances that have distinguished his career. Bearded and brooding, the actor's Felix Bush warns off trespassers with his hunting gun, communes mostly with his old mule, and then, for reasons that take a turtle-walk's while to explain, decides to have a memorial service for himself - while he's still up and breathing.

Seven-year-old Ella had just that Saturday morning made a big investment in her first hermit crab. Not like sinking one's life savings into amazon.com, to be sure, but a deal that could result in monumental psychic bankruptcy. After all, our last experiment with sea life was the equivalent of buying late in the Tulip Mania: goldfish Rebecca and Zachary both perished within 48 hours of purchase. Fortunately, that afternoon, we headed to Cape May Point State Park, arriving just in time for the 2 p.m. Tank Time talk.

"Thomas Chimes' art is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski wrote in 2007. After a 2007 interview with Mr. Chimes, Inquirer reporter Amy S. Rosenberg wrote that in his work, "there's always another idea, another citation, another memory, another theory, another poet or artist to bring toward the surface, then submerge again, behind layers of paint or layers of ideas, until just barely visible, a reduction.

In the rugged foothills outside of town here, many mountain men eke out their solitary existence, and Ted Kaczynski seemed no more eccentric than the other oddball loners whose appearance and demeanor ward off any friendly gesture. The census-taker is probably the only man in town who was ever invited inside Theodore John Kaczynski's tiny, one-room cabin, with its woodburning stove, outhouse in the back, and no electricity or running water. His impressions were that Kaczynski was a somewhat benign hermit, but hospitable.

A DARK WARNING Lest you think there's an easy way to combat the winter pallor beginning to afflict many of us, beware of tanning pills containing canthaxanthin. They could kill you, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center physician reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Available through tanning salons and advertisements, such pills are thought to have killed a previously healthy young woman whose skin turned orange after she took the drug and who came down with malaise, headaches, fatigue, weight loss and aplastic anemia - a frequently fatal deficiency of blood cells due to bone-marrow failure, the doctor says.

With one out in the fifth inning, Sacred Heart's Theo Mercurio reached third base. He was 90 feet from going where no baserunner has gone with St. Augustine's Kevin Baxter on the mound in more than three weeks: home. Mercurio never made it. Baxter struck out the next two batters and pitched a scoreless sixth inning to register his fourth consecutive shutout as St. Augustine beat Sacred Heart, 13-0, Saturday in the first round of the Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic. Baxter, a senior righthander, allowed four hits with one walk and eight strikeouts.

Chris Oakley is all arms, legs, and potential. The St. Augustine Prep junior has pitched four varsity innings in his career but already has committed to the University of North Carolina on a baseball scholarship. "They see that frame and see how he throws and they think about where he's going to be in two years," St. Augustine coach Mike Bylone said of the interest by some of the top college programs on the East Coast in a pitcher who has yet to make an impact at the varsity level.

St. Augustine freshman Shane Monroe swept the first set of his NJSIAA state singles semifinal match and was up a break at 2-1 in the second set before defending champ Michael Lippens of Shore Regional stormed back for a three-set win on Wednesday at Mercer County Park. Lippens, a senior who will attend Louisville in the fall, won his 100th career match, 0-6, 6-2, 6-1, and advanced to Thursday's title match against Ramapo's Jonathan Carcione. Lippens (28-0), unbeaten the last two seasons, was stronger in the heat late in the match than Monroe, who suffered his first loss in 40 matches this spring.

St. Augustine is returning to the NJSIAA State Non-Public A boys' lacrosse championship for the second consecutive year, after the second-seeded Hermits crushed No. 3 seed Don Bosco Prep, 14-5, in Saturday's home semifinal. Mike Sutton and Steven Pontrello scored four goals apiece, and Nikko Pontrello contributed two goals and three assists. St. Augustine will face top-seeded Delbarton in the title game on Wednesday. State Group 3. Kyle Engel had a hat trick, Phil Gamble added two goals and an assist, and No. 5 seed Moorestown played lockdown defense to upset top-seeded Ridgewood, 8-2, and earn a berth in Wednesday's championship against Ridge.

The bottom of the lineup was the story Saturday as St. Augustine reached the semifinals of the 38th annual Joe Hartmann South Jersey Diamond Classic with a 6-0 victory over Washington Township at Deptford. Entering the tournament game, the Hermits (18-2) were ranked second in South Jersey by The Inquirer, and the Minutemen (16-4) were No. 3. Rick Elfreth, Barry Buchowski, and Christian Adorno, the last three in the St. Augustine lineup, accounted for five of the Hermits' six runs and five of their seven hits.

Taking faceoffs in lacrosse is a messy, often painful job. The duties usually are reserved not only for a hard-nosed, scrappy player, but also for someone a team can rely on under pressure - because the job can be the difference between winning and losing a close game. That certainly was evident in St. Augustine's 10-9, come-from-behind win Thursday at Shawnee. The Hermits won 17 of 22 faceoffs, including the game's biggest after Mike Sutton's go-ahead goal with 3 minutes, 10 seconds left.

A lot has changed about the St. Augustine lacrosse program since it started eight years ago. The goals, though, have stayed the same. Step by step, the Hermits quickly rose to one of the top programs in South Jersey. But from the beginning, it has always been about more than that. "We basically have the mind-set of one goal, and that's winning a state championship," senior captain Jake Berkelbach said. "We're trying to make history. That's our main focus. " In 2008, the Hermits made their first appearance in the Non-Public A quarterfinals.

He made it a math lesson. "Before the tournament, I asked the players if they could give up 128 minutes of their lives to win a state championship," St. Augustine coach Paul Rodio said. Four games. Sixteen quarters. One hundred and 28 minutes. That was all that separated the Hermits from the Non-Public A state title. It was a gimmick, an old coach telling a bunch of young players to look at things from a different angle, to realize just how close they were to making the memory of a lifetime.

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. - Some people hate the Tournament of Champions because of what happened to St. Augustine Prep on Friday night. Just don't count the Hermits in that group. Veteran coach Paul Rodio, his assistants, his players and many of those longtime followers of the prestigious program don't detest the format of New Jersey's annual postseason competition among the six state group champions. They don't hate the harsh reality that five state champions must end their seasons with a loss - many in frustrating fashion.

Every team looks at the Tournament of Champions from a different angle. Some teams can't recover from winning a state title. Some teams don't want to recover. Some teams can't generate the energy and passion to play their best in the T of C, which brings together New Jersey's six state champions in a three-night competition to determine the overall No. 1 team in the state. Some teams have another perspective. They see the T of C as another competition, another challenge, another chance to add even more polish to a shiny state-championship season.