Human Touch

Whereas, there are many noteworthy residents in most towns, And whereas, national months or weeks recognizing something or another are proliferating rapidly, Now, therefore, mayors do quite a bit of proclaiming these days. An official proclamation by a town's mayor is a throwback - evoking images of burly officials with monocles glinting in the sun as they declare 1878 the Year of Westward Expansion, or something along those lines. Or of the Mayor of Munchkin City formally welcoming Dorothy and celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. With glowing, florid language, proclamations take note of a citizen who has done something out of the ordinary, or whose ordinary contributions over a lifetime add up to something special.

Timothy McVeigh, the accused Oklahoma City bomber, certainly isn't the first suspect to have his image humanized by a canny defense team. Indeed, there seems to be a recipe for it: Sincere, smiling photographs replace the flinty-eyed ones; fuzzy sweaters emerge (whatever the season); there are courtroom back rubs, closely monitored interviews, tales of childhood woes or triumphs, of hanging around with Boy Scouts and being a champion halfback or crack soldier. We have seen it now with the Menendez brothers, whose defense came pretty close to that of the parent-murderer who asked for mercy because he was an orphan.

Jane Camardese and Jennifer Lanuto showed up at the doorstep of Ralph Bayton's small blue house just as he was polishing off the last bite of his turkey burger. The nourishment was essential. For the next three and a half hours, Bayton's neck would be connected by catheter to a dialysis machine that slowly would cleanse the impurities from every drop of blood in his body. The 45 minutes before and after the treatment would be spent riding in a wheelchair van with Camardese and Lanuto to the dialysis clinic in Cherry Hill.

"HUMAN TOUCH" "LUCKY TOWN" Bruce Springsteen. Columbia. It ain't easy being The Boss. As the people's prophet of rock, Bruce Springsteen is expected to reflect carefully on the listeners' situation, to moralize on the world's wrongs and lead us out of the wilderness. Springsteen fans also expect him to produce the kind of musical anthems that will withstand hundreds of radio repetitions and will always electrify a concert and rally the multitudes to sing and stomp along.

The long wait for new music by Bruce Springsteen is almost over. Columbia Records and Springsteen's publicist, Shore Fire Media, announced yesterday that not one, but two albums from Springsteen will be released in "early spring. " The Boss' last album, Tunnel of Love, came out in 1987. The simultaneous release of Human Touch and Lucky Town marks the second time in a year that a superstar act has chosen to issue two single-length albums rather than one, more expensive multi-volume set. Guns N' Roses employed the strategy with Use Your Illusion I and II, and has experienced great success: Both albums have spent weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, and each has sold in excess of three million copies.

Fans who have waited 4 1/2 years for a new release from Bruce Springsteen are thrilled and relieved that Columbia Records has announced it will release two albums from the rock legend in early spring. "There is a great sense of relief," said Erik Flannigan, senior editor of Seattle-based "Backstreets" magazine, a 12-year-old quarterly publication devoted to Springsteen's career and named for one of his songs. "It's been . . . over four years. It's been frustrating. " Since the rumors started flying last week that the long-awaited Springsteen albums would be released sometime after March 31, the magazine has received about a thousand inquiries, Flannigan said Friday.

Almost no one who read Gideon Defoe's cult series of absurdist novels about 19th-century pirates put the books down and thought: Claymation! No one except fellow Brit Peter Lord, head of Aardman animation, the company behind the Wallace & Gromit franchise, and when you think about it, the perfect outfit to grasp the author's Anglo-eccentricities and convey them safely to screen. Just to make sure, Aardman hired Defoe to develop the screenplay. Their collaboration is called The Pirates!

Well you may think the world's black and white And you're dirty or you're clean You better watch out you don't slip Through them spaces in between - From "Cross My Heart," by Bruce Springsteen With songs about fatherhood, intimacy and faith, Bruce Springsteen's first new albums since 1987 might well be subtitled The Long-Awaited Happy Endings to All Those Restless, Rambling Songs of His Youth. Human Touch and Lucky Town, to be released simultaneously Tuesday, find Springsteen lightening up and having fun - and reveling in the spirituality of ordinary life.

In a unique effort to prove the full mettle of his new band, Bruce Springsteen will preview his forthcoming world tour with a live radio concert Friday night at 10 on WMMR (93.3/FM), and then tickets to his American shows - including Philadelphia dates - will go on sale the following morning. To pump the publicity machine even harder, Springsteen will also show up three times on TV this weekend - twice on MTV and once on Fox. Springsteen's Philly shows will be Aug. 28 and 29 at the Spectrum, with no added dates possible "at this time," said a source at Electric Factory Concerts.

It's getting a little tough to believe Bruce Springsteen when he sings that "these are better days. " At least when it comes to his career. His simultaneously released albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town, took nose dives on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week after just four weeks in the stores. And competition from hipper rockers (Nirvana, Beastie Boys) reached fever pitch. So countering "Bruce backlash" called for a first-rate spin doctor. Or just some good publicity.

Almost no one who read Gideon Defoe's cult series of absurdist novels about 19th-century pirates put the books down and thought: Claymation! No one except fellow Brit Peter Lord, head of Aardman animation, the company behind the Wallace & Gromit franchise, and when you think about it, the perfect outfit to grasp the author's Anglo-eccentricities and convey them safely to screen. Just to make sure, Aardman hired Defoe to develop the screenplay. Their collaboration is called The Pirates!

I'm sitting with the savages in Section 205. The woman behind me keeps knocking me in the head as she tries to plant her foot on my shoulder and clamber onto the back of my seat for a better view. There goes her beer, down my wife's suede coat. "Yoooo-woooo!" the two Springsteen fans to my left shriek, and it would drown out the gorgeous trumpet, bass, and piano rendition of "Meeting Across the River. " Except that back here, 14 rows off the Spectrum floor, I'm barely hearing it anyway.

I can't properly assess Michelle Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention without first bringing up Drew Westen. Westen, a psychology professor and the author of a recent book titled The Political Brain, sometimes advises Democrats about the importance of connecting emotionally with voters. (The fact that Democrats even need to be advised about this is further proof of why the Republicans usually win presidential elections.) Anyway, Westen recently suggested that Barack Obama badly needs to demonstrate how his own personal story connects with the lives and concerns of the people he aspires to lead.

'Write what you know," the adage goes, and Usher Raymond IV has dutifully tried to heed the advice. Why wouldn't he? After all, the washboard-ab'd R&B singer - who is known by only his first name - called his last album Confessions, and the CD was the top-selling disc of 2004, moving a whopping 9.5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But that was then. And Here I Stand (LaFace . ?) presents a new Usher, a maturing, 29-year-old married man who's a new father and who, though he still has booty very much on his mind, is attempting to put his playa-listic days behind him. Back in the day, "I'd do one every night, and sometimes I had two," he sings to his wife, Tameka Foster, in "Before I Met You. " He tells her, and his hot and bothered audience, that he's just not into that kind of thing anymore.

Builder magazine's editorial director, Boyce Thompson, never hesitates to color outside the lines. Every concept house his trade magazine has created for the International Builders Show - from Dallas in 1998 to Atlanta to Las Vegas to Orlando the last three years - was designed to make a point about the residential-construction industry that Thompson believes needs to be made. The 2006 Reality House in Orlando, for example, was built to emphasize that no matter how big they get, new houses don't have as much storage as the typical American family needs.

Rexxx, an Irish terrier with eyes like pools of melted chocolate and a coat the color of Lindsay Lohan's locks, isn't a canine hero but he plays one in the movies. The star of The Fast and the Furrious and Jurassic Bark is Hollywood's top dog, numbering among his buds the AFLAC duck and Taco Bell Chihuahua. As he performs a spectacular skydive for his current film, Rexxx's rip cord malfunctions and the pooch crashes to earth, where he's presumed dead by his trainer. But the wonder pup lives and, in a modest backwater, finds meaning as a work dog, rescuing humans as he rescues himself from the pampered precincts of privilege.

Camden is Linda Winfield's passion. Specifically Camden's children, and in her job as vice president of PNC Bank's Southern New Jersey Community Development Department, Winfield has many opportunities to help. "Our corporate mission is to win the hearts and minds of the community, but my personal mission is to make sure that children see - and have - alternatives," said Winfield, 54, who has worked at PNC Bank for nine years. "For me, that is my greatest personal reward - children with lots of positive options.

Test your knowledge of Springsteen trivia with this quiz. 1. On his first album, from where did Springsteen offer greetings? 2. In his pre-E Street outfit, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, what board game did Springsteen and his band mates play onstage during shows? 3. At what Bryn Mawr coffeehouse did Springsteen frequently perform in the early 1970s? 4. What executive signed Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan and Springsteen to Columbia Records? 5. Who played drums on the song "Born to Run"?

Hadassah Lieberman appears to be like most other women. She wants to be home in Connecticut, where her pre-teen daughter is in school. She takes out the trash in her bare feet. She wonders whether she will ever be able to get out of a car again without putting on blusher. By talking about herself and her experiences on the campaign trail, Lieberman - she is the wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman - sought to connect with the supportive crowd that turned out at Jenkintown's town square yesterday for a get-out-the vote rally.

The rise in popularity of a financial services career might well coincide with rising numbers of newcomers plunging into a thriving stock market. More people are making money today and want professional insight on how to increase earnings. Along with advice, new investors want a close relationship with the financial adviser they choose. "The fact that the baby boomers are aging and are making more money is one reason the financial planning career has taken off the way it has," said Roy Diliberto, president of the national Financial Planning Association.