Insect

In the heart of a paved-over South Jersey lies a pristine wilderness, a place of contradictions where delicate white flowers attack and smother unsuspecting gnats with gooey globs. It is the home of fat, red-bellied turtles, whose sudden splashes in the narrow cedar rivers are what break long silences when weekenders do not venture into the hideaway. It is the Pinelands, a place where sedge-choked marshes meet rivers and pygmy pine forests greet much taller neighbors, the cedars and red maples, on opposite river banks in the hybrid ecosystem.

A Bucks County student took home a first-place award and a Montgomery County student placed seventh at the Future Business Leaders of America national conference this month in Nashville. Cecilia Olmo, who will be a senior at Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, was the national winner for computer applications. She earned a $300 cash prize. Aksha Vora, who recently graduated from North Penn High School in Lansdale, placed seventh in accounting. Each student competed against more than 100 other contestants.

It is safe to say that I am never going to turn up as a rules official at the U.S. Open. But, hey, after 40 years of swatting golf balls, it's not as if I don't know the difference between an OB stake and O.B. Keeler. Or so I thought. Fact is, sometimes you just don't know what you don't know until somebody rubs your nose in it. Such was the case on Tuesday when I, along with about 80 local amateurs, club pros, and officials from the Golf Association of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Section of the PGA, attended a daylong seminar on the rules at Philadelphia Country Club.

Whatever is killing the bats of New England appears to have arrived in Pennsylvania. And New Jersey officials are checking out reports that it might be there, too. Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Game Commission confirmed that bats had tested positive for the same fungus found in New England bats that have been dying by the tens of thousands during the last two winters. Everyone agrees that the finding could have profound effects on the bat population here. One of the many mysteries is whether the fungus causes the deaths, now referred to as "white-nose syndrome," or is a symptom.

Vice President Quayle, who publicly bashed CBS's Murphy Brown in May for glorifying single motherhood, tried to visit the set of the hit sitcom in 1989, co-creator Diane English said yesterday. Speaking to TV critics gathered in Los Angeles, English said Quayle's advance team had called when he was in L.A. and requested a visit to the show, which stars Candice Bergen. "We were doing a lot of Dan Quayle jokes at the time, so I think his people thought it might be fun for all of us to be photographed together," English said.

After the funeral of her 3-year-old son, Patti Murabito did what she had to do: the laundry. And then she, husband John, and their three girls began life without Johnny. "You're dealt the cards you're dealt," Patti says. "It's what you do with the cards. " What the family does now is help kids at the Ronald McDonald House in Camden. In 2006, the Murabitos outfitted a bedroom there in the theme of Johnny's beloved SpongeBob SquarePants. And on May 4, they donated $35,000 for a new toddler playroom, the combined generosity of their family and hundreds of their friends, neighbors, and business associates.

Sunday Sexual politics In Ray Cooney's 1981 farce Two Into One , a married member of Parliament sets up a tryst with the prime minister's secretary at a remote hotel, only to find his plan complicated by the presence of his wife, an officious hotelier, a confused waiter, a jealous husband, and a family-values opponent also on the make - for him. Expect lots of slamming doors when the show goes on at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Hedgerow Theatre ...

Higher speed limits, affordable gas, a weak dollar overseas. Vacationer, the American road beckons. And this year when you go, why not plan to visit some of "The World's Largests" that dot our countryside: giant cows, huge shoes, mammoth chairs and dozens of other such outlandish, behemoth creations. No matter what your destination, there's bound to be a place along the way with something large to show you, often the result of small-town civic boosterism. Herewith, a sampler of World's Largests.

Bob Beaney's epiphany came while mowing his lawn in Wallingford. Seven years ago, he saw a red-tailed hawk. "Now it's just incredible," he said, meaning his awareness of life surrounded by nature, birds and butterflies. That last interest is relatively new, and gaining: "In the middle of the day the butterflies are out but the birds aren't. " Fifteen years ago, virtually no one in America watched butterflies. Even lepidopterists relied mainly on mounted specimens for their research.

One in an occasional series about the regional effects of climate change and how we're coping. On May 2, 1908, as he strolled along the Perkiomen Creek in Montgomery County, Bayard Long collected a flowering sprig of redbud. He mounted it, labeled it, and added it to the herbarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences, where he was the curator. A century later, but just miles away in Chester County, botany graduate student Zoe Panchen also found a redbud in flower. But this time, the short-lived blooms had appeared much earlier.