Journey

The little boy is moping in his room. His grandma brings him a bowl of soup. It's one of those big, old-fashioned bowls, china, decorated all over in blue, with scalloped edges, maybe 60 or 70 years old. A set of eight - like this one, with no chips - might fetch $200 or $300 at a country auction. With big matching plates, like the one underneath this bowl, make it more than $400. You can see the carrots and celery and potatoes in the soup, and you can see it's very old-fashioned soup: too much flour or cornstarch.

Was your story featured in the "Love" column? We'd love to hear what's happened since you said "I do. " Maybe you survived a layoff or health crises together. Perhaps you never wanted children, but now have them. Or you always wanted children, and found the journey difficult. Is marriage so much better - or worse - than you expected? If you're interested in being featured in a "Love" retrospective, e-mail your triumphs, challenges, and adventures to , with your contact information.

A new substance-abuse rehabilitation center will officially open at St. Elizabeth's Convent, 23rd and Berks streets, in September, but its doors opened a little early for 33 teen-agers this week. No, they weren't prospective clients. They were members of Journey, the weeklong leadership camp sponsored each summer by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The teens were part of a stream of volunteers who have been helping clean the North Philadelphia convent since Project HOME, a homeless outreach group, took over its lease June 1. The convent has been vacant for five years.

DO WHATEVER necessary to avoid "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island," a quasi-sequel to the 2008 release "Journey to the Center of the Earth. " It's a monumental failure because of clunky acting, an uninspired story, not-so-special effects, and flat 3-D. Despite borrowing from multiple Jules Verne novels - and even a few other classic adventure books - "Journey 2" has less plot than a Super Bowl commercial. Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), who went on a quest with his uncle to find his dad in the first "Journey," teams with his stepfather (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson)

Two years ago, our family began planning to attend the London Olympics. We also began work on the Thompson/Tomson History Walk. After decades of researching our family history, we wanted to walk in the footsteps of our English ancestor, Thomas Tomson, from his ancestral village, Leyton, to the River Thames, where he boarded the ship Abigail in 1635. He arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and, a few years later, hopscotched to eastern Long Island, where he helped found a number of towns, before arriving in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1664 as one of the Elizabethtown Associates.

While some Mexican immigrants may already have found their voices in their new Philadelphia community, others are still searching. Local artists Nora Litz and Michelle Ortiz are helping some of them speak out through their "El Viaje" project. "El Viaje" - "the journey" in Spanish - is six Mexican families' visual accounts of their experiences leaving their Mexican homeland and traveling to South Philadelphia, where they now live. The paintings and other objects convey the heartfelt emotions of leaving family members behind to embark on a difficult, sometimes dangerous journey to an unfamiliar land.

VATICAN CITY - The following, from the Associated Press, is the Vatican's official English translation of Pope Francis' "Urbi et Orbi" speech (To the City and the World) delivered in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Wednesday night. Brothers and sisters, good evening! You know that it was the duty of the Conclave to give Rome a Bishop. It seems that my brother Cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to get one... but here we are. ... I thank you for your welcome.

Gospel According to Al Green is a revelation. Philadelphia filmmaker Robert Mugge's portrait of the remarkable singer traces his journey from soul man of the '70s to the soulful preacher of today - pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tenn. Arkansas-born Green cut his teeth on gospel, touring the country with his brothers as part of an evangelical quartet. Almost from the beginning, Green swore a dual allegiance to the sacred and the profane, and, once into his 20s, his well-known blues ballad "Let's Stay Together" suggested that the sensual might be winning over the spiritual.

For Bonnie George and David Plon, yesterday's journey to the final round of the Philadelphia Mixed Foursomes Golf Championship was tougher than the trip for their opponents today, Green Valley's Bonnie Kay and Phil Siegel. Kay-Siegel did not have to journey to Philmont Country Club's South Course. Their opponents, Halaine Cohen of Philmont and Jerry Donofrio of Sandy Run, defaulted because Donofrio had back trouble. Paul Erhardt of Wilmington Country Club shot a 72 to finish first among four qualifiers for the U.S. Senior Amateur Golf Championship at Doylestown Country Club.

When he renounced possessions, friends and family in 1990, Chris McCandless, 23, was an intense and idealistic college grad fleeing the savage materialism of so-called civilization. He took his savings, gave it to OxFam, and hit the road. A self-styled monk whose hermitage was the American outdoors, McCandless sought serenity in rugged mountains where he mastered his fears, and on the sparkling rivers where he rode the rapids of self-reliance. On the basis of the exhilarating Into the Wild, Sean Penn's exceptional film inspired by Jon Krakauer's nonfiction best seller, McCandless (charismatic Emile Hirsch)