Linoleum

The works of artist Percy Martin are featured in an exhibit at Swarthmore College celebrating Black History Month. Martin, who deals with images of African Bushmen, works with etchings, lithographs, wood, linoleum and drawings. The exhibit, "Myths," opened at the college's McCabe Library last Sunday and runs through Feb. 28.

Q. I plan to put ceramic tile on the floor in my bathroom. The floor is a concrete slab that is covered with linoleum. Can I put the ceramic tile directly over the linoleum, or should it be removed? What do you recommend to fasten the tile to the floor and what kind of grout should I use? A. While we have seen ceramic tile installed over existing sheet vinyl on a concrete slab, we strongly suggest you remove the vinyl before installing the tile. This will help to ensure the bond between the tile and the substrate below is strong and durable.

Cibo's segue Cibo is only a week-old memory, and already Ciboulette's Bruce Lim is brainstorming his next venture - a catering biz called Ciboulette Catering. The newest offshoot of Ciboulette, 200 South Broad St., will happen "pretty soon," he said, and should hold none of the overhead or pitfalls of his failed casual restaurant, Cibo, off 3rd and South. That one, open less than a year, was simply in the wrong area, Lim said. "They all like to drink and eat cheesesteaks down there," he said.

Dear Anne and Nan: We have a shiny brown linoleum floor that is plagued with dull scuff marks. The scuff marks are not dirt, but are due to the removal of the shiny coating. Is there any way to correct these marks? - Holly Eaves, Pawcatuck, Conn. Dear Holly: It's hard to tell how serious your problem is from your description. If the linoleum or vinyl isn't seriously worn, dampen baking soda with water and rub the scuff marks in a circular motion until they are gone. Rinse, then wax. If your floor is newer and of the "no-wax" kind, apply an Armstrong product called "New Beginning," available wherever Armstrong flooring products are sold.

Some convicted murderers have found a way out of their jail cells - they're using their imaginations. For Avis Lee, it means a swirling number of years above her black-and-white self-portrait and this entry in her journal: "Serving a life sentence to me means counting," wrote Lee about her years at the state prison at Muncy in Lycoming County. "Counting numbers in terms of weeks, counting days in terms of years, attempting to count what is infinite in terms of what is finite.

It's been said you can't go home again, but Nathan Dolente thought he'd give it a try. Of course things wouldn't be exactly the same, but somehow, he believed, it could still be home. So about a year ago, a restaurant appropriately called L2 opened at 22d and South, where, way back in 1983, Dolente and a partner created and operated Linoleum, a hip, '50-ish restaurant. In its day, Linoleum was a huge favorite and had a great run before closing in 1989. In 1996 Stephen Starr, of Old City's Continental, leased the building from Dolente and turned the place into a caviar-vodka bar with borscht and blinis called Cafe Republic.

Downstairs, six teenagers carved, inked and rubbed linoleum against sheets of construction paper, creating elaborate ink prints. Upstairs, five younger students crouched over wooden blocks clamped to a worktable. They were sawing brass, up and down, up and down, slicing the metal into pieces that would become necklace pendants. And in another room upstairs, a class of little children was taking bites out of apples and drawing each step of the fruits' demise. The children, ranging in age from 6 to 16, are part of the Advance education program at Centro Guayacan, West Chester's only Hispanic community center.

Some new linoleum in the kitchen and some new carpeting in the living room, that was the plan. Just a little sprucing up at the Fields family's split- level home in Fargo, N.D. Never did Brook and Barbara Fields imagine that the plan would ultimately force them to abandon their home and many of their possessions. "It started out as home decorating and turned into a nightmare," Barbara Fields said. What forced the Fieldses to flee was asbestos - the fibrous mineral that has been linked to pulmonary disease and cancer in tens of thousands of workers.

Jill A. Rupinski's artwork seems to want to defy Picasso's dictum that "Art is what nature isn't. " For in her 30-year retrospective show of paintings and pastels at Wayne Art Center, she fuses art and nature and she does it in her own way, with configurations that she imposes on the landscape. Rupinski, a Northeast Philadelphia resident and faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, paints moving and evocative landscapes without being literal. She can suggest the bristly quality of trees without describing them, and turns many a thicket of bony limbs into a lightning-like pattern.

To hear George Thomas tell it, City Hall is a classic story of rise and fall, an arc common to monuments of both the Roman and the Philadelphian empires. "While the city fathers used its opening to celebrate the arrival of the new century," the architectural historian says, "over the years, this fabulous building was completely vandalized, with ceilings dropped, rooms cut into rooms, grand halls turned into junky storage areas. " Citizens who visit the building to obtain a marriage license or serve on a jury would not immediately recognize that City Hall was conceived as much for public pleasure as for civic duty.

Question: We have to replace our 30-year-old kitchen linoleum flooring. This floor is also in the back hall as well as the powder room. My husband and I have been having discussions as to what type of flooring we should get. He does not want tile of any sort as he says it is breakable and difficult to put down. We will be using a contractor to install any new flooring. There is a possibility we would be selling the house within five years. I would like a floor that is nice, contemporary, and durable, and will look good if and when we sell the house.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was simultaneously mastering middle school and Rubik's Cube, a new fad hit town that turned my peers, literally, on their heads: breakdancing. I was fascinated. But how was a white boy from the burbs supposed to learn how to breakdance? There was no manual and only an occasional sighting on TV. "Look, look!" my mother would yell from the living room, but by the time I got there: "Oh, you missed it. " For months I begged my parents to take me to New York City, the breakdance capital of the world.

If you cook healthful food, it stands to reason that you would want a healthful kitchen. Which means avoiding plywood and particle board, which give off gaseous formaldehyde, and steering clear of PVC and vinyl, which leach lead, cadmium and phthalate plasticizers. When they burn, they give off dioxin. But let's skip the bad news. The good news is that healthful kitchens are easy to come by, as demonstrated by Jennifer Roberts in her excellent book Good Green Kitchens (Gibbs Smith, $29.95)

Jill A. Rupinski's artwork seems to want to defy Picasso's dictum that "Art is what nature isn't. " For in her 30-year retrospective show of paintings and pastels at Wayne Art Center, she fuses art and nature and she does it in her own way, with configurations that she imposes on the landscape. Rupinski, a Northeast Philadelphia resident and faculty member at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, paints moving and evocative landscapes without being literal. She can suggest the bristly quality of trees without describing them, and turns many a thicket of bony limbs into a lightning-like pattern.

To hear George Thomas tell it, City Hall is a classic story of rise and fall, an arc common to monuments of both the Roman and the Philadelphian empires. "While the city fathers used its opening to celebrate the arrival of the new century," the architectural historian says, "over the years, this fabulous building was completely vandalized, with ceilings dropped, rooms cut into rooms, grand halls turned into junky storage areas. " Citizens who visit the building to obtain a marriage license or serve on a jury would not immediately recognize that City Hall was conceived as much for public pleasure as for civic duty.

With Anna Bellenger holding the lead, Andy, a rambunctious Norwich Terrier pup, scampered so quickly around the exhibition ring at the Philadelphia Dog Show, his little feet were a blur. It turned out to be of no consequence that Andy's main interest was frolicking with his competitors; the 7-month old Norwich won the best-of-breed anyway. For Bellenger, a Unionville resident who has raised ribbon-winning Norwich terriers for 20 years, Andy is a delight. He also is a likely end to her serious involvement in breeding and showing dogs, which also included a best-of-breed finish at the 1997 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York.

Before you open your eyes to see the remarkable transformation of a pink linoleum box - for that is what the dining rooms at Vietnam Restaurant used to be - imagine bobbing across the South China Sea stuffed into a 35-foot boat with 190 other refugees. For three days and three nights in 1979, this is how the journey from Vietnam began for the Lai family, stripped of its sandal factory, relieved of its home, crammed on a freedom boat without enough food or water. Fuel was running thin, too, just as a tanker came to the rescue, towing the boat to the safety of a Malaysian refugee camp.

It's been said you can't go home again, but Nathan Dolente thought he'd give it a try. Of course things wouldn't be exactly the same, but somehow, he believed, it could still be home. So about a year ago, a restaurant appropriately called L2 opened at 22d and South, where, way back in 1983, Dolente and a partner created and operated Linoleum, a hip, '50-ish restaurant. In its day, Linoleum was a huge favorite and had a great run before closing in 1989. In 1996 Stephen Starr, of Old City's Continental, leased the building from Dolente and turned the place into a caviar-vodka bar with borscht and blinis called Cafe Republic.

Cibo's segue Cibo is only a week-old memory, and already Ciboulette's Bruce Lim is brainstorming his next venture - a catering biz called Ciboulette Catering. The newest offshoot of Ciboulette, 200 South Broad St., will happen "pretty soon," he said, and should hold none of the overhead or pitfalls of his failed casual restaurant, Cibo, off 3rd and South. That one, open less than a year, was simply in the wrong area, Lim said. "They all like to drink and eat cheesesteaks down there," he said.

The congressman was discussing - whining might be a better word - the paper's mocking of his old pal, Al Spivey. A day or two before, we carried a big Page 1 photograph of the legislative candidate in the instantly installed kitchen of the house where he said he lived. The untrimmed linoleum floor was curling up the sides of the new cabinetry, which I suppose is a good way to keep bread crumbs from lodging in the corners. Spivey's patron wanted to know why a little-known office seeker deserved such prominent attention from this newspaper.