Lip Balm

Dear Polly: Do you have any tips for cleaning brown soot stains from glass fireplace doors? - Janet Dear Janet: My favorite cleaning method for glass fireplace doors is to spray them with a foaming bathroom tub-and-tile cleaner, then wipe clean with a paper towel. The cleaner really dissolves the brown sludge, no matter how baked on it is. You can just wipe most of it away with a paper towel. The soft abrasion of a plastic scrubber (non-scratching) is enough to remove more stubborn spots.

EATING FOR TWO Women, you can safely gain 25 to 35 pounds during a normal pregnancy. So says the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, in an update of a report issued 20 years ago that recommended a 20-to-25-pound gain. Concern about low infant birth weight led to the increase. The new report says underweight women should gain 28 to 40 pounds, and overweight women should gain 15 to 25 pounds. It also says the only vitamins or supplements normal pregnant women with a balanced diet need is a low daily dose of iron.

WITH SO much media scrutiny going on in the world, you'd think that the people under that scrutiny would start to behave a little smarter. Politicians routinely stake out positions opposite to those staked out previously - and they're all on video. Athletes claim they've never taken steroids when years earlier they had muscles like a post-spinach Popeye. Corporate CEOs make claims irreconcilable with statements to congress or shareholders that end up on "The Daily Show," or YouTube.

JUST DESSERTS: Momma was right. Fast cars and too much hanky-panky will wilt your willy for sure. Dr. Giulio Biagiotti, an Italian specialist on male hormones, has confirmed what Momma already knew - young mack daddies who enjoy lots of sexual adventures run a high risk of being totally, shall we say, kaput, by age 40. Smoke a lot and drive like a maniac and you'll be even worse off. Noting that men who had "regular" sex would not...

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham announced the start of a new drive yesterday to collect care-package donations for the troops in Iraq. But tubes of toothpaste and sticks of deodorant may just pile up in Abraham's offices with nowhere to go - at least for the next month. Abraham said the items to be collected at her office at 1421 Arch St. and at two other sites in the city would be delivered to the local USO center at Philadelphia International Airport. That was news to the USO. With the exception of phone cards and sealed disposable cameras, the nonprofit organization has stopped taking donations, said Diane Sharp-Keys, executive director of the USO of Philadelphia Inc. "We don't have any place to put it," she said.

Rapids! The raft is suddenly a teeter-totter on water, and I'm doing a turtle imitation trying to avoid the water crashing over my head. The water is 47 degrees. I am soaked. I am cold. And I paid for this vacation. Day One, city slicker on the river. Actually it's city slickers, four childhood friends from South Philadelphia and a new buddy from Roxborough. Call us the Philly Five. Everyone else did. We were on the Colorado with 22 other passengers in two rafts in Grand Canyon National Park for six days of white-water rafting, camping, and being outdoors.

A few years ago, several of Lindy Snider's friends and family members were battling cancer, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, and lamenting what the treatment was doing to their skin. She remembers asking her good friend, the singer-songwriter Lauren Hart, who was being treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000, "Why don't you ask your doctor for some cream?" Hart's answer was, "Well, there's nothing," Snider recalls. Perplexed that big pharmaceutical and cosmetics firms did not have a line of products geared to cancer patients, Snider, 46, began searching for information, and spoke to doctors and dermatologists.

I'm not about to bad-mouth summer reading lists. Reading is good. Homework, however, is slightly less inspiring. So why not make up your own summer reading list - a private, fun one? Here are some new books, all out this spring and summer, to get you started. The Eternal Smile: Three Stories, by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Derek Kirk Kim, offers three multilayered stories. They are the product of a collaboration between Yang, author of the award-winning graphic novel American Born Chinese, and illustrator Kim. "Duncan's Kingdom" is an over-the-top fairy tale with a twist, and "Gran'pa Greenbax" is a witty send-up of corporate consumerism.

Military conflict brings a special kind of mobilization to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the pacifist relief agency based in Center City. Squads of volunteers have gone into high gear in the basement of the Quaker headquarters, assembling hundreds of family hygiene kits for use by war refugees in western Iraq. They received 30 boxes of donated supplies Wednesday for sorting and weighing, and eight more came in Thursday. About 10,000 completed kits have been shipped to Jordan.

Two million pounds of ground beef. Four hundred and fifty thousand pounds of canned hams. And 8,000 tons of fruits, vegetables, cereals and prepackaged meals. The orders for supplies have been pouring into the Defense Personnel Support Center in South Philadelphia as the American troop buildup continues in the Mideast. Workers have filled requests for 50,000 bottles of sunscreen, 50,000 containers of foot powder, 2,000 tubes of lip balm - and tens of thousands of desert-camouflage uniforms and protective suits to guard against chemical warfare.

WITH SO much media scrutiny going on in the world, you'd think that the people under that scrutiny would start to behave a little smarter. Politicians routinely stake out positions opposite to those staked out previously - and they're all on video. Athletes claim they've never taken steroids when years earlier they had muscles like a post-spinach Popeye. Corporate CEOs make claims irreconcilable with statements to congress or shareholders that end up on "The Daily Show," or YouTube.

I'm not about to bad-mouth summer reading lists. Reading is good. Homework, however, is slightly less inspiring. So why not make up your own summer reading list - a private, fun one? Here are some new books, all out this spring and summer, to get you started. The Eternal Smile: Three Stories, by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Derek Kirk Kim, offers three multilayered stories. They are the product of a collaboration between Yang, author of the award-winning graphic novel American Born Chinese, and illustrator Kim. "Duncan's Kingdom" is an over-the-top fairy tale with a twist, and "Gran'pa Greenbax" is a witty send-up of corporate consumerism.

A few years ago, several of Lindy Snider's friends and family members were battling cancer, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, and lamenting what the treatment was doing to their skin. She remembers asking her good friend, the singer-songwriter Lauren Hart, who was being treated for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000, "Why don't you ask your doctor for some cream?" Hart's answer was, "Well, there's nothing," Snider recalls. Perplexed that big pharmaceutical and cosmetics firms did not have a line of products geared to cancer patients, Snider, 46, began searching for information, and spoke to doctors and dermatologists.

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham announced the start of a new drive yesterday to collect care-package donations for the troops in Iraq. But tubes of toothpaste and sticks of deodorant may just pile up in Abraham's offices with nowhere to go - at least for the next month. Abraham said the items to be collected at her office at 1421 Arch St. and at two other sites in the city would be delivered to the local USO center at Philadelphia International Airport. That was news to the USO. With the exception of phone cards and sealed disposable cameras, the nonprofit organization has stopped taking donations, said Diane Sharp-Keys, executive director of the USO of Philadelphia Inc. "We don't have any place to put it," she said.

Military conflict brings a special kind of mobilization to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the pacifist relief agency based in Center City. Squads of volunteers have gone into high gear in the basement of the Quaker headquarters, assembling hundreds of family hygiene kits for use by war refugees in western Iraq. They received 30 boxes of donated supplies Wednesday for sorting and weighing, and eight more came in Thursday. About 10,000 completed kits have been shipped to Jordan.

It happened a few days ago, when Joan Cote, up from Delaware for a meeting, pulled into a parking lot in Old City. "USO," said the attendant, pointing to the letters on Cote's van. "What's that?" A lot of people are about to find out, as 120 USO centers around the world ramp up their services to American troops preparing for or heading into battle. Cote could have said that USO stands for the privately funded United Service Organizations, whose motto "We deliver America" embraces such challenges as shipping the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to the United Arab Emirates.

Rapids! The raft is suddenly a teeter-totter on water, and I'm doing a turtle imitation trying to avoid the water crashing over my head. The water is 47 degrees. I am soaked. I am cold. And I paid for this vacation. Day One, city slicker on the river. Actually it's city slickers, four childhood friends from South Philadelphia and a new buddy from Roxborough. Call us the Philly Five. Everyone else did. We were on the Colorado with 22 other passengers in two rafts in Grand Canyon National Park for six days of white-water rafting, camping, and being outdoors.

Just when you thought the summer's plague of mosquitoes and yellow jackets and gnats and flies was finally over, when you were ready to forget about stings and bites, when you were ready to trade in your insect repellent for lip balm, this had to happen. Bugs got big. Suddenly, arthropods are more popular than ever. Insects and arachnids are the pop culture darlings of the moment, sort of Spice Girls with more legs. Not since the British Invasion have beetles been such a hit. Antz, the animated movie starring ant versions of Woody Allen and Sharon Stone, just opened to swarms of moviegoers.

JUST DESSERTS: Momma was right. Fast cars and too much hanky-panky will wilt your willy for sure. Dr. Giulio Biagiotti, an Italian specialist on male hormones, has confirmed what Momma already knew - young mack daddies who enjoy lots of sexual adventures run a high risk of being totally, shall we say, kaput, by age 40. Smoke a lot and drive like a maniac and you'll be even worse off. Noting that men who had "regular" sex would not...

The deadliest weapon in the United States' - or any man's - army, is perhaps the cheapest. Usually constructed of plastic or wire, the weapon costs about $1. Unlike most military weapons, using it requires no special training. Misdirected or accidental discharge of the weapon is never fatal, yet few who have encountered it on the battlefield have lived to tell the tale. It is by all accounts a smashing success. So, if you have a spare fly swatter sitting around the kitchen or feel like buying a couple of extra ones, the 111th Tactical Air Support Group of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard would like to have them.