National Treasure

The Senate will consider a bill today that is needed to prevent mining right next door to one of the country's natural treasures, the Grand Canyon. The Forest Service foolishly approved a permit for a British company to explore for uranium just outside the borders of Grand Canyon National Park, within three miles of a popular tourist lookout. The government's action came without a full environmental review. No public hearing was held. More than four million tourists visit the Grand Canyon annually to enjoy its unrivaled majesty.

LaVaughn Robinson glistens with sweat. At 63, he's some four decades older than almost everyone in the tap-dancing class he has just finished teaching at the University of the Arts - but they're the ones who look winded, not he. "I keep asking myself, am I going to be here for long?" he says with a smile that proclaims he doesn't mean a word of it. Self-deprecation isn't really the style of this Philadelphia dancing legend, the recent recipient of two major awards. He wears his honors ebulliently.

Insisting to the end that he struck the Liberty Bell with a hammer to state his belief in God and Jesus Christ and "declare myself separate from the United States of America," Mitchell A. Guilliatt was sentenced to nine months in a halfway house yesterday. U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois said he did not doubt that Guilliatt, a self-styled religious wanderer, was sincere in his beliefs. But DuBois also agreed with Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchell S. Goldberg that the federal sentencing guidelines for damaging government property - probation to six months in prison - did not reflect the seriousness of Guilliatt's April 6, 2001, attack on "one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the freedom of this country.

Your cover story (May 2) on damaged artifacts and neglect is only the latest in a series of disturbing stories about management of the Betsy Ross House. It is becoming apparent that Joe Vignola has turned this national treasure into a cheesy little political fiefdom. Ed Rendell must bear some responsibility, as well, although it's never clear just what his behind-the- scenes role is. It can't be hard to locate a competent professional who'd jump at the chance to manage a museum known to every American schoolchild.

What are Helen Mirren and Jon Voight doing soaked in a raging underground river? And why's multiple Oscar nominee Ed Harris snarling like a silent-screen baddie? How about debonair Bruce Greenwood, skulking through a cave? And what's with Harvey Keitel, as a G-man cartoonishly exclaiming, "the President's been what?! " They're all here in the service of Nicolas Cage, himself an Academy Award-winning thespian who, in the guise of gallivanting historian Ben Gates, tears around Washington and Paris, Buckingham Palace and Mount Rushmore, in search of a lost city of gold.

Save for Black Hawk Down and Remember the Titans, producer Jerry Bruckheimer usually serves fast food to his audiences (Pirates of the Caribbean, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Bad Boys). Coupled with director Jon Turteltaub, Bruck got lost in the special sauce on National Treasure, and the DVD has that dollar-menu feel about it. Treasure spins a yarn about hidden loot pilfered from the Temple of Solomon by the Knights Templar, eventually finding its way to the Founding Fathers, who happened to be Freemasons.

That's not a semiautomatic hanging from the shoulder of Benjamin Franklin Gates. It's a weapon far more powerful: the Declaration of Independence. National Treasure stars Nicolas Cage as Ben Gates, a cryptographer and civics geek who steals the declaration in order to decode a treasure map encrypted on the back. In this breathless action-adventure, the clues lead Ben from Washington's National Archives to Philadelphia's Independence Hall to Manhattan's Trinity Church, blazing a trail for what visitors' bureaus call "Hipstoric Tourism.

Manoa Elementary School was host to a national treasure last week and, befitting its value, it spent much of the time under wraps. Usually, the tiny samples of dust and rocks were kept behind two locked doors in a location known only to principal Daniel Marsella and fifth-grade teacher Nancy Popiel. When they were displayed, the items were on view in a black cardboard and paper tunnel in a darkened classroom. There, inside a clear, lucite disc, were moon samples that were brought to Earth for study.

Buzzie's world It would be interesting to see how Buzzie Bavasi, the long-time general manager for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers who died Thursday at the age of 93, would have handled today's high-priced athletes. This is the guy who said in 2000, after Alex Rodriguez signed with the New York Yankees, "The guy makes $25 million a year and he gets another $100,000 for making the all-star team? If I was paying a guy $25 million a year, he sure as hell better make the all-star team.

"You may fire when you are ready, Gridley. " Those words were uttered by Commodore George Dewey aboard the Olympia on May 1, 1898, as the United States was about to assert itself as a superpower. The setting was the Philippines, at Manila Bay, and the enemy was Spain, whose colonial dominance over the Philippines and much of the American hemisphere, including Cuba and Puerto Rico, was about to be successfully challenged. More than 100 years later, the United States continues to exert a worldwide influence that was born at that moment.

America's national flagship, the SS United States, is being listed for sale after more than a decade on the Philadelphia waterfront. This means there's a good chance she'll be broken up and sold for scrap - an unacceptable fate for a vessel that served as America's Cold War ambassador-at-sea, the perfect embodiment of U.S. power and efficiency. This legendary passenger ship sailed from New York to Europe and other destinations from 1952 to 1969. Its manifests listed U.S. and foreign presidents, a multitude of A-list celebrities, and a generation of leaders in business, diplomacy, culture, and the arts.

Buzzie's world It would be interesting to see how Buzzie Bavasi, the long-time general manager for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers who died Thursday at the age of 93, would have handled today's high-priced athletes. This is the guy who said in 2000, after Alex Rodriguez signed with the New York Yankees, "The guy makes $25 million a year and he gets another $100,000 for making the all-star team? If I was paying a guy $25 million a year, he sure as hell better make the all-star team.

The Senate will consider a bill today that is needed to prevent mining right next door to one of the country's natural treasures, the Grand Canyon. The Forest Service foolishly approved a permit for a British company to explore for uranium just outside the borders of Grand Canyon National Park, within three miles of a popular tourist lookout. The government's action came without a full environmental review. No public hearing was held. More than four million tourists visit the Grand Canyon annually to enjoy its unrivaled majesty.

World-renowned tap dancer LaVaughn Robinson, 80, of Philadelphia, died of heart failure Wednesday at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Born in South Philadelphia in 1927, the youngest of 14 children, Mr. Robinson had said he learned the time step from his mother on the kitchen floor when he was 6. He went on to tap in Philadelphia and on stages around the world, was named a national treasure, and taught tap at the University of the Arts for...

In the first "National Treasure," Nicolas Cage and his pals steal the Declaration of Independence and eventually discover a room full of gold and artifacts left by the Founding Fathers. In the sequel, which opens today, Cage and co-stars Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha move on to rifling through Queen Elizabeth's desk at Buckingham Palace and kidnapping the president of the United States at Mount Vernon. Despite lukewarm reviews, the first film earned a surprising $347 million in global box office receipts and seems poised to turn Cage's Benjamin Franklin Gates into an Indiana Jones-meets-Sherlock Holmes franchise.

What are Helen Mirren and Jon Voight doing soaked in a raging underground river? And why's multiple Oscar nominee Ed Harris snarling like a silent-screen baddie? How about debonair Bruce Greenwood, skulking through a cave? And what's with Harvey Keitel, as a G-man cartoonishly exclaiming, "the President's been what?!" They're all here in the service of Nicolas Cage, himself an Academy Award-winning thespian who, in the guise of gallivanting historian Ben Gates, tears around Washington and Paris, Buckingham Palace and Mount Rushmore, in search of a lost city of gold.

Housing giant K. Hovnanian will team up with Philadelphia-based nonprofit MANNA this Sunday to host "Tours for $10," an afternoon of house tours at Old City's The National. MANNA - Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutritional Alliance - is an organization which delivers tasty and nutritious meals to patients at acute nutritional risk due to disease. When founded, MANNA focused on HIV/AIDS patients, but has since expanded to include people with cancer. "We were looking to do some charitable work in the city," explained Rick Buchholz, K. Hovnanian's area vice president for southeastern Pennsylvania, "so when one of our associates, who had been involved with MANNA in the past, told us about the organization, we were immediately interested.

When Old City's popular Five Spot club went up in flames on Feb. 3, Donald U. Smith said folks at nearby historic Christ Church were "ready to pull the handle. " The handle, as Smith calls it, was a switch that would have activated sprinkler heads outside the church's 200-foot-high steeple, enveloping the wooden tower in a curtain of water to protect it from flying embers. As it turned out, it wasn't necessary to give the steeple's fire-protection system its first workout since it was installed last year.