Naturalist

Kim Williams, 62, a naturalist and author known for her homespun commentary, died of cancer at her home Wednesday. She had been featured on the All Things Considered radio program for more than 10 years, making her the longest-running guest commentator on National Public Radio. She announced on the air three weeks ago that she had terminal cancer and was refusing chemotherapy. She said she had readied herself for death after learning in late May that she had ovarian cancer.

Eileen E. Brown Hand, 91, a self-taught naturalist who was instrumental in developing nature and educational programs at Batsto Village, died July 5 at the Mount Holly Center in Lumberton. She had lived in Lumberton for three years and previously resided in Southampton Township and in New Lisbon on the banks of the Rancocas Creek. She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mrs. Hand and her husband, Louis E. Hand, who died in 1988, began their involvement with South Jersey's Pine Barrens in the 1940s.

To friends and family, he was "the grand old man," "the stuff of legend," a World War II veteran who believed in hard work and service to family, country, and the environment. Robert U. Cassel, 95, a decorated infantry captain in Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army and a devoted birder and naturalist, died Wednesday, Sept. 1, at his temporary home in Little River, S.C. He was a longtime resident of Mantua Township. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cassel was raised in Paulsboro and Woodbury and graduated from Woodbury High School in 1932.

Fungus is not a pretty thing. But it does have a reason for being. That's what Montgomery County Parks naturalist Wendy Hoffman set out to demonstrate Sunday when she led about a dozen nature lovers on a hike through Green Lane Reservoir Park. On the expedition, Hoffman pointed out different kinds of fungus growing on logs, tree trunks and leaves while explaining the importance of an organism normally associated with moldy bread and athlete's foot. "It seems yucky, but they have to attach themselves to living things in order to survive," she said.

John T. McNeill Jr., 85, a former Democratic chairman of Kensington's 33d Ward and an amateur naturalist, died Monday at St. Mary's Catholic Home in Cherry Hill. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. McNeill lived in the city until 1974, when he moved to New Jersey. There, he lived briefly in Paulsboro before moving to Haddonfield. For 36 years Mr. McNeill followed a family tradition and worked for the post office in Philadelphia. His father, the late John T. McNeill Sr., was a letter carrier for 45 years in the Center City financial district, and had two brothers who also were longtime postal employees, said his son Gordon G. McNeill.

Despite years of what his supporters describe as outstanding service to the Five Mile Woods nature preserve, resident naturalist Richard Mellon has been asked to leave his position this summer. Lower Makefield Supervisor Wesley Hackman confirmed that the Board of Supervisors had asked Mellon to vacate his township-owned house in Five Mile Woods by July. Asked why the popular naturalist was being fired, Hackman said that the board had decided that it was time to change the decade-old relationship between Mellon and the township, which he described as "messy.

One fortunate day, having no news of her own to convey, a shy, young, reclusive Englishwoman wrote a fanciful, illustrated letter to a friend's child about "four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. " Eight years later, she borrowed back the letter - carefully preserved by its recipient - and submitted The Tale of Peter Rabbit to several publishers. Not one was interested. So the indefatigable Beatrix Potter published a small, black-and-white edition of the story on her own. The rest is children's book history.

Crowned by a monarch, Sandra Cawley of Sicklerville waited yesterday for the just-released butterfly to take flight on its annual migration to South America. Triple Oaks Nursery in Franklinville sponsored the Harvest Weekend Educational Open House, at which the butterflies were released and a naturalist spoke.

If you wonder what drives Pat Sutton, come on in. Clues are everywhere inside her 19th-century farmhouse in Goshen, Cape May County, a tiny dot of a place between Delaware Bay and the ocean. The shower curtain is imprinted with butterflies. Owls decorate throws on the sofa. Piles of plant and bird books cover the coffee table. Had you gone around to the backyard, you'd have no need for clues. The key to understanding Sutton is staring you in the face: It's her wildlife garden.

In a long-ago satiric routine called "Christ and Moses," comedian Lenny Bruce imagined Jesus and Moses returning to Earth and walking into St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue during a Mass. The flustered celebrant, Cardinal Francis Spellman, calls the pope for advice on how to handle the situation. Are you sure it's them? the pope asks. Yes, Spellman replies, it's Moses, and he's brought a very attractive Jewish boy with him. What Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider, probably didn't know was that it was Rembrandt van Rijn who, three centuries earlier, invented the "attractive Jewish boy" as a model for depictions of Jesus.

To friends and family, he was "the grand old man," "the stuff of legend," a World War II veteran who believed in hard work and service to family, country, and the environment. Robert U. Cassel, 95, a decorated infantry captain in Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army and a devoted birder and naturalist, died Wednesday, Sept. 1, at his temporary home in Little River, S.C. He was a longtime resident of Mantua Township. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Cassel was raised in Paulsboro and Woodbury and graduated from Woodbury High School in 1932.

Could there be a more pregnant title than "Dialogues With Darwin"? Network for New Music tantalized and rewarded weekend audiences with its Darwin project, involving new poetry, settings of three of those poems by still-evolving young composers, and a highly evolved major piece by Maurice Wright. Where else could such a program convene but at the American Philosophical Society, for the concert and the poetry readings asked fundamental questions about changing understandings, and even sidled up to the unanswered question: "Does music (or any art)

Creation marks Paul Bettany's second go-round as a 19th-century naturalist in a movie from screenwriter John Collee. In Master and Commander, Bettany was the proto-Darwin whose findings about how animals use camouflage to elude predators had immediate application during the Napoleonic Wars. In Creation, he is Darwin himself, decades pregnant with the research for his seminal On the Origin of Species, but too hopeless to deliver the manuscript. Does Darwin have prepartum depression because he fears the laws of natural selection he has so carefully documented will challenge the laws of God?

Derek Fell's interest in Paul Cezanne is different from most. Of course, he delights in the great postimpressionist's penchant for painting bathers, still lifes, portraits, and landscapes, many of which can be seen in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's current exhibit, "Cezanne and Beyond. " But Fell, a well-known horticulturist, photographer, and author of 50 garden books, is especially keen on the role Cezanne's Proven?al garden played in his work. "Being in his garden, I felt like I was stepping into one of his canvases.

How many artists wish they were Mark Dion? Probably most who've encountered his witty, over-the-top installations of objects arranged to recall the explorations of the great naturalists and their particular (and often peculiar) collecting habits. This is an art form that also has conveniently required Dion to travel in the far-flung footsteps of his paradigms - to Belize, to Venezuela's Orinoco Basin, and to the coasts of the Baltic Sea and North Sea, among other places. Dion's most recent project, however - proposed by independent curator Julie Courtney and awarded a generous $171,650 by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initative, a program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts - has kept him conveniently close to us. For "Mark Dion: Travels of William Bartram - Reconsidered," an installation in the historic Bartram house at Philadelphia's Bartram's Garden, Dion made his own version of the Philadelphia-to-Florida expedition undertaken by the city's own great 18th-century explorer, artist and ornithologist William Bartram, a son of John Bartram, the legendary early-American botanist who built the aforementioned house.

It's very warm today, well into 80-degree territory. Nonetheless, Victor Allen Crawford 3d is dressed in a pressed linen suit and tie, long-sleeved shirt with French cuffs (and links), polka-dotted pocket square, the whole enchilada. Standing in his tiny Mount Holly kitchen, he offers a visitor a wine glass of sparkling Pellegrino water and a small bowl of strawberries. "Please," he implores, placing a faux silver tray on the table, "have some. " We're here to tour his backyard bog garden, a mini-wetland (sandy, peaty, mossy)

The Philadelphia Zoo's lion house - a regional icon right up there with long-gone Connie Mack Stadium and the heart at the Franklin Institute - was silent yesterday. The great beasts had moved out. But only because they were waiting for their African savanna to move in. Zoo officials and supporters broke ground for a $20 million exhibit that will have more than a dozen large felines, including all the "big five" - lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and cougars. Come spring of 2006, when the cats return - most have been shipped to other zoos for safekeeping - they'll be roaming outdoor areas that resemble the savanna, a Central American rain forest, the Siberian tundra, or Pennsylvania's woodlands, home to the cougar.