Offerings

ANCIENT Chinese gods and goddesses looking 12 feet tall strolled into Chinatown around noon yesterday to the clash of cymbals and the beating of drums as the heavy smoke from incense sticks wafted through the air. The fourth annual Hoyu Folk Culture Festival attracted participants from Philly, New York and Washington, and also hundreds of onlookers who gathered on 10th Street, mostly between Arch and Cherry. Boys and young men in lion costumes jiggled their lion heads as they marched to Chinatown's Friendship Gate.

Sales late next week, one in Chester County and the other in the city, will offer opportunities to bid on the personal property of a sports personality and to acquire antique and vintage Americana at bargain prices. The sports personality's belongings will be featured by Barry S. Slosberg Inc. at a sale beginning at 5 p.m. Thursday at the gallery in Port Richmond. Although the personality is not identified by name on the Slosberg Web site, a published report in July said the goods were from the Villanova estate of former 76ers star Allen Iverson and his wife, Tawanna, who moved from the area after he signed with the Denver Nuggets.

Been there. Done that. That could be the prevailing attitude about this Victorian-era resort, where the demand for tours of the three key attractions has fallen in the last five years. And in a town that has built its economy on offering more to do than just going to the beach, the decline has led the nonprofit Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts - credited with salvaging Cape May's genteel past when developers and their wrecking balls came calling more than 30 years ago - to cut staff, close a museum, and shift the types of tours it offers.

What could the hit television series M A S H and a play written in 411 B.C. possibly have in common? Try war and sex, Swarthmore College professor Jerry Frost recently suggested during a lecture in his class "War and Peace. " His students snickered. But Frost wasn't joking. In M A S H, the sexual banter between doctors and nurses was used to soften the sting of antiwar criticism, he explained. And Aristophanes attempts the same in his satire, The Lysistrada, in which the women of ancient Greece withhold sex to dissuade the men from fighting.

Chamber music has been a growth industry here with no place to grow. As audiences have expanded for music for small ensembles, the minuscule number of halls suitable for performance has not grown, but shrunk. Performers have their choice of the Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square, the Academy of Music ballroom, the Academy recital hall, the Walnut Street Theater, the Free Library's Montgomery Auditorium or a church. None comes close to the ideal of an attractive, intimate, acoustically live setting that includes audience comfort, ease of accesss and nearby secure parking.

As a Camden County College photojournalism student, Brad Walker knew the beginning-of-semester ritual of hitting at least five camera shops for the right film, chemicals and paper. He knew the frustration of not having a personal studio to develop photos, and of limited school lab hours. In a two-story home on North Centre Street, Walker, 26, has turned his former frustrations into The Darkroom, a business with a rare combination of offerings for amateur photographers. For hourly fees, customers can dip and dunk (develop)

The Main Line Antiques Show has impressive assets: an outstanding exhibitor list, good timing for the holidays, and a historic setting with easy access. In only its sixth year, the event Saturday and Sunday has found an ideal home at the Radnor Valley Country Club in Villanova. The club's main building was originally part of a vast old Main Line estate. In about 1907, J. Franklin McFadden (1862-1936), a cotton broker and one of Philadelphia's wealthiest men, hired the local architectural firm of Cope & Stewardson to create a grand Colonial-style house on his 307-acre Radnor Valley Farm.

IN THE REGION Witness tells of 'Risperdal Popcorn' Johnson & Johnson promoted illegal marketing of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal by paying physicians to give favorable speeches, subsidizing golf trips, and even having sales staff "butter up doctors" with bags of "Risperdal Popcorn," a former company manager testified in Philadelphia in a trail stemming from a lawsuit brought by a Texas teenager who blames the medicine for causing him...

When it comes to credit issues and identity theft, I sometimes feel like what we used to call a broken record. Almost incessantly, I urge readers to check their credit reports by visiting www.annualcreditreport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228. Both will get you to the "central source" mandated by Congress a decade ago for consumers to request free reports from TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax, the nation's three main credit bureaus. If the reports are clean, I tell readers, there's no need to pay for a credit score - which Congress, alas, did not require the credit bureaus to provide, and did not bar them from pitching via side deals to consumers who request their free reports.

Little morsels of information have been leaking out of the NovaCare Complex since Chip Kelly held his first practices with the Eagles last month, all of which were closed to the media. Running back LeSean McCoy said the first three-day minicamp felt like a track meet. Tight end Brent Celek said Kelly's method of communication would change the NFL. Wide receiver Jeremy Maclin revealed that Michael Vick was ahead of Nick Foles in the quarterback competition. It's what they in the entertainment business call "a soft opening.