Painting

THERE'S IRONY HERE. Tom Corbett, who ascended to the governorship on the wings of law and justice, faces the prospect of law-and-justice issues clipping his re-election odds. At least a half dozen legal snarls set to unfold in coming months can put the guv on the wrong side of stuff with real political impact. And when I say "wrong side," I don't mean legally. I mean, excuse the word, optically - what it looks like and how it plays as he seeks a second term. The issues are Corbett-generated.

The one job most of us do ourselves is paint. For example, I repainted the walls along the staircase after nicking them with a Morris chair we move upstairs each winter so the Christmas tree has a spot in the living room. I touched up a window frame here, a wall there, and plan to give the exterior of the house a fresh coat of paint in the spring - May is always a good month, although late September to early November is ideal. I've been using paints without volatile organic compounds exclusively for three years now, and they appear to do the trick.

For many years, artist Lady Bird Strickland painted the people that she met in her life - and it was no ordinary life. Subjects such as Dizzy Gillespie, Josephine Baker, Charlie Parker, Marian Anderson, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington were all part of the jazz bebop scene in Harlem where the young Georgia native danced and romanced in the 1940s, before putting it all down with brushstrokes. But by the 1980s - married, settled down in suburban Willingboro, and still painting - Strickland began to grasp that the New York jazz era that she had witnessed was just one scene in a much larger mural of the African American experience.

Jen Bryant lives in Chester County and is the author of "A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin," illustrated by Melissa Sweet In 1933, if you peered through the first-floor window of a certain plain brick house on Gay Street in West Chester, you might see a strongly built African American man, impeccably dressed in pressed white shirt and wool vest, his left hand grasping his right wrist, leaning toward his easel. His gaze is riveted, intense, as he applies from his palette, in thick, short strokes, house paint he's scavenged from the borough's alleys.

As a Philadelphia Traffic Court judge, Fortunato "Fred" Perri Sr. cultivated a public image as a tough guy. His nickname was "the Terminator" - a reflection of his supposed willingness to jail bad drivers. But for a favored few, Perri couldn't have been friendlier. "When you call, I move, brother, believe me," he allegedly assured a Southwest Philadelphia businessman said to be in league with him in the fixing of tickets. "It will be all right. Don't worry about it," he reportedly told the same businessman on another occasion, assuring him that a ticket would be fixed as promised.

Daniel J. Haley Jr., 92, the second-generation president of the family-owned Finnaren & Haley Paint Inc. for many years, died Sunday, Jan. 20, of cardiopulmonary arrest at the Waverly Heights retirement community in Gladwyne. Mr. Haley served as president and chairman of the board of Finnaren & Haley starting in 1958, when his father, company founder Daniel J. Sr., died. With brother Robert, the pair led the company's expansion to a peak of 35 retail stores in Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware, Mr. Haley's daughter Reggie Pakradooni said.

Lawyers for a Philadelphia priest and an ex-parochial-school teacher on Tuesday began a two-pronged defense to convince a Common Pleas Court jury that their clients' personalities were inconsistent with those of men who would rape a 10-year-old altar boy. Lawyers for the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero called a series of character witnesses who testified about the pair's reputation in the community for being peaceful and law-abiding....

Previously best known for his entertaining YouTube skewerings of the art world, "Art Thoughtz With Hennessy Youngman," Jayson Musson, now having his first show with Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, has since become an official member of that sector. He's been cutting up Coogi sweaters (the colorful patterned cotton knitwear sported by Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show and more recently by various rappers) into strips of fabric that he assembles and stitches into patterns of his own. Pulled over stretchers, the finished tapestrylike works look as though they must be based on particular paintings, and their titles hint at such connections, but Musson's fabric manipulations are so subtle it's difficult to pinpoint specific forebears.

On a Philadelphia street corner covered in graffiti, one 10-foot-wide stretch has been dedicated to the victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The painting has a black background, with puffy white clouds and Sandy Hook tagged in giant pink block letters. On the left is a child with wings, his head bowed and hands joined in prayer. On the right are the words Dedicated to Sandy Hook Elementary School. The unsigned painting is a memorial to the 26 students, teachers, and school administrators who were killed Dec. 15 in a mass shooting.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir V. Putin delivered his state of the nation address Wednesday, and he made conditions in his country sound enviable - a view immediately rejected by his critics. "We will implement everything we planned," Putin said, describing a Russia committed to democracy, where corruption would be fought, more jobs would be created, affordable housing would be built and pay would be increased. "He has repeated all the unfulfilled promises he has made in the course of his 13 years in power," Vladimir Ryzhkov, an opposition politician, wrote in his blog, pointing out that new points included promises to improve spirituality and collegiality.