Paradise

The Paradise City Arts Festival opens today at the 33d Street Armory, 3205 Lancaster Ave. (at the Drexel University campus), and runs through Sunday. Now in its 13th year, the festival will feature distinctive pieces by 125 artists (40 of whom are new exhibitors) working in a variety of media. The exhibit "Teapots in Paradise" will focus on an array of functional and fanciful teapots. Festival hours are noon to 7 p.m. today, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

Congratulations to George Wilson for his excellent article in the Oct. 24 paper, "A building boom threatens Poconos. " I was particularly interested in the part about gambling. We who own homes or cottages in the Poconos are very concerned about casino gambling. I wrote to Gov. Thornburgh earlier in his administration, asking him not to permit gambling in Pennsylvania, and I certainly hope the next governor will hold this line. Let Atlantic City and Reno, Nev., have this disaster, and let us keep our paradise alive!

When Tom Delimaris looks at the strip of Camden waterfront between the Waterfront Entertainment Centre and the New Jersey State Aquarium, he sees paradise. The business kind: an upscale nightclub, a family seafood and steak eatery, an elegant Asian restaurant, a hip blues and barbecue joint, T-shirt shops - all housed in a "Mediterranean-style" two-story indoor/outdoor complex with breezy balconies affording a perfect view of Philadelphia's lights rising out of black water. With $5 million to be invested in 53,000 square feet of property - representing one of the largest injections of private funds into the depressed waterfront area and the first use of the federal government's Empowerment Zone tax-exempt loan program - Camden residents could be seeing this version of paradise themselves by May 1998.

The studio 20th Century Fox recently grabbed a few headlines by offering a money-back guarantee on one of its movies. Well, I've got another guarantee for you. I guarantee Fox does not offer you a money-back guarantee on "Trapped in Paradise," because movie theaters don't carry the kind of cash that could reimburse you for the kind of suffering and mental cruelty this holiday movie inflicts. I call "Trapped in Paradise" a holiday movie, but it's a holiday movie only in the sense that having your car broken into at the mall is a holiday tradition.

In the 1930s, when Boies Penrose 2d took his two children on a cruise of the West Indies, he fell in love with the island of Barbados. Several years later, when he felt he needed a name for his farm in Devon, he selected Barbados Hill, a name that has endured through the years. "It was his own little piece of paradise," recalls his son, Charles B.B. Penrose. This week that piece of rural paradise - even more unusual in its bucolic tranquillity today than it was when it was first named - will go on the auction block as an entire 26-acre estate or as four parcels.

Now that the City Council has voted unanimously to silence boom boxes, one has to wonder why the city's premiere legislative body has blatantly ignored another bill introduced the very same day. We are referring, of course, to Councilman John F. Street's far-sighted measure to ban people from carrying snakes on public streets or in parks and recreation areas. In contrast to the usual legislative fare, the bill represents a refreshing effort to solve a problem before it develops.

Whither Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh? As of yesterday, nobody seemed to know. An immigration official for Antigua, where the wandering guru was reportedly headed over the weekend, said he wasn't there and that if he beamed down on Antigua, he would be "declared persona non grata. " Since his deportation from Oregon on immigration violations in November, the cult leader has been pressured out of India, Nepal, Crete and, just last week, England. A spokeswoman at Rajneesh's disbanded Oregon commune said she didn't know where he was. "Wherever he is, we'll hear about it whenever he's ready for the curtain to go up on the next act," said Ma Sarita.

The idea behind Susan Hagen's "Tree Carpet Project" is simple and direct - translate the imagery of a Persian carpet at the Philadelphia Museum of Art into small sculptures of carved and painted wood. Hagen's realization of this idea, seen in her exhibition at the Spruce Street branch of Schmidt/Dean Gallery, reveals a thoroughly engaging artistic imagination. Hagen has created a three-dimensional garden of earthly delight that translates a Persian vision of paradise into a contemporary American one. Her sculptures bring together human, animal and plant forms in unusual ways, to express hope and despair, the innocence of youth, and nature's beauty and variety.

Perhaps he got a good deal on two tickets or stopped in town to grab a cheeseburger. Whatever his reasons for visiting, homicide suspect Matthew "Mackie" Armstead found himself trapped in Paradise on Saturday, when authorities tracked him to the idyllically named town 10 miles east of Lancaster, Pa. Armstead is one of two suspects in the June 12 killings of brothers Khary and Jerome Foreman, on Oxford Street near 24th, in North Philadelphia, according...

A few years ago, when the widely hailed and in every way dreadful kiddie-porn peep show "Kids" came out, I thought the guy who made it, Larry Clark, just might be the worst director around. Now I'm sure of it. His "Another Day in Paradise" is an utterly disgusting trash heap of other people's ideas, stolen from better movies and made by Clark into a collage of bad acting, trite vision and dreary profanity. The project, for reasons that are not evident, attracted the attention of James Woods.

NAZARETH, Pa. - On a rain-swept morning, Mark Scheibel sits in the Pickin' Parlor. As he waits for the tune-up of his GPCPA1 guitar, he's strumming another exquisite Martin instrument. A broad smile creases his face. "Martins deliver such a rich, full sound," says Scheibel, a resident of Mount Holly Springs, near Harrisburg. "Playing one is always a beautiful thing. " Every weekday, guitar-playing pilgrims and music lovers travel to tour C.F. Martin & Co. in this village.

I was in big trouble. Two hours into a Hawaiian vacation, my 14-year-old stepdaughter, Dana, and I sat lounging by the pool at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai on the Big Island. Already she had sampled an open-face lobster BLT for lunch, downed a mango smoothie, ducked under the waterfall of the Sea Shell Pool, and swum in the ocean. Relaxing on a lounge chair, she ate a Popsicle and asked quite seriously, "Are we going to do nothing all week?" "Nothing" sounded like paradise to me, especially because this was our first major trip with 5-month-old daughter Carolyn.

So you've ridden some big miles on your bike in the hope of getting in great shape. And now you're ready for a really long road trip. But where to go? How about a little piece of paradise? You should take a look at the Big Island of Hawaii. I had just sold my family business and wanted to take some time off, get in shape, travel, and just catch up on life. I was ready to ride, and paradise was waiting. I had friends on the Big Island, and I knew their place would be a great home base.

Perhaps he got a good deal on two tickets or stopped in town to grab a cheeseburger. Whatever his reasons for visiting, homicide suspect Matthew "Mackie" Armstead found himself trapped in Paradise on Saturday, when authorities tracked him to the idyllically named town 10 miles east of Lancaster, Pa. Armstead is one of two suspects in the June 12 killings of brothers Khary and Jerome Foreman, on Oxford Street near 24th, in North Philadelphia, according...

The first time Suzanne Kourlesis and Marty Kisliuk saw the site where they would build their Westampton home, the builder, Gary Gardner of Medford, had to convince them they would not feel lost in a forest. "There were so many trees that we couldn't imagine a place for a home," Kourlesis recalls, sitting on the deck looking over what is still a woodland paradise. Nature retains its primacy here and seems barely intruded upon, despite the presence of the contemporary home and lap pool, which are surrounded by stonework created by Moorestown contractor Massimo Procaccini.

Just down the road from Lake Nockamixon in rural Upper Bucks County, a meadow blooms in soft yellows and delicate pinks, vibrant fuchsias, burgundies and purples, even on these still-barren March days. When fields are brown and trees naked, roaming the warm greenhouses of the Parkside Orchid Nursery is "just like being in paradise," said co-owner John Salventi. For nearly 20 years, Salventi and Tom Purviance, partners in life and in business, have been growing specialty orchids - hundreds of varieties that have captivated aficionados and neophytes alike at local flower exhibitions, on The Martha Stewart Show, and at orchid events across the country, including the current annual extravaganza at the New York Botanical Garden.

Finding a beautiful, nearly deserted beach in Hawaii isn't a tropical fantasy. You just might have to make a long, sometimes bumpy ride or a bit of a hike. But if you long to be alone, buy a good map and head for these places where you can still get lost in paradise. _ Kauai: Polihale Beach. A well-developed dirt road takes you the last part of the drive to the longest beach in the islands, so it's best to rent a Jeep or SUV - something with a little ground clearance. Officially, most rental-car companies say that the beach is off-limits - meaning if you get stuck, you are on your own getting out. But in more than a decade of visiting the beach, I've never had a problem with the road if I had the right kind of vehicle.

When Larry Wallace moved to Woolwich seven years ago, he was drawn by the Gloucester County township's rural character, reasonably priced housing, good schools, and low crime. His property tax was about $5,500. Since then, much has changed. "It's been a paradise for a lot of people. Now it's a tax nightmare," said Wallace, a county freeholder. Woolwich - the fastest-growing town in New Jersey's fastest-growing county, according to U.S. Census data released last week - has gradually increased its levy to provide services to its ballooning population.

What gardener doesn't feel cheated by the aestas horribilis - horrible summer - of 2010? Historic heat, mosquitoes and pestilence, no rain, so much horribilis -ness, we leap into fall with eager hearts. Mary Costello, co-owner with Peter Smith of City Planter, a garden shop on Fourth Street in Northern Liberties, says she senses a pent-up demand out there. "We were dead all summer. It was just so hot, nobody spent time on their deck," she says, "but everybody's back out now. " Back out and ready to rip out the potted summer stuff looking so spent and replace it with lively, interesting plants for fall.

Down in the barn of many beams, where Milo and Wilma grunt in pig heaven, where Lemon the hen comes clucking for grain and Louie Vuitton the show horse snorts steam into the winter air, a sign hangs from a peg: "Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of God. " Emerson would like it here on Joel and Mindy Chernoff's farm near Newtown Square. Be still, and you'll hear rustlings, manger sounds, stirrings. The Chernoffs bought these eight Delaware County acres in 2006 but stayed in their Havertown subdivision for two years while renovating the 40-year-old house and raising the barn.