Relics

Touching, touching, reaching for the holiness. A white-haired woman pressed a bundle of holy objects to the Plexiglas that contained the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux. A curly haired boy flattened his palms against the glass. A man in a sport jacket held out a religious pamphlet, then knelt. A woman fanned a fistful of holy cards like a bridge hand and pushed them all forward. All day yesterday, they filed past the five-foot reliquary containing some bones of the much-venerated St. Therese, also known as Little Flower of Jesus, in a devotional at the Discalced Carmelite Monastery, 66th Avenue and Old York Road.

New Year's Day will provide a wide variety of traditional sales, highlighted by the sale of a major collection of American Indian stone relics. Blades, ax heads, drills, knives and points, as the tips of arrows and spears are called among collectors, will be offered at 1 p.m. Wednesday by the Conestoga Auction Co. near Manheim in Lancaster County. They range from a paleolithic point fragment to stone items that were still being used in the 1600s and 1700s when Europeans came to America, according to auctioneer Karl Boltz.

His Bible rests in a small display case now, its cover and pages dog-eared and brittle from age and constant use. Nearby is the large pine pulpit that he made by hand and his tapestry- covered stools, showing wear from knees bent there in prayer more than 150 years ago. Here are the simple belongings of a man of faith and courage: Richard Allen, who emerged from slavery in the 1700s to found a church and fight for civil rights. The artifacts are part of a little-known collection in the rebuilt museum bearing Allen's name in the basement of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 419 S. Sixth St. in Center City.

Vacationing four years ago with his parents, Josh Wright was a 13-year-old kid with a good book to read in the back seat of the family car. The book was nonfiction, about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and Wright, already interested in history, soon was engrossed. Although Wright couldn't have known it, the real story was that his new- found fascination would begin a new chapter in his own life. For the last 13 months, Wright, now 17, has run a Civil War relics business from his parents' home in West Chester, buying and selling such things as swords, pistols and uniforms.

It was creepy, and George M. Rees' 16-year-old daughter didn't like it. For years her father, an amateur relic hunter, had brought home stuff he dug up near the Antietam Civil War battlefield at Sharpsburg, Md.: Bullets, buttons, hunks of shrapnel - encrusted objects he had found in the dirt with his $450 metal detector. But this was different. This time he had brought a tiny crucifix and beads from a rosary, a religious medal, a rusted pocket knife and other things. They were a soldier's personal effects.

Birmingham Township's colonial history will be the subject of a $41,000 study. Surveys of buildings and artifacts, as well as a comprehensive account of the Battle of the Brandywine, are to be included in the study, authorized Monday by the Board of Supervisors. The study will be headed by Nancy Webster of Wallingford, an authority on the battle, with Martha Leigh Wolf of Birmingham, an architectural historian, and Betty Cousans-Zebooker of West Chester. All of the township south of Route 926 will be included in the study, which will be conducted through August 1989.

As Karl Van Florcke sees it, the discovery of the centuries-old relics in the Delaware River was meant to be. The captain of the Army Corps of Engineers dredge McFarland was working on the vessel last month when its pumps were turned off for the day - at the precise moment that a piece of the nation's history was vacuumed up with tons of muck and debris. Less than 24 hours after the crew finished shipping-channel maintenance near Fort Mifflin in South Philadelphia, Van Florcke glanced up at the dredge's nine-foot-wide drag head and spotted something lodged in its grate.

The relics are coming - with a millennium's worth of weird tales and religious controversy. The bones of the Little Flower - St. Therese of Lisieux in France - arrived on American soil yesterday and will be the object of public veneration in Philadelphia by this weekend. To Roman Catholics, these bits of bone and hair and fingernail are tangible proof that a saintly person walked this earth, a holy man or woman who could intercede with God on behalf of the devout. To many non-Catholics, relics represent a ghoulish, body-snatching aspect of a religion whose mysterious rites and symbols seem to recall more superstitious times.

From the outside, Jeffrey Norcross' white, two-story home looks like any other on the tree-lined Pennsauken street where he lives. But on the inside, the house resembles a museum. Old clay pipes from the Pine Barrens, bowls fashioned centuries ago by American Indians, fossilized sea urchins dug out of the South Jersey sand and other relics from across the country lie on dusty shelves in the densely packed basement and garage. And for every artifact Norcross has on display, hundreds more are carefully stowed away in crates.

Although the building that once housed Asbury Park's Palace Amusements is facing the wrecking ball, some of the things that made it fun remain, relics of a faded Shore town's golden age. The Palace's Ferris wheel, which popped out of the arcade's roof, and its carousel are in storage in Monmouth County, the property of William Sitar, an Iselin-based developer. Randy Senna, a Wildwood boardwalk-game operator who is an amusement-game designer and collector, owns truckloads of stuff from the Palace, from moving figures to bumper cars and even a popcorn machine and vacuum-tube-powered sound room equipment.

ATLANTIC CITY - Long before animal-rights activists recently poured cold water on plans to revive the diving horse spectacle on the Steel Pier, animal acts were huge crowd pleasers along the city's famous Boardwalk. Beginning in the vaudeville era, myriad wacky acts were showcased on the resort's various entertainment piers, including waterskiing dog Rex, a family of boxing kangaroos, and boxing cats. Kangaroos boxed kangaroos (and the occasional human pugilist) and cats tangled with cats, with the animals wearing boxing gloves.

A big sign off Route 73 in Winslow Township once directed music lovers into what seemed like just a wooded area with a few houses. But several blocks back, there was a seminal source of entertainment for mid-20th century African Americans, who often were excluded from mainstream events. "Back in those woods was my Daddy's Tippin Inn," said Helen Toomer Beverly, 76. "You turned off 73 and within a block, you could hear the music and smell my mother's fried chicken. Buses would come from Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

ZAGREB, Croatia - What becomes of a garden gnome hurled in fury at a windshield during a stormy breakup? Or a teddy bear that was once a Valentine's Day present? A wedding dress from a marriage gone awry? An ax that smashed through household furniture? All are on display at the Museum of Broken Relationships in the Croatian capital, each with a written testimony telling tales of passion, romance, and heartbreak. On Valentine's Day, visits to the museum almost double.

It has become the memorial day no one wanted to have, but no one can quite ignore. The 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks comes this weekend with a variety of commemorations - some small and quiet, others long and ongoing. The anniversary will be marked as a solemn occasion in many towns. At the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the emphasis is on the everyday and personal meanings of the attacks. Working with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center, which will open next year in New York City, the Penn Museum assembled items from the Twin Towers excavation.

YOU MIGHT THINK the hair and fingernail clippings stored neatly in Andy Kahan's filing cabinet would have withered to dust, given their biological origins. Or at least that they'd be burning bright with the fire of eternal damnation, considering their previous owners. Instead, they sit there, looking as worthless as something swept off the bathroom floor. But Kahan paid good money for them. Once attached to some of the world's most notorious killers, the clippings are a creepy collectible, part of a "murderabilia" market that has flourished online as the public's passion for all things true-crime has grown.

They come in marking moments with birthday cards, love letters, and wedding presents. They come for passport applications and money orders. They come to return unwanted items and pick up shiny new ones. And on ordinary days, customers come inside the Main Street post office in Manayunk to mail bills or buy stamps. In this hilly but walkable community, the tall redbrick building stands as an aging relic amid the bistros, coffee shops, and salons. Almost at odds with its trendy surroundings, it is now threatened with closure in the digital age. In the last five years, with the steady click of a mouse, U.S. mail volume has dropped 20 percent, or 43 billion items.

JERUSALEM - Israeli scholars have confirmed the authenticity of a 2,000-year-old burial box that appears to bear the name of a relative of the high priest Caiaphas who's mentioned in the New Testament, the Israel Antiquities Authority said yesterday. The find offers support for the existence of the biblical Caiaphas, who appears in the New Testament as an adversary of Jesus who played a key role in his crucifixion. The ossuary - a stone chest used to store bones - is decorated with the stylized shapes of flowers and bears an inscription with the name "Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri.

ASBURY PARK, N.J. - Mrs. Govett did not mince words on the report card of the second grader named Jack Nicholson at the Roosevelt Elementary School in Neptune. "Jack's work is excellent, but he needs more self control. " Is it any wonder that young Jack grew up to be the arguably still out-of-control actor whose work is nevertheless considered excellent? Nicholson's prescient and insightful report card - undated but presumably circa 1944, when he would have been 7 - is one of a handful of donated artifacts at the inaugural exhibition of the New Jersey Hall of Fame, which opened Wednesday on the boardwalk in Asbury Park.

Near the terminus of a dead-end road, on a bulblike hill in the midst of a grassy meadow, a group of Temple University archaeology students and volunteers is excavating what may be one of the most important African American historical sites in New Jersey. It's called Timbuctoo - a once-thriving enclave probably founded by free African Americans and escaped slaves in the 1820s, now abandoned, if not forgotten, for more than half a century. An entire village lies beneath the grassy hill near Rancocas Creek in Westampton Township outside Mount Holly - at least 18 houses, remains of a church, two roadways, an alley, a number of privies and wells, possibly schools, and large parts of a cemetery, where 13 graves of African American troops from the Civil War are marked by headstones - but where six times as many may lie in unmarked graves.

IF THERE were a political version of the popular game of Twister - the one that rewards the best contortionist - then Specter would be its all-time champ. In the end, it was "left foot, blue" that caused him to fall. En route to becoming the longest-serving U.S. senator in Pennsylvania history over three remarkable decades, Specter had to beat Philadelphia's Democratic machine by becoming a Republican, find new life after Watergate in the Reagan Revolution, infuriate conservatives with one Supreme Court vote and liberals with another, and overcome "The Year of the Woman.