Ruins

Like the coral with its branches in the water, I send out my senses in this living hour: the instant is fulfilled in a yellow harmony - oh, noon! wheat-ear heavy with minutes, cup of eternity! Hymn among the Ruins - Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

'Slow and steady wins the race. " - Aesop The temptation is natural: To run past the judges' stand and imagine being crowned with the olive wreath of victory as spectators (including, perhaps, Plato or Diogenes or Herodotus) roar their approval. Children readily succumb to the urge, crouching at the stone starting line and bolting down the track. Amid tumbled columns and roofless walls, in the ruins of the stadium where it all began, they are running literally in the footsteps of ancient Olympians.

KING OF THE WORLD: Don King, the garrulous boxing promoter, visited the ruins of the World Trade Center yesterday. The devastation did not leave him speechless. "America brought me down here today," King said from the perimeter of the wreckage, waving to passers-by. "There is a hue and a cry across America with unity, solidarity and togetherness . . . " Other celebrities who made an appearance at the ruins yesterday included Bette Midler and Candice Bergen. LATIN, THE DEAD LANGUAGE: First it was anti-Castro protesters.

During a recent trip to Europe, I was struck by the similarities between some great European cities and Philadelphia - MICHAEL LACING. In Rome, you see ruins of the once-great Roman dynasty. In Philadelphia, you see the ruins of other once-proud dynasties - the Phillies. the Sixers, the Flyers. London is the home of the Queen, a ruler with no real power. Philadelphia has Billy Meehan. London is enormous, 600 square miles. Philadelphia's much smaller, but has 600 potholes in just one square mile.

BAJA SITE PREDATES THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS It couldn't be right. Anthropologist Jerry Moore thought someone had goofed when he and his students discovered artifacts in Baja California dating to 5000 B.C. But the carbon-dating tests were on the money. The artifacts predated the pyramids of Egypt by 2,000 years. "I thought the oldest site was 2,000 to 3,000 years old," Moore said. "To find a site almost 6,000 years old was quite a surprise. " Moore, a professor at California State University at Dominguez Hills, and his students recently returned to Baja, where they mapped a village site and discovered a cave etched with lightning bolts, cactuses and what looks like a man astride a horse.

I have a fear of heights - a sometimes ridiculous, disabling fear of heights. I worry that any balcony could be my demise. Don't get me started on steps that have no risers to stop your foot. Or monkey bars: the inexplicable horror. So when I was plunked atop a Greek mountain, my traveling companions were lucky I didn't do my best impression of a Greek statue - dead pale and frozen. I was in Athens after two months in dark, dank England, so the sunny Mediterranean skies and 75-degree temperatures seemed like gifts from the gods.

Leslie Butler Sr. was devastated when he gazed at the charred ruins of his Empire Avenue house yesterday morning. Not only had he lost his home, but he also believed he would never see the $30,000 in cash, his life savings, that was in the building at the time of the fire. To the rescue came William Hargrove, owner of a Camden demolition and construction company. Shortly after 2 p.m., using a piece of excavating machinery with a claw, he dug out the money, along with a silver box containing bonds that belonged to Butler.

As a child growing up in the 1920s, Ed Walton played around the ruins of the old Comly mill next to his family farm in the Byberry section. The mill, barn and mill race that helped generate energy from the water stood next to Byberry Creek, a tributary of Poquessing Creek. "We just called it the mill property, and it was a fun place to play around at," Walton said. "The mill itself was still standing when I was growing up. "There was a barn and some ruins of a house, but the mill wasn't used for anything by then.

Akin stays in race as deadline passes JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Embattled GOP Rep. Todd Akin has made good on his promise to stay in Missouri's U.S. Senate race despite calls by top Republicans to quit after his comments about rape. The final deadline for candidates to remove their names from the Missouri ballot passed Tuesday as Akin began a statewide bus tour. Akin is trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin has repeatedly apologized since saying during a television interview in August that women's bodies have ways of averting pregnancy in cases of what he called "legitimate rape.

A South Philadelphia lot that formerly contained a hotel that declined into a brothel before falling into ruins was dedicated yesterday to a new purpose - a playground for children. Music mogul Kenny Gamble cut the ribbon on the state-of-the-art playground in the 1500 block of Catharine Street designed to serve the neighborhood and the 700 students of Gamble's Universal Institute Charter School. The facility will be called Uncle David's Universal Playground in honor of its patron, philanthropist David N. Pincus.