Sheep

It is a commonly acknowledged truth that in the summertime in the suburbs, no lawn ornament is safe. Still, even by the bemused standards of local police - who have grown accustomed to irate residents hastily filing reports - the heist pulled off a few weeks ago by graduating students at Clearview Regional High School in Mullica Hill was a big one. The suspected culprits, who police believe were graduating seniors, crept through at least...

Some folks suffer from post-holiday depression, but I'm not one of them. I like the quiet of January; it's the holidays that stress me out. Don't get me wrong. I love the joy of Christmas. But with its growing commercialism and the morphing of December into one meaningless "holiday season," that joy becomes harder to find each year. This year, joy has been especially elusive. First, my daughter broke her finger. She'd finally made the A team in basketball, but she broke her finger the night before her first game.

Editor's note: We recently asked our readers to try to explain the disconnect between Philadelphians and the folks who represent them in Harrisburg. This is the only letter we got. Enough said. PHILADELPHIANS suffer from resignation and cynicism caused by what seems to be a government that is no longer of, by and for the people - it seems to be of, by and for the money. Or maybe it's a goverment of special interest groups, cliques that require extreme attitudes to belong. Since Philadelphians don't have extreme attitudes (unless you're talking sports or unions)

One of three dogs, believed to be family pets and responsible for a series of attacks on sheep and other livestock in Montgomery County since February, was shot and killed early yesterday by a Plymouth Township shepherd during another attack there. Since February, the dogs have been responsible for the deaths of 14 sheep, the mauling of 75 others and the killing of more than a dozen chickens in five attacks, according to police. All the attacks occurred at night in Plymouth and Whitemarsh Townships.

Sheep rustlers are back again. Ornamental lawn sheep rustlers, that is. They hit the area last week, rounding up six in Upper Gwynedd Township and three in Towamencin Township. Those fuzzy creatures with wooden legs planted in manicured turf have cropped up on suburban lawns in the last two years and along with them have come the rustlers, mostly youths playing pranks, police said. "The last time sheep were rustled in the area they turned up in a herd on the Lansdale Borough Hall lawn," said an Upper Gwynedd police dispatcher.

The East Nantmeal Board of Supervisors had mostly light housekeeping on its agenda Thursday. So it had time to talk of sheep and sweet water. The sheep came up because former Upper Merion High School teacher Wesley Sessa, who now restores old buildings and grows grapes on his farm, built a sheep shed on his property. The question before board members was whether he should have been required to have a building permit for the 18-by-25-foot structure, which he said was only temporary.

Kim Lambert took her livestock project for last week's Gloucester County 4- H Fair and turned it into something warm to wear. The 16-year-old Mantua Township resident and her family breed Corriedale and Lincoln sheep on their farm. Last summer, Kim's mother bought a loom, and together they learned the art of weaving. For her 4-H project this year, Kim raised some of the sheep herself, sheared them, washed the wool, carded it, spun the fiber into yarn, and then wove it into a scarf.

Sweetgrass, a meditative and intensely beautiful documentary about the last sheep run in Big Timber, Mont., isn't just about the passing of a way of life. It's about the death of a particular sense of time: slow, profoundly observant, in tune with the larger cycles of nature. The movie begins with a single sheep in close-up and by the end holds the curve of the entire planet in its serenely uninflected lens. If you're used to the ADD pace of modern filmmaking, Sweetgrass will probably drive you crazy.

On the shores of Bala Lake, in the grassy field beyond Anthony Pugh's 16th- century stone farmhouse, grazed the radioactive sheep. They had come down from his High Hill Farm a few weeks earlier, 500 of them, living proof of the lingering effects of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union almost two years ago. The British government says that sheep with such high readings cannot be slaughtered until their radiation levels drop...

THIS IS a letter to the people of Philadelphia who don't have power and feel at the mercy of those who do. Over the last few months, it's been impossible to avoid the drumbeat of fear over the millions of people losing jobs, of the largest U.S. companies possibly closing, of thousands of new applications for unemployment. Even if you haven't lost anything, or didn't have a lot to lose in the first place, you're probably worried, confused and hoping that the folks in charge come up with a really smart plan.

THEATER Fresh off a defining performance as Feste in Pig Iron Theatre's spectacular "Twelfth Night," Scott Greer heads to the reliably hilarious 1812 Productions, which kicks off its season with "Mistakes Were Made. " In a role originated last year by the wonderfully wacky Michael Shannon, Greer is Felix Artifex, an off-Broadway producer who is simultaneously trying to mount his first Broadway show (an epic about the French Revolution), reconcile with his estranged wife and avoid charges of foreign sheep-trafficking.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The flash-point Syrian city of Hama endured a fifth day under military siege Thursday, with a resident saying people were being "slaughtered like sheep" in the streets and families were burying their dead in home gardens or roadsides rather than risk a trip to a cemetery. Food supplies grew short and residents shared bread, while phones, electricity, and Internet were cut off or severely hampered. There was no official count of the dead. One resident said that about 250 people had been killed since Sunday.

Ralph Macchio , sore as a blister after being dismissed Tuesday night from Dancing With the Stars , is talking smack about the DWTS judges. The TV audience hardly had time to make it to the refrigerator before the Karate Kid star was complaining about "rude and disrespectful" comments from Carrie Ann Inaba , Len Goodman , and Bruno Tonioli about Monday's performance. Tonioli was even bleeped. Macchio, 49, and partner Karina Smirnoff got the lowest scores of the night.

LUBBOCK, Texas - In his 33 years raising sheep in West Texas, Glen Fisher has never seen it so good. U.S. consumer demand is up, imports are down, and prices have soared. "You have almost what you can call a perfect storm," said Fisher, 64, who has about 3,100 animals on his acreage near Sonora. "The great part is we have record prices for lambs - the highest ever by a whole lot. " Last year's May delivery of lamb fetched about $1.39 a pound; this year, the price is about $2.20 a pound, said Fisher, the immediate past president of American Sheep Industry Association.

MONTE LEON NATIONAL PARK, Argentina - The sign at the start of the trail was a little disconcerting: If you see a puma, don't run. Maintain eye contact, shout loudly, raise your jacket over your head, and tell a park ranger. It seemed like a lot to remember should a hungry cat come loping down from the sandy hills. Would I unzip my jacket in time? What if I forgot to make eye contact? Fortunately for visitors meandering down along this patch of the Patagonian coastline in southern Argentina, the pumas are interested in a different type of biped - namely the black-and-white waddling kind.

A perfect storm (although perfect is definitely the wrong word) of potty jokes, sex jokes, breast-implant jokes, bratty-kid jokes, and sheep-CPR jokes, Just Go With It stars Adam Sandler as a Beverly Hills lothario who pretends to be married - unhappily - thereby winning the sympathy and physical consolation of attractive women he meets in bars. But there's more to it than that. To wit, Nicole Kidman, who bursts on the scene, giddily camping it up in an extended cameo.

OGMORE BY THE SEA, Wales - So, how do you feel about sheep dung? Because that's basically the dilemma I had to deal with, on my way to St. Andrews, Scotland, for the 139th Open Championship. Actually, though, it wasn't really a problem. I was on the third leg of a four-stop golfing expedition through Wales. Hey, it can't be all work. The good folks from Wales convinced me that their country was worth the effort, especially for those who only associated it with Tom Jones and Ian Woosnam (I realize there's somebody else I'm forgetting)

Sweetgrass, a meditative and intensely beautiful documentary about the last sheep run in Big Timber, Mont., isn't just about the passing of a way of life. It's about the death of a particular sense of time: slow, profoundly observant, in tune with the larger cycles of nature. The movie begins with a single sheep in close-up and by the end holds the curve of the entire planet in its serenely uninflected lens. If you're used to the ADD pace of modern filmmaking, Sweetgrass will probably drive you crazy.

What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America? If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown - the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One. Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama's returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil, rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

THIS year, 45,000 Americans will die for lack of health care. Thousands are losing their benefits. But the clowns on Fox News and that drug addict on the radio, along with the sheep too lazy or too stupid to check out their lies, are doing everything they can to ensure things will only get worse. Robert Leonardo, Palmyra