Silence

In an annual rite known as Upfront Week, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, and the CW just presented their lineups for the 2012-13 TV season to advertisers in New York. The ceremonies took place in some of the city's most august concert Halls (Carnegie, Avery Fisher, Radio City Music) over four days. The broadcast companies introduced only 20 new series for the fall (down from 27 last season). NBC led the pack with six new shows. Fox and the CW had half that many. Like it or not, an awful lot of familiar faces will be returning in the fall.

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

So many parents and alumni of St. Denis Catholic School in Havertown supported merging with friendly CYO rival Annunciation B.V.M., the marriage should have gone off without a hitch. Instead, parishioners hoping to embrace the past and future in a name were told the regional school would honor the late Cardinal John Foley. The decision was, in their pastor's words, "nonnegotiable. " Children voted on a mascot, only to have their choices (Cardinals, Falcons, or Phoenixes)

WHEN THE Oscar nominations were released last week, the silence was deafening. Three actors were nominated for saying virtually nothing - two for the silent movie "The Artist," and Max Von Sydow, who was anything but extremely loud in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. " He plays a mute. Von Sydow was mum on the subject of his nomination, but issued a photostat of a handwritten note: "I don't know what to say. " Last year, everyone was talking about performers who didn't talk.

When it comes to Center City's proposed special services district, no news was definitely good news this week. On Monday the deadline passed for property owners to object to paying a 4.5 percent property tax surcharge to fund extra cleaning and security for the city's commercial core, and only a relative handful said no. That means that this crucial program has surmounted its major hurdle and now needs only final City Council approval, which we...

Michelle Francl is chairwoman of the Bryn Mawr College chemistry department 'I can't believe I sat through a three-hour movie without a sound track," a friend mused over a glass of wine. His wife had dragged him to see Into Great Silence, the movie about the lives of Carthusian monks. "It was oddly compelling, though," he said. That's when I admitted that I sometimes spent days in silence, and that it can be strangely irresistible. After a moment of (what else?) dead silence, someone blurted out: "You don't mean in a monastery, like those monks?

Led by their valedictorian, the 194 members of the senior class at Camden County Vocational-Technical School observed a moment of silence last night during the school's commencement exercises. The pause, which brought an automatic stillness to the crowd of several hundred, was called for by Loreli Liebermann shortly after she began to give her commencement address. It had been expressly forbidden by the vocational- technical school's Board of Education during a public meeting last month after Liebermann requested permission.

Mayor Street is calling on Philadelphians to leave their offices and homes on Sept. 11, join hands and observe a citywide moment of silence. The observance, to take place at 10 a.m., will follow a memorial march organized by firefighters and police. "After Sept. 11, you saw total strangers on the street saying hello, holding doors for people," said Frank Keel, Street's spokesman. "The mayor's feeling was maybe if some of that spirit of brotherhood has subsided over the past year, maybe this kind of citywide bonding in silence and remembrance can rekindle some of that sense of goodwill and brotherhood.

Andy Rooney's July 22 Op-ed Page column "Street musicians are not music to his ears" hit home. Once a street musician, I played the horn with classmates in front of Woolworths on Chestnut Street, near Broad Street. We were students of the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, and we needed the extra money. At $10 each per hour, I couldn't think of a better way to spend my free class periods. But today, after seven years of studying to be a priest, I find that silence is a friend I see too seldom.

WHY COULDN'T Page 1 Sexy Single Nefertiti Jaquez (as beautiful as she is) list an e-mail address like everyone else did? Not even an account set up just to see the public reaction? You are a truly blessed, gorgeous woman. But you're shedding light as to why you may still be single! Ken Belneau, Philadelphia

IN A CITY where justice frequently is thwarted by a no-snitching culture, Rodney Ramseur did what others are too scared or too heartless to do: He spoke up and told what he allegedly saw, fingering a former friend at a court hearing last week as the gunman who shot a neighbor in 2010. But Monday night, someone gunned down Ramseur and his girlfriend as they sat in a springtime drizzle on the porch of his Olney home. Now, police are probing whether a retaliation-minded murderer targeted Ramseur for his role in helping authorities prosecute the neighbor's slaying.

JOE JOHNSON was exhausted by the time the Hawks and Utah Jazz had dragged each other into a fourth overtime - in Atlanta's third game in 3 nights, no less. "It was unbelievable," he said. "I just had to laugh it off. I've never played in a game like that. " Johnson scored 37 points, Josh Smith added 22 and the Hawks ended Utah's six-game winning streak with a 139-133 victory Sunday night in the NBA's first quadruple-overtime game since 1997. The four overtimes tied for the third-longest game in NBA history.

Sidney Crosby was booed before he even touched the puck Sunday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center. His absence on the score sheet, though, coupled with the final score, gave Flyers fans plenty of reason to cheer. Sunday marked just the 10th time in 48 games - regular season and playoffs - that the Flyers held Crosby without a point. Crosby was a minus-1 with seven attempts at the net and no hits in 17 minutes, 37 seconds of ice time in his third game back since suffering a concussion/neck injury Dec. 5. Crosby entered the game with 26 goals and 36 assists for 62 points in 36 career regular-season games against the Flyers.

Tammy Lerner grew up in a big, close-knit family in central Pennsylvania. Everyone lived near one another, celebrated holidays together, and respected the elders as the strong-willed heads of the extended household. When some family members heard allegations that young Tammy and a couple of cousins were being sexually abused by two of their uncles, they protected their kin. The accused abusers, that is. "My story is not exceptional," said Lerner, now 41 and vice president of the Bryn Mawr-based Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse.

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan - For Toshiko Murakami, 70, memories of the terrifying earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of her seaside town and swept away her sister brought fresh tears Sunday, exactly a year after the disaster. "My sister is still missing, so I can't find peace within myself," she said before attending a ceremony in a tent in Rikuzentakata marking the anniversary of the March 11, 2011, disaster that killed more than 19,000 people and unleashed the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

Aaron Bradley got to sing his favorite song at his own funeral Saturday, and when they played the tenor's recording of "Defying Gravity," it brought nearly everyone in the First Presbyterian Church of Moorestown to tears. Afterward, the singing went on for hours at a reception with an assist from a Rutgers-Camden choir and impromptu karaoke from everyone else. For Trish and Andrew Maunder, who had given Bradley a home in 2004 and were making plans to adopt him, the celebration felt just right.

During the recent NJSIAA basketball and wrestling tournaments, many of the athletes' performances spoke volumes. Yet some student athletes didn't do actual speaking after difficult losses, which at least in this quarter is reason for some concern. One of the most difficult things after losing an event that means so much, especially one that could signal the end of a high school career, is standing up and discussing the details. That doesn't mean it should be ignored. This is not to point fingers at anybody who specifically declined to be interviewed.

For anyone in need of an intense, quick shot of affordable quiet, these are some options near and far. Green Gulch Farm, Muir Beach, Calif. Part of the San Francisco Zen Center, Green Gulch Farm is a retreat center in Marin County, close to Muir Beach, offering Thursday-through-Sunday retreats at $60 per day, including meals and tax. The focus is Zen meditation and service (as in chores). 415-383-3134; sfzc.org/ggf . Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, Wis. The focus is on women and ecological justice, all denominations welcome.

ED RENDELL'S vow of silence was officially laid to rest yesterday. It lasted about as long as most people expected. The former governor, who told the Daily News on Saturday that he would no longer talk publicly about his pursuit of Philadelphia Media Network, discussed the topic at length with Buzz Bissinger on WPHT (1210-AM). Rendell told Bissinger, who was guest-hosting "The Michael Smerconish Show" on WPHT yesterday afternoon, that his investor group - which includes powerful New Jersey Democrat George Norcross and businessman Lew Katz - would be "willing to do something" to convince reporters and readers that it wouldn't meddle with stories in the Daily News , Inquirer , Philly.com and SportsWeek , which are owned by PMN. "I'd be open to ideas, and so would the group," said Rendell, adding that he'd probably be chairman of the board if his group took ownership.

The Nutter administration loves to plan stuff. It has probably turned out more master plans in the last four years than the previous two administrations combined. And yet there's one part of the city that it has steadfastly refused to discuss: the I-95 corridor. Vastly overbuilt in the mid-'60s, the 10-lane superhighway cut off the city's - no, make that America's - most historic neighborhoods from the Delaware waterfront. The broad canyon is a key reason that Penn's Landing, and hundreds of acres along the river, remain undeveloped today.