Small World

If you can't stop the world, can you at least slow it down? Because lately it's wobbling way out of orbit. This week, Gwyneth Paltrow was anointed "The World's Most Beautiful Woman" by the ultimate arbiter of pulchritude, People magazine. What am I missing here? Not just beautiful, the most beautiful. In the world. I haven't been this shocked since Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Paltrow's appearance might best be described as "fairly pleasant.

It is 250 miles from Nashville to Memphis. There's not much to look at these days along Tennessee's bland but rolling spine - the usual strip development, small towns, the occasional mansion, scrub pine and oak, old farm and cotton land. But for writer Peter Taylor, who grew up in Tennessee, as his father and mother did, and their fathers and mothers before them, and on and on into the far American past, those two cities and the 250 miles in between represent a universe.

With a pyramid of cigarette butts in the ashtray attesting to his concentration, Bill Gillespie slowly rolled the boxcar along the two-foot section of rail. Not quite satisfied, he did it again, as a colleague watched with the look of an expectant father. "There are certain regulations that the cars have to pass for coupler heights, weight and wheels," said Ernie Brouse, smiling as Gillespie nodded in approval and exchanged the boxcar for a tanker. "The stuff you buy on the shelf is too light.

When Beth Krush drinks coffee, she sweetens her cup with half a packet of Sweet 'N Low; the other half is for Joe, her husband of 46 years, who patiently waits his turn. When one talks, the other listens - head slightly cocked, totally engrossed - before swooping down, in midsentence, to carry on the tale of their lives together. In this long, productive marriage, the meeting of like minds has spawned a single vision that extends far beyond the pleasures of home and family life on the Main Line.

It's a small world after all, as Thomas Guenther brings the German craft of miniature Hummel figurines to Bucks County. Guenther - a master painter for Goebel West Germany, the only manufacturer of the porcelain figurines - visited Yeagle's Potpourri in Lahaska on Sunday during his first trip to the United States. Collectors pay hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands, for the pieces, which are based on the drawings and paintings of Maria Innocentia Hummel, a Bavarian nun who sold her works to the Goebel company more than 50 years ago.

It's hard to tell yet how this piece of information fits into the U.S.-Israeli-Iranian-contras jigsaw puzzle, but: On Dec. 12, 1982, the Madrid daily El Pais reported the surprise appearance in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, of Ariel Sharon, then the minister of defense for Israel. It closely followed President Reagan's arrival, also in Tegucigalpa, on Dec. 4, 1982. My goodness, it's a small world indeed! Maybe in the not-too-distant future we'll be calling this little prelude to the current arms scandal "Tegucigalpagate.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Here's more proof that baseball is a small, small world: Rays manager Joe Maddon and Phillies director of travel and clubhouse services Frank Coppenbarger were together at Salinas, a low-level Angels farm team in the Class A California League, in 1978. Maddon was the catcher. Coppenbarger was the clubhouse manager. Maddon has gone on to become the clear favorite to be voted the American League Manager of the Year. But Coppenbarger can always brag that he batted in the prestigious third spot in one game while Maddon hit eighth.

The view from behind the sizzling grill at Pat's King of Steaks isn't much to speak of. But it does provide a good sight line of the mural above the empty lot across South Ninth Street - the one with the likenesses of Fabian, Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and other native pop stars. Josh Colon has spent nearly a decade working at the South Philadelphia cheesesteak mecca, developing mad spatula skills while asking customers, "You want that wid? Or widout?" Now he's ready to try life on the other side of the Plexiglas, to maybe etch his own face on the musical Wall of Fame.

If you can't stop the world, can you at least slow it down? Because lately it's wobbling way out of orbit. This week, Gwyneth Paltrow was anointed "The World's Most Beautiful Woman" by the ultimate arbiter of pulchritude, People magazine. What am I missing here? Not just beautiful, the most beautiful. In the world. I haven't been this shocked since Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Paltrow's appearance might best be described as "fairly pleasant.

ARIES (March 21-April 19) If you request things repeatedly, you'll sound like a nag, and you'll be tuned out. So instead, you'll take matters into your own hands. TAURUS (April 20-May 20) The task you've been dreading won't be so bad. Today's high energy level will make it much easier. GEMINI (May 21-June 21) You're a social person, but crowds can still cause you stress, especially when you have to keep track of someone or stick with a group. CANCER (June 22-July 22) Does acting "as if" something is true really make it so?

The New Jersey Democrat was playing the role of a Pennsylvania Republican, Rick Santorum, when he went for the jugular in a mock debate with Democrat Bob Casey in 2006. "You know, let me tell you something, Bob," Rep. Rob Andrews (D., N.J.) remembers saying. "The only thing I'm grateful for you after I hear you misrepresent your record is that your father is not here to hear it. " The issue was abortion. Andrews knew that both Casey and then-Sen. Santorum opposed abortion, and that the subject was sure to surface in the coming televised debate.

Grace Hall is the big favorite in the Grade II Delaware Oaks at Delaware Park on Saturday. The mile-and-a-sixteenth, $400,000 filly classic has attracted a field of seven. In her most recent race, the locally based daughter of Empire Maker, who broke her maiden at Delaware Park in her career debut July 11, 2011, finished third in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 4. The winner of the Kentucky Oaks, Believe You Can, and the second-place finisher, Broadway's Alibi, also broke their maidens at Delaware Park in 2011.

A few months ago, my cousin Nanci's friends threw her an early 50th birthday bash.   Just 160 of her closest buds. In the photos, she is beaming. She's lost some weight. Her hair is cropped short. Her makeup is perfect. You hardly notice the wheelchair. The music, the food, the decorations, everything was just the way she had wanted it, because Nanci really knew how to whoop it up. In her 20s, she threw a toga party in her backyard and asked her father, Herb, to judge the costumes.

Artist Daniel Anthonisen lives in a rustic carriage house in Point Pleasant, Bucks County, that basically consists of one room and a loft. For Anthonisen, 41, it's a perfect fit. His tiny carriage house sits next to a historic home that dates to 1794 on the expansive property of architect Alan Ritchie and his wife, Rosa, an interior designer. Ritchie is a partner in the New York architectural firm of Johnson-Ritchie, which has designed buildings including Trump International, the Chrysler Center, and locally, the Business Center at Drexel University.

The view from behind the sizzling grill at Pat's King of Steaks isn't much to speak of. But it does provide a good sight line of the mural above the empty lot across South Ninth Street - the one with the likenesses of Fabian, Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, and other native pop stars. Josh Colon has spent nearly a decade working at the South Philadelphia cheesesteak mecca, developing mad spatula skills while asking customers, "You want that wid? Or widout?" Now he's ready to try life on the other side of the Plexiglas, to maybe etch his own face on the musical Wall of Fame.

- Larry Brown , Jan. 17, 2005 NEW YORK - Larry Brown knew Gerald Henderson before that, of course, before the kid played for the Episcopal Academy team that Brown always said he wanted to coach as his retirement job. Brown's is a big world but basketball is a small world, and, well, you know.   "I've known him ever since I was in middle school, being in Philadelphia," Henderson said last night, the night when Brown's Charlotte Bobcats drafted him with the 12th pick of the first round of the NBA draft.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Here's more proof that baseball is a small, small world: Rays manager Joe Maddon and Phillies director of travel and clubhouse services Frank Coppenbarger were together at Salinas, a low-level Angels farm team in the Class A California League, in 1978. Maddon was the catcher. Coppenbarger was the clubhouse manager. Maddon has gone on to become the clear favorite to be voted the American League Manager of the Year. But Coppenbarger can always brag that he batted in the prestigious third spot in one game while Maddon hit eighth.

When the world unites, there's more to ponder than stoppage time: The Berlin ball mainly separates different degrees of stupidity. Two young men - let's call them Dumb and Dumber - suffered slight foot injuries after kicking concrete-filled balls chained to lamp posts and trees in Berlin. The words "Can u kick it" were sprayed in pink paint close to each of the balls, at least six of which were left in the streets. Police arrested two unidentified men, ages 26 and 29, who apparently had a workshop to produce the German version of "Punk'd.