Small World

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.

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.

A quarterback, a running back, even a linebacker, can be readily encircled in glowing statistics, numbers that make his worth obvious. But the Radnor Red Raiders have a player - Scott DiCarlo - who was a key to their stirring upset victory over Archbishop Carroll last week, and the only statistical thing you can say about him is that he recovered a fumble. "But he did a lot more than that," said DiCarlo's coach, George Hopson, talking about the 6-foot, 2-inch senior. "He's a great two-way player.

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.

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.

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.

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.

IN JULY, I traveled to Washington with a Sufi teacher from Pakistan. I have known him since December 2000, when he first suggested to some of us in Philadelphia that we might benefit from acknowledging and accepting that we live in one small world. We did not appreciate the import of his observations at that time. Back then, he said that what America does elsewhere in the world will ultimately affect us at home. He asked: "What are the consequences of the fact that 2 out of 6 billion people in the world are hungry?

The world was getting smaller each year, and not because of electronic technology or new jet routes. Eight years of serious health problems have increasingly tethered my body to bed and sofa, although my mind and spirit long for the larger world. How to travel when one's actual geographical range shrinks to a few miles, then to a few blocks and, many days, to just a few feet? I live in Collingswood, surrounded by wetlands and tributaries of the Delaware River. Since the illness, I have come to deeply appreciate our delicate local waterways.

How ironic that the term mickey mouse has come to mean "lacking importance; insignificant. " Its etymological source - Mickey with a capital M - is anything but. Last week's centennial of the birth of Walt Disney, creator of the world's best-known cartoon icon, reminds us how one man's idea can sire an empire. Love him or hate him, you cannot deny Walt Disney's remarkable and enduring influence on American business, culture and fun. Mr. Disney's extraordinary achievement began in animation - with Steamboat Willie in 1928.

If not for its high-cult pedigree - from a Henry James novel, adapted by the tony Merchant-Ivory team - The Golden Bowl would seem the stuff of raging soap opera. A wealthy widower dotes on his sheltered daughter, who is engaged to an impoverished aristocrat, who has had a passionate fling with the widower's daughter's closest friend, who winds up marrying her friend's moneyed father but still trembles at the sight of the man who is now her son-in-law. Of course, this four-cornered circus of passion, deceit, betrayal and regret is performed in grand English castles and palatial Italian villas, at opulent masked balls and in other rarefied precincts of swell society.

Jeff Brantley is in his 16th professional season, playing for his fourth different National League organization. In all that time, in all those travels, he's come to know hundreds of people. Managers. Coaches. Players. Trainers. Clubhouse people. Reporters. Baseball is a small world that way. As the Phillies have made their appointed rounds in the final weeks of this stillborn season, Brantley has had the opportunity to reacquaint himself with many of these folks. And many deliver the same message.