Society

WHAT WOULD you say if I told you that you could profoundly cut your risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer? Significantly decrease your risk for Alzheimer's disease, too? And, better yet, that you could do all this without spending a single dime? Impossible, right? Wrong. All that and more may be possible simply by following the sage advice of Dr. Michael Mosley, a British medical journalist and co-author of The FastDiet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting . The "Fast Diet" is all the rage in Britain and could take flight here as well.

THE FACT that Lynn Cheney and the right-wing pundits pounced on John Kerry for mentioning the vice president's daughter is indicative of how far they had to stretch in order to find fault with Kerry at the debate. If this is the worst thing that they could come up with, they are clearly grasping at straws. The entire ordeal could have been avoided if George Bush wasn't in favor of incorporating discrimination into the Constitution. It is unconscionable that Mr. Cheney is not willing to stand up to ensure that his own daughter is assured the same rights that he enjoys.

Mary-Virginia Allen Geyelin, 95, of Villanova, a society writer for the Evening Bulletin and a travel agent, died Tuesday at her home. Mrs. Geyelin was born into the society she chronicled. She graduated from Agnes Irwin School in 1924, and that year made her debut at a tea in her home in Rittenhouse Square and at a dance given by her parents at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. A lifelong tennis player, she won the women's doubles tennis championship at the Penn Athletic Club in 1931 and also won tennis tournaments at Mount Desert Island in Maine, where her family summered every year.

Cliff Hall, a noted society entertainer and bandleader whose career was cut short two decades ago by a stroke, died yesterday. He was 77 and lived in Lake Worth, Fla. The Cliff Hall Orchestra, which still performs around the country, came under the direction of Hall's close friend and associate, Neal Smith, when Hall suffered a stroke 22 years ago at the height of his popularity. Smith, whose orchestra played for parties at the past Presidential Inaugural, said: "Three or four of us owe our whole musical careers to him. He did so much for us. He was the greatest entertainer.

The text of this document is unavailable. Please refer to the microfilm for Thursday, April 28, 1994.

White House chief of staff Howard H. Baker Jr. was caught ruminating recently on the general drift of American idealism, or more accurately, the lack thereof. He saw a "bland society" out there, a "passive, comfortable" society where "materialism is a palliative" and patriotism and values are passe. In a way, his remarks provided a nice backdrop for another unburdening: the commencement address to Ohio State University law graduates by William J. Brennan Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court's senior justice.

Socialization is the process whereby an individual is inculcated with the values of his society. It begins the second a baby peeks from out of his mother's womb. Socialization is the process whereby an individual learns right and wrong, as his society defines it; the standards of success in his society and how he can achieve them; his obligations as a citizen. Socialization is accomplished through participation in family and neighborhood. It is accomplished through participation in religious, educational and political institutions.

A federal judge in Washington had no hesitation last week in ordering the Justice Department to reveal the names of almost 1,200 people it jailed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Secret arrests are 'a concept odious to a democratic society,' and profoundly antithetical to the bedrock values that characterize a free and open one such as ours," said U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, quoting an earlier ruling in her own decision. . . . The [U.S. State Department] continues to insist . . . that secrecy was necessary to keep information from Osama bin Laden and other terrorists still at large.

The Delaware County Historical Society has concluded its long search for a permanent home with the purchase yesterday of a second facility, a three-story former downtown bank building. The building will be used as a museum, research center, archive and document reproduction center, and as the site for many of the society's youth-education programs. The 21,000-square-foot building most recently was used for offices and as a check-cashing center. Before that, it housed the Delaware County National Bank and that bank's successors.

Ruth Jones of Thorndale remembers when trains rumbled through Caln Township and stopped at the tidy cream-and-brown freight station off Route 30 in Thorndale. The trains took on coal for their steam engines and, in later years, the station was the place where farmers from the surrounding area loaded their cattle on special freight cars. The station was demolished about 1942. And for many years it seemed as though it was only longtime residents such as Jones who could bring it back, at least in memory.

If ever our town could pull together enough ambition to stage a string-quartet festival, it would be like striking a vein of artistic gold. Were any presenter visionary enough to host visits from the world's most charismatic pianists, aficionados would rush in. And if you blended these prospects - along with a singer or two - into a single series, what you would have is the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, which, clocking an impressive one score...

David Harwitz, the Society Hill psychiatrist who provided first aid to the pharmacist wounded in a shooting Monday night, went to visit his impromptu patient Tuesday at the hospital. The 35-year-old victim was "very poised, very pleasant" as he received visitors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, said Harwitz, 47, medical director for a children's behavioral health program in Camden. Harwitz described the pharmacist, whose name is being withheld by The Inquirer, as a well-liked fixture in the community.

A neighborhood pharmacist was critically wounded in a shooting during a possible robbery Monday night in the city's Society Hill section, police said. Police said the shooting occurred about 9:50 p.m. on Lawrence Street north of Pine Street. The victim was transported by police to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. A resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, Rob, said he heard yelling outside his house and then a loud pop. He looked outside and saw "the victim was lying flat" on the ground and a man in a hoodie was running north on Lawrence toward Spruce Street.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is accepting nominations for its second annual History in Pennsylvania awards. The awards honor volunteer-run small and mid-sized history and heritage organizations in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties and seek to foster community interest in history. In October the honorees included the Wharton Esherick Museum , the Concord Township Historical Society , Friends of the Japanese House and Garden, and Bartram's Garden for its community farm and food resource center.

WHENEVER the death penalty is debated, you are sure to hear opponents talking about the horrible possibility of an innocent person being killed. While I'd quibble with their numbers (there have been relatively few documented instances of wrongful executions), I'd agree that there is nothing more horrific, unjust or inhuman than a guiltless individual being forced to have his life taken from him. That reason alone should motivate each state legislature to seek a moratorium where it appears that the system doesn't afford the necessary levels of due process and equal access to competent legal representation.

They packed it all up - the wagon wheels and stagecoaches, the carriages and cars, the big-box stores that sell everything from kitchenware to computers. Not the actual items, of course. The images and memories and records, loaded into 600 boxes and trucked out of Jenkintown to spacious new quarters in Abington. The Old York Road Historical Society has a new home, taking over the second floor of Alverthorpe Manor, the mansion built by a Sears heir. As part of the move, the society that for more than 75 years has studied one of the region's major suburban arteries is expanding its outreach to offer greater, more comfortable access to researchers, scholars, genealogists - and even news reporters.

It took Alicia Keys 2 minutes, 36 seconds to butcher the national anthem before the Super Bowl. There are farmers who can butcher a hog in 2 minutes, 36 seconds and have time left over to set six strips of bacon sizzling in the skillet. If you bet "over" 2:05, you won from here to New Orleans. There's a sucker born in America every 24 seconds. A proposition bet on the length of the anthem is all the evidence you need. You want a second opinion? Take the prop on how many total hats the Harbaugh brothers would wear on the sidelines, none, one, two?

Whether a recitalist, concerto soloist, or member of the Johannes Quartet, violinist Soovin Kim has been one of Philadelphia's more consistent and welcome classical music guests for at least 15 years. But in his recital Wednesday with pianist Natalie Zhu, familiarity hardly meant you knew what he'd do next. The unforced gentility of his playing, prompting comparisons with Arthur Grumiaux in years past, was apparent in the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital at the American Philosophical Society - though not in Ravel's usually charming, suave Violin Sonata . That was reimagined as a semi-modernist companion to Webern.

IN NEED of a quiet afternoon? Call a bunch of City Council members and say you want to chitchat about ethics. Mention Council Majority Whip Blondell Reynolds Brown, who was recently fined for lying about how she spent campaign funds. Other than the sound of circling wagons, you'll get mostly nada. In their defense, a few might have been busy trying to figure out the answers to my questions about Council's dormant Ethics Committee. Didn't know the Council had one? Don't feel bad. A few members weren't even sure they served on it. Umm. No?

Kim Sajet, president and chief executive of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania since 2007, has been tapped to be director of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the society announced Tuesday. The Australian-born Sajet, 47, who came to the historical society from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she was a vice president, will become the sixth director of the gallery, established by Congress in 1962 as a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. "I'm really excited," she said in an interview.