Society

NEW YORK - So I crash a Rob McCord fundraiser at the swanky Four Seasons, on 57th off Park Avenue, and I'm chatting with Kathleen Kane when in walks Tom Wolf. Not the white-suited uber-author of The Right Stuff , The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full . That Wolfe has an "e" on his name. This is the York biz-guy and former Ed Rendell revenue secretary about whom I wrote, when he talked of running to succeed Rendell, that he (Wolf) was "too smart to be governor of Pennsylvania.

A prank call that may have led to the death of a British nurse has struck a chord with Americans just as guilty of laughing at TV and radio jokes that have come close to prompting tragic, if not fatal, responses. The prank call remains a staple of a number of U.S. syndicated radio programs, including the Tom Joyner Morning Show and the Steve Harvey Show , with a cast member calling a listener, pretending to be someone else, and then goading the unsuspecting victim into an irate response.

As you wake up this morning and open your Sunday paper - or, more likely, check your mobile phone for news updates - rest assured that your city is in good hands. One hundred miles up the turnpike, your elected officials, business leaders, lobbyists, enablers, and media mavens are waking, bleary-eyed, after the weekend party-a-thon that is Pennsylvania Society. It's been going on since 1899, this swanky soiree of our state's power elite, in which the same few hundred usual suspects shuttle from one Waldorf-Astoria ballroom to another, from the Cozen O'Connor to the Duane Morris parties.

NEW YORK - Some travel to the annual Pennsylvania Society event to test the waters for political campaigns, and some to seal deals or buttonhole lawmakers. Gov. Corbett came this year - midway through his first term - to assert himself as the state's de facto leader and position himself for a second term in 2014. Speaking to several hundred people, mostly business leaders, in the ornate ballroom of the historic Metropolitan Club on the Upper East Side, Corbett said he would soon present long-awaited plans to deal with pension costs, liquor-store privatization, and the state's transportation system.

NEW YORK - Some travel to the annual Pennsylvania Society event to test the waters for political campaigns, some come to seal deals or buttonhole lawmakers. Gov. Corbett came this year - midway through his first term - to establish himself as the de facto leader of the state and position himself for a second term in 2014. Speaking to 500 people - most of them business leaders - in the ornate ballroom of the historic Metropolitan Club on the upper east side, Corbett said he would soon present long-awaited plans to deal with pension costs, liquor privatization and overhauling the state's transportation system.

HARRISBURG - Publicly, they may be clinking glasses, breaking bread, and swapping political gossip. But make no mistake. Behind the social niceties will be relentless political maneuvering on what nearly everyone in Pennsylvania politics has been talking about since last month's election: who will challenge Gov. Corbett in 2014. That will be the scene this weekend at the Pennsylvania Society's annual gathering of Pennsylvania politicians in New York City. Yes, there will be a smattering of government-like forums, but mostly it will be a time of back-slapping, networking, fund-raising, and, of course, wining and dining.

Would the symphony orchestra be better off if it somehow could be sequestered from such outside concerns as politics and money - the greatest idealization of humanity cut off from humanity itself? Such compartmentalization was not possible for Arturo Toscanini. On the day Hitler's troops entered Vienna in 1938, the great Italian conductor stormed out of rehearsal with his NBC Symphony and into his dressing room. "There he barred the door to his family and friends," according to a story retold in Cesare Civetta's recently released The Real Toscanini: Musicians Reveal the Maestro (Amadeus Press)

THE UNTOLD story of 2012 is how "not" became the new relationship normal - not married, not a parent, not a close friend, not a loyal customer, not a committed employee, not a Democrat nor a Republican, not affiliated with organized religion. This flight from relationship flies in the face of a society that says individual relationships matter most and where many organizations attempt to brand themselves as relationship-focused. We speak in the poetry of relationships - home, family, friends, community, colleagues, customers, fellow citizens and even brothers and sisters in faith, but we increasingly live in the prose of divorce, single-parent families, transient communities, alienated employees and customers, partisan political discourse and religious divisiveness.

Above all else, she makes a beautiful sound. Some singers are willing to forgo sound quality to put emotion behind a text. But in her Friday-night recital for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society at the Perelman Theater, mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink swathed story after story in an unfailingly civilized tone. Argentinean with Slovenian roots, Fink has the twin virtues of richness and clarity. Often it was impossible to separate her polish from that of her pianist, Anthony Spiri. In the fourth in a set of Schumann songs on texts by Nikolaus Lenau, "The Herdsgirl," Fink's sound was nearly indistinguishable from Spiri's right hand, so neatly matched were they in pitch and color.

ASSAULT CHARGES were filed Tuesday against a Westfield, N.J., man who allegedly participated in a brawl between two wedding parties at the Society Hill Sheraton this month. Meanwhile, the attorney representing the family of a man who died of a heart attack following the melee said he will investigate concerns that there was a defibrillator on site that didn't work and that the hotel may have irresponsibly served guests alcohol. Brian Lanza, 29, of Westfield, Union County, was one of two men originally issued a disorderly conduct citation following the early-morning fight Oct. 7 that was captured by a hotel guest on a video that has received more than 1 million views on YouTube.