Summer Home

If people are inside Larry Korff's Shore house in Loveladies, N.J., he can "see" them on his video camera from 72 miles away. In early spring, his summer home will "tell" him by text when the plumber stops by to turn the water back on. And never mind those days of entering a stuffy, shuttered house on a Friday night during a heat wave in August. "I can put my air conditioner on two hours before I get down to my beach house, and it'll be very comfortable when I arrive," says the businessman, 61, who also has burglary and fire alarm systems in his Wynnewood home, as well as a programmable thermostat, and sensors on the sump pump and basement walls to detect flooding.

BEACH HAVEN WEST, N.J. - The full consequences of Hurricane Sandy will be played out in a thousand personal decisions, and for families like the Wosceks, owners of a tiny yellow bungalow on a lagoon, that meant one thing: For Sale. As Is. (Wrecked by Sandy.) And just like that, things will never be as they were for the Wosceks, undisturbed through 39 years, six boats, 40 weekends a year in Beach Haven West, kids crabbing off the dock. "Ugh, you have no idea," said Steven Woscek, 61, of Phillipsburg, N.J., whose getaway house at 35 Nancy Dr. now commands a Sandy-deflated asking price of $174,900.

This year, the Ocean City house that Evan Andrews' great-great-grandmother bought so many decades ago will turn 100. The "cottage," as it is affectionately known by the seven family members who own it and the countless others who spend summers here, has seven bedrooms, three baths, and the requisite rocking-chair porch. It has never been winterized, has neither air-conditioning nor dishwasher, but does have sleep porches where the smallest of the clan dream under the stars when the heat bears down.

Gov. Kean occasionally pops up on radio and television to say that when it comes to vacations, New Jersey and you are "perfect together. " But when it comes to his own time off, he appears to be saying, "I love New York. " Kean recently bought a summer home on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound. The governor paid $995,000 for the house and 10 acres on the exclusive, 9- mile-long hideaway. Why Fishers Island? "He's been going there for years and years and years, and his wife's family has gone there for years.

One look at the site of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) tells you it's worthy of a world-class orchestra. The place has presence - precisely what Philadelphia's benevolently planned but clumsily executed Mann Music Center doesn't have. You enter SPAC by foot or vehicle surrounded by the verdant lawns of historic bathhouses. The pine trees are luxuriant, sky-high. Like Tanglewood in the Berkshires, the entrance - placid, uplifting - is an ideal preparation for the reception of great music.

Exposure - or lack of it - is one of the main causes of simmering discontent among the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra's leaders have apparently given up on the idea of returning the group to national radio broadcasts, even though orchestras large and small have managed to maintain a presence on the airwaves. Recordings have become sporadic, as has national touring. Regionally, at least, the orchestra has maintained its profile with concerts in Washington, Carnegie Hall, and at its upstate New York home at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where it wraps up almost four weeks of concerts tomorrow night.

As mysterious as it is powerful, the cloud of adoration that follows Itzhak Perlman is like nothing else in classical music. The Philadelphia Orchestra picked Perlman Wednesday night to open its summer here at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center - the orchestra's 40th season at the sylvan center - and it proved a wise choice. The wicked storm earlier in the day hardly seemed to depress attendance, and even when the skies opened up again 15 minutes before the concert, drenching the picnickers on the lawn and threatening them with nearby lightning, the audience hung in. At the end of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Perlman got a chorus of shouts and whistles of the sort generally reserved only for safely returning astronauts and emerging rescued coal miners.

We haven't always owned a house at the beach. For a long time, we mostly talked about getting one. But six years ago, my husband and I had a conversation with my husband's brother Joe and his wife, Marybeth. Somehow we were able to agree that now was the time to look for a vacation home. We weren't committed - the plan was to see what was available. I volunteered to drive to Ocean City and meet with a Realtor on a summer Saturday. Tom had 10 houses picked out for me to see. I had my list of what we wanted and didn't want.

Six local historic homes will be on display during the second annual House Tour today. The tour, which begins at 1 p.m. and ends about 4 p.m., will feature two of the oldest homes in Laurel Springs. The summer home from 1876 to 1882 of poet Walt Whitman, at 315 E. Maple Ave., was built in 1785. At that time, the home was called the Stafford Farm House. The name has since been changed to the Whitman-Stafford House. The Lakeview Inn is also scheduled to be on the tour. At one time, this eight-bedroom home could accommodate 40 people and was rumored to be haunted by a kind spirit.

Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, said: When in doubt, tell the truth. Well, Sam, the truth is they never did get around to building that statue of Adam you wanted here in Elmira. That doesn't mean, however, that you are forgotten in these parts. Fact is, you probably would give a cynical snort of amusement upon learning that the Elmira area is now called "Mark Twain Country," and that they have slathered your two names all over this stretch of the Chemung River valley.

BEACH HAVEN WEST, N.J. - The full consequences of Hurricane Sandy will be played out in a thousand personal decisions, and for families like the Wosceks, owners of a tiny yellow bungalow on a lagoon, that meant one thing: For Sale. As Is. (Wrecked by Sandy.) And just like that, things will never be as they were for the Wosceks, undisturbed through 39 years, six boats, 40 weekends a year in Beach Haven West, kids crabbing off the dock. "Ugh, you have no idea," said Steven Woscek, 61, of Phillipsburg, N.J., whose getaway house at 35 Nancy Dr. now commands a Sandy-deflated asking price of $174,900.

If people are inside Larry Korff's Shore house in Loveladies, N.J., he can "see" them on his video camera from 72 miles away. In early spring, his summer home will "tell" him by text when the plumber stops by to turn the water back on. And never mind those days of entering a stuffy, shuttered house on a Friday night during a heat wave in August. "I can put my air conditioner on two hours before I get down to my beach house, and it'll be very comfortable when I arrive," says the businessman, 61, who also has burglary and fire alarm systems in his Wynnewood home, as well as a programmable thermostat, and sensors on the sump pump and basement walls to detect flooding.

Arthur "Rocco" Shore, 92, a restaurateur and businessman who operated a steak house in Center City and a chain of men's stores in Northeast Philadelphia, died Sunday, Dec. 9, at his home in Northfield, N.J. Mr. Shore operated Dave Shore's, a Jewish steak house, at Camac and Walnut Streets. It was named for his father, the co-owner, who started the business. The restaurant was launched in the 1930s at Fourth and Lombard Streets and moved to Camac Street a few years later, his daughter, Susan, said.

Ann Gimbel-Goff, 85, a "no nonsense" mother who raised six children and became a long-distance runner, died at Rydal Park in Jenkintown on Wednesday, Nov. 7, of complications from Parkinson's disease. She had fought the disease for the last 15 years of her life. Mrs. Gimbel-Goff was born in Abington Township in 1927, and was a great-granddaughter of Adam Gimbel, founder of Gimbel's department stores. She was the third of seven children, and was predeceased by a brother, Roger Gimbel, and sister Joyce Trifield.

Harrison Ford is gone. So, too, the Victoria's Secret models, and the $2.5 million emerald-and-ruby bra. They had supplied the summer's marquee moments at the Elkins Estate, a pair of storied Gilded Age mansions set on 42 verdant acres in Elkins Park. For two weeks, Ford strode through the manly paneled rooms of Chelten House for the movie Paranoia . Over at Elstowe Manor, models in filaments of lace and satin posed in the marble corridors for a Christmas catalog. In opulent spaces not occupied by production crews, newlyweds popped champagne at swank receptions.

Barbados-born singer Rihanna , smokin' hot from Thursday night's MTV Video Music Awards, brings her "Diamonds World Tour" to the Wells Fargo Center at 7:30 p.m. March 14. Tickets go on sale Saturday, so get 'em or get the heck out!!!! She was last at Wells Fargo in July 2011. Which of her accomplishments shall we list? Her Moonman award for vid of the year at the VMAs? Or "We Found Love," inescapable this summer, 10 weeks at No. 1? The thing she does most is shock. She's got this new tattoo of Isis , purportedly in honor of her grandma, Clara "Dolly" Braithwaite, who departed this vale on July 1. Where is this memorial tat?

ATLANTIC CITY - There were some summers when the great sailing ship known as the Naughty Nestor never left its dock at the Farley State Marina. Not that this meant it wasn't used. My father-in-law, Capt. Herb (middle name Nestor; I have not pursued the origin of the naughtiness), and mother-in-law, Linda (she of the iron stomach), used it plenty. It was essentially their summer home, in a neighborhood of like-minded boat types, a rugged and rollicking community of stationary floaters who held dock parties and danced to cover bands on the deck at the nearby casino.

John O'Donnell Mangan III, 71, of Blue Bell, a health-care administrator, died Monday, July 16, at Jefferson University Hospital of a stroke. For 14 years until retiring last month, Mr. Mangan had been an administrator for Keystone Mercy Health Plan's Provider Network Management Department. Previously, he had a 29-year career with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, serving in various positions, including as a district director, mental-health delegate, and assistant commissioner.

Robert Matthew Gillin, 84, of Bryn Mawr, a business owner, entrepreneur and civic activist, died of heart failure Wednesday, June 27, at home. In the 1950s, Mr. Gillin worked with his father in the coal business in Western Pennsylvania. Aware that customers were switching from coal to oil heat, he and his brother Jim established Petroleum Heat & Power Co. in 1957. For the next 30 years he owned and operated the heating-oil distribution company in South Philadelphia. Mr. Gillin also developed real estate and businesses in Avalon, N.J., where he and his wife, Martha "Martie" Wolfington Gillin, had a summer home.

THERE'S AN an old saying that behind every great man is a great woman. Apart from its obvious sexist slant, there was considerable truth to the maxim in the case of former Pennsylvania Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr. and his wife, German-born Renate Elizabeth Nix. "She was very supportive of him," said her daughter, Kimberly Bernhard. "She was the backup. " She traveled with her husband on his many trips on judicial business, took care of the entertainment, and generally helped ease the burdens of his presiding over the state's highest court.