T Shirt

Artist Bariq Cobbs sprays seven white T-shirts with sunshine-yellow paint. With a brush, he smears on blobs of kelly green. He fills in white spots with an eye-popping orange and finishes up with random streaks of electric blue. Squish, squish. Cobbs doesn't have a plan when he starts, but within 10 minutes each shirt features glossy triangles, rectangles, circles and squiggly lines. It's the free-form art that has earned Philadelphia's Miskeen Originals a reputation for hot in the star-driven world of hip-hop men's fashions.

54 pairs of sneakers. THAT'S the inventory of the things I collect. I'm the Imelda Marco of athletic shoes, my closet full of Nikes, Pumas and Adidas. And there was a time when cameras were made in the U.S.A. - remember the Brownie cameras from Kodak? My collection of little black box cameras had catchy names like "The Tower" or "The Meteor," and through rummage sales and flea markets, I've acquired dozens from the days before your cell phone, PDA or even sneaker could snap a picture.

Philadelphia School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. will join Mayor Nutter and the head of the teachers' union to help the Charles Carroll High School community move forward from the Mitt Romney T-shirt controversy, Hite said Monday night in a statement. Late last month, teacher Lynette Gaymon had taken student Samantha Pawlucy to task for wearing a Romney T-shirt to school. The story broke last week and garnered national attention. Pawlucy, 16, has not returned to the Port Richmond school since the episode became public.

The Anti-Defamation League in Philadelphia publicly objected Thursday to a T-shirt being sold by Urban Outfitters Inc. that bears a symbol that critics said resembles a Star of David patch that Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear during the Holocaust, sometimes on concentration camp uniforms. "We find this use of symbolism to be extremely distasteful and offensive, and we are outraged that your company would make this product available to your customers," Barry Morrison, regional director of the ADL, wrote in a letter e-mailed to Richard A. Hayne, chairman and chief executive of the retail corporation headquartered at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Results of a Say What? poll: Fight move of battleship New Jersey? Out of 252 votes 36% Yes, hard work, funds brought ship here, made it an attraction (90 votes) 15% No, more will see it near the Statue of Liberty than in Camden (37 votes) 28% Yes, just needs better marketing (71 votes) 21% No, let it go where it can make money. (54 votes) ? ?

Question: Seventeen years ago I divorced the mother of my four children. After a heated divorce lasting several months, we agreed on things and split up legally. Throughout the proceedings, my wife used my children as weapons against me, and I spent the next several years listening to insult after insult from my children, driven from their mother. Under no circumstances will I paint the picture that I was the perfect angel, but I never expected or deserved what I got from them. My work had me out of state for the last seven years.

BLACK BELT taekwon-do instructor. Political activist. High school sophomore. Samantha Pawlucy sure knows how to stand up for herself and stay true to her convictions. A geometry teacher at Charles Carroll High School, in Port Richmond, on Friday ridiculed Pawlucy, 16, for wearing a "Romney/Ryan" T-shirt and told her to leave class, her mother, Kristine, told the Daily News Wednesday night. The teacher told Samantha, " 'Your wearing a Romney shirt is like me wearing a KKK shirt,' " according to her parents, who said they intend to file a formal complaint Thursday with the district and the school.

Samantha Pawlucy said she was afraid to return to Charles Carroll High School after complaining that a teacher mocked her for wearing a Romney/Ryan T-shirt on dress-down day. The sophomore said classmates, former friends, and even students from other schools had issued threats over what they saw as lies and misinterpretation. That's what's she heard from other students and read on Facebook, Pawlucy said. "I don't want to go to school and get jumped," Pawlucy, who said she has a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do, said at her home in Port Richmond on Thursday evening.

THE TEMPEST over the Romney T-shirt may have calmed down by now: Student Samantha Pawlucy has returned to school, the teacher in question has written a "mistakes were made" letter, and columnists and commentators have weighed in on the "teachable moments" that might be found in Pawlucy's humiliation at the hands of a teacher who mocked her for her support of a (gasp) Republican in a Democratic town. We agree that there is at least one teachable moment in this episode. But it's not about free speech, and it's not a lesson kids need to learn.

IF YOU'RE wondering whether GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is aware of the Philadelphia kerfuffle surrounding a teenage girl and a pink Romney/Ryan T-shirt, he is. Romney on Wednesday night phoned the home of Samantha Pawlucy, the 16-year-old who wore the shirt and was reportedly ridiculed by geometry teacher Lynette Gaymon. Kate Meriwether, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, confirmed the call. Problem was, Samantha was not at home to take the call, according to a source close to the family.