Umbrella

Kevin "The Umbrella Man" Dwight says he didn't know the shotgun hidden in the umbrella he handed to another man would be used to kill a friend inside a Nicetown deli last year. "I didn't do it," shouted Dwight, 27, after Municipal Judge Lydia Y. Kirkland ordered him to stand trial on murder, conspiracy and weapons offenses after a preliminary hearing yesterday. Dwight, of 20th Street near Cayuga, faces arraignment Aug. 30 for his role in the shotgun slaying of Aineias Life, 19, inside the Wayne Junction Deli at 20th and Wingohocking streets on Oct. 7, 1993.

When police found out that the alleged weapon used in a Collingdale bank holdup actually was an umbrella, they dropped armed-robbery and weapons charges that had been filed against a Philadelphia man. But those were the only charges dropped in the case against Charles Thomas Hickey, 37, of the 2700 block of West Country Club Road. At a preliminary hearing Tuesday before District Justice William J. Dittert, charges of robbery, theft, receiving stolen property, reckless endangerment, making terroristic threats, and simple and aggravated assault were upheld.

The Lawncrest Community Association voted unanimously Tuesday to withdraw from the Northeast Federation of Civic Association (NEFCA) at the urging of state Rep. Chris Wogan and association president Phil Grutzmacher. The action was based on what some consider a conflict of interest by two officers of NEFCA who acted as consultants to a developer at a Burholme Civic Association meeting in January. Both Joan Ferreira, NEFCA's chairwoman, and Marlene Joseph, NEFCA's vice chairwoman and a practicing lawyer, spoke in support of developers Glenn Kowit and Thomas Clauss, who want to build duplexes at the intersection of Tabor Road and Napfle Avenue.

It could be worse. According to our friends at Accu-Weather in Central Pennsylvania, the seven inches or so of rain that Philadelphia has received since the official start of winter is a drop in the bucket. It could have been snow. "The standard equivalent is about an inch of liquid to a foot of snow," said meteorologist Laura Anderson. "This is not a constant, it can vary. " Early reports warned that yesterday's rain was just the beginning of a wet and miserable couple of days, but it doesn't seem to be that serious.

Just because science claims to have located a gene that predisposes certain people to carry golf umbrellas in Center City does not, in my mind, excuse the behavior. We do not so lack for depressing sights on the sidewalk as it is that we should now suffer pathetic (and often dangerous!) encounters with those afflicted with Male Suburbanite Syndrome (MSS). Characteristics of the MSS afflicted (early stages): I say, show me a golf umbrella between Fifth and 20th streets and I'll show you a man with MSS. And I say, the disease is spreading!

Coatesville's Keenan Coleman is superstitious by nature. "I always take off my sweat bottoms first and then the tops," the Red Raiders senior said. Plus, he's still wearing an old pair of ripped shorts that have been bringing him luck since his sophomore season. He wouldn't dream of trading them in for a new, unlucky pair. On Saturday, in the high-jump competition at the PIAA state championship track and field meet at Shippensburg, in a dogfight for first, Coleman was at his superstitious best.

With the first twinges of lunchtime hunger, beachgoers in this town don't reach for soggy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. They punch their cell phones from the sand and call for takeout. When Shore restaurants say they deliver, they'll take it all the way to your beach towel. Thanks to cellular telephones, Margate and Ventnor beachgoers lose nothing to their Shore neighbors to the north and south, where boardwalks beckon with tasty treats. Dino's subs, Cleo's seafood, South End's pizza, and Tsui's Garden Chinese will come straight to your umbrella, at least if the couriers can locate you, for merely a generous tip. "On a holiday weekend, you can't give up a piece of valuable real estate on the beach, not even to walk two blocks for a sandwich," said Rick Francesco, an Atlantic City firefighter relaxing yesterday in Margate.

A WOMAN with her 2-year-old child spat on a SEPTA bus driver and beat him with her umbrella Sunday after he asked her to quiet the screaming toddler, according to police. It marked at least the second assault on a bus driver in the past two weeks. The 50-year-old driver asked Tiffany Alexander, 25, to calm her child down soon after she boarded the Route 7 bus about 3 p.m., a police spokeswoman said. Alexander argued with the driver and swung the umbrella as if to hit him, but she sat back down, police said.

Wielding an umbrella, a pedestrian slogs through the snow and rain along Plymouth Road in Norristown. Today, leave the umbrella in its stand, but dig out hats and mittens - it will be very, very cold.

A WOMAN with her 2-year-old child spat on a SEPTA bus driver and beat him with her umbrella Sunday after he asked her to quiet the screaming toddler, according to police. It marked at least the second assault on a bus driver in the past two weeks. The 50-year-old driver asked Tiffany Alexander, 25, to calm her child down soon after she boarded the Route 7 bus about 3 p.m., a police spokeswoman said. Alexander argued with the driver and swung the umbrella as if to hit him, but she sat back down, police said.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, Chinese artist Huang Rui opened his black-and-white umbrella at 40th and Walnut. During the next 64 minutes, 63 others picked up umbrellas and joined him in the performance-art piece. Soon, the 64 handmade umbrellas, each emblazoned with a Chinese character and its English translation, filled a stretch of sidewalk a block long. Huang's piece, I-Ching , takes its name from the ancient Chinese book of divination that contains 64 hexagrams used to predict the future.

Back in the day, when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn and baseball was an all-white game, Branch Rickey hired Jackie Robinson and changed American sports forever. That story - one that would seem a good idea for Black History Month - is the basis of Branch , now at Society Hill Playhouse. The show began with a startling and weirdly manipulative moment: The national anthem was played on a scratchy record, and everyone in the audience stood up. Somewhere between a high school assembly speech, a pep talk, and a Wikipedia article, Branch by Walt Vail isn't really a play at all, and Steve Hatzai, an accomplished actor and playwright, struggles in this one-man show to theatricalize it. But it's a hopeless task.

JEANNETTE, PA. - A western Pennsylvania man found not guilty of beating his very intoxicated fiancée with a frying pan will still spend 20 to 60 months in prison for fighting with an officer who arrested him. Westmoreland County prosecutors charged Timothy Lenhart, 56, with attacking Jennifer Hix on July 10, 2010. About a year before that, Lenhart was acquitted of poking out Hix's eye with an umbrella, and he avoided conviction in the frying-pan attack because Hix testified that she couldn't remember the beating.

TRENTON - Gov. Christie said Tuesday that he would move to merge several graduate medical-education programs as part of a plan to reconfigure the state's public universities. Following the recommendations of a task force he created to consider medical-education changes, the governor plans to make Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Public Health part of Rutgers' flagship campus in New Brunswick and Piscataway. The governor also will move to make the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, now part of Robert Wood Johnson, a separate entity within Rutgers.

Mother Nature is certainly playing an April Fools joke on the Philadelphia area this morning, with snow falling throughout the region. So what's in store for the 1:05 p.m. start for today's Opening Day game between the Phillies and Houston Astros? "It's going to be pretty raw," said Greg Heavener, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Mount Holly office. Heavener said this morning's heavier precipitation is moving out, but a leftover shower could fall around noon.

Draped in violet silk chiffon, mom-to-be Natalie Portman looked sensational at the Academy Awards, baby bump and all. But for Tamar Klaiman, like most other women, the home stretch of pregnancy was anything but glamorous. With an aching back and swollen feet, the last thing Klaiman wanted in the weeks before her due date was a baby shower. "I had no desire to be in a room full of people paying all their attention to me and to open presents in front of everyone," said the first-time mother, whose son, Abraham, was born in April.

Dear Martha: How should I prepare my patio furniture for winter storage? A: Although most outdoor furniture is built to withstand the elements, proper maintenance and storage in the offseason helps it last much longer. First, remove the cushions and umbrella, and clean them according to the directions on the label. If there are no instructions, wash them using a sponge and 1/4 cup mild dishwashing liquid, such as Ivory, mixed into 1 gallon of warm water. Rinse the fabric, and then stand the cushions on their sides.

Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place. During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invade Western Europe, they risked massive U.S. nuclear retaliation. Goodbye, Moscow. Was this credible? Who knows? No one's ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that - a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice.

I COULDN'T agree more with everything Stu Bykofsky has written on this ridiculous bicycle situation. On Nov. 23, about 7:30, I walked out of the Ritz at the Bourse on South 4th, and, before I could get my umbrella open, a woman on a bike nonchalantly rode right up the handicapped dip onto the sidewalk and, had I not noticed and stopped short, would have ridden directly into me. It was all I could do to restrain myself from nonchalantly directing...