Villages

Indigenous folklore traditions have had a rough enough time surviving in the modern world. A man-made disaster requiring the permanent resettlement of an entire region's population doesn't help. Following the calamitous Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident of April 26, 1986, 160 Ukrainian villages in the contaminated zone were effectively wiped out. There was fear that the area's already fading, thousand-year-old polyphonic singing styles and ancient folk songs, some believed to be pre-Christian in origin, had suffered a cultural death-blow.

XALITZINTLA, Mexico - A 17,886-foot volcano outside Mexico City exhaled dozens of towering plumes of ash and shot fragments of glowing rock down its slopes Friday morning, frightening the residents of surrounding villages with hours of low-pitched roaring not heard in a decade. A roiling white cloud of ash, gas, water vapor and superheated rock spewed from the cone of Popocatepetl high above the village of Xalitzintla, whose residents said they were awakened by a window-rattling series of eruptions.

Imagine living in a place with the sparkle of the city and the calm of the country. A place where you could walk to work, school or shopping, stroll the streets at night, live next to people who were different from you. There would be houses and supermarkets, offices and stores, recreation centers and parks, apartments and a town square all in one community. In fact, it might look a lot like a Parisian boulevard, with buildings five and six stories high, shops and offices on the first level and apartments above, or a postmodern version of Chestnut Hill.

The Chinese countryside is a peaceful land of wheat fields, poplars, honeysuckle and the acrid aroma of night soil. Only a murmur of Beijing's strife and bloodshed has reached the red brick villages about 25 miles from the capital. But those scraps of news have been enough to plunge the peasants into quiet despair, said a young American who teaches English in the village of Cui. "It has been a very bad week. People have been somber, quiet and very withdrawn," said James Burton, 27, who was found pedaling along a country road, where the homes are clustered together in villages set several miles apart.

I see the sign and can't resist: "Vasa (via Old Road). " I brake the rental car, reverse, and turn right. In fields on both sides of the road, men are harvesting ruby-red grapes and loading them onto donkeys, which carry them to trucks that will take them down to the coast, to the big wine cooperatives around the port of Limassol. The road is sticky with juice oozing from the trucks, and I pass another intriguing sign: "Caution: Road Slippery With Grape Juice. " I stop to talk to a harvester who is sitting by the side of the road in the shade of an almond tree.

Authorities have discovered that 20 more villages tucked away in the mountains of Armenia were seriously damaged by last week's earthquake, and 150 looters have been arrested, Soviet media said today. Meanwhile, the top U.S. disaster relief official said today that some foreign rescue teams have given up hope of finding more survivors in the rubble left by the Armenian earthquake and are heading home. However, Soviet officials said the rescue effort would continue and denied reports that stricken cities would be bulldozed to prevent an epidemic.

TEHRAN, Iran - Residents of the zone in northwestern Iran hit by powerful twin earthquakes described moments of terror and panic, with birds crowing loudly in warning seconds before the ground shook. As the death toll rose Sunday to more than 250 with entire villages leveled, rescuers called off searches for survivors and turned their attention to caring for the 16,000 people left homeless. At least 20 villages were destroyed in the quakes Saturday that were followed by 36 aftershocks, state television reported.

The little boy in the supermarket was 7 or 8. Neatly dressed in a down- filled jacket and matching cap, he was gently pushing an empty shopping cart behind the young woman, shuffling ahead. Could she have been his mother? She wore frayed bedroom slippers over soiled white socks. Her eyelids were swollen. Her hair was uncombed and filled with lint. Her body was barely visible under a coat two sizes too big. She was in a daze. She seemed almost unaware the child was with her, yet his connection to her was tangible - and heartrending.

Maybe Pinocchio was wrong. Maybe the dream of becoming a real boy was misguided. Nancy Brownstone suggests Pinocchio would have been happier if he had just learned to be content in his own wood. She slips on elbow-high black gloves and is now completely covered in black. Into the darkness, behind a bejeweled lavender puppet stage, she disappears. The velvet curtain parts. Pinocchio's Tale begins as jolly tunes flow from a hand-cranked calliope. Pinocchio, looking dapper in his red shorts and suspenders, chatters and tap dances.

An earthquake in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Tadzhikistan yesterday triggered two huge landslides that engulfed three villages, killing up to 1,000 people, according to reports from Tadzhik officials. The predawn quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey estimated at 5.4 on the open-ended Richter scale, was the second major earthquake to rock the Soviet Union in seven weeks. On Dec. 7, a tremor registering 6.9 devastated a 50- mile-wide region of western Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people.

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in this region's communities. Way back when, Queen Village was the place to buy a house if you couldn't afford Society Hill. Joseph P. Fanelli Jr., who moved from the suburbs in 1985, readily acknowledges that Queen Village was his second choice. "But looking at it today," says Fanelli, president and CEO of Quaker City Manufacturing Co., the new townhouse in the 100 block of Catharine Street he bought 28 years ago for $175,000 "was a great buy. " It was a lot of money in 1985, especially when you could buy what veteran real estate agent and Queen Village native Kathy Conway calls "a grandmom house" for $50,000.

VELIKA IVANCA, Serbia - He went from house to house in the village at dawn, gunning down his mother, his son, a 2-year-old cousin, and 10 other neighbors. Terrified residents said that if a police patrol car had not shown up, they all would have been dead. Police said they knew of no motive in the carnage Tuesday that left six men, six women, and a child dead in Velika Ivanca, 30 miles southeast of Belgrade. After the rampage, police said suspect Ljubisa Bogdanovic, a 60-year-old who saw action in one of the bloodiest sieges of the Balkan wars, turned his gun on himself and his wife as authorities closed in. Both were in grave condition.

IT WASN'T long ago that Philadelphia fire Capt. Michael Goodwin - a popular veteran with nearly three decades in the department - took the test for a promotion to battalion chief. Now, Goodwin will receive his promotion posthumously - after he died Saturday evening fighting a three-alarm blaze in Queen Village - the third firefighter killed in the line of duty in the past 12 months. Goodwin, 53, a 29-year veteran described by neighbors as a dedicated family man, was killed after a third-floor roof collapsed beneath him as he battled a fire in a fabric store at the corner of 4th and Fitzwater streets Saturday.

BEIRUT - After weeks of rebel gains in the south, the Syrian regime launched a counteroffensive on Sunday with widespread air strikes and an operation that reclaimed a northern village on a strategically important route. At least 20 people were killed in heavy air strikes that targeted rebels trying to topple the regime in at least seven cities and regions. To underline their resolve, the government called on opposition fighters to surrender their arms and warned in cellphone text messages that the army is "coming to get you. " State television said the aim of the counteroffensive was to send a message to the opposition and its Western backers that President Bashar Assad's troops are capable and willing to battle increasingly better armed rebels on multiple fronts.

Melanie Miller used to love walking from her home on Spruce Street to Rittenhouse Square - until 2008, when she became chronically ill, disabled, and in constant pain. Miller that year was diagnosed with a litany of problems, including multiple sclerosis and transverse myelitis, a spinal cord disorder. "It's in my joints, it's in my bones, it's in my brain," said Miller, 37. If she was going to stay at her beloved home, she needed help. So she joined Penn's Village, an organization of Center City residents who work to support elderly, ill or special-needs neighbors who want to remain in their homes.

DAMASCUS, Syria - A power outage plunged Damascus and southern Syria into darkness late Saturday, Syria's state news agency said, while anti-regime activists reported a string of tit-for-tat, sectarian kidnappings in the country's north. The news agency, SANA, quoted Electricity Minister Imad Khamis as saying that the failure of a high-voltage line had left the country's south without power. The blackout affected the capital, Damascus, and the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida, which abut Jordan.

It's a great place for dogs, Bakhtia. In winter, when the Yenisei River is frozen over in this remotest patch of Siberia (accessible only by helicopter or, in summer months, by boat), the huskies go hunting with their masters, or tag along behind undulating snowmobiles, or curl up in a patch of sun in an opening between massive firs. When the ice thaws, they help to catch fish. The males and females breed. Puppies are born, and the cycle continues. Although Happy People: A Year in the Taiga isn't really about the dogs, documentarian Werner Herzog is fascinated by these keen-eyed beasts, and their relationship with man. But per the title, this engaging film - which Herzog cut down to size from a four-hour Russian TV program by Dmitry Vasyukov - is about the human residents of the village in the Taiga boreal forest.

CARLTON BRISCOE sat in the mahogany pews at the venerable Mother Bethel AME Church in Society Hill on Sunday, as he normally does. But on this particular Sunday, the Rev. Mark Tyler's sermon really hit home. The message was not about miraculous healing or overcoming improbable odds. It was about breaking the cycle of violence in the black community, a topic ignored in many churches despite what has become an epidemic. Tyler's message was part of "Gun Violence Prevention Sunday," being marked by more than 100 congregations nationwide.

BEIRUT - Gunmen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad swept through a mainly Sunni farming village in central Syria this week, torching houses and killing more than 100 people, including women and children, opposition activists said Thursday. The reported slayings fueled accusations that pro-government militiamen are trying to drive majority Sunnis out of areas near main routes to the coast to ensure control of an Alawite enclave as the country's civil war increasingly takes on sectarian overtones.