News Archives

Mural guru, students paint the town

In a small storefront church at 34th Street and Haverford Avenue, the Rev. Cornell A. Smith Sr. and some of his neighbors waited patiently for a group of Penn students. Their business was planning a new mural at 35th and Wallace with the students.

News briefs

Top good guy Penn has grabbed the top position in U.S. News & World Report’s new ranking of programs that use community service as an instructional strategy. The poll coincides with the 10th anniversary of Penn’s Center for Community Partnerships, which has worked with schools from across the University to promote community service as a way to better integrate Penn and West Philadelphia. Because of this collaboration, students can now choose from more than 120 classes defined as academically-based community service courses.

Woodward cannot tell a lie

Today’s politicians still have not learned the lesson of Watergate, the scandal that brought down the Nixon White House. That was the message that Bob Woodward brought to about 900 people in Irvine Auditorium as part of the University Honor Council’s Third Annual Integrity Week earlier this month. Woodward, who as a young man broke the story of the Watergate scandal with fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, said neither Sen. Bob Toricelli nor former President Bill Clinton understood the lesson: “When you make a mistake, don’t try to excuse it.”

Sensitive dentists for sensitive smiles

For many elderly African-Americans, it is not all smiles when it comes to making a trip to the dentist. According to a new study by Ann Slaughter, assistant professor in the School of Dental Medicine, dentists’ chair-side manner is one reason why elderly African-Americans are staying away from the dentist in greater numbers compared to the general population. Misperception about the state of their oral health is another.

Ask Benny: The Ivy League, from fiction to the facts

Dear Benny,How did the Ivy League get its name? —I Bleed Red and Blue Dear Loyal Quaker, There are a number of apocryphal tales about the origins of the term “Ivy League,” including a widely-circulated one that attributes it to an 1890s alliance among Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Penn known as the “IV league,” after the Roman numeral four. The answer to this question, though, is found in the preface of Mark F. Bernstein’s “Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession” (Pennsylvania, 2001).

Empowered

In politics, even a loss can be turned to advantage if one plays one’s cards right. And that’s exactly what former broadcast journalist Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky has done with her brief tenure as a U.S. representative.

At Work With...Rudy Bowens and Kelly Buchanan

Out & About: A cook and his books

The event was billed as a program on “Old Recipes and How to Make Them Work.” The speaker: Fritz Blank, chef of Deux Cheminées, one of Philadelphia’s premier restaurants, and the proprietor of an impressive collection of old recipes, cookbooks, pamphlets, menus and other food-related material, some of which was on display in the Kamin Gallery corridor at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, the site of the talk.

Editor's Pick: Penn Presents Africa, live on stage

Malian vocalist Salif Keita inaugurates Penn Presents’ first African Culture Series with a performance at the Annenberg Center Oct. 20. The singer is part of a long line of griots, or storytellers, descended from Sundjata Keita, founder of the 13th-century Mandingo empire. Salif Keita broke with tradition to embrace music as the vehicle for telling his stories about life’s joys and heartbreaks. His latest album, “Moffou,” takes its name from the club he opened in Bambara, Mali, to promote West African music. —S.S.

BOOKQUICK/“The Business of Sports Agents”

The legendary Charles C. “Cash and Carry” Pyle, considered by most to be the first sports agent, negotiated a $3,000-per-game contract for Red Grange to play professional football for the Chicago Bears in 1933. Today, salaries in the tens of millions of dollars are commonplace, and instead of theatrical promoters and impresarios, professionally trained businessmen and lawyers dominate the business.