Philadelphia Pa

On a stretch of land here dusted with the wings of sycamore seeds, love stories lie underground with the dead. There is the human heart buried next to the man who first captured it. The body of a banker whose wife left him for a famous actor. The couple hit by a train after a wedding reception. Time threatened to wash away the long-lost tales of romance and heartache trapped in Laurel Hill Cemetery, a Victorian-style graveyard overlooking the Schuylkill River.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up. The dispute centers on the dispensing of "street money," a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city's Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.

Hal Sawyer figures he knows just what is needed to deliver his precinct for Barack Obama in the gritty world of Philadelphia politics. He has rigged up his Dodge Caravan with a loudspeaker so he can drive through his neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia urging people to come out to Obama events. He has reams of contacts as a local committeeman, part of the city's entrenched Democratic Party machine.

Some people who visit the acclaimed restaurant Deux Cheminees come for more than chef Fritz Blank's cuisine -- they come for his books. The Philadelphia mainstay that offers some of the city's finest dining also houses an impressive culinary collection that includes about 15,000 volumes: cookbooks, periodicals, menus and memorabilia.

To help finance a $68 million deal to keep Thomas Eakins' masterpiece "The Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has sold another Eakins painting, "The Cello Player," academy officials said. One of the academy's most recognizable artworks, the large 1896 oil portrait shows cellist Rudolf Henning with his instrument.

The oldest Civil War museum in the country will be moving from a row house in downtown Philadelphia to a classic colonial building close to Independence Hall. The Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia is slated to reopen at its new location in 2010, museum officials announced Tuesday. The museum was founded in 1888 and has been tucked away in a four-story house since 1922.

Conspiracy theory or hostile corporate takeover? Those two options come to mind when reading the lengthy court petition filed recently in the dispiriting case of the Barnes Foundation. Nearly three years ago, the court approved moving the unique Pennsylvania school with the drop-dead $6-billion Modern art collection from suburban Lower Merion Township to downtown Philadelphia.

The city's beleaguered police chief, acknowledging that police alone cannot quell a run of deadly violence, on Thursday called on 10,000 men to patrol the streets. Sylvester Johnson, who is black, said that black men in particular had a duty to protect residents. Philadelphia, the nation's sixth-largest city, has nearly 1.5 million residents, 44% of them black. It has recorded 294 homicides this year, most of them involving black men.

A month after civic leaders and the police chief in this crime-plagued city called on 10,000 black men to patrol the streets, thousands arrived Sunday by foot, car, motorcycle, bus, in wheelchairs, with sons and nephews in tow. "Sign up here!" a volunteer shouted to the long line of men that circled Temple University's Liacouras Center. "Be a part of history!"

PHILADELPHIA -- America's oldest natural history institution has no intention of going the way of the dinosaur, but its nearly two centuries in existence have been almost as bumpy as the hide of a carnotaurus. The Academy of Natural Sciences, battered by budget problems, is crafting a multimillion-dollar plan to refurbish its exhibits, replenish its coffers and reinvigorate its staff in time for the venerable museum's 200th birthday in 2012.