Heath System's Bond-Rating Slips a Notch
Citing "weaker-than-expected financial performance" due to decreased reimbursements and increased competition, Moody's Investors Service recently downgraded the University of Pennsylvania Health System's bond-rating from Aa3 to A1. Continued...

Welcome to the Construction Site, er, Campus
It's a common sight this time of year: Lost freshmen searching for someplace to eat, buy books, learn about a student activity, etc., etc. These days, though, the people they turn to for directions may be just as confused, as a slew of building and renovation projects reshapes the campus. New landmarks are going up and some old favorites are moving -- to new locations or into the past. Continued...

Western Hospitality
This month Sansom Common is sponsoring the first "Go West! Go International! 3rd Thursdays," a program launched by the University City Business District (UCD) to attract visitors to the area and highlight its cultural, retail, and restaurant resources. Running from 4:00-8:00 P.M. on Thursday, September 17, the event will close off Sansom Street from 34th to 36th Streets and 36th Street from Walnut to Chestnut for a street festival and other attractions. Continued...

Bones in the Basement
of Franklin's London Digs
We're sure there's no connection between the e-mail we sent to a group called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House and the subsequent addition to their Web site. After all, we were only trying to find out a little more about an item we had seen in a church newsletter about some Š bones being found in the basement of 36 Craven Street in London, where Franklin lived from 1757 through 1774. Continued...

Farrington to Preside at Lehigh
Dr. Gregory C. Farrington, the professor of materials science and engineering who served as Penn's dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science since 1990, left the University in August to become president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. Continued...

Alone Together
They live more than 500 miles apart, and they travel three to five hours by plane once every four to six weeks. Their average age is 45, and they have been married or involved in a serious relationship for 14 years. Two out of three are in managerial or professional positions; the others toil in the Academy. Some 18 percent have children. Continued...

Posters from the Edge
"The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud," wrote George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, his classic first-person account of the Spanish Civil War. Brought back by American volunteers -- who, like Orwell, fought on the Republican side against Generalissimo Francisco Franco -- the posters on this page are part of an exhibition titled "Shouts from the Wall: Posters and Photographs from the Spanish Civil War," which is being shown at the Arthur Ross Gallery through October 4. They are the work of named and anonymous artists, produced by governmental and left-wing organizations that were united in their opposition to fascism -- if in little else. Continued...

The Mystery of the Borrowed Bard;
Or, All's Well That Ends Well
The talk this past spring in Bennett Hall, home of the English department, was all about Shakespeare -- the bard's portrait, that is.
    The approximately five-feet-by-seven-feet image, an enlargement of the engraving from the frontispiece of the 1623 Folio by Martin Droeshout, has stared down at students, faculty, staff, and visitors from its post on Bennett's main stairway for the better part of two decades. It disappeared sometime in the pre-dawn hours of April 29 and remained missing until Commencement morning, May 20, when it was paraded -- "triumphantly," by all accounts -- by graduating English majors before being dropped off at Bennett Hall. How it was removed without being seen and where it was stored in the meantime -- not to mention the identities of the triumphant paraders -- remains a mystery. Continued...

Dubois Center:
Crossing Disciplines for Research
Some of the urban themes and racial issues raised by W.E.B. Dubois's 1899 landmark study The Philadelphia Negro are being given a fresh look by a new multi-disciplinary center at Penn: the W.E.B. DuBois Collective Research Institute. Continued...

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