A fan seeks to retrieve lost time

July 25, 2008

Someone told me once that the two most evocative things, the two things that could hurtle him back to a place and time, were scents and songs.

Recent columns

• In the market for some solitude

  July 22, 2008

  I drove out to the future of grocery stores yesterday, but when I stopped for gas, I ended up on a detour to the past.

• An odd theory, odder clients

  July 18, 2008

  Well, this certainly gives support to the fool-for-a-client adage.

• The show goes on

  July 15, 2008

  Housing foreclosures have hit record numbers. It can cost $100 to fill up an SUV. Even Fannie and Freddie might need an advance on their allowance from Uncle Sam.

• Projects are nice; but so are ethics

  July 11, 2008

  Over at Mondawmin Mall yesterday, shoppers negotiated their way through the ripped-up parking lots and blocked-off construction sites of a continuing $70 million project that promises to reverse the shopping center's long, slow decline. The talk was of things like the soon-to-open Target - no longer a big deal in the suburbs but the city's first - and the 10 for $10 "bonus buys" at the already open Shoppers Food Warehouse.

• Wal-Mart may have made a discovery

  July 8, 2008

  First came Wal-Mart's decision to push for lower prices for compact fluorescent lightbulbs, those swirly, energy-efficient alternatives to the incandescent ones. Then, it started offering redesigned milk jugs that, by decreasing storage and delivery costs, also will reduce energy consumption. And, most recently it announced a new emphasis on stocking its stores with more produce grown locally rather than shipped from longer distances.

• Surprise sparked ire in land proposal

  July 4, 2008

  The insurgents met to plot their next move, over lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. The level of their anger was such that even the tiniest revolutionary, a mere child, used the strongest language that her young ears probably had ever heard.

• Sun role plays out in 2 stories

  July 1, 2008

  When I joined The Sun 21 years ago, there was still at least one person in the newsroom who had worked here when H.L. Mencken did. He used to use his pencils down to the stub, she told me.

• What do you get for a mink?

  June 27, 2008

  You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Ever since the fur started flying in the state prosecutor's investigation of Mayor Sheila Dixon, I keep hearing that song from Guys and Dolls, the one sung by a doll who was shocked, just shocked, at what a guy expected in return for his gifts:

• Killings nearby seem unreal

  June 24, 2008

  I live in one of those good neighborhoods, where what obviously was the sound of gunshots - sharp, rapid-fire bursts - woke me around 2:40 Sunday morning, and yet still I thought: firecrackers.

• The elephant in the room

  June 20, 2008

  I'd like to take the opportunity of all those microphones that have been shoved in my face these past couple of days since my house was raided, and speak directly to you, the citizens of Baltimore.

• Smith learns a tough lesson

  June 13, 2008

  There's a lot of "disappointment," some of it "extreme," in the Baltimore County executive's office this week. County exec Jim Smith has allowed that he's also "confused" and finds the situation "frustrating."

• Hopkins, families' common ground

  May 27, 2008

  For years, they have been the kind of neighbors that shared the same space if not the same world - the renowned Johns Hopkins medical complex and the largely impoverished East Baltimore community surrounding it.

• Multiple missteps in life of inmate

  May 23, 2008

  You probably shouldn't take his word on it, but a fellow inmate diagnosed Kevin Johns thusly: "He was zapped out."

• NAACP signals start of new era

  May 20, 2008

  He's very Obama, isn't he?

• Finding strength amid the despair

  May 13, 2008

  We hate talking about it. We fear saying something awkward or intrusive. We think we'll only make it worse by acknowledging it, so we fall silent.

• Vilnius is wild about Zappa

  May 9, 2008

  The letter arrived, mayor to mayor, wishing the newly elected Sheila Dixon the usual "cordial congratulations" and wishes of "great success" on the "demanding and challenging" task she faced.

• Horse racing is beauty, tragedy

  May 6, 2008

  This time, it happened off-camera, and post-race.

• After the fish were gone

  May 2, 2008

  Towns usually die slowly in a cascading series of losses - the factory, the high school, the movie theater - making it hard to point to when or even why a once thriving community expires. But with Great Harbour Deep, a one-time outpost in a remote coastal stretch of Newfoundland in Canada, it was clear when the death spiral began and what triggered it.

• Baring your all for BWI security

  April 29, 2008

  The bad news: You still have to take off your shoes.

• Bus case points to sad truth about us

  April 25, 2008

  Many words have been spilled on the bus beating case in which a group of middle school students attacked a fellow passenger and nearly blinded her, and Circuit Judge David W. Young has heard just about all of them - in the courtroom as he presided over it, of course, but also in e-mails, on the phone and even on the street, where passers-by would accost him.

• Fielding the setup for papal event

  April 18, 2008

  Even though he's planned events for presidential inaugurations and managed rock tours for the likes of the B-52s, and even though his company is known for staging hooplas like official election night parties and museum anniversaries, there are still some things beyond Ajay Patil's considerable multitasking, detail-wrangling skills.

• Children casualties in divorce warfare

  April 1, 2008

  Lynn Shiner heard the news as she drifted off to sleep Sunday night, and when she awoke yesterday morning, she thought maybe she had dreamed it. A few taps on the keyboard, though, confirmed that the crime, however nightmarish, was no dream.

• Md. views the final act before the voting

  February 12, 2008

  One candidate lauded those serving in Iraq because they "did everything they were asked to do."

• Primary spotlight for Md.? Imagine

  February 8, 2008

  Call it Sorta Significant Tuesday.

• Marbella: Crime shatters myth of escape

  July 31, 2007

  On a rainy day, a beach town deflates. The whole myth of escape, of ceaseless fun and respite from reality, turns as sodden as day-old cotton candy.

• Another remake, same ol' Baltimore

  July 20, 2007

  There's a certain giddy if twisted glow that John Waters brings to his beleaguered Baltimore. The cheerfully perverse -- or is it perversely cheerful -- Waters clearly was born to play bard to so battered a burg.

• Trying to break the cycle of violence

  November 21, 2006

  You see it all the time in crime stories: "The victim was taken to Shock Trauma ... "

• Nikki's death stands out amid blur of statistics

  November 14, 2006

  The tributes flowed, from intimates and strangers alike, and some were read at Nicole Edmonds' funeral this weekend. Appreciative murmurs rippled through the mourners at the east-side church when a particularly famous name followed the "sincerely," like Martin O'Malley, the newly elected governor, or Ben Cardin, the just-minted U.S. senator.

• A modest people, a respectful distance

  October 4, 2006

  The customer awkwardly approached the young Amish woman, as many of us have done these past couple of days.

• Evil can lurk in even the smallest, most remote communities

  October 3, 2006

  Night had already cloaked the valley by the time I arrived, and snow had started falling, gently as it does in the mountains in springtime. Under the twin covers of darkness and snowfall, I didn't realize until the next morning just how beautiful and idyllic Littleton, Col., was.