AMTRAK Express, the magazine of the national railway passenger service, has come up with a Baltimore article reminiscent of the up-from-rotting-piers puffery the city used to enjoy regularly 10 years ago. You can tell it from the heading over the article in the April issue: "A City on a Harbor: Grass in the ball park, sharks in huge tanks, civil cab drivers. Mencken was right; the amenities are alive in Baltimore."

One sour note. Authors Rory Metcalf and Gael Montgomery don't think much of the Museum of Art. It could do, they say, "with fewer third-rate paintings by the big stars and more first-rate work by lesser-knowns."

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John Waters, Baltimore film maker and "symbol of pop culture hipness," gets a major treatment in the April 7 New York Times Magazine. "Kinkmeister," the article by Paul Mandelbaum (formerly of Baltimore magazine) is accompanied by several photos of Waters and his menagerie, including the late Glenn Milstead, a.k.a. Divine. One of its most revealing aspects is an interview with Waters' parents at their Baltimore home.

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Craig Hankin in today's Forum makes a good point about the shortage of programs at Memorial Stadium on Opening Day. Apparently, programs were sold out so quickly that no one who arrived after 1:30 could find one. Surely O's management simply goofed. Surely it wasn't playing footsie, as Hankin suggests, with collectors of baseball memorabilia.