As the recession deepens, it claims many more four-footed casualties

January 4, 2009

The dog scampered back and forth in the small room, true to its name. "I call her Frisky," said the man at the other end of the leash.

Recent columns

• Many of us already had enough stuff

  December 25, 2008

  If the predictions were on target, at this very moment you are suffering through a Christmas that is almost 29 percent less merry than last year. In fact, it will be the least merry Christmas since 1999, so you might as well go back to bed and sleep through it.

• After Baltimore's homegrown businesses all sell out, what will be left?

  December 21, 2008

  When did Baltimore become a junked car, sold off for parts?

• A little Camelot appeals to recession-weary

  December 18, 2008

  Run, Caroline, run!

• Discontent grows out of church's plans for garden space in Pen Lucy

  December 14, 2008

  As anyone who has gotten soil under his or her nails knows, to garden is to constantly ward off encroachment - the weeds, the slugs, the insatiable tulip-snarfing squirrels.

• The pay raise was legal, but was it right?

  December 11, 2008

  In yesterday's warmish temperatures, the fur coat stayed home, or at least was not on mayoral display. So it conceivably could have looked even worse when Mayor Sheila Dixon set out to defend an increase in her own salary, even as she's ordering cutbacks in spending and services throughout the city.

• First comes the slots mess, then comes the slots money — we hope

  December 7, 2008

  Usually, it's the back end of the beast that is the less lovely end. Not so, though, with slots.

• Walk across America glimpses its spirit

  December 4, 2008

  There was the well-considered - or at least alliterative - sack of sustenance that someone gave him in Nevada, containing a banana, a beer, and a bag of chips. There was the family in Nebraska that invited him in for dinner and put him up for the night in a spare bedroom.

• The cash-strapped turn to 'urban mining' for a golden Christmas

  November 30, 2008

  With three children and a mother's desire to give them the perfect Christmas, Dionne Smith might have joined the post-Thanksgiving rush to the stores this weekend. Instead, the Woodlawn resident headed in exactly the opposite direction - to a place that was quiet rather than frenzied, where she would sell rather than spend.

• Some offenses are just unpardonable

  November 27, 2008

  In the spirit of the holiday season, and his last one in the White House, President George W. Bush has pardoned two turkeys and 14 felons.

• Blighted Pall Mall housing gone but so many need a place to live

  November 23, 2008

  It ended not with a bang or even a whimper, but something more like a sigh of resignation.

• Pulling together the threads of our past

  November 20, 2008

  In near darkness, it appears almost as an apparition. Like reliquary, the tattered flag is displayed behind glass in a new temperature- and light-controlled chamber, the bones not of a saint but of a nation.

• Economic slowdown, weekly trash pickup: We'll live

  November 16, 2008

  Ah, twice-a-week garbage collection. It was nice while it lasted - 55 years, apparently - but it's time to give up this municipal luxury. It's time to hold our noses and pry this one out of our cold, Hefty Cinch Sak'd fingers.

• Political cartography has strange consequences

  November 13, 2008

  After a lengthy labor, we can slap that 1st Congressional District baby on the bottom and declare: It's a Democrat.

• New first family, new community

  November 12, 2008

  This new president didn't promise to bring a new puppy along when his family moves into the official residence, and his overall message was more of continuity than change.

• Unlikely neighbors take first step in turning community around

  November 9, 2008

  Of all the things the rowhouse on East Oliver Street had been over the course of its lifetime, the most recent was what some locals delicately called a gentlemen's social club.

• Don't look for change. It's already arrived

  November 6, 2008

  So this is what "change" looks like.

• In Carney, diverse neighbors eager to vote

  November 5, 2008

  Not that I have a thing for CNN's John King, but I long to feel his touch.

• A campaign junkie shows signs of impending withdrawal

  November 2, 2008

  Look, over there, you can see it from here!

• School vote was victory for equal expectations

  October 30, 2008

  Lelia T. Allen choked up during the state school board meeting this week when she remembered how, as a child growing up in North Carolina in the 1940s, the school buses would pass her by. So she walked - three miles, as the occupants of those buses threw things at her - determined not to be denied an education.

• Early voting? Sure. Last-minute voting? That's for me!

  October 26, 2008

  I'm the person you see at the store on Christmas Eve, buying that last present, or five. Dinner at my house? The starting time, if not the cuisine, is decidedly Continental. And, as my editors will attest, there is no deadline late enough that I can't blow it. So, when I hear "early voting," I think: getting to the polling place while it's still light out.

• In this case, clothes may make the candidate

  October 23, 2008

  So now we have the answer to the eternal question that arises as you peruse the doll section at Toys 'R' Us: Just how much more does Vice Presidential Barbie cost than Caribou Barbie?

• Yes, they're paper cuts, but they can go deep

  October 16, 2008

  Maybe it's because we're already accustomed to talking about hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars as casually as if it were pocket change. A $250 billion outlay to prop up the country's biggest banks? Big deal, when we're already committed to spend a total of $700 billion to bail out the markets.

• Visitation-rights ruling breaks new ground for gay couples

  October 12, 2008

  In all but one way, the visitation-rights case that was decided in Baltimore County Circuit Court last week was typical of the legal wrangling that follows many a divorce - a couple splits up, the custodial parent doesn't want the ex to see the kid.

• Gone — just when we needed it the most

  October 9, 2008

  One designer jacket: $5.

• From the town, wearing the gown

  August 31, 2008

  During move-in weekend at Hopkins, she was the girl to see - for new students wondering where to get their IDs, for parents trudging around with huge Bed Bath & Beyond bags, for the hundreds of upperclassmen helping to unpack the SUVs and minivans ferrying the class of 2012 to campus.

• Holes in anthrax case not novel

  August 8, 2008

  In case I ever turn up dead while being investigated by the Feds, and they release all the suspicious stuff they've uncovered about me, let me explain right now why I recently Googled "novel kill scientist poisoned strawberry."

• Why did What's-his-name decide to come to our city?

  August 5, 2008

  Looks like the Fauxfeller picked the wrong town to disappear in.

• 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:

• 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.

• 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."

• Horse racing is beauty, tragedy

  May 6, 2008

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

• 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.

• 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.