Abandonment

Former Ravens running back Jamal Lewis, in Baltimore to sign autographs at the National Sports Collectors Convention, said Friday that his arrest earlier this week in Atlanta for child abandonment, a misdemeanor, was caused by a hearing he did not attend. “It was not about an abandonment issue, it was not about a kid issue,” he said. “It was the fact that, honestly, I didn't show up for a hearing to defend myself and everything else. But, like I said in my statement, you know, I've never been a bad father.

Anne Arundel County police officers arrested a Baltimore man after he fled from a hit and run accident in Severn Thursday evening. According to the county police department, Darryl Laverne Watson, 26, of the 2500 block of Marbourne Avenue, was charged with numerous traffic-related offenses after leaving the scene of an accident on Telegraph Road in Severn. Police said Watson was driving south on Telegraph Road in a green Dodge SUV when he made a left turn in front of another vehicle, causing a collision at around 6 p.m..

I know we have become a nation of such short attention spans and long-term addiction to instant gratification that asking viewers to spend even an hour with a documentary that could change the way they see the world is probably a fool's errand. But this fool is asking -- no begging -- you to see "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," an HBO documentary premiering at 9 Monday night and repeating throughout the month on HBO and HBO2. I have not seen anything on-air, online or in print that so deftly nails one of the most important and least reported stories of our economic and political lives in this presidential election year.

- Is it any wonder that a city renowned for its lofty skyscrapers has created a stunning park in the sky? The High Line Park, a 1930s-era elevated rail line, has been transformed into vibrant green space, perched some 30 feet above Manhattan. There aren't many spots in a bustling city where the cacophony of horns and rushing traffic below melds with the Zen-like peace of an urban sanctuary up above. Yet the High Line, which was opened in 2009 and bills itself as the first public park of its kind nationwide, manages to achieve that feat.

Approximately 50 firefighters spent about two hours battling a fire Saturday at the abandoned Henryton State Hospital in the Marriottsville area of Carroll County, officials said Sunday. Brett Pearce, deputy chief of the Sykesville Fire Department, said Sunday the site - which once served tuberculosis patients and, later, mental health patients before it closed in the mid-1980s - has been a hot spot for crime. At least 12 suspicious fires have been set in the last 10 years, Pearce said.

You smell damp masonry as you approach the old factory atop the Jones Falls Valley just above downtown Baltimore. The restoration and conversion of the old Lebow Brothers garment manufacturing plant into a new $25 million Baltimore Design School is now five months in the making. Open to the elements since the mid-1980s, it still reeks of abandonment. But that changes by the day. It's a remarkable project in a lightly visited section of the Station North Arts and Entertainment District and the part of Baltimore known as Greenmount West.

The closure and sale of St. Peter the Apostle Church on Poppleton Street is, indeed, a great loss, both historically and architecturally ("Second-oldest Catholic church in city is being sold," Jan. 28). However, the ultimate tragedy is the insight this decision gives into the state of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. For the past 12 years, the Archdiocese has closed churches and schools in poor areas of town, while allocating money to "important" building projects (remember the "Heritage of Hope?"

If a good Catholic upbringing produces a governor who rejects the basic biblical teaching that God ordained marriage between a man and a woman, then we may as well have elected an atheist. Gov.Martin O'Malleysays that "growing up in the Catholic Church influenced his early thinking on the topic. " He should have stuck with it. Public service is not a reason to abandon biblical values. Margaret D. Pagan

Maryland homeowners who are caught getting unwarranted homestead credits on their property tax bills would face fines equal to 25 percent of any undeserved break, under a bill introduced Friday in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, the bill's sponsor, has abandoned an ambitious idea to revamp Maryland's 35-year-old homestead credit — which rewards longtime residency — with a tiered system tied to homeowners' incomes. Though he earlier called that a fairer system, he says he has concluded such an overhaul lacks public support and would be too complicated.

There's a new Carolina cuisine joint in Baltimore. It's called, appropriately enough, Low Country Kitchen — but just try to find it. Unless you had a good reason to be walking past Hannah Williams' new takeout place, you might never see it. It's in the Old Town neighborhood, more specifically the Old Town Mall. Once a model of progressive 1970s urban development, the Old Town Mall, except for a stray pawnbroker and barbershop, today sits all but abandoned. But the opening of Low Country Kitchen might be the spark the once-thriving commercial center has been waiting for. "There's something very special about Hannah that's going to impact how people … feel about the mall," says Kristen Mitchell, senior development coordinator with the Baltimore Development Corp.