Acme

Philip Thomas Clark Sr., a retired jack operator who had worked for the Acme grocery store chain for more than three decades, died Sunday from complications of diabetes at Seasons Hospice at Northwest Hospital Center. The longtime Baltimore Highlands resident was 83. Mr. Clark was born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton. He attended city public schools. He enlisted in the Navy at the end of World War II and did not see action, family members said. After leaving the Navy, he went to work in the 1950s for Acme, where he was a jack operator, moving pallets with an electric fork lift.

If you think about it, whatever horrible curse has befallen actress Susan Lucci now seems to have enshrouded the Super Bowl-bound Buffalo Bills.Fourteen times, Susan Lucci has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy for her work on the popular soap "All My Children."And 14 times, the poor woman has watched as some other actress yelps with joy, rushes to the podium and cradles a gleaming gold trophy while dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex.Could you blame Ms. Lucci if she came home every day and threw a shoe at the dog?

Now that Maryland's top lawmakers are marching stoically toward ethics reform, some senators and delegates may be feeling the first pangs of change in their stomachs.Among the reforms passed by both houses this week is a requirement that legislators can no longer let lobbyists pick up the tab for those delicious -- and often expensive -- meals that Annapolis restaurants are so famous for.Instead, they will be given a total of 30 bucks a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If the tab runs higher, it comes out of their own pockets.

I've started collecting Little Golden Books that I read as a child. Many of them seem too new to be original. Is there some way I can tell if they are old?The Western Publishing Co. has sold billions of Little Golden Books since it published the first dozen titles in 1942.Some titles were published for many years. The most valuable is a first edition. Check the book's first two pages. There should be a string of letters. The letter on the far left shows the edition the book. An "A" on the far left indicates a first edition; a "B", a second edition; and so on.The letters sometimes appear on the last page.

Your first job as a Maryland electricity shopper is to sign up for a good deal at a good price. I'll remind you how to do so later in the column. Your second job is to make sure you don't get switched to a bad deal once the good deal expires. Thousands of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. households have taken one- or two-year contracts since electricity prices began falling a couple years ago. Now that many of the terms are coming to an end, inattentive consumers risk being rolled over to a lousy new rate.

Moving to expand its online sale presence, Acme Paper & Supply Co., Inc., a Savage-based distributor of packaging, office and janatorial products, has acquired ReStockIt.com, a supplier of office supplies and electronics. Financial terms were not disclosed. ReStockIt.com, based in Davie, Fla., reported revenue of $25.6 million in 2011. It has 30 full-time employees. Acme was founded in Baltimore in 1946 by the Attman family and moved to Howard County in 1979. ReStockIt.com was founded in 2004.

George M. Buchwald, retired warehouse superintendent for the Acme Markets, died Saturday at Baltimore County General Hospital after a stroke.Mr. Buchwald, who was 81 and lived on Townhill Road in Carney, retired in 1972 after 40 years at the company's Baltimore warehouse.The Baltimore native was a machinist's mate in the Navy in the 1920s and 1930s, becoming a chief petty officer.He was an Orioles fan and liked flower gardening.Mr. Buchwald's first marriage, to Ethel Meyers, ended in divorce.

Well before the first performance last week of Lola Pierson's latest work, "Office Ladies," it was advertised as a "hit play. " That's the sort of cheekiness you might expect from a young, DIY-type theater company that calls itself the Acme Corporation, inspired by all the not-so-safe-or-reliable products packed in boxes stamped "Acme" that appear in classic Looney Tunes cartoons. "We just know the play's going to be a hit," said Stephen Nunns, one of the forces behind the company, which has ties to Towson University, where he teaches and directs the MFA program in theater arts.

The final stage direction in Samuel Beckett's “Play” is “repeat.” The Acme Corporation, one of Baltimore's experimental theater companies, is taking that instruction very seriously. Last Friday, the one-act, three-character, roughly one-hour work was performed on a kind of continual loop from noon until midnight in a high-ceilinged, balconied hall at St. Mark's Lutheran Church. But that's just a warm-up. This week, the production's length will double, running continually from one noon to the next.

Acme Paper & Supply Co. has a name more befitting its past than its present. When the company started in 1946, it specialized in paper products such as drinking cups. Today, Acme is a much different company — so much so that the tagline "more than paper" has been appended to its name. Plastics are now the predominant part of the business. The company also has helped the U.S. House of Representatives switch to more environmentally friendly products. If you've ever used hand sanitizer at a hospital or restaurant, it was likely supplied by Acme.