Americana

It started when Susan Jonas found a pair of white cotton gloves, tucked in their original tissue, the threads joining them as couple, never clipped.They had been in an oak tomb of bureau drawers for three decades, forgotten."

Q: I heard about a ship that is part freighter and part passenger, that boards passengers in Miami and sails to South America on a regular schedule. Can you give me some information about it?A: I think you mean the Americana. This ship sails as far south as Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a fairly regular schedule, but it recently changed its U.S. ports and no longer stops in Miami.This is no ordinary freighter.The 19,500-ton ship of Ivaran Line, which carries 88 passengers plus freight, now sails from New Orleans and stops at Houston, two ports in Venezuela, Rio de Janeiro and Santos in Brazil, before arriving in Buenos Aires.

WASHINGTON -- It has cast a glow on Baltimore burlesque shows, shone down upon Methodist worshipers, and thrown light on the nation's lawmakers. But now the chandelier with such a radiant past has a distinctly dim future.Its 148 lamps and 14,500 crystals that first twinkled in the long-gone Maryland Theater on West Franklin Street are out of place in the Small Rotunda of the Senate wing of the august U.S. Capitol, according to no less an authority than George White, architect of the Capitol.

17 to 20 car windows shot out by prowlerSeventeen to 20 car windows were shot out Monday night and Tuesday morning by someone prowling a Glen Burnie neighborhood with a BB gun, county police said yesterday.Cars parked on roads in Harundale and Americana Circle were damaged. Police said they know of no suspects.All the incidents occurred between 11 p.m. Monday and 5:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police said nothing was taken from the cars.The streets that were hit include Americana Circle, Woodside Avenue, Saunders Way and Norfolk Road.

Jay North was supposed to stay 7 years old forever. As television's Dennis the Menace, he would remain frozen in time: a happy-go-lucky extrovert in striped overalls, his wispy blond locks flopping around as he made a mess of every situation.But while the TV series "Dennis the Menace" has aged into an antiquated and innocent piece of Americana -- canceled 30 years ago by CBS -- its star has evolved into someone quite different than we remember.Even during the four years he reigned as the adorable Dennis Mitchell, the image was an illusion.

Uncle Sam on a velocipede, an American verdigris urn-form finial, and a miniature portrait by Mary Jane Simes, the granddaughter of Baltimore's James Peale, are part of the treasure trove of objects to be offered for sale at the Baltimore Museum of Art's 11th annual antiques show this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.Besides being rare and American, the three items mentioned above have something else in common: All are being offered by dealers new to the show this year."We know that Baltimore is a seething bed of toy-collecting activity," said Donald Hillman, of Hillman-Gemini Antiques, New York City.

ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE MAKING O CASABLANCA. By Aljean Harmetz. Hyperion. 402 pages. $24.95.FEW films contain more indelible images and memorable lines than "Casablanca" -- and why that is so is one of the greatest mysteries about it.How could it be that a film whose script was fiddled with by seven writers, took fewer than 10 weeks to make and cost little more than $1 million (today's top performers wouldn't burp for less than 10 times that amount)...

When Christie's and Sotheby's auctioneers gather around their antique Thanksgiving tables, they should give thanks for the few hardy souls, largely dealers, who raised their bidding paddles at the major fall Americana sales in New York City. These bellwether late-October auctions had all the trimmings laid out -- furniture, decorations, quilts, ceramics, glass, folk art, clocks and paintings -- but feasting was selective.In comparison to the late-1980s' market peak, this fall's Americana sales showed that the lingering recession is giving once voracious bidders a bad case of indigestion and that there were some turkeys of pre-sale estimates.