Back Door

Frank O'Grady refused to open his door this time, but he still got robbed.And now the 72-year-old man is afraid the robber who visited his home twice in the last week will return."

Frank O'Grady refused to open his door this time, but he still got robbed.And now the 72-year-old man is afraid the robber who visited his home twice in the last week will return."

Baltimore County police are asking for help locating items that were stolen from a woman who was beaten and stabbed in her Pikesville home over the weekend.Police are looking for a suspect in the attack on Barbara Jean Connell, 42, who was found by her roommate Saturday afternoon on the living room floor of their home in the 700 block of Silver Creek Road. Connell was in fair condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, a spokeswoman said.Connell's 1995 Ford Probe was taken but was recovered a short time later in the 3900 block of Milford Mill Road, said police spokesman Bill Toohey.

YESTERDAY morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table and felt a breeze moving over my ankles. The back door and kitchen windows were closed, yet a chilly wind was a-blowin'. This was a sign that it was time to replace the back door screen with its glass storm panel.Pulling out the screens and putting in the glass is part of the seasonal switchover routine that homeowners go through at this time of year.Yesterday, I did my duty, but took little joy in it. In the springtime, when the screens go in and the air is full of promise, you are in a welcoming mood, thinking of ways to invite pleasant breezes into your house.

Where are the boys of summer?They arrived in the summer of my sixth year in the South Baltimore rowhouse. One evening, while cleaning up in the kitchen, I heard voices through the screen door. Young voices, eager, conspiratorial, free. I looked out the back door. Two boys stood in the walkway that runs behind the houses on my block. The passageway is barely wide enough for two people. But for any youthful rogue, the network of concrete lanes that runs from one street to another offers an easy escape route, a shortcut, a hideout.

A masked man walked through the open back door of a Pasadena pizza parlor Sunday and robbed the owner of an undisclosed amount of money, county police said.Rex P. Atwood, 33, owner of Vizzini's in the 4100 block of Mountain Road, told police he was in the office with an employee just after 10 p.m. when a man walked in, pulled out what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun and demanded money.The man grabbed the cash drawer and ran out the same door he came in, police said. Police did not have a detailed description of the suspect.

Police logEllicott City: 9200 block of Marydell Road: Someone broke the back door of a house with a rock Tuesday, but no entry was made.Elkridge: U.S. 1 and Howard Street: A brush fire was reported and extinguished. There were no arrests.Pub Date: 11/07/96

Two men, one with a handgun, robbed a Glen Burnie store Sunday evening and escaped with an undisclosed amount of money, county police said.The men walked in the back door of the Dollar Bills store in the 6700 block of Ritchie Highway about 7:15 p.m., and one of them pulled a black semiautomatic pistol and announced the robbery, police said.The gunman forced the store manager to open the safe and give him money, and the second man stood watch over an employee in a rear stockroom, police said.

WASHINGTON -- Before Paul Simon retires from the Senate in a couple of years, he intends to board up the back door to the Alamo.Simon, a Democratic liberal from Illinois, has for some years tried to get Congress to pass a constitutional amendment that would force it to balance the federal budget.The heart of the amendment is simple: "Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed receipts for that fiscal year."But, as one pundit put it, the concept sends shivers down Congress' spine -- or would if it had one.Congress can balance the budget without an amendment.

A 31-year-old employee who was shot in the back Tuesday night as he tried to flee during an armed robbery at a Pennsylvania Avenue carryout died Tuesday afternoon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, police said.The victim, Brian Anthony Harrod, was a part-time employee at the Sub Shack near his home in the 1500 block of Pennsylvania Ave.Police said two robbers burst into the store when the owner opened the front door to take out trash. Mr. Harrod and another employee were behind an enclosed partition when one of the intruders grabbed a customer and held a gun to the customer's head.

So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine, to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo. They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number)

`Back door' to prison beats revolving door I carefully read "A `back door' into prison" (Dec. 2). One thing that stood out was that all of the cases presented involved convicted violent criminals who did not serve anywhere near the time that they were sentenced to but were back on the streets posing a threat to law-abiding citizens. I say that if these former felons are out on probation but have not learned their lesson and are not squeaky clean, they should return to prison where they belong.

Fifty percent of the federal work force will be eligible to retire by 2010. To find a federal job, check usajobs.opm.gov and agency Web sites. Look for such things as announcements of open ings; career fairs, which may feature on-the-spot hiring; summer internships; and recruitment programs for students, recent graduates and minorities. But even while you knock on the federal government's front door, check the back door, too. How? By seeking temporary and contract jobs in federal agencies.

THE WIND is a great leveler. The muscular gusts that rocketed though Maryland late this week swept away feelings of seasonal smugness and sent me scurrying to weatherstrip the home front. During November it feels, as Verlyn Klinkenborg says in his new book of essays, The Rural Life, as if "winter could come the next minute or the next month." I had been counting on cold weather to mosey into town in a month or two. But Thursday when the howling wind woke me up at 4 o'clock in the morning it sounded like the wolf was at the door.

A Baltimore man was shot three times yesterday by a city officer after police chased the man to his grandmother's house in East Baltimore. Egan Davis, 23, was shot in the right thigh, hip and arm by Officer Frank Nellis, 27, who has been on the city police force since March 1998. Davis was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition. He was shot as he paced on a red metal awning over the front of a house in the 1500 block of N. Lakewood Ave. "My speculation is he was trying to decide whether he could jump safely," said Maj. Michael J. Andrew, commander of the Eastern District.

It was one of those seductive Venetian dinners. Little out-of-the-way place, soft lighting, good company and a table spread with exotic, unfamiliar temptations. Spirits I'd scarcely heard of. An entree I'd never have ordered myself. Sometime after the Aperol spritzer, probably during the squid-ink pasta but definitely before the last chilled sip of limoncello liqueur, I yielded - a pushover the very first night. Like countless conquests before me, I, too, murmured, "I'm not a tour person, but ... " Many who have taken a Rick Steves tour know the feeling.

THE SCREEN door panel emerged from winter storage in sorry shape. There was a tear running along the bottom edge, an opening that the backyard mosquitoes - those pesky Asian tigers - would be certain to exploit. So I measured the height and width of the panel, bought a piece of new screen that was several inches longer and wider than my measurements, and went to work in the back yard. It was pleasant duty. It was a glorious spring afternoon. I set up operations on a table underneath the blooming dogwood tree, its bright pink blossoms lighting up the landscape.

Alton and Geneva Smith were happy last summer when city crews cleared out the impromptu landfill behind the alley of their Aisquith Street home. But like a recurring addiction, the trash is back, even worse than it was before. Mattresses, a fender, toys, furniture, shoes, baby clothes, gum and candy wrappers, a TV, a cash register, and beer, wine and liquor bottles are some of the items the Smiths can see yards from their back door. Along with shards of glass, rats and a headache-causing stench, the mess had forced the Smiths to call the city four times since the cleanup.

Frank O'Grady refused to open his door this time, but he still got robbed.And now the 72-year-old man is afraid the robber who visited his home twice in the last week will return."

Frank O'Grady refused to open his door this time, but he still got robbed.And now the 72-year-old man is afraid the robber who visited his home twice in the last week will return."