Balcony

A $3 million face lift of downtown Baltimore's 218-year-old Lexington Market would add larger windows, lighted signs, a balcony for outdoor dining and a 45-foot-tall globe with a digital display reading "World Famous Lexington Market." The renovation, which a city architectural review committee will begin reviewing today, is intended to make the market more attractive as the city helps lead a $350 million rebuilding of the struggling neighborhood around it. The panel will approve or reject the renovation in the coming months.

THERE ARE TIMES when you feel lucky to have been in the right place at the right time, when things turned out magnificently, beyond anything you could have imagined when you walked in or started out. A few years ago, I went fishing in the Big Gunpowder Falls -- the same day, it turned out, that a man in kilts decided to serenade us with bagpipes in the woods along the river. I felt lucky to have seen a certain amazing Dunbar High basketball game -- incredible passes, fabulous shooting -- that included a couple of guys named Muggsy Bogues and Reggie Williams.

On my first cruise, I was thrilled to have an outside cabin with a small porthole that provided a patch of natural light and a glimpse of cobalt sea. On my last cruise, I griped because my private veranda was not large enough to accommodate all four chaises I insisted the steward set out so my husband and I could lounge al fresco with two new friends we had met on board. What a difference five years makes. Once a rare amenity of only the ritziest ships' most expensive cabins, private balconies have become commonplace on every cruise line's newest offspring.

Nowhere in the 1824 Anne Arundel Court House now being refurbished is the weight of history more apparent than in the cavernous upstairs courtroom and its gallery, where black residents say Jim Crow laws once segregated them.The upstairs courtroom was created in an early 1890s overhaul of the courthouse, which is the third oldest in Maryland. The building is being renovated as part of a $2.5 million project to turn it into a museum and gateway to the new Circuit Court building next door."I went up there as a lad to watch the trials," said George Phelps Jr., 72, who grew up on nearby South Street.

Gene Siskel was not the most respected of American movie critics; he wasn't even the most accomplished half of "Siskel & Ebert" -- after all, Roger was the one with the Pulitzer Prize.But Siskel had an intense love for movies, a passion that made him as much fan as critic. He once owned the suit John Travolta wore in "Saturday Night Fever" and, for a wedding present, gave colleague Ebert Harpo Marx's horn. And his opinions were neither lowbrow nor high; if his yearly best-film picks included such critical darlings as 1997's "The Ice Storm," 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ" and 1975's "Nashville," he was just as sincere in defending his pick for 1998, the box-office dud (and critically ignored)

Gardening is for mortgage holders.Gardening is for mortgage holders with rich topsoil.Gardening is for mortgage holders with rich topsoil and green thumbs.Question: Which, if any, of these statements is false?Answer: All of them, because container gardens can deliver on green-thumbers' dreams. The solution to their poor-dirt/no-dirt circumstances is only terra-cotta pots away. Yards and fields can be replaced by peat-based soil in pots.So, all you renters and other soil-deprived homeowners, a garden can be yours if you contain it.And we're not talking just about those pedestrian indoor plants.

A New Jersey couple has sued an Ocean City hotel, charging that it negligently permitted two of its guests to throw a water balloon from a balcony in 1994, knocking the husband to the ground.The federal suit, which also names two Pennsylvania women and the owners of the hotel as defendants, says Frederick Wacker of Forked River, N.J., suffered "serious, painful and permanent injuries, shock to his nerves and nervous system [and] great mental and emotional suffering and anguish" as a result of the incident.

GAVLE, Sweden -- No one could have known, of course. But the view all these years from Maria Nordin's balcony has been a bittersweet reminder of the life she so much wanted but was never allowed to have.The blessing is that her failing blue eyes -- at the center of her awful story that began 54 years ago -- now prevent her from seeing more than a few yards away.The playground five stories below, with children dangling from tire swings and mothers trading neighborhood gossip, is beyond her sight.

WHEN I WAS young, all the big-name bands came to the movie theaters in Cumberland for one-day engagements. Madly enthusiastic about jazz, I went as often as possible to hear and applaud some of the best orchestras of that day -- Woody Herman, Gene Krupa, Les Brown, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong -- taking in all the jazz that could be crammed into the far-too-few minutes those musicians were on stage.I never really thought about the color of the performers. I saw the musicians with my ears and heard them in the leaping of my heart.

The dream dressFormal-wear manufacturers are anticipating a demand for this summer's ultimate wedding gown, a knockoff of last year's ultimate wedding gown. The Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy dress, which was front page in virtually every periodical in September, has caught the fancy of brides-to-be."Our version is certainly inspired, but not a copy," says Peter Noviello, who along with Sherrie Bloom designs the Chetta B label. "The bias asymmetrical cut with the trumpet hem puts the look across," he says of the devore velvet dress.