Beloved

Arigesta Harris, a factory worker and mother of five who was a beloved figure in Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighborhood, died March 5 at the University of Maryland Medical Center of an aneurysm. She was 60. She died a week before she was to wed Tearan Melvin, her companion of 20 years. A graduate of Baltimore's Southern High School, Mrs. Harris worked for 15 years on the assembly line at Carr Lowery glass company. Later, after taking time off to raise her children, she became an employee at B&W Optical Co. She was at work the morning she became ill. Mrs. Harris, whose marriage to Arthur Harris Sr. ended in divorce, was a lifelong member of Mt. Sinai Holy Church in Cherry Hill.

What becalmed "Beloved"? Launched with galas and cover stories and borderline-reverent reviews, the Oprah Winfrey epic that arrived wrapped in Oscar predictions has been anything but beloved at the box office.In the five weeks since its Oct. 16 release, the $65 million picture, which stars Winfrey as a runaway slave whose nightmares continue well beyond the Civil War, earned a disappointing $22.5 million. Its failure, just 10 months after the fast fade of Steven Spielberg's "Amistad," another harrowing film about the slave experience, has prompted a rethinking of the market for prestigious, black-themed films.

George Burns, the beloved cigar-puffing comedian whose career spanned vaudeville, radio, movies and television, died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif.Mr. Burns, 100, was the foremost comic "straight man" of his time in a partnership with his late wife, the scatterbrained Gracie Allen. He began a new solo career in show business when he was nearly 80.When he was well into his 90s, Mr. Burns announced with his customary brio that he had arranged to celebrate his 100th birthday, on Jan. 20, 1996, with an engagement at the London Palladium.

"Beloved" is the movie that couldn't be made, and was, about people who couldn't go on, and did.Admirers of "Beloved," Toni Morrison's novel about a former slave trying to rebuild her life during Reconstruction, were understandably skeptical when they heard that the Pulitzer Prize-winning book was being adapted for the screen. How could a movie ever begin to capture the book's complex structure, its poetic language, its interiority and rhythm?Director Jonathan Demme has solved that problem by narrowing his focus while hewing strictly to the novel's visual details and emotional tone.

One of Fulton's oldest buildings, the tiny one-room landmark off Route 216 known to locals as the Milkcan, was moved last week to make way for the future.The move didn't take very long or go very far -- only a couple of hundred yards west of the spot where the building had stood since 1886.But the sight of two enormous construction cranes lifting a building off its foundation and putting it down again was enough to stir the interest of more than a few passers-by on Friday. As motorists made their way through Fulton, many slowed long enough to witness the brightly colored store dangling in midair.

Karen Lattanzi's mother was never cool enough to pile her hair on top of her head, load it with hairspray, slip into skin-tight pants and wrap a screaming-purple polyester scarf around her neck. But her daughter, 13-year-old Chiari, is. "I am so proud," Lattanzi, of Towson, said yesterday after Chiari was named "Best Hon" in a contest to memorialize Baltimore's distinctive women of yesteryear and their distinctive sense of fashion. (Rule No. 1: Hair can never be teased too high.) "I remember my girlfriend's mother looking much like my daughter," said Lattanzi, 46, a teacher's assistant who grew up in Northwood.

The homestead at 124 Bluestone Road is still "spiteful." Still full of a baby's venom. It looks as if it will soon slump into the ground, not with a soft, final sigh, but with an acrid, reverberating thud.Once the place was bright and hopeful, as the set designer for the movie "Beloved" intended. Then, haunted by the cinematic ghost of a murdered baby girl, the home slid into chaotic disrepair. Whitewash gave way to gray, weather-worn boards, and the place came to resemble a sorry rural wreck that spoke only of loss.

On October 9, 2002, MARY H. (nee Brown) formally of Towson, loving daughter of the late Arthur and Beulah Brown, devoted sister of Jean Roberts and her husband of Marvin Sonny, dear aunt of Michael S. Roberts and his wife Michelle, beloved great aunt of Brittany and Andrew Roberts. The family will receive friends in the LEMMON FUNERAL HOME OF DULANEY VALLEY INC., 10 W. Padonia Road, (at York Road) Timonium-Cockeysville, on Friday from 2-4 and 7-9 P.M. A Funeral Service will be held in the Timonium United Methodist Church, on Saturday, October 12 at 10 A.M. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.