Black And White

For the first few decades, movies only came in black and white. Then color took over and elbowed its predecessor into the shadows.But a little black and white can still do a lot for a film - as New Line's "Pleasantville" proves. "Pleasantville," which opened in theaters Friday, uses glorious B&W to depict the title town, a throwback to those wholesome little villages that dominated TV screens of the 1950s (think "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It To Beaver"). The effect is both nostalgic and visually striking.

I'm having a ridiculous argument with my husband, who insists that my new job means more to me than our marriage. This is the story: When I married five years ago, I wore only minis. I have great legs, and I admit that I used them to the best advantage.Then I got a promotion, and because I wanted to look professional, I started wearing pantsuits. Now my husband is complaining. He says he fell in love with my legs, but now all he sees are pants. He wants me to get out my old dresses and wear them.

True story: In the early '70s, this newspaper's most incompetent copyreader was in career trouble. It seemed his employers expected him to spell words correctly, even the hard ones, like sheriff and caricature. He also wanted to write, but in the phrase of Peter De Vries, hated the paperwork. His prospects in either endeavor were limited.Add the fact that it was Christmas Eve, the mega-depressive spoonful-of-arsenic night of the year. Add the fact that he had been so busy thinking about his own problems that it suddenly dawned on him he had not bothered to buy his poor, hard-working wife a Christmas present.

I always enjoy writing short essays on the use of color, even though they may be hard to visualize when the accompanying photos are in black and white. We'll have an easier time of it with this column, however, since I've chosen to write about one ofmy favorite color schemes: black and white with a one-color accent.Black and white, with an accent of either yellow or red, could be seen in many high-style interiors of the 1950s and 1960s. This was partly a reaction against contemporary design trends and the more cloying period looks at that time.

Our 60-year-old house, which we've been slowly renovating, contains a guest bathroom that's in need of new wall tiles. The original floor, still in place, consists of the small black-and-white tiles that were the norm back in the '40s. And you can guess what color all the fixtures are. We'd like to retain the style that the homebuilders chose for this small but functional bathroom, even though it's kind of dull. Can you suggest ways of introducing a bit of visual fizz without altering the basic design?

The invention of photography radically changed people's relationship to images because it revolutionized their ideas about what pictures could look like and mean. Two shows currently at area galleries demonstrate that the camera can describe the world in characteristically minute detail, even when the images it produces are not photographs at all in the conventional sense. Laurie Snyder's exquisite black-and-white images of trees at Goucher College's Rosenberg Gallery, and Philip Bogdan's large color prints of woods at the Maryland Federation of Art's City Gallery, revisit the idea of landscape by calling into question the nature of photographic representation.

A decade ago, the list of the top 10 TV shows favored by African-American viewers and the list of top shows among all viewers shared only one program: Monday Night Football. But this year, for the first time in a generation, the polls on shows favored by white and black audiences are strikingly similar, in agreement on eight of the top 10. Never in the 20 years that the data from Nielsen Media Research has been systematically compared based on race has such a convergence between black and white TV tastes emerged.

THERE are many things that stunned the political establishment about my recent meeting with Pat Buchanan to discuss his interest in the Reform Party nomination for president.Mr. Buchanan is a right-winger; I come from the left. Mr. Buchanan has been criticized for being racist. I'm black. Mr. Buchanan is a lifelong Republican, a consummate political insider. I am the ultimate outsider, an African-American independent at odds with the black leadership's insistence that we stick to the Democrats for our political and economic survival.

Well, now they've done it. The three main candidates in the mayor's race answered questions about race head-on in a televised debate the other night.The verdict? No big deal.In contrast to the racially charged mayor's race of 1995, issues of black and white this year seem secondary to education and crime, housing and economic development.Officials and organizations have bestowed an uncommon number of cross-racial political endorsements, mostly from blacks to Martin O'Malley and whites to Carl Stokes.

OUT OF Martin O'Malley's mouth came the following phrase Tuesday morning: "the integrated and hopeful 3rd District." He said this right at the top, so everybody could notice his sentiments. Then he used this phrase: "working-class families of this city, black and white." He said this maybe 12 seconds later, in case anybody had already forgotten his first reference: It's a city of multiple colors.He said these things standing on the sunlit corner of Harford Road and The Alameda, right by Clifton Park, and right by a sign originally designed to keep drug dealers away, which they naturally ignore, and he said it while announcing his run for mayor of Baltimore.

Betty Rosen says fashion isn't a top priority, yet the 76-year-old Pikesville resident is known around town for her style. She and her husband, Buddy Rosen, love to travel, and that's when she does most of her shopping - that is, when this professional photographer isn't taking pictures of faraway places and people. Whether she's headed to Asia, the grocery store or Gertrude's at the Baltimore Museum of Art for Moveable Feast's annual "Dining Out for Life" event, Rosen always looks picture-perfect.

Young African-Americans are 20 times as likely as whites to develop heart failure, according to a new study published today. The deadly illness strikes one in every 100 blacks under the age of 50. "We usually thought of heart failure as a disease of older people, but that's based on studies by mostly white participants," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and the study's lead author....

Shari Elliker and Treavor Erney had no illusions about the half-million-dollar house they purchased last August in northern Baltimore's Homeland. The three-story Georgian-style home, solidly built of fieldstone in 1928 and placed among similar mansions in the Olmsted-designed neighborhood, was a majestic site to behold - from the street. But beyond the front door, with its impressive Palladian transom, a daunting job awaited. "This house was a major interior renovation," said Elliker, a popular WBAL talk-radio host.

I couldn't take my eyes off the screen Jan. 20 as Barack Obama, his black hand resting on the Lincoln Bible, took the oath of office as our 44th president. Like millions of other Americans, I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. My thoughts turned to many things that afternoon - to the Layton Theater of my youth, where African-Americans were relegated to the balcony; to Carolyn Thomas, who joined my all-white high school class in 1961 as its only black member; to the "Whites Only" sign on the bathroom door in the city park not far from home.

I've come aboard as the new editor of UniSun at a time of great promise and strong pride for people of color. Indeed, it's been an inspiring year for black Americans, many of whom never thought they would live to see a black man in the White House's Oval Office. With Barack Obama's amazing and historic triumph on Nov. 4, we now have a president-elect and first family who look a lot like you and me. I know it took a lot of sacrifice and struggle to get to this moment of change. But as a daughter of the South, too young to have participated in the civil rights movement, I see it as a beginning, not an ending.

Four years ago, Barack Obama introduced himself to America by painting a picture of a nation that was united, somehow, in spite of itself. The pundits, he said in the keynote address to the Democratic National Cnvention, like to "slice and dice" the country: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. "But I've got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."

SUFFOLK, VA. - The solid South could be cracking beneath John McCain's feet. Southern support for Barack Obama is building in states that have been reliably Republican for decades, polls show, and they might deliver a decisive verdict in next week's election. Virginia hasn't gone Democratic for president in 44 years, but it is leaning Obama's way. He holds a narrower edge in other Southern battlegrounds: North Carolina, last carried by a Democrat in 1976, and Florida, which decided the 2000 race.

Look at the picture, taken in a dime-store photo booth in 1955. What do you see? A black-and-white snapshot of black and white buddies hanging out - in black-and-white, segregated times. They seem an odd pair. One wears a wide smile, a starched shirt and a bow tie. He glows with the naivete of Barney Fife. His friend, dressed casually, is smiling, too. But his is a weathered, worldly smile, a look born, perhaps, of the day. Both men, then Baltimore Colts rookies, would leave their mark on pro sports.

Our 60-year-old house, which we've been slowly renovating, contains a guest bathroom that's in need of new wall tiles. The original floor, still in place, consists of the small black-and-white tiles that were the norm back in the '40s. And you can guess what color all the fixtures are. We'd like to retain the style that the homebuilders chose for this small but functional bathroom, even though it's kind of dull. Can you suggest ways of introducing a bit of visual fizz without altering the basic design?

While she was reviving the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter in Baltimore, Lillie May Jackson was regarded as something of a screamer. She was in the face of authority so persistently that white judges, among others, kept a wary eye out for her. "Find out what Mrs. Jackson wants and get it for her," they said - or words to that effect. About all she could do to back her demands in those days was raise her voice. Black voting strength was insufficient to win concessions, and there was little, if any, black representation in government.