Blue Eyes

BERLIN -- In an unfinished mosque on the fourth floor of a building being renovated in the polyglot neighborhood called Kreuzberg, Bosnian Muslims recite a litany of terror, sorrow and death."

You know you're in the right place the minute you see him. Not Cal Ripken, although the Iron Man was certainly on site last night, opening day for his Aberdeen IronBirds. It's the other guy, the one with the ample gut and the beard and the fetching IronBirds T-shirt. He's the one who makes such a grand entrance through the iron gates at Ripken Stadium. The guy's got 100 pounds on Cal, easy, but he's also got that hat - the hat of a true minor league baseball fan. His name is Jerry Bainbridge.

Blue eyes are typically associated with beauty, or perhaps Frank Sinatra. But to University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, they represent an evolutionary mystery. For nearly all of human history, everyone in the world had brown eyes. Then, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first blue-eyed baby was born somewhere near the Black Sea. For some reason, that baby's descendants gained a 5 percent evolutionary advantage over their brown-eyed competitors, and today the number of people with blue eyes tops half a billion.

Something big had to be happening on North Chester Street in East Baltimore yesterday, what with all the NO PARKING signs lashed to the trees, the police barricades sealing off the block, the cops and police cruisers. And, oh yes, the sudden and dramatic influx of strangers in jackets and ties. The reporters, the TV camera guys, the guys with coiled wires in their ears, all milling around the Formstone facade of what used to be a Lutheran church. It's now the headquarters of The Door, a group devoted to making the neighborhood better -- helping kids learn, keeping them busy in the summer, rebuilding decayed houses.

WashingtonIn another life, an adopted child named Cathy Deupree fantasized that her parents had been killed in a car crash or a plane disaster, or even that she was somehow the offspring of aliens.After all, she reasoned, Superman -- her favorite comic book hero -- had come to Earth from the planet Krypton. And anything would be better than facing the possibility of having been willingly abandoned at birth.The girl grew up to be a woman who now calls herself Jett Williams. As she reached adulthood, she searched for her birth parents and found that her mother was a Nashville secretary named Bobbie Jett.

GIVEN its location on the lower end of the "Bos-Wash corridor" and within 40 miles of Washington, Baltimore is a stopping-off point for the famous and near-famous, the politician, even the queen. It's parochial to mention that So-and-So visited Baltimore five times. He or she darn well should have!Having said that, Glimpses makes an exception for "ol' blue eyes," Frank Sinatra, who creates excitement wherever he goes. And Baltimore has been no exception.There've been at least three visits, maybe a fourth.

Three regional concert series are gearing up for their 2010-2011 season. South County Concert Association First up is the South County Concert Association, which opens its 35th season Sept. 21 with "The Great American Songbook," which is a celebration of Broadway productions. On Oct. 29, Frank Sinatra is represented as Steve Lippia offers his "Simply Sinatra" tribute concert. Next up is a special "Celebration of Christmas" concert by the Annapolis Chorale on Dec. 11. New Hampshire's "Ambassadors to the World," Rick and Ron Shaw, take the stage Jan. 14 with a blend of traditional, contemporary and original songs interspersed with humorous tales.

"Frankie! Frankie!"Frank Sinatra, who released his first new recording in 10 years this holiday season, is more than a timeless crooner whose music is still played nonstop in hundreds of restaurants. In some corners, Ol' Blue Eyes is considered an investment.While not igniting the collector frenzy of vintage Elvis Presley or Beatles memorabilia, many of his items are rising in value:* "Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music (Part II)," a promotional album distributed free by Budweiser in 1966, features Sinatra sporting a mustache on its cover.

A week's worth of watching the "Oprah Winfrey" show has brought two surprising revelations to our attention.First of all, we noticed that the studio audience is remarkably well-versed in self-help psychobabble, never hesitating to urge troubled guests to face reality, get counseling or simply mind their own business.Second, there was all that bright blue eye shadow on the women in the audience. These were not subtle, well-blended rims of smoky, gray-blue shadow. These were wide, arcing rings of bright baby blue, covering the eyelids from one corner to the other and from the lashes right up to the brows.