Canary

The Handel Choir of Baltimore will perform Johann Sebastian Bach's ''Mass in B Minor'' at 3 p.m. on Sunday, February 27 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation on West Preston Street.Come early. At 2 p.m., a professor from the Peabody Conservatory will explain the work's musical composition. Then you can sit quietly in a pew and prepare yourself for the spiritual experience of this sacred music. But preliminary study and meditation are not required. All you have to do is show up, and Bach's mass will sweep you away.

The problem with many environmental crises is that they creep up so slowly they are easy to ignore. For many years now, the public has listened to dire warnings only to look around and note that everything seems fine, at least on the surface.Many of these warnings have come from the Worldwatch Institute, a non-profit research organization based in ) Washington, D.C. For the past 11 years the group has issued an annual State of the World report, detailing progress (or lack of it) in such areas as balancing food production with population growth, preserving rain forests or ending poverty.

Distraught and weeping, Darlene Rodriguez cradled the body of her pet cat as her Finksburg home was ravaged by fire.Ms. Rodriguez, who has lived in the Todd Village trailer park off Route 140 more than five years, returned from work yesterday afternoon and found firefighters battling the flames engulfing her mobile home.She screamed for the cat, according to firefighters.One of the volunteer firefighters was able to get inside and reach the animal, but found it dead.The 14-year-old cat, a canary and the house trailer were lost.

If there is one thing the federal government does not need is more politics. It needs less. Yet the Senate last week voted to amend the Hatch Act to allow federal civil servants to engage in political activity. The Senate bill would allow most executive branch and Postal Service employees to manage political campaigns, run for party offices, solicit campaign contributions from fellow workers. Yet it was abuse of this sort intermingling of partisan politics with governmental activity that produced the Hatch Act in 1939.

It's almost spring. The first robins are singing. And the town of Manchester has started spreading sewage effluent over its new spray fields.The town started spraying water at the site March 1, but Thursday was the first day the liquid sewage effluent started flowing. Soon, the spray fields will be green with reed canary grass."When I started work here 15 years ago, I never thought I'd be a farmer," said Steven Miller, Manchester's water and waste water superintendent.The alfalfa and reed canary grass will act as living sponges, absorbing nitrogen, phosphorus and other excess nutrients from the soil, preventing them from contaminating ground water and the Prettyboy Reservoir.

The Northeast High School drama department will present its fall production, "The Cat and the Canary," at 7:30 p.m. next Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the school auditorium on Duvall Highway.The plot features all of the elements of a good whodunit: a deceased eccentric's unusual will; greedy relatives; inherited insanity; an escaped maniac; and murder."You can't tell who the corpses are without a program," said director Ron Price. "Our cast has really enjoyed putting this play together.

LONDON -- It rises like an exclamation point on the east end of this low-slung city, up into the smog from Isle of Dogs, a thumb of land jutting into the Thames.The men who run the riverboat tours down to Greenwich always call attention to Canary Wharf and to the tower at its center, 1 Canada Square. It is the tallest in Europe, they say.It may also be one of the emptiest. And it could become emptier still, now that the bankers financing Canary Wharf have decided they have given enough.They made their decision Wednesday after considering a request to lend nearly $1 billion more to the project's developer, Olympia & York Developments Ltd., a Toronto-based developer that has sought bankruptcy protection for most of its Canadian assets.

From The Sun June 23-29, 1841zTC June 25: Samuel Canaby, Esq., of Woodside, near Wilmington, Del., has a short horned Durham cow, which yields on an average 253 quarts of milk weekly -- an average of over 36 quarts a day -- yielding over 17 pounds of good butter.June 29: The number of Christians in China is estimated at 300,000.From The Sun June 23-29, 1891June 28: A syndicate of American and English capitalists have just concluded negotiations for the purchase of 800 acres of land adjoining the northern city limits of Baltimore, with the view of developing it into a suburban town.

THOSE OF YOU who have seen the October issue of Baltimore magazine and its list of the city's 50 most powerful people will know me as a ''600-pound canary'' whose prospects for appearing on a future version of that list depend on what kind of song he sings. It's still too early to give you a complete rendition of my song, but I'd like to try out a few phrases. I am going out on a limb a bit with some personal ideas about the University of Maryland system's proper role in greater Baltimore.