Chalk

Asked by the mayor how he is getting to the airport, the visitor says he'll hail a cab. No you won't, says the mayor. This city has made it illegal for cabs to cruise for fares.Why?That is what government does. It abets ''transfer seeking'' -- the use of government power to transfer wealth from one group to another, in this case from weak taxi competitors to the three companies that control most of the market and can afford sophisticated radio dispatching systems.The city has set taxi rates high, so taking a cab to the airport can cost twice as much as a stretch limousine.

No Triple Crown winner this year, no first-female-jockey-to-win, no sunshine? No problem, said those who flocked to Pimlico Race Course on Saturday and waited out a midafternoon downpour to watch Oxbow leave behind Kentucky Derby winner Orb to capture the 138th Preakness Stakes. "This is always an exciting race," said Tom Meek, 59, of Phoenixville, Pa., smoking a postrace cigar. "As much as I love Orb and as much as I want a Triple Crown, this is great for Oxbow. That horse rocked.

The owners of Daedalus Books & Music had great expectations when they opened their first stand-alone retail store at the then-recently reinvigorated Belvedere Square in 2006. But the bookstore opened just before the national economy went into the tank. Daedalus found that because remainder books — the excess inventory sold at a discount by publishing houses to outlets like Daedalus — are so low-priced, it was hard to sell enough to keep the store going. It is set to close next month.

Can new plywood be installed on a 40-year-old roof without removing the old? Roy Gingrich of Ellicott City has a 40-year-old house with an asphalt shingle roof surface. The existing asphalt shingles need replacement, so he plans to do a tear-off and re-shingle. Because the plywood roof sheathing under the shingles has become brittle and weak, he plans to install new plywood as well as new shingles. But can he simply install new plywood over the old plywood sheathing to avoid the extra time, expense and attic debris that he believes removing the old plywood would entail?

I WISH BEN CARDIN would decide whether he's running for governor. Perhaps then the debate will turn to something more substantial than what Ben Cardin's going to do.But I doubt it. No matter who the candidates, no matter what the campaign, issue or event, our political discourse has been steadily devolving into little more than a game:Who's in? Who's out? If County Executive So-and-So runs, what will that mean for Sen. This-and-That? Sen. This-and That's polls have been pretty pitiful ever since that stadium vote; even if he can get past So-and-So in the primary, he might be too beaten up to win the general.

SAN ANTONIO-- --What was the bigger shocker in the Alamodome last night? That the top-seeded, former No. 1-ranked team whose credentials got slighted all year long advanced decisively into the national championship game? Or that the top-seeded, former No. 1-ranked team who was the odds-on favorite to be here from Day 1 of the regular season got smoked like a holiday ham? If you did have to choose one unlikely Final Four occurrence over the other, give long consideration to the way Memphis handled UCLA in the opener, but then take the eye-popping developments in the nightcap, when North Carolina fell behind Kansas 40-12 in the first half.

Shuttle Discovery's successful Ulysses mission ended five months of frustration for the U.S. space program, but it marked only the first step on an incredibly long trip -- in space and on the ground.Discovery, the workhorse among NASA's three usable orbiters, returned safely from a near-perfect mission. But its passenger, the European Space Agency's Ulysses explorer, has half a billion miles to go to execute a tricky "slingshot" swing around Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, before it reaches its real workstation near the sun. Moreover, NASA still hasn't found the cause of fuel-leak problems that have kept shuttles Columbia and Atlantis on the ground for five months.

According to NFL Properties licensing director Colin Hagen, sales of football cards are 25 percent ahead of last year.He attributes that to interest in the league's 75th anniversary and strong performances on the field by veterans and rookies.Baltimore-area dealers, whose customers have no hometown NFL team, think it's the baseball strike.Rick Hubata, of The Dugout in Ellicott City, says his football card business has doubled since last year. "Across the board, football sales are dramatically up," he says.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama fired the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the first sacrificial lamb brought down after the alleged "targeting" of conservative political groups by the IRS. Mr. Obama declared, "Americans are right to be angry about it. " Call me out of step, but I am angrier that the president is joining the rush to judgment. All that is known for sure is that some IRS functionaries took a shorthand route to identify partisan political groups that might be pretending not to be political so that they could get the tax exempt status available to social welfare organizations.

While Enid Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden" is, on one level, about the challenge of raising a precocious and troubled teen-ager, on a deeper level it is about the part of a plant that lies hidden under ground -- the roots.The 1955 script -- receiving an able production under Suzanne Pratt's direction at Theatre Hopkins -- is itself an example of something that turns out to be different from what appears on the surface. From the beautifully detailed conservatory set to the cultured tones of the actors portraying the cast of upper-class characters and their servants, everything about the show suggests a drawing room comedy.