Cheri

HOLLYWOOD - Cheri Woods is no fan of the Doors. Jim Morrison's band was too dark, too druggy. "No, I'm an Elvis nut." Still, Woods has been on a crash course in all things Doors that has included hours of research and even a seance since taking over the two-bedroom Morrison Hotel. "It's $200 a night," Woods chirps, "or $1,000 for a week." She bought the place in late 2003 for $700,000 and only after the transaction was under way did she learn of its rock history. "This is internationally recognized as the last known U.S. residence of Jim Morrison," Woods said of the upstairs rear unit, actually the home of girlfriend Pamela Courson.

Pam Soliman captured her second Women's Golf Association stroke-play championship in three years yesterday when she shot a second-round 3-over-par 78 for a 36-hole total of 153, and won the 49th annual event by two strokes over two-time titlist Cindy Peterka at Baltimore Country Club.Soliman, 20, and a member of the Duke University women's golf team, dueled Bonnie Fry for much of the round, before getting some breathing room at No. 16, a 406-yard par-5, where she made birdie and Fry made double bogey.

Cheri M. Horton, 49, social worker, therapistCheri M. Horton, a social worker and counselor in Baltimore and on the Eastern Shore, died Wednesday at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury after a two-year struggle with cancer. She was 49 and a resident of Hebron, Wicomico County.For the last two years, she was a private therapist with Counseling Associates in Salisbury. Before that, she was coordinator of counseling services for Coastal Hospice, which serves terminally ill patients throughout the lower Eastern Shore.

SPRING FLOWERS and birds were making a big showing outdoors and indoors in the community as children from Linthicum Elementary School celebrated their own welcome to the season with an art show and reception at a local florist shop. "Reinventing Flowers, a Burst of Bloom," was held recently at Flowers Extraordinaire by Stephen in the Shipley-Linthicum Shopping Center on Camp Meade Road. Thirty-five pupils proudly brought parents and grandparents to see their paintings, prints, drawings and collages, and celebrated the accolades with punch and cookies.

MOSCOW - The wife of an American who has been in jail here since last spring visited him yesterday at Lefortovo Prison, then called on Russian authorities to release him on medical grounds. Edmond Pope, 54, has suffered in the past from a rare form of bone-marrow cancer, and fears it may have returned. "I went in to see Ed this morning," Cheri Pope told a news conference. "He was very fragile and he was very weak and he was very tired. It's very difficult to see my husband in this condition, and it's very difficult for me to go back to my family in the United States and tell them about his condition."

Longtime crab house Obrycki's will close its Pratt Street doors next year, ending a six-decade run of serving seafood to tourists and Baltimoreans. Obrycki's will open again in March. But when the crab season concludes in November, the family's Fells Point restaurant will close for good, according to Robert M. "Rob" Cernak, who operates the business with two sisters. Cernak said the family decided to close "for quality of life" reasons. The Cernaks expect to open a smaller crab house soon at the planned slots parlor near Arundel Mills mall.

Aaliyah Boyer had hoped to watch the New Year's ball drop on TV, but when she learned she had missed the stroke of midnight by 32 seconds, she returned to the front yard with her friends to watch her neighbors light fireworks. Nearby, someone apparently fired a gun into the air to add to the celebration. Amid the jubilation, the 10-year-old fell to the ground, the warmth and color draining from her body after she was hit by a falling bullet. Her family initially thought that she had fainted, but the wound would prove fatal.

On January 16, 2004, N. CHERIS PRETTYMAN (nee McAllister); beloved wife of William D. Prettyman; dear sister of Deetta Bishoff, Jerry McAllister and Gail Morris; sister-in-law of Sandra Richardson. Funeral Service will be held at the family owned Duda-Ruck Funeral Home of Dundalk, Inc., 7922 Wise Avenue, on Sunday at 8:30 P.M. Friends may call on Sunday, 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Cremation to follow.

On August 24, 2003 CHERIE LEE (nee Scott) OF WESTMINSTER, wife of Raymond Beaver, daughter of Helen Kirby Scott and the late Gordon M. Scott, mother of Debra Lyons and husband R. Eric and Teresa Yingling and husband Kevin, step-mother of David Beaver and Judith C. Myers, sister of H. Craig Scott. Survived by seven grandchildren and two step-grandchildren. Friends may call at the Pritts Funeral Home and Chapel, 412 Washington Rd., Westminster on Tuesday 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 P.M. where services will be held on Wednesday at 12 noon.

With the bloated proportions (in miniature) of a Thanksgiving Day parade float, a fast-food calorie count and a puzzle-box construction that defies the most rudimentary of table manners, the fried hard crab is a celebration of culinary excess and old Chesapeake Bay ingenuity. Once a widespread specialty, it still can be found at a smattering of local crab houses, including Tall Oaks in Pasadena, L.P. Steamers in South Baltimore, Gunning's in Hanover and Magothy Seafood Crab Deck and Tiki Bar in Arnold.