NEWS
By Andrea K. Walker | July 21, 2009
Retailers looking to draw consumers to their stores during the slow economy are trying to get shoppers to think like it is the Christmas season, when stores offer some of the best deals of the year. They're looking to woo people with "Christmas in July" sales that they say are as good as the bargains in November and December. The summer Christmas sale concept isn't a new one, but it has evolved to include more than just holiday merchandise as retailers look for ways to bring in customers during the slow period right before the back-to-school season, retail experts said.
NEWS
By Annie Linskey | January 4, 2009
Two Baltimore Department of Public Works employees stood ready in Cherry Hill yesterday morning to turn Christmas trees into wood chips. But perhaps it was too soon for Baltimoreans to take down decorations. Only five cars arrived with trees in the morning. Employees appeared a bit disappointed, shuffling around the machines but perking up whenever a car drove near. "People will just throw them in the alleys," Quentin McCready said. The Christmas tree program works like this: City machines chew up the Christmas trees, and residents can take the resulting mulch.
NEWS
By Kimi Yoshino and Ali Hameed | December 26, 2008
BAGHDAD - Three years ago, a note appeared at Lita Kaseer's door. It contained a bullet and a one-word message: "Leave." Kaseer did flee, along with hundreds of other Christian families from the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad, once a vibrant Christian community. This year, she returned home from Syria, and yesterday she attended Christmas Mass with her husband and 7-month-old son. "It's always better to come home," said her husband, Khalid Kamil, 34. "In any other place, you are a stranger.
NEWS
By James Drew | December 26, 2008
Running out of money to buy food, David P. Anderson was among the first to file into the dining room yesterday at Our Daily Bread. Behind him, dozens waited in line on Christmas morning as Anderson sat down to a turkey dinner and reached first for the cranberry relish. But it wasn't until he was walking out of the downtown Baltimore soup kitchen that Anderson learned who had prepared the meal and served it to him. For the 15th year, members of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation stepped in so the usual volunteers, several of them Christians, could celebrate Christmas Day at home with their families.
NEWS
By From Sun news services | December 25, 2008
On Christmas, the NBA gives the gift of basketball - five games broadcast nationally on ESPN, ABC and TNT, the first of which is a yuletide plum, pitting Dwight Howard and the Orlando Magic against the Chris Paul-led New Orleans Hornets. The Magic battled an injury bug in the early going, but that hasn't stopped them from winning 13 of their first 17 games. After a breakthrough 2007-2008 season, a relatively slow 9-6 start has everyone in New Orleans asking why. (Noon, ESPN) The second game of ABC's doubleheader is a clash of two teams who met in last season's NBA Finals and whom many pick to lock horns in June when Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics take on Pau Gasol and the Los Angeles Lakers.
NEWS
By JEAN MARBELLA | December 25, 2008
If the predictions were on target, at this very moment you are suffering through a Christmas that is almost 29 percent less merry than last year. In fact, it will be the least merry Christmas since 1999, so you might as well go back to bed and sleep through it. I base my calculations on a recent Gallup poll that found that Americans on the average planned to spend about 29 percent less on Christmas presents this year - $616 rather than last year's $866,...
NEWS
By PETER HERMANN | December 25, 2008
(An exchange of holiday greetings between The Baltimore Sun and the city's Police Department.) The cop shop reporters were snug at their desks, While visions of prizes danced in their heads. But the scanner was quiet; no crime to report; Nothing, nada; the blotter, quite short. The editors moaned; this can't be, they mused; Christmas cheer doesn't sell! We need bad news! Away to the windows, reporters ran like a flash Notebooks in hands, they threw open the sash. And there to behold, under a bright shining star, The flashing blue lights of a city police car!
NEWS
By Garrison Keillor | December 25, 2008
It is the blessed Christmas season. But of course you know that. Unless you live 10 miles up a box canyon deep in the Wasatch Range with only your dog Boomer and are demented from drinking bad water, you have been inhaling Christmas night and day and "Adeste Fideles" is stuck in your head like a five-inch nail. This Christmas, I am in New York for the general dazzlement and variety. On Sunday, St. Patrick's was packed to the rafters for 4 p.m. Mass in Spanish, the name "Jesucristo" drifting around the battlements, and a few blocks south the Jane Austen Society was meeting to discuss Christmas in Olde England, and in between, I stopped in a men's store and bought six pairs of red socks.
NEWS
By Rashod D. Ollison | December 18, 2008
Kenny Rogers is having throat problems - not a good thing for a man renowned for his soft, leathery croon. "My body's falling apart, but I'm never sick," says the 70-year-old country-pop legend, his voice noticeably frayed. "I tell you: These throat problems started two days ago. I'm so full of steroids, I feel like a racehorse - or a professional athlete." Rogers is calling from his luxury tour bus en route to a vocal cords specialist in New York, the same one Mick Jagger goes to. "I'll be fine by the time I get to your city," he says reassuringly.
NEWS
By Rashod D. Ollison | December 18, 2008
Always at Christmas, Ledisi's house was abuzz with loud friends and family members. A funky good time was in full swing for hours. "It was from church to the house, people eating by the stove. It was none of that sit-down thing," the R&B singer says. "People playing dominoes, drinking, cussing and singing. At the end of the night, I would sit by the tree, looking at the lights when I was supposed to be 'sleep." For It's Christmas, her latest album and second release for the venerable Verve label, Ledisi encapsulates the soulful mood of those holidays in New Orleans and Oakland, Calif.