Conversations

The last time Ryan Imbriale grew a mustache, he was a junior in high school. Now 39, he still cringes a little when he sees that yearbook photo, showing the wispy scraggle above his lip. He was never tempted to set aside his razor again. Until now. "I've been growing it since Nov. 1, to the dismay of my family," said Imbriale, principal at Patapsco High School & Center for the Arts and a married father of four daughters. Imbriale and 16 other faculty members at the school are growing mustaches to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer and other men's health issues, as part of a global campaign called Movember.

The Ravens offense enjoyed a rare display of success in Sunday night's 23-20 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers as Joe Flacco became the first Ravens quarterback to throw for 300 yards in the all-time series and eight different players caught at least one pass. The unit also excelled on third downs. The team converted 14-of-21 third downs en route to amassing 23 total first downs. The number of third-down conversions is a season high, doubling the previous high of seven registered against Pittsburgh on Sept.

Punters don't usually create a lot of waves, but Sam Koch rocked the boat a little bit with his successful two-point conversion in the Ravens' season-opening thrashing of the Pittsburgh Steelers. After quarterback Joe Flacco connected with tight end Ed Dickson on an 18-yard touchdown strike on their first offensive play of the third quarter, Koch, who was holding for kicker Billy Cundiff, took the snap and ran through a hole created by the left side of the offensive line into the end zone.

Glenelg had a chance to win a game that would essentially clinch a share of the county title, and the Gladiators took it. After scoring a game-tying touchdown on a fourth-and-8 pass from Mark Darden to Ben Carta in overtime, the Gladiators attempted the two-point conversion for the win. Darden scrambled, dodging tacklers from one sideline to the other, but was eventually brought down behind the line of scrimmage, as River Hill (7-2) held on to defeat visiting Glenelg (7-2) 21-20 in overtime Friday night.

Roger Testud, a French-born baker who became a familiar presence at Baltimore's open-air markets, died of cardiac arrest Oct. 21 at St. Agnes Hospital. The Charring Cross area resident was 81. "He is about as French a baker as you can get," said a 1979 Evening Sun profile of him. "He looks as though he was created by Balzac, shaped by Rodin and taught by Savarin. " Born in Avignon, Mr. Testud was 14 when he began his baking apprenticeship there. He baked throughout his teens and later went into demonstrating and selling commercial baking equipment.

When the staff and contributors at the Jewish Museum of Maryland were putting together the new exhibit "Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity," they knew better than to try and tell people what is Jewish food and what is not. If a matzo ball is pretty clearly Jewish food, does a low-fat version with chives still count? Is falafel Jewish? Is hummus? Can sushi be Jewish if it's served at Jewish weddings? Where does lo mein fit in? According to curator Karen Falk, questions like those, and the way they are linked to larger conversations about religious, ethical and cultural values, are at the heart of the exhibit, which opens Oct. 23 and runs through September 2012.

A few Pittsburgh Steelers players have complained publicly that the Ravens rubbed it in their faces when they went for a two-point conversion in the third quarter of the Ravens' 35-7 thrashing on Sunday. News of those complaints have trickled back to the Ravens, but when informed of the protests, special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg made no apologies. "I wasn't aware that they complained about it," Rosburg said. When informed that they had, Rosburg replied, "Is that right?

They ran a Grand Prix through the streets of Charm City recently, and if you looked closely, some people say, those were dollars you saw spewing from the exhausts of those high-performance engines. Those are the kinds of dollars that spread all throughout the downtown area, to local establishments and small businesses. Soon, we'll begin to hear the story of the economics of the Izod IndyCar event. I'm told we should be interested in that story - the one about economics and racing.

When the Ravens opened the third quarter with an 18-yard touchdown strike from quarterback Joe Flacco to tight end Ed Dickson with just 21 seconds elapsed in the second half, conventional wisdom called for Billy Cundiff to kick the extra point. But the team called for a two-point conversion, and holder Sam Koch's saunter into the end zone through the left side of the line put an exclamation point on the Ravens' 35-7 rout of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The two-pointer was the 23rd such conversion in franchise history and Koch's first of his career, but he insisted that the play was not designed to pour salt in the Steelers' wounds.