Copy Desk

Tim Smith Tim Smith is The Sun's classical music critic. He was born in Washington, D.C., and received a master's degree in music history from Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is the author of The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Classical Music, published in 2002. For UniSun, he writes about the off-season life of one of the Soulful Symphony's talented members. Tanika White A journalist for 10 years, Tanika White covers fashion, style and beauty for The Sun. Before that, she covered education and schools.

When is a short story not a short story? And is that good o bad? Well, a good example can be found on Page 19: Sue Waterman's moving piece of fiction "Holding On, Letting Go." But it's bad if you want to enter it in a contest with certain ground rules, which she did. While Ms. Waterman's entry made it to the finals of our Summer Short Fiction Contest, it didn't quite adhere to the short story form enough to satisfy our judges. It ended up as an honorable mention.But Sue Waterman's entry stayed with me, partly because I have a 12-year-old daughter -- and what Ms. Waterman says about first-born daughters is absolutely true -- but mostly because of how Ms. Waterman tells her story.

John M. "Jack" Lemmon, managing editor of The Evening Su for the past 12 years, announced his retirement yesterday.Though Mr. Lemmon, 63, gave his official retirement date as Dec. 31, he said yesterday that "as a practical matter, today is my last day."During his tenure as the newspaper's top news executive, The Evening Sun received numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize."I think we had some good times. This was a happy place to work. Most of us enjoyed doing what we did," he said. "One of the most exciting things was a good story, having something in the paper that you're proud of."

Clint W. Ensign is a godsend for serious sightseers who know how it is to spend the day squinting and moving their lips as they try to read the inscriptions on Washington's monuments. Not only has Mr. Ensign painstakingly recorded the words of wisdom from 27 sites in the nation's capital, he offers tight histories of each site that help put the quotations in context and make the overpriced, almost pocket-sized book fascinating even for the casual nontourist reader.In an overly humble preface, the author explains how he chose which inscriptions, how he added punctuation to some passages to make them more readable, why he didn't give the White House its own chapter . . . and on and on. He even slips in an unsettling pre-emptive apology in case there are any errors!

Overcome by a roaring fire in her Roland Park home, an 11-year-old girl died at Sinai Hospital yesterday after being pulled from the flames by Baltimore firefighters, while her 16-year-old brother clung to life in the same medical center. Their father, Stephen A. Young, a deputy copy desk chief at The Sun, was found outside the front door. Choking, he managed to tell firefighters that his children were trapped inside, a city Fire Department spokesman said. Young was rushed to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was in critical condition and stable last night, recovering from a broken hip and suffering from smoke inhalation.

Walter E. Dorsett, a copy editor for The Sun, was found dead Tuesday at his Waterloo Place apartment in Mount Vernon. He was 55. Mr. Dorsett, who had worked at The Sun since 2000, had been under treatment for cancer. Born and raised in Waynesboro, Pa., where he graduated from high school and worked on the school paper, Mr. Dorsett earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1969 from what was then Wake Forest College. He also attended its law school. He began his newspaper career in 1967 as a part-time phone clerk and intern at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, and became an editor at age 20. During his 12-year career there, he held positions including copy editor, business editor, acting city editor, editorial writer and Sunday news editor.

Lawrence Sherwood Faith, a retired Baltimore County teacher, died Sunday after a long illness with heart disease and cancer. The Catonsville resident was 73.A graveside service for Mr. Faith will be private.Mr. Faith was born March 14, 1917, at his family's home in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., one of 16 children of Harry Erastus Faith and his wife, the former Bertha Elizabeth Barnhart. He was fond of telling stories from an austere childhood, one of the most memorable being a scheme to make money by trapping muskrats.