Daniel Boone

SOME of the good folk of the media who kindly look after our morals think the country is going to the wrong place in a hand basket.Specifically, Newsweek magazine found that when it took a poll that asked, "Do you think the United States is in a moral and spiritual decline?" 76 percent of the adults said Yes and 20 percent said No.The majority, as usual, is probably right. It accounts for the fact that "the fraying of America's social fabric . . . has become a national obsession." Further, chaos, or the fear of it, "has made Americans nostalgic for a more orderly age."

MARYLAND IS among the smallest of these United States (42nd in size) and more densely populated than all but five other states. In a word, it's crowded.But Daniel Boone knows better.Dan, no relation to the fabled pioneer, and a much better naturalist -- says it's all in how and where one looks at the state.Boone once drove from marshy, oystery Girdletree, on the southeastern corner of the Shore, to the strip-mined mountains of Kempton, in Garrett County's southwestern corner.It took eight hours -- drive north as long, and you'd be in Boston.

Names for styles of furniture can be confusing. One expert might call a chair Victorian, another Aesthetic Revival, another late 19th century. All could be correct, since Aesthetic Revival describes a type of Victorian furniture made in America in the late 19th century.Furniture collectors should familiarize themselves with the terminology. Mission and Arts and Crafts both describe the heavy, rectangular, plain, often oak furniture made by Stickley and others in the early 1900s.Chippendale was named for a man who designed furniture in England in the last half of the 18th century.

Daniel Boone DuganInsurance executiveDaniel Boone Dugan, a retired insurance executive, died Saturday of pneumonia at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 85.He retired in 1980 as president of the insurance firm of Bland, Dugan & McMillan, which he had established in the early 1930s. The business was later acquired by Stump, Harvey & Cook.Earlier, he had worked on Wall Street from 1927 to 1932, learning the brokerage business before returning to Baltimore.Born and reared in Baltimore, he was descended from a family that included Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Archbishop John Carroll, the nation's first Roman Catholic bishop.

Daniel Boone, home-improvement contractor and kitchen remodeler, is on the verge of once again becoming Daniel Boone, major-league pitcher.This off-season, three teams -- San Diego, Kansas City and Los Angeles -- contacted the 41-year-old left-hander about joining their rosters as a replacement player.Last week, Boone signed with the Padres, mostly because it required the shortest commute from his home in El Cajon, Calif.Not bad for a guy with two big-league victories whose last pitching assignment in the majors came in an Orioles uniform -- five years ago.Boone, who runs his own construction company, said he has a dream that he performs so well as a replacement player that the Padres ask him to stick around when the striking major-leaguers come back.

CLEVELAND -- For Baltimore Orioles left-hander Dan Boone just being there was memorable, but the result of his first major-league start wasn't.He struggled with the mound and his control and left afte manager Frank Robinson had endured 4 2/3 shaky innings of the second game of a doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians.Although Boone did not take the loss, the Indians went on to win 7-3, to prevent a four-game series sweep. The Orioles took the opener, 6-3, behind Bob Milacki.Robinson showed patience with the 36-year-old knuckleballer i an effort to let him go the five innings necessary to qualify for a victory.

Whitewater, Wis. -- JUST WHEN one thinks that the plebeian morning TV shows, which incongruously call themselves "news" shows, cannot sink any lower, they do. The other day, on a brief stop here at our old family lake cottage where I was busy sitting on a small plastic raft, one morning show came up with a theme awesome in its irrelevance: "Can a woman's menstrual cycle make her voice change?"That section of the news, which got more time than Bosnia, Russia and Somalia put together, showed a drawing of the woman-in-question's larynx, as well as of her voice box and vocal folds.

Today in history: June 7 In 1769, frontiersman Daniel Boone first began to explore the present-day Bluegrass State. In 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Continental Congress a resolution for a Declaration of Independence. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was nominated for another term as president at his party's convention in Baltimore. In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City came into existence as copies of the Lateran Treaty were exchanged in Rome. In 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas.

On December 3, 2004, EDWARD O. WAYSON, JR.; loving husband of Jeannine Wayson; devoted father of Sarah Elizabeth Wayson and Anne Katherine Wayson; step-father of Kacey Stephens; dear brother of Daniel Boone Wayson; beloved son of Ruthann Wayson. Family will receive friends on Monday from 4 to 7 P.M. at the JOHN M. TAYLOR FUNERAL HOME, INC. , 147 Duke of Gloucester Street, Annapolis. Funeral Services will be held Tuesday at 10:30 A.M. in St. Anne's Church, Church Circle, Annapolis. Burial will follow in Lakemont Memorial Gardens.

Two men were shot to death from behind last night as they stepped into an alley in the Pimlico section of Northwest Baltimore, city police said.Homicide Detective Daniel Boone said there was no known witness to the 10:30 p.m. double shooting, although a man was seen running from the alley off the 3700 block of Spaulding Ave. seconds later. Neighbors told police they heard six shots.The victims were identified by police as Andre Wallace, 24, of the 3600 block of Spaulding, and Lamont Jones, 21, of the 3500 block of Woodland Ave. Both were shot in the back of the head -- apparently by a lone gunman who approached them from behind -- and were found lying dead a few feet from each other, police said.