Delaware River

Elizabeth Clarke's childhood home on the Delaware River -- a property with large gardens and a greenhouse -- instilled a love of plants that led her from a job at a seed company to a role that she considered her greatest achievement -- founder of a garden preserve that eventually became Cylburn Arboretum.Miss Clarke, who supervised nature and garden activities for the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks for nearly 30 years, died Wednesday at Charlestown Care Center of complications from a stroke she suffered in 1994.

PHILADELPHIA -- Finally, their ship has come in. After nearly a day of tumultuous cheering by thousands of onlookers, stirring multigun salutes, enthusiastic flag-waving, and the poignant recalling of indelible wartime memories, the USS New Jersey has returned to its place of birth.The battle-scarred hero of three wars arrived last week at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where the 857-foot battleship was built nearly 57 years ago. and began the not-so-easy task of backing into its docking space.

Is there any better relief from the demands of adulthood than a weekend getaway?Consider adulthood: You're battling traffic day and night, and never-ending deadlines at work. At home, the house is falling down around you, and the kids want to know for the 500th time why they can't get a horse.Consider a weekend getaway: All cares, responsibilities and children are left behind, money is thrown around as if you had it to spare and friendly people are at your beck and call - pouring that second glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice at breakfast, directing you to the best sights in town, preparing the fireplace in your bedroom at night so the flames will spring to life with a single match strike.

Four Philadelphia men pursued by federal agents on a wild chase were being held yesterday on federal conspiracy charges after a "smash and grab" holdup at a White Marsh Mall jewelry store Monday morning.Randolph Charles, 33; Horace Alsbrooks Jr., 19; Hassan Ross, 24; and Brahim Bethean, 20, were scheduled for a bail review hearing today in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.The men, charged with interstate transportation of stolen property and conspiracy, crashed a van into a car on Interstate 95 in south Philadelphia and tried to elude police by heading for the Delaware River, according to court documents.

PHILADELPHIA - Clean-water advocates have ranked the Delaware River as the waterway receiving one of the largest amounts of toxic chemical discharges in the nation."

Bagpipes and tartans will be the order of the day in Alexandria, Va., on Saturday and next Sunday as the towncelebrates its Scottish heritage during the 20th annual Virginia Scottish Games.The grounds of Episcopal High School at 3901 W. Braddock Road will take on the appearance of a Scottish country fair crowded with musicians, dancers, pipers, athletes, clan societies and craft and food vendors.The main event is the U.S. National Highland Heptathlon, a seven-event invitational competition that traces its origins back to the ancient Highland games of Northern Scotland.

"Christmas at Hagley" is a view of a 19th-century holiday at the original du Pont mills and estate near Wilmington. Tours run daily through Jan. 2 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., giving visitors an opportunity to see Hagley's 240-acre property festively decorated for the holidays.At Eleutherian Mills, the 1803 du Pont family home, pine roping winds up the sweeping stairway. Hand-made decorations are used extensively and adorn the Victorian Christmas tree in the parlor. Also featured at the mansion is a collection of lace, including bonnets dating from 1815, a parasol, a Victorian neck piece and Belgian war lace made during World War I.One of the tour-stops is the 19th-century machine shop, where you can see demonstrations of steam toys.

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- The most celebrated brain of the 20th century resides in Apartment 13 on the second floor of a nondescript brick building here.It hasn't produced a worthy thought in almost 40 years. Which is to be expected, given its current state: bathed in alcohol, cut into about 100 chunks and slices, and divvied up among three glass jars.Can this really be what's left of the mind that conceived the Theory of Relativity?It can, and is.Albert Einstein is in Kansas now. Well, his brain is, anyway.

IT SEEMS LIKE only yesterday that I heard Gen. Georg Washington utter those immortal Yuletide words, "These are the times that try men souls."In fact it was only yesterday. I was talking to George on the telephone. He was telling me about the ceremonies to be held at Washington Crossing, Pa., tomorrow. Every year patriotic history buffs gather there to re-create the most important military victory in American history.It was on Christmas night, 1776, that General Washington and his troops rowed across the Delaware River to rout the Hessian mercenaries at Trenton on Dec. 26. That was the beginning of the end for the Brits here and the beginning of the beginning for the United States.

It is called a "ring of crisis."This ring's darkened boundaries mark a huge and populous area within which southern New Jersey residents are drinking and flushing and lawn-watering and car-washing and bathing themselves to death.They are sucking their water wells dry.And they know it.What they don't know -- or, at least, don't agree on -- is what to do about it.Potential solutions abound. But each one is costly.State officials first tried forcing cuts in water usage. A court said they couldn't do that.

For Asa Erickson, the Maryland Transportation Authority's proposal last week to charge a $1.50-a-month fee for an E-ZPass account is reason enough to drop the service. And he believes he's going to have a lot of company. "I'm not going to pay that fee," the 32-year-old northern Baltimore County resident said. "They're going to have a huge number of people dropping their accounts." Perhaps. But Maryland motorists are going to face two trends in the coming years: Toll roads are becoming more common, and toll booths are going extinct.

Maryland's premier trout stream, Gunpowder Falls, is under attack from an algae strain feared worldwide for its ability to coat the bottom of rivers and lakes and smother the habitat and food supply of fish. Heavy, with the consistency of a wool coat, Didymosphenia geminata is a recent invader of East Coast waterways. It begins as microscopic organism that travels from stream to stream on boats, fishing gear and the bottoms of felt boots and waders. The algae is not hazardous to humans, but could have a "profound" effect on fish and the quality of freshwater streams and recreation, upsetting the delicate balance of nature, said Jonathan McKnight, coordinator of the Department of Natural Resources invasive species team.

An identification system intended to cover 750,000 port workers, including 20,000 in Baltimore, that was supposed to be put in place in 2003 is now slated to make its debut in the fall at the port of Wilmington in Delaware. The Transportation Security Administration was supposed to implement the program at 10 ports by July, but an official said this week that the agency will miss another deadline. The Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, has been scorned by terrorism experts who consider harbors a weak link in homeland security, by ports that continue to pay for their own gate security, and by lawmakers who approved millions of dollars for the program after the 2001 terrorist attacks only to see it languish.

The recent death of Capt. Paul J. Esbensen, 76, of Stevensville, who was a highly respected wreck investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board and a well-known port figure, recalled his role investigating the loss of the SS Poet more than two decades ago. He had spent 15 years as senior marine investigator for the NTSB before retiring in 1996. During his tenure with the NTSB, he investigated 25 major maritime accidents, including the Poet and the loss of the Pride of Baltimore.

In Brief: Nature Snakeheads found in Delaware River "Frankenfish" are swimming in the Delaware River. Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission officials have confirmed what they long suspected: Northern snakeheads - aggressive, predatory fish imported from Asia - are in the river and probably growing in number. "This is certainly not a shocking discovery," said agency spokesman Dan Tredinnick, noting that snakeheads showed up in Meadow Lake at Philadelphia's FDR Park in July 2004. Snakeheads were first found in a Crofton, Md., pond in 2002.

TRENTON, N.J. -- The second major flood of the Delaware River in six months has left more than 1,000 residents in New Jersey's capital temporarily homeless, exhausted and demanding answers. In meetings yesterday with city officials at an American Red Cross shelter here, evacuees repeatedly asked, "Why?" They wanted to know why a waterway that seemed so tame for so long has overflowed its banks twice since September. No river was affected more by the weekend downpours than the bulging vein of the Delaware that cuts through prime real estate in Trenton, where the Delaware's 25-foot flood crest sent people scurrying Saturday night.

NEWARK, Del. - Like a mutant blob in a bad horror movie, an oil slick first thought to be relatively small has grown bigger and more menacing over the past week, oozing its way down both banks of the Delaware River. When the Greek tanker Athos I began leaking heavy Venezuelan crude oil into the river the night of Nov. 26, it appeared to be a manageable spill confined to a riverside terminal - 30,000 gallons, according to estimates. But authorities now are warning that it could be as much as 473,000 gallons, a gooey mess that has stained 70 miles of shoreline across three states.

NATIONAL Oil spill fouls Delaware River A tanker spilled 30,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River yesterday, creating a 20-mile-long slick between Philadelphia and southern New Jersey that threatened birds and fish. The tanker, registered in Cyprus, was carrying 325,000 barrels of oil from Venezuela. [Page 3a Two hunters mourned in Wis. Mourners remembered a father and son in rural Rice Lake, Wis., yesterday - two of six hunters killed in a confrontation with another hunter last week.

ON A LATE summer afternoon, a huge oil tanker bearing a Liberian registry glides past Chesapeake City. A lone man fishing from the banks of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal barely looks up as the ship slips by, its wake slapping against the banks. Passing ships are as common as flies in this part of Cecil County. They have been since 1829, when the canal first opened with the aim of increasing commerce in the mid-Atlantic region. Since then, almost everything about the canal has changed -- but its purpose has not. Then, as now, it linked the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River, allowing ships to speed their way between Baltimore and Philadelphia, cutting nearly 300 miles from the voyage.

Crumbling into the soft sands of Delaware Bay off Cape May Point, N.J., is the last tangible remnant of the failed dreams of a now long-forgotten Baltimore entrepreneur known as Col. Jesse Rosenfeld. The 1926 grounding of the steamer Atlantus dashed Rosenfeld's hopes to establish a ferry service on Delaware Bay. Since then, the hulk of the Atlantus has rested several hundred yards off Sunset Beach where it continues to be something of a maritime curiosity. The old tan-colored ship, now broken into several pieces with its bow still clearly visible, is bereft of its funnel and deck house.