Dollhouse

GEORGE BENSON JR., president of Benson Motor Cars Ltd. in Eastport, was named a finalist of Time magazine's 1999 Quality Dealer Award at the National Automobile Dealers Association Convention in San Francisco.Benson is well known in and around Annapolis for his distinguished community service. He's a past president of the Annapolis Rotary Club, he has served as chairman of the Foundation board at Anne Arundel Medical Center, and he's a member of the board of trustees at Western Maryland College and a member of the Board of Trade of Anne Arundel County.

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE thing about the landscape of Ireland is the green -- it's so unbelievably green," says Barbara Schnell, a Hampstead artist who spent a week in Ireland in a rented stone cottage with several other artists in September 1997.Four of the artists will exhibit works composed during the residency abroad, starting Monday at Westminster Bank and Trust, Main Street, Westminster.Fran Nyce of Westminster will exhibit watercolor paintings. Gordon Wickes will exhibit photography, and his wife, Marge Wickes of Finksburg, will exhibit paintings.

Gary Kachadourian has built a better art show, and the world is beating a path to its doorstep. On a recent weekday afternoon there must have been 15 or 20 people at once in the fine arts gallery of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, several times the number one expects to encounter in local galleries. And it's easy to understand why.UMBC asked Kachadourian to curate the current edition of "A View From Baltimore to Washington," its biennial regional show. Kachadourian, himself an artist of miniature works, asked 22 artists to create works based on the concept of the dollhouse.

On most nights, after his children or grandchildren were asleep, Lewis Evans quietly retired to his basement workshop. He would settle there -- often well into the night -- chiseling, whittling and carving the makings of woodworks.Mr. Evans, 71, who died Fridayof leukemia at North Arundel Hospital in Glen Burnie, sold many of the clocks, dollhouses and jewelry boxes he crafted, but he also gave much of his work to friends and relatives."That was always his first love," said his wife, the former Lucille Peace, whom he married in 1955.

Youth is far too painful to be wasted on the young. That's the tragic thrust under the mordant hilarity of Todd Solondz's new film, "Welcome to the Dollhouse," opening today at the Charles.What a sad, funny poem to the exquisite agonies of being aseventh-grader, gifted and a nerd! Poor Dawn Weiner (Heather Matarazzo), christened "Weinerdog" and "Lesbo" by her sensitive peers, is a walking geek tragedy crammed into 4-feet-5 inches and 85 pounds, behind lenses thick as thumbs.She attracts persecutors in a way remarkably similar to the sugar and its cloud of flies.

HOWLS AND SCREAMS and bumps in the night? You must be in Lineboro, where the Lineboro Volunteer Fire Company has launched a nightmare wagon ride for Halloween.You, too, can be scared witless for five horrible nights Oct. 27-31, starting at dark each evening.The Haunted Hayride is open to any willing passenger. Covering 3 miles of dirt roads, the hay wagon will bounce thrill seekers into macabre mayhem."Scary" is the only detail we've been told.Rides begin at dark and stop at midnight Friday and Saturday and 10 p.m. Sunday through Tuesday.

The late Victorian farmhouse is sound, but it needs work -- a lot of work. Built in 1875, it hasn't been renovated since the 1950s."It's a long-term project," said homeowner Sharon A. H. May -- even if the house is only 5 feet long and 4 feet high.While the chief of the Baltimore state's attorney's sex offense unit spends her days in deadly serious work, prosecuting criminals, she spends her evenings and weekends "in another world.""I come home to play with my toys," she said of the 22 dollhouses that occupy every room of her Baltimore County home "except the laundry, the kitchen and the bathroom."

Many hard-working adults see the up side of getting older: When we retire, we'll have the time to pursue our interests and passions.Ellicott City resident Lou Koehler has pursued his interest in model trains to the point that he has actually returned to the working world.Earlier in his life, 75-year-old Lou designed mechanical and electrical installations for commercial buildings in Maryland and Virginia, retiring as a senior partner in an engineering firm.He'd been interested in model trains as a child, but had set them aside to devote himself to his career and family.

For adults yearning for a little taste of childhood, Debbie Hooper has the answer -- start a hobby with miniatures.The 37-year-old mother of two said she began working with miniatures five years ago after buying her mother a dollhouse for Christmas.Since then she has started making and decorating dollhouses and "room boxes;" her younger daughter has one dollhouse and wants more.Mrs. Hooper has just donated an original room box in 18th-century Colonial style and worth an estimated $500 to $800 -- to the YWCA for its "Make a Little Room" benefit auction to help the homeless.

One of many things I want to be is a photographer. I have a dependable eye for interesting composition in my own snapshots, but I am only a lucky amateur.Lucian Niemeyer, a businessman educated at Indiana University and Notre Dame, has been a professional photographer only seven years. Mr. Niemeyer uses no filters, artificial lights or laboratory magic to enhance his photographs, yet he has published three books and his work has appeared in National Geographic and other periodicals and has been displayed throughout the country.

Miracle Laurie didn't want to get a role on just any TV show. She wanted to be on a Joss Whedon TV show. And now she is, and Fox has renewed Dollhouse for a second season, and life just couldn't be a whole lot better. "I auditioned for Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) at least a thousand times. I tried out to be a series regular on Firefly. I auditioned for years for his stuff," says Laurie, who will be in Baltimore this weekend, signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans at the annual Shore Leave sci-fi convention at the Hunt Valley Marriott.

Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marinoni are engaged Cynthia Nixon is engaged to her partner, Christine Marinoni. Charlotte Burke, a representative for the Sex and the City actress, confirmed the engagement. No other details were given. Nixon showed off an engagement ring at an ActionMarriage Equality rally in midtown Manhattan on Sunday. She has two children from her relationship with photographer Danny Mozes. Will Ferrell, Pearl Jam set for O'Brien's first 'Tonight Show' Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam will be part of Conan O'Brien's first Tonight Show.

Fox has a new and improved dream girl for the Friday-night fantasies of teenage boys, and she arrives tonight wearing a hey-look-me-over, super-short dress - the perfect model of female allure and submission. Her name is Echo, and she's at the heart of a dark new drama, Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon, the Hollywood producer who gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Sarah Michelle Gellar, once upon a time. I liked Buffy, and I even learned to find messages of female emancipation in its imitators, like James Cameron's Dark Angel, featuring Jessica Alba.

The Carroll County Farm Museum will offer a taste of an old-time Christmas at its "Christmas Crossings" holiday tour. The tour will take visitors through the holiday from 1850 to 1910. "It's a journey through the decades, a basic education back to a time when you didn't have Wal-Mart and you had to be creative and use what you had," said Dottie Freeman, museum administrator. Each room on the first level of the 1850s-era farmhouse is decorated to depict a different decade. The main entry hall is decorated with burgundy swags going up the banister, interspersed with handmade tapestry bags filled with ivy and peacock feathers.

Susan Dunn is a shopaholic who isn't looking to reform her ways. Instead, when she launches her new magazine, PaperDoll, she's looking to indulge others just like her. She also wants to disprove naysayers who say there's no shopping in Baltimore. "It's a good time for [a shopping magazine] in Baltimore," said Dunn recently, over iced coffee at Starbucks in Mount Washington Mill. "There's lots of exciting stores coming here." The Ruxton resident starts to name them, ticking them off the way a mother lists the names of her children.

There once was a girl who wanted a dollhouse but didn't get one as a child. The girl, Anne Smith, grew up, moved away from her native Iowa and was living in New York, dealing in antiques, when she came upon a grand old dollhouse from 1870 in need of a little love. It was a beautiful thing to behold: 5 feet tall and 5 feet wide, handcrafted from wood, with bay windows on its side and a smoky blue glass transom above its front door. She bought it on the spot and took it home for a retired jeweler she knew to restore.

A year ago, the exterior of the Dutterer Flower Shop resembled a rectangular block with an upside down ice cream cone sticking out of its top. Today, the store looks like a life-size Victorian dollhouse - complete with chocolate-brown trim and two turrets, one with stained-glass windows and the other with a display of child-sized figurines singing Christmas carols. It has been more than a year since Westminster's Facade Improvement Program began doling out money to spruce up the city's commercial districts.

Merritt Albert Birch, who worked until his early 80s and spent his free time crafting clocks, dollhouses and other intricate works of wooden art, died of lung cancer at his home in the Baltimore County community of Stoneleigh. He was 89. Mr. Birch served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, the first two years supplying food to mobile field hospitals overseas in Italy and North Africa. He finished his stint at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, handling life insurance. After that, he began a 38-year career in the private life insurance business, the first few years with Acacia, the bulk of the time with Mutual Benefit and the last few years as an independent broker in Towson.

Some old Baltimore addresses carry an emotional value. When I heard that 317 N. Charles St. would cease to be the place where I went for writing paper, cards and invitations, I winced. Down's Engravers and Stationers is moving to the Inner Harbor's Gallery next month. I'm sure there'll be more foot traffic at its new location, but I'll so miss this Charles Street site where I shopped for so many years. As with many institutions in Baltimore, this Down's was known by another name, Lycett's.

A HOBBY AS enduring as stone and mortar took up residence in the heart of Evelyn Jones one Christmas Day nearly 30 years ago. That was the day her husband, the late Army Maj. Nelson Jones, presented her with a two-story colonial dollhouse. The foundation for a lifetime hobby was laid. Jones' collection has grown to nearly 20 pieces, and in time for October's National Dollhouse and Miniature Month, it is on display in the Pascal Center for the Performing Arts Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College.