Drawer

Don't you just hate it when your drawers drop? It seems to happen at inopportune moments.The other night, for instance, it happened to me when I was listening to a basketball game on the radio and simultaneously furthering my child's education.The fourth-grader had been sent home from school with instructions to ask his parents for a list of five facts about World War II. I was working on my list: 1. Ronald Reagan was in the movie version. 2. The Russians were on our side. 3. The Enola Gay flew over Japan but we can't say what it did -- when the contents of a kitchen drawer went tumbling to the floor.

Dr. Davood Badie, a Harford County pediatrician, died Monday at his Bel Air home from complications of cardiovascular disease and Parkinson's disease. He was 79. Dr. Badie, the son of a farm owner, was born and raised in Mazandaran Province, Iran. He earned his medical degree from the University of Tehran in 1955 and moved to England five years later. In 1961, he immigrated to Baltimore. Dr. Badie completed a rotating internship at Maryland General Hospital in 1962 and a residency in pediatrics at what is now the University of Maryland Medical Center two years later.

For 50 years the marionettes and hand puppets made hospital stays bearable, churchgoers happy and schoolchildren smile. Now they lie tucked away, forgotten.They fill the drawers in Bernard Paul's studio in Linthicum Heights. Tags on green drawers bear the puppets' names.There's Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf and Grandmother; Cinderella in the peasant clothing her sisters loved to ridicule and the ball gown they came to despise. There's even Pinocchio, long nose and all.They "are all in the drawer sleeping now," said Mr. Paul, their maker.

I recently downsized into an apartment and must now decide how to make the best use of limited space. The bedroom, for example, is doubling as my home office. I store files in a closet and work on an L-shaped desk with a side return where I keep my computer. Can you suggest where to find an attractive desk with more storage space and a convenient surface for my laptop? Would it have to be custom-made? The bedroom has contemporary black-lacquered furniture. The services of a cabinetmaker may be needed to furnish a home office that succeeds visually as well as functionally.

In a faraway corner of the Internet, in a room cluttered with mountains and dogs and children and lovers and souffles and beloved grandparents, the women of the Memoir Cafe share pieces of their existence. A few aspire to be published, but most Cafe members simply want to fine tune their ability to make written sense of their lives and to add their thoughts to the collective experience of women around the world. They work in a cyber community brought together by Stephanie Montgomery, a Walpole, N.H., writer and teacher who launched the Memoir Cafe last February.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Howard County.North Laurel: 9000 block of Maier Road: Someone broke into an office Wednesday, and stole the cash drawer with cash inside.Pub Date: 4/04/97

Police logWoodbine: 3200 block of Jennings Chapel Road: A burglar broke into a home Friday and took a dresser drawer filled with jewelry.Pub Date: 5/21/96

A man armed with a knife robbed an Annapolis service station of an undetermined amount of money early yesterday, county police said.Pamela L. Offer, a clerk at the Shell station in the 2500 block of Riva Road, told police that the man walked into the station about 1 a.m. and asked for cigarettes.When Offer opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a large knife and demanded money, police said. He grabbed money from the drawer and fled, police said.Pub Date: 11/11/97

In the past few years I've noticed that furniture manufacturers are not routinely including drawers in smaller tables. Bedside pieces, end tables and even writing tables now seem to be made without slide-in/slide-out storage compartments. What we're getting instead may be an open under-shelf or shelves behind double doors.This is a real loss, I think. After all, the drawer has been with us for a very long time. According to historians of the decorative arts, it was invented by the Chinese in the early part of the 13th century.

The heart of the home is undergoing a transplant. The kitchen is on the move. Not just small appliances, but more permanent kitchen fixtures now are in other rooms not traditionally reserved for cooking or food preparation. In recent years, kitchen design options have expanded in style and sophistication, with furniture-like cabinets, sleek and stylish appliances and a cozy relationship with neighboring spaces, particularly the family room and the outdoors -- deck or patio. "A lot of manufacturers are making products so well-designed, they're more conducive to [use in]

Victoria's Secret advertises seven "must-have" bras, which is already four more than I have. I own three bras. The beige one. The black one. And the one that is in the wash. For my 21-year-old daughter and her tribe, seven bras would only amount to a starter set. They have more bras in their dresser drawers -- or on their bedroom floors -- than they have dollars in their wallets. Among these young women, bras are the new shoes. Something different for every outfit. And you can't have too many.

In a faraway corner of the Internet, in a room cluttered with mountains and dogs and children and lovers and souffles and beloved grandparents, the women of the Memoir Cafe share pieces of their existence. A few aspire to be published, but most Cafe members simply want to fine tune their ability to make written sense of their lives and to add their thoughts to the collective experience of women around the world. They work in a cyber community brought together by Stephanie Montgomery, a Walpole, N.H., writer and teacher who launched the Memoir Cafe last February.

THE BENEFITS OF BARLEY For the sake of your health, go with the grain. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's new food guidelines urge Americans to eat more whole grains, and a new study by USDA scientists in Beltsville finds that eating foods made from barley can help reduce cholesterol levels. The study by researchers at the Human Nutrition Research Center found that men and women who ate as little as 3 grams of barley a day could see drops in their cholesterol levels. Those who ate as much as 9 grams a day saw their cholesterol levels drop more than 13 percent.

Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy is an odd play. The title is odd (it refers to a character who was an accomplished artist as a boy). The characters are odd (the protagonists are two reclusive middle-aged Ontario farmers). And the plot is odd (a young actor moves in with the farmers to study them for a play). Of course, odd can be good. And the fine performances in Everyman Theatre's production make the most of the play's three idiosyncratic characters, without making fun of them. But the oddest aspect of this popular Canadian play is that it's all talk and very little action.

Forget Paris Hilton. The most interesting naked people on-screen these days are savvier and more talented than Hilton. Wrinklier, too. Think of them as the naked and the two-thirds dead -- actors over 50 who are baring all. It's the biggest trend in the movies, with five of them this month alone. The trend didn't come out of nowhere. Sir John Gielgud was revealing his titled, nonagenarian privates as far back as 1991 in Prospero's Books. But Kathy Bates' gutsy hot-tub scene in last year's About Schmidt seems to have kick-started a real trend, to the extent that five former Oscar nominees (Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, William H. Macy, Danny DeVito and Helen Mirren)

March is -- was -- National Craft Month, by what authority I am not sure. Since Americans spend 7.5 hours per week working on crafts -- another fact of uncertain origin -- I thought it would be a good month in which to write a column dedicated to crafters and their many homespun projects. But I didn't get it finished. For that reason, this tribute to crafters is late. But it is done, which is more than can be said for the projects undertaken by most crafters. If crafters have anything in common, it is a wealth of good intentions.

I want to convert a seldom-used guest room into a dressing room. The space has a window and two doors, one of which leads to the bath and the other to our bedroom. Can you give me some pointers on planning the conversion so that the dressing room will be both efficient and attractive?The first step involves a lot of counting and measuring. You'll have to tally up the number of shoes, suits, dresses and so on that are to be stored in the converted space. Then you should calculate the size of those parts of the room that are to be used purely for storage, while keeping in mind the need for ample circulation space.

Ceiling fans have that air of summer about them. But turn one on in reverse mode in the winter, and the warm air that has risen will be distributed more evenly throughout the room, allowing heating systems to work more efficiently. Unfortunately, though, what many fans do not have is an air of style. But the Monte Carlo Fan Co. decided it didn't have to be that way and since 1996 has designed high-performance fans in styles ranging from traditional to contemporary and from sleek to ornate.

The heart of the home is undergoing a transplant. The kitchen is on the move. Not just small appliances, but more permanent kitchen fixtures now are in other rooms not traditionally reserved for cooking or food preparation. In recent years, kitchen design options have expanded in style and sophistication, with furniture-like cabinets, sleek and stylish appliances and a cozy relationship with neighboring spaces, particularly the family room and the outdoors -- deck or patio. "A lot of manufacturers are making products so well-designed, they're more conducive to [use in]

Ceiling fans have that air of summer about them. But turn one on in reverse mode in the winter, and the warm air that has risen will be distributed more evenly throughout the room, allowing heating systems to work more efficiently. Unfortunately, though, what many fans do not have is an air of style. But the Monte Carlo Fan Co. decided it didn't have to be that way and since 1996 has designed high-performance fans in styles ranging from traditional to contemporary and from sleek to ornate.