Empty Space

Q: Our Victorian town house has a small empty space that I want to convert into an elegant powder room. Do you have some suggestions for the general treatment of such a setting?A: I can offer plenty of suggestions, but you'll first need to decide how authentic you want the room to look. Assuming you'd like the conversion to be consistent with the style of the rest of the house, you should start scouring the salvage yards and antique shops for plumbing and lighting fixtures as well as tiles and other suitable materials.

Three weeks ago, the Highlandtown storefront was empty and apparently without prospects. On Saturday, the space was filled with holiday wreath-making, carefully crafted plant arrangements and free coffee. The rapid transformation into a "pop-up" shop was the handiwork of organizers from the Southeast Community Development Corp. In a few days, the space will be clear once more, but the community group wants to leave behind a message about the vitality of business in Highlandtown.

Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: A poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject. - Ted Kooser "Echo" A lone voice in the right empty space makes its own best company.

At a forgettable, long-shuttered building on North Liberty Street that people hurry past without a second glance, LaTrice Whitaker will be selling cupcakes, playing jazz and pouring mugs of gourmet coffee. At a similarly empty building nearby, two local men will showcase furniture they craft by hand from salvaged wood. And if Sarah Doherty has her way, after sundown every night, the blank facade of 307 W. Baltimore St. will become a virtual movie screen as she projects video artworks onto its arched front windows.

Drivers who play "park shark," prowling the lot for the closest empty space, should just give up and park it, a new study suggests.A paper in Transportation Science shows the quickest way to get inside is to pick the first available space. In the study, Richard Cassady of Mississippi State University and John Kobza of Virginia Tech set up a hypothetical parking lot, then calculated the probability of hypothetical drivers finding a space quickly.The scientists looked at three factors that constitute a good space: how close it is to the front entrance, how long it takes to find and how long it takes the driver to reach the front door after entering the parking lot.They modeled two kinds of drivers.

"Threads of Time: Recollections," by Peter Brook. Counterpoint. 198 pages. $25.From 1946 through the late 1980s, Peter Brook was the English-speaking world's greatest theater director. His productions ranged from King Lear (with Paul Scofield) and A Midsummer Night's Dream (the set was an all-white squash court with trapezes) to projects developed by Brook's International Center of Theater Research that included "The Conference of the Birds," "Mahabharata" (10 years in the making with an international group of artists)

THEY'RE home now.They come from college carrying bags filled with dirty laundry and wearing new-found philosophies. We listen, their father and I, and we watch.We listen to their ideas on the environment, nutrition, psychology, and yes, raising a family. We watch an earring appear and then disappear and a full head of hair turn to a shiny pate.We wonder what happened to the wardrobe they packed when they left for college and why they prefer wearing a roommate's clothes. But it's OK, we say.They're home now, and the Oriental lamp in the living room is wearing a baseball cap. There are always sneakers in the hall and an empty milk carton on the kitchen counter.

STONINGTON, Conn. -- It sounds so simple: "Creating a Beautiful Home."But the subject and title of the most recent book by the interior designer and writer Alexandra Stoddard can be more than a little intimidating to those who think they lack the flair -- or the funds -- for home decorating.That need not be the case, insists Ms. Stoddard, arguing that the tools of interior design are at everyone's fingertips.A sort of self-help home-decorating guide, her latest book (published by William Morrow last year)

LONG POND, Pa. -- The Winston Cup Series has come to the Pocono Mountains to mourn.The faces in the garages are somber and pale. They buried Winston Cup star Davey Allison in Hueytown, Ala., on Thursday. The funeral procession was eight miles long, and mourners lined both sides of the road from church to cemetery."The only thing that rivaled the outpouring of sympathy was Bear Bryant's funeral," Allison's close friend Neil Bonnett said. "To see that much sympathy and caring, it made me glad that I live in Alabama."

Business has been so good in the two years since Lee Cohen and Patricia Lobel bought Avenue Gourmet that the Owings Mills specialty food distributor twice asked for more space from its landlord. "To grow we needed space to add items," said Cohen, a vice president. "We needed certain things, and our landlord found us space and is getting it ready for us now." The latest lease was for 11,000 square feet, which real estate brokers consider modest. But the landlord, MIE Properties Inc., was happy for the business.

Michael Benevento, a sculptor and art installer, is one of three co-directors who run the quirky Current Gallery in downtown Baltimore. Benevento, who is 24 and recently graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and his partners aren't in it for the money. They're volunteers with other jobs, who simply want to give artists an exhibition space - and to breathe a little life into what would have been one more vacant downtown storefront. In fact, the gallery exists on borrowed time.

Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: A poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject. - Ted Kooser "Echo" A lone voice in the right empty space makes its own best company.

Preservationists adore developer David Hillman for spending millions of dollars to convert downtown Baltimore gems such as the old Hecht's and Standard Oil buildings into modern apartments. But that 120-foot-tall "robotic" parking garage he wants to build? That they don't love so much. After all, it would loom over the 213-year-old former church rectory on West Saratoga Street where Preservation Maryland has its stately home. "It obviously would have a negative impact, in our view," said Tyler Gearhart, executive director.

The instinct among human beings to live in the open is as natural as their instinct to find shelter. But to indulge that impulse effectively at home, you must have the equivalent of outdoor rooms, spaces that are every bit as alluring, inviting and comfortable as indoor areas. For a porch, patio or backyard deck to be truly livable, it has to meet the same standards set for indoor rooms. It has to cater to physical, visual, emotional and even spiritual needs. To get the most out of an outdoor space, ask yourself what purpose it will serve.

Business has been so good in the two years since Lee Cohen and Patricia Lobel bought Avenue Gourmet that the Owings Mills specialty food distributor twice asked for more space from its landlord. "To grow we needed space to add items," said Cohen, a vice president. "We needed certain things, and our landlord found us space and is getting it ready for us now." The latest lease was for 11,000 square feet, which real estate brokers consider modest. But the landlord, MIE Properties Inc., was happy for the business.

Coverage didn't do justice to success of Roland Park students How thoroughly disheartening to read The Sun's paltry coverage of Roland Park Middle School's participation in the National Academic League (NAL) national championship and the headline's negative slant ("Roland Park Middle loses in semifinal of academic competition," April 26). A headline that concentrates on defeat, rather than the fact a Baltimore City school team placed fourth in the nation, is a subtle message to students that if they work hard (several extra-curricular hours every week for most of the year)

Coverage didn't do justice to success of Roland Park students How thoroughly disheartening to read The Sun's paltry coverage of Roland Park Middle School's participation in the National Academic League (NAL) national championship and the headline's negative slant ("Roland Park Middle loses in semifinal of academic competition," April 26). A headline that concentrates on defeat, rather than the fact a Baltimore City school team placed fourth in the nation, is a subtle message to students that if they work hard (several extra-curricular hours every week for most of the year)

Baltimore fares poorly on realty investmentQuestion: How does Baltimore stack up against other cities when it comes to investment prospects in real estate?Answer: How does last place grab you?That's where our town finished in a new study by Ernst & Young, the national accounting firm, and the National Real Estate Index. The study examined 24 cities in the West and the Northeast and found Baltimore weak in nearly every area. And the weakness isn't limited to downtown -- markets for suburban office space and for retail space, which is concentrated in the suburbs, showed problems, too.The area doesn't really have a huge glut of vacancies.

Tom and Betty Patton were not victims of a bad economy or competition. They just wanted to retire. But after a fruitless three-year effort to sell their thriving Federal Hill hardware business, the Pattons closed their doors permanently, hoping just to find a buyer for the building. "I want to go fishing," said Tom Patton, owner of Singer's Hardware on Charles Street. The effort illustrates the strange commercial reality in Baltimore's hottest waterfront neighborhoods. As existing businesses disappear, few people beyond the owners of a stable of restaurants, bars and discount shops want the storefronts along the main streets of Federal Hill, Canton or Fells Point, despite skyrocketing home prices.

VICTORY GARDENS live! Consider Duncan Street Garden, a block-long oasis on the south side of East North Avenue, between Collington Avenue and Chester Street. The fruit and vegetable garden has existed 11 years, tended by retired men trying to make ends meet in an area where median family income is $15,865. Duncan Street Garden is exceptional. A majority of Baltimore's more than 14,000 vacant lots are neither productive nor pleasing to the eye. Far too many have become dumps overgrown with weeds or nests for druggies.