Eternity

Deborah Kerr, the acclaimed British actress whose versatile talent and refined screen persona made her one of Hollywood's top leading ladies in the 1950s in films such as From Here to Eternity, The King and I and An Affair to Remember, has died. She was 86. Ms. Kerr, who in recent years had Parkinson's disease, died Tuesday in Suffolk, eastern England, her agent said yesterday. In a screen career that was launched in the early 1940s, Ms. Kerr received six best actress Academy Award nominations.

With a new baseball season comes new hope, and there's reason to believe that hope may be justified this summer for IronBirds watchers. Granted, since June 18, 2002, the three months of regular minor league baseball available at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen has been a dependable source of a little good clean fun. Whether the home team would win or lose, on the field, the experience of going to the ballpark and taking in the sights and sounds has...

CALVIN KLEIN, the designer who brought us waifs and teen-aged junkie wanna-be's, has discovered marriage and family.Heaven help us mommies and daddies.In an advertising campaign that began last week, supermodel Christy Turlington has found herself a stud-daddy in newcomer Norbert Michalke and they are romping on the beach with two children in praise of "Eternity," the Calvin Klein fragrance, one presumes, for family vacations.The print ad is an eight-page, black-and-white picture story that begins with a couple and moves to a family of four on an isolated beach.

"If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it. " -- Abraham Lincoln History is full of warnings about what happens when people follow public opinion instead of standing by their principles. In its most extreme manifestation, public opinion might well become mob rule when vigilantes take the law into their own hands. Major media have whipped the crowd into its latest frenzy over same-sex marriage, or should I say "marriage equality," the latest euphemism, likely intended to make the masses more accepting of what was once unacceptable.

At the end of the six months Hart Crane spent on Isle of Pines, off the coast of Cuba, from May to October of 1926, a hurricane passed over the island and all but destroyed Villa Casas, the defunct plantation his maternal grandfather had built. One of the reasons Crane had gone to the Caribbean was to undertake repairs on the house and grounds that his grandmother and mother had long neglected. But the storm more or less settled the fate of the family estate, as well as put an end to the most productive period of writing Crane would ever experience.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Eddie Delahoussaye won both $200,000 divisions of the Hollywood Derby yesterday aboard Eternity Star and Olympio.

Daniel Taradash, 90, who won an Oscar for his screenplay adaptation of James Jones' best-selling novel From Here to Eternity, died of cancer Feb. 22 at a Los Angeles hospital. Best known for adapting sprawling novels and Broadway plays, Taradash's screenwriting credits include writing or co-writing adaptations of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy, William Inge's Picnic and James Michener's Hawaii. But From Here to Eternity, the 1953 film version of Jones' novel about Army life in Hawaii during the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the one movie for which Taradash said he received the most compliments.

Silver liningBrrrrr. The frosty economic climate is nipping at the toes of hundreds of local businesses, occasionally even freezing the life out of the unprotected. Certain retailers, though, find the harsh conditions bracingly refreshing: Gage Menswear, for one. The discount store is surviving and thriving, and growing beyond its Baltimore borders to a new location at Valley Centre, 9616 Reisterstown Road in Owings Mills."1990 was a very tough year for most, but we experienced a double-digit increase in volume," says buyer Bill Glazer.

HAVRE de GRACE -- Sunday morning. The morning of the Seventh Day.Depending on the nature of the household and the habits of its occupants, this might be the time for a hickory-smoked cholesterol fix. For a jog down quiet suburban streets. For earnest banalities on Washington interview shows. For sleeping in.For some, Sunday morning means nice clothes and formal Sunday services, the comfort of familiar prayers and sacred music. For others, not necessarily the less devout, it can be an occasion for more private reflections on life, on time, on eternity, on death.

I have a teenager. If you have your own teen, or have been where I am now, you understand. If you have a young child, just wait. It's another magical parenting experience that I would not, honestly, trade for anything. Well, perhaps I would trade it for a good night's sleep or eternal youth, or a wrinkle-free face, or my sanity. Having a teenager has made me completely insane. I'm more bonkers than I was already. The most recent verbal sparring took place in my car while I was driving Alex to a doctor appointment.

Growing up in Rome, not far from Saint Peter's Basilica (whose dome I could see from my parents' bedroom) I did not think much of my circumstance. I thought it was just normal to drive my scooter by the Vatican walls and to see the Swiss guards seriously guarding the entrance to Vatican City. I also thought it normal to be able to go into Vatican City (as my father was a Vatican employee) to buy cheaper gas and imported goods free of the high Italian taxes. It is only after moving to America that I realized the exceptional luck of my youth.

As Americans are being lulled into believing our wars are winding down, I was appalled to read Robert Koehler's recent commentary about U.S. power in the world ("Can an empire show compassion?" Aug. 5). Do I want to live in a hyper-militarized American empire? Absolutely not. There is nothing in our Constitution to mandate we dominate the planet, and if history is any guide, such a philosophical change spells disaster. It's despicable that we have more than 1,000 military bases worldwide and simultaneously have created a form of armed intervention based on presidential whim.

Bacon lovers, are you sitting down? Better yet -- are you dead? If so, your dream product is here. Today they guys who brought the world Bacon Salt, Baconnaise and most recently, Bacon Lube, unveiled their latest creation: the bacon coffin. For those who love bacon to death. "You ate bacon, you decorated your body with bacon, your car with bacon and your home with bacon," the release says. "And now, you can peacefully rest wrapped in bacon. " The coffins are painted to look just like the deceased's favorite food -- with what the company calls a "bacon and pork shading.

Let's get metaphysical. That's the right frame of mind for viewing the abstract compositions in Richard Hellman 's exhibit in the Himmelfarb Gallery at Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel. Indeed, "The Inner Circle: Screenprints and Etchings" has cosmic aspirations. This Baltimore-based artist relies upon an imagistic vocabulary of astronomically evocative spirals. He also uses circles and wavy lines that you're free to metaphorically interpret in terms of everything from natural forms to the very nature of existence.

The crowd of about 1,000 surrounding his new statue showered the greatest glove man in the history of the hot corner with a spirited and loving ovation at Saturday's unveiling ceremony. Then something quite unusual happened. Brooks Robinson wept. "I haven't had an applause like that in a long time, believe me," he said, choking up along the way. "Thank you very much. " It was a very special tribute to a very special Baltimore legend, but nobody knew how special it would feel until Robinson had trouble finding the words to thank all the people who came together on a cool afternoon outside Camden Yards to show their appreciation for his great baseball career and a life so well lived.

I have a teenager. If you have your own teen, or have been where I am now, you understand. If you have a young child, just wait. It's another magical parenting experience that I would not, honestly, trade for anything. Well, perhaps I would trade it for a good night's sleep or eternal youth, or a wrinkle-free face, or my sanity. Having a teenager has made me completely insane. I'm more bonkers than I was already. The most recent verbal sparring took place in my car while I was driving Alex to a doctor appointment.

Just when it seemed safe to enter the afterlife, eternal damnation has returned.That glowing light at the end of the tunnel, the story goes, might be a blast furnace.Hell -- after practically vanishing from public thought in recent decades -- is making a comeback in a rush of new books, philosophical debates and accounts of near-death experiences.It also has been remodeled.Since Dante left, the place has been overhauled by everyone from Catholic priests and a Tennessee cardiologist to "Far Side" cartoonist Gary Larson.

Miami. -- I learned the power of religion -- I don't mean just the allure or mystique, but the combustive, life-altering force -- some 20 years ago, from a monk assisting at weekday mass in the Cathedral of St. John-in-Lateran in Rome. A priest had begun the introductory prayers in Latin: ''I will go unto the altar of God.'' And the monk responded, ''to God who gladdens my youth.''Juventutem meam, he said, distinctly and with feeling. My youth.He was 81.From that day, you'd never catch me writing that religion is out of place in civic life, in politics, in governance, or in anything else.

See a retractable kitchen island, controlled with an iPhone. Find out who said, "I'm barely interested in food....I love food but I don't like to talk about it very long. " Also, Bananas Foster injures four at Florida restaurant, and Eli discovers an eternal truth Eli reviews Max's (Hot) Dog House (Cafe) in New Freedom, Penn. He loved the desserts: "The Fried Oreos were better than when they're not fried. " That's true of just about everything. (Adventures of a Koodie) Four diners at a restaurant in Palm Harbor, Fla., were injured by a Bananas Foster . Reportedly the server doused too much alchohol on the flaming tableside dessert.

My generation, the baby boomers, reinvented jeans, sex and parenting, so it is no surprise that as we age, we are putting a new spin that, too. This was never going to go smoothly. Aging, I mean. Boomers are so reluctant to acknowledge, much less adapt to, even the tiniest erosions of time that we will drive the health care system off the cliff in our pursuit of eternal youth. And since boomers love to talk about themselves, we are writing about aging, too. Judith Viorst, the children's book author our children loved, has turned writing about aging into a modest franchise.