Face To Face

Jeff Blake's past will come back to haunt his present on Sunday. Or perhaps it will be the other way around. With injured Chris Redman aiming to return to full workouts next week, Blake is looking to solidify himself as the Ravens' starting quarterback against the Cincinnati Bengals, a franchise that tried to bench the strong-armed veteran at every opportunity. In a lengthy interview about him and his former team, Blake insisted yesterday that all emotional ties have been severed, and he steered away from reliving his painful six years in Cincinnati.

Howard County's police chief and lead prosecutor are at odds over how criminal cases should be handled and over the role of prosecutors stationed in neighborhoods - but neither is pursuing a meeting to resolve their differences. Nearly four months after Howard police Chief Wayne Livesay sent Howard State's Attorney Marna L. McLendon a letter accusing her office of dropping "any criminal case where there is less than 100% chance of conviction" and McLendon questioned why he would "choose now to raise these issues," the two say they have yet to sit down to discuss their concerns.

Joan Gavigan was almost perfect. She coaxed a feuding father and son to look each other in the eye, to talk about their differences over money and the son's education. She was just about to get the two to sign an agreement about finances and school when she made her mistake: She told the two that it was obvious that they loved each other. "Argh," Gavigan said, recalling the moment. "That's such not a guy thing to say. Too touchy feely. ... It could ruin everything." Such is the life of a conflict mediator trainee.

One of a novelist's greatest hopes is that her characters come to life in the eye of the reader. So it was with a creator's awe that Priscilla Cummings responded to word that one of her protagonists had made the leap into the real world, seemingly ripped from the pages and breathed into existence as a young girl in Minnesota. In A Face First, released a year ago, Cummings relates the fictional story of Kelley Brennan, a 12-year-old girl whose life changes drastically as a result of a car accident.

IT WAS A SPARKLING SPRING morning, a day that begged to be spent anywhere but in a dark, wood-paneled courtroom where some particularly ugly history was being dredged up. Even Circuit Judge James Garrett didn't want to be there - or rather, he didn't want us to be there. Outsiders - Yankees probably - had descended on Birmingham, Ala., to watch an old Klansman stand trial for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church almost 38 years ago, killing four black girls dressed in their Sunday best and tidying up before services.

A thick April shower falls on the fine old building that was the President Street railroad station and on Pratt Street and on Camden Station and on the silent graves of the Civil War dead all across the city. Now the Civil War Museum, the modest brick depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore line nestles uneasily among its towering new neighbors between Little Italy and the Inner Harbor, a handsome antique in a neighborhood of knockoff modernism. The President Street station is 140 years old and a truly historic site.

Boy meets his double from many years ago Borders Books & Music in Bowie holds a discussion group for kids in fourth through sixth grade Tuesday. Participants will analyze the 1994 book "Time for Andrew: A Ghost Story" by Mary Downing Hahn. Andrew is a 12-year-old who's been sent to his great-aunt's 19th-century house in Missouri for the summer so his parents can join an archaeological dig in France. Almost immediately, Andrew has the uneasy feeling he's being watched. But by whom? He soon gets his answer - while exploring his aunt's attic, he comes face to face with his look-alike, a boy gravely sick with diphtheria.

WASHINGTON - Emerging in a gray mist, the lead actors in a gripping American drama took their places on the inaugural stage. George W. Bush raised his right hand while facing a stone-faced Vice President Al Gore, the man he defeated after a brutal post-election dispute. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the oath of office just steps from President Bill Clinton, over whose impeachment trial the justice had presided in his familiar gold-barred robe. Bush's father, the one-term president, watched with tears in his eyes as his son followed his path to power.

Baltimore, a city that exploded in anger and riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. nearly 33 years ago, celebrated the slain civil rights leader's birthday yesterday with a joyous parade down the boulevard named in his honor. The inaugural parade - an affair that included high school bands, hip-hop dancers and robed choral groups - is likely to mark the start of a tradition that many in the crowd said was too long in coming. Along the parade route, residents talked about King, the social changes for which he died and the long road still ahead.

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. -- The second round of Syrian-Israeli peace talks got off to a seemingly rough start yesterday as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa failed to hold a scheduled face-to-face meeting last night. Instead, Barak and Sharaa met separately with President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. U.S. officials blamed the canceled summit of Barak, Sharaa and Clinton on earlier meetings that ran longer than expected. "I wouldn't exaggerate the significance of it," said State Department spokesman James P. Rubin, who noted that Barak and Sharaa had previously met face to face in Washington.