Family Secrets

ROME -- For many filmmakers through the years, a certain kind of pilgrimage to Rome leads to the opulent parlor of the composer Ennio Morricone. It's the place where he has discussed grand concepts and crucial details, and often unveiled new themes on the piano, for the distinctive film scores he has written over the past four decades, from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to The Mission. There are more than 400 of them, though he hasn't kept count. Yesterday, Morricone, 78, was to make his long-overdue American concert debut with 200 musicians and singers at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

From shotgun marriages to adulterous affairs, illnesses to drug abuse, every family has its secrets. So when, if ever, should the proverbial family beans be spilled?In these confessional times, when TV shows like Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones seem to have little trouble coaxing their guests to blithely reveal the most sordid details of their lives, the answer would seem to be: whenever.But Evan Imber-Black, a New York-based family therapist who has made family secrets her life's work, says people who see public confession as an all-healing process are making a major mistake.

HAGERSTOWN -- There's gold in Jim and Gladys Fazenbaker's back yard. On the rocky, wooded slope behind their house near here grows a tiny patch of a nondescript plant, the roots of which could fetch as much as $400 a pound these days.It's ginseng, one of the most sought-after herbal remedies in the world. Prized for centuries in China and other countries as a tonic and stimulant, it can be found by the knowledgeable in the mountains of Western Maryland.The Fazenbakers are practitioners of a fading Appalachian tradition known as "sanging," searching the woods for wild ginseng and digging up the roots for sale or personal use.The patch behind their house is too small to merit harvesting, but the couple say they know of other secluded spots in Allegany, Garrett and Washington counties where they can find several pounds of ginseng roots.

Everything you need to know about what's going on this week. MOVIES OPENING (Friday; subject to change) Johnny English Reborn The Mighty Macs  Paranormal Activity 3 The Three Musketeers NOTABLE TV MONDAY Talking Dead (series debut; midnight; AMC) The Lying Game (mid-season finale; 8 p.m.; ABC Family) Sin by Silence (special; 8 p.m.; ID) The A-List: New York: Reunion, Part 2 (special; 9 p.m.; Logo) We Have Your Husband (telefilm; 9 p.m.; Lifetime)

LOS ANGELES -- As the host of "The Newlywed Game," Bob Eubanks explored the wonders of romance. Recently, he's been a spokesman for a 900-number dating service that left investors feeling jilted.The service Mr. Eubanks hailed as "revolutionary" in an infomercial is under investigation for suspected investment fraud, part of a state and federal crackdown on a new form of scam that feeds on the psychic, chat and date lines that have become staples of cable TV. DDTC Mr. Eubanks hasn't been accused of wrongdoing.

If your taste buds itch for truly Southern baking, then you've got to scratch 'em on the goodies at Tina Paul's West Baltimore sugar shack.For Paul -- a former forklift operator who began selling baked goods at flea markets -- "from scratch" is a family tradition: Many of her signature specialties have been passed down from Florence "Puddiny" Johnson, her 91-year-old grandmother."

Jim Magruder took a deep breath, swung back his arm, and threw his wedding band as far as he could into the audience. That's how he knew he was finally free. "Telling this story has taken the hex off this wedding ring that I haven't known what to do with for ten years," Magruder told the 250 people attending a Stoop Storytelling session in 2006. "If you caught it, give it to someone you love, or sell it on eBay, but I'M DONE WITH IT!"

SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Beneath the ancient, moss-draped oaks, Sue Rendeiro leads a dozen visitors to a granite bench that happens to be a tomb.Families still picnic among the dead in Bonaventure Cemetery, she tells the spellbound group, and the poet Conrad Aiken designed his unique gravestone for those who might want to linger with a martini, as he often did.But these men and women are toting cameras, not silver shakers, on their pilgrimage to the once-secluded cemetery....

"It's usually easier to befriend a redneck than to shoot him." First-time author W. Hodding Carter took this sage advice to heart as he and a friend trekked into the great American wilderness in an adventurous and funny, if ill-prepared, attempt to re-create the romance and glory of the Lewis and Clark expedition, from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean."Westward Whoa" recounts in a wonderfully innocent and self-deprecating way the trials that Mr. Carter and trusted buddy Preston Maybank encountered in their travels west on the tempestuous Missouri River, through the Montana hinterlands, the Continental Divide, and finally on the Columbia River to the Pacific.

IN HIS effort to become mayor of Baltimore, Lawrence Bell now declares with straight face that politics has no place in a political campaign.He wishes us all to be virgin again. It dawns on the City Council president that if his cousin Kweisi Mfume enters the race for mayor, then the entire business is over. Thus, Bell attempts to undo what he characterizes as cynical and underhanded State House political maneuvering with what he characterizes as clean and wholesome City Hall political maneuvering.