Front Porch

PRESTON --Twenty years ago, when Mimi and Bill Willis were still considered newcomers in this Eastern Shore village, they whiled away late-summer evenings on the front porch - chatting, rocking, listening to warm-weather sounds and counting the reasons they'd left the congestion of suburban Washington. ... Not anymore. Like their neighbors who live along Main Street, they have long since retreated indoors to block out the din of cars and trucks rumbling through - 11,149 vehicles a day, by the State Highway Administration's count.

Three teenage boys were shot last night while sitting on the front porch of a rowhouse in Northeast Baltimore's Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood, city police said. The victims, whose wounds did not appear life-threatening, were being treated at the pediatric intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said Maj. Antonio Rodriguez, commander of the Northeastern police district. Shortly after 9 p.m., an unknown male armed with a semiautomatic handgun approached the youths - two 16-year-olds, the other 14 - as they sat on the porch of a two-story house in which one of the victims lives in the 1500 block of Homestead St. and fired several rounds, Rodriguez said.

JGS Homes has opened a sales trailer at Summit Ridge in Mount Airy, where the company is building 30 traditional homes on lots of one-quarter acre to one-third acre.Crown molding in the living and dining rooms, hardwood flooring the foyer and powder room and gas-powered heat, cooking and hot water are some of the standard features in the Carroll County community.The Brighton I is a 2,050-square-foot home with a beginning price of $214,900. The first floor has a front porch, two-story foyer with guest closet, 11-by-13-foot living room, 10-by-9-foot library, 11-by-11-foot dining room, 11-by-19-foot kitchen/breakfast area, powder and laundry rooms, 18-by-13-foot family room with gas fireplace and two-car garage.

Hours before she and four others were killed in a raging house fire last week, Juanita Roy jumped out of a car to get away from two men, her clothes ripped and her face bruised.When Roy was found on the front porch of her home in the 5200 block of Norwood Ave. at 2 a.m. Jan. 14, her upset aunt called a relative, saying the 20-year-old looked as if she had been assaulted or raped.By 5: 20 a.m., the house was in flames.Police investigating the fire as arson say they have looked into the events of the young woman's last night alive, interviewing one of the two men in the car.Antoinette Manago, 23, daughter of fire victim Francine Roy, said she doesn't know if the men were involved in the fire.

Viewed against a backdrop of grayish brown, winter bare trees, the house on Wrights Mill Road -- with its gray cedar siding and fieldstone front porch -- looks almost like a natural extension of the land.The house perches atop a steep hill like a cherry on an ice cream treat, and its sharp angles continue the trend set by the land beneath it.Chris and Kenyon Lewis could have had a nice, level piece of land on which to build their dream home, but they chose this lot in western Baltimore County.

Maybe it's the side porch, or the house's Southern style.Maybe it's that Felicia Northrop -- whose friends call her Martha Stewart Jr. -- loves to entertain.Whatever it is, something makes the Northrops' Fox Valley home in West Friendship warm and inviting, and some nights when Felicia's husband, Creig, comes home from work, he greets a few neighbors and their children before he finds his own -- Victoria, 4, and Jake, 2."I wanted people to feel like they could always come in -- there would always be a pitcher of ice tea or a pot of coffee or something -- and just feel real welcome," said Felicia, 28, who insisted that they include a side door off the kitchen.

A woman was shot to death and a man mortally wounded in a Hampstead home early yesterday in the second and third domestic homicides in this Carroll County town in two weeks, Maryland State Police said.Sharon Lee Mechalske, a 38-year-old mother of two boys, was found shot to death in a bedroom of her home in the 4200 block of Wolf Hill Court at about 1: 15 a.m. Kent Leonard Cullison, a 30-year-old Arcadia mail carrier, was found slumped in a pool of blood on the front porch of the house.The shootings bring Carroll County's homicides this year to three.

At least 19 people were homeless yesterday after a morning fire burned seven rowhouses in West Baltimore's Rosemont neighborhood, destroying some and badly damaging others.Fire investigators had not determined a cause by yesterday afternoon, but they said they believe the fire began under a front porch at 1628 N. Warwick Ave. and spread quickly. When firefighters arrived about 5: 30 a.m., they reported several porches ablaze.No injuries were reported, but distraught residents stood across the street from their burned homes and watched as firefighters piled their charred belongings on the sidewalk.

A Carroll County family was left homeless yesterday for the second time in two months after a three-alarm fire heavily damaged a farmhouse near Manchester.Gilda Hogan, 50, and her children, 21 and 15 years old, have been staying with David Solomon, 49, in the 4200 block of Maple Grove Road while her husband, Russell Hogan, 55, recovers from burns he suffered when the family home near Lineboro caught fire in December, said W. Faron Taylor, deputy state fire marshal."The cause of [yesterday's]

A man and a woman were fatally shot in a Hampstead home early yesterday in the second and third domestic homicides in this Carroll County town in two weeks, Maryland State Police said.Sharon Lee Mechalske, a 38-year-old mother of two boys, was found shot to death in a bedroom of her home in the 4200 block of Wolf Hill Court about 1: 15 a.m. Kent Leonard Cullison, a 30-year-old Arcadia mail carrier, was found slumped in a pool of blood on the front porch of the house.The shootings bring Carroll County's homicides this year to three.

Glenn and Denise Bowman always dreamed of restoring an old house. Early in 2006, they bought a 5,600-square-foot home built about 1840. The imposing but time-worn Clarksville structure, formerly a dentist's office and commercially zoned, had lain vacant for nearly eight years and was slated for the wrecking ball by an automotive dealership that planned to develop the property. The couple paid $1 for the house. Then the fun - and the hassles - began. "The hardest thing was finding the land for it," said Glenn Bowman, a lighting and design consultant.

Please take a good look at Professor Henry Louis Gates. He is 5-foot-7, weighs 150 pounds, wears glasses and uses a cane. His legs are of unequal length, his mustache and goatee are gray. He is 58 years old and looks it. It's important to see Mr. Gates - scholar, author, documentarian, Harvard University professor and African-American man - because that's what Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department apparently did not do in the July 16 confrontation that has ignited debate about racial bias in the U.S. "justice" system.

Back in 2003, friends of Greg Alexander and Paul Williams told them they had found the perfect house for the couple. Five years later, it appears the friends were spot on. "We couldn't live anywhere else," said Alexander, a 39-year-old freelance writer and editor of Mason-Dixon ARRIVE, a monthly lifestyle magazine. The place he refers to is Charles Village in North Baltimore. The perfect house was (and remains to this day) a meticulously renovated, three-story brick Victorian townhouse with a wide front porch and compact, landscaped front garden.

By Preakness Saturday, every last Christmas tree pine needle has to be out of my house. I also have to cut my first rose of the season. It's also the day when the winter rugs must disappear down into my cellar. I live by a Baltimore calendar wherein the Christmas holiday season, late winter and a cool, wet spring have a way of mushing together. By mid-May, it's time for a change. I make the time to clean, tear up the house and find the last holiday light bulbs that might have rolled under the sofa.

Rawlings-Blake calls for openness by police City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake is asking the Baltimore Police Department to post more crime information online, as other major police departments do. She also wants the department to consider a policy used in Chicago of posting the final reviews of police-involved shootings online. "This could be a good balance between protecting officers and bringing transparency to the public," Rawlings-Blake said. The City Council president has been critical of a new Police Department policy of withholding the names of officers who shoot civilians, saying that it was developed without appropriate input from the community.

Among the terra cotta tiles on the kitchen floor of Barbara and Joe Bradshaw's custom-built Marriottsville house are two with unusual designs on the surface: paw prints. The tiles, handmade in Mexico, were laid outdoors to dry. "At night, animals run over the fields, and if the tiles aren't dry, they leave paw prints," Barbara Bradshaw said. When she told the workman that she thought a tile with a small paw impression had charm, he added a second one with an even larger paw imprint. "People usually ask about the paw prints - did your dog do that?"

It's a simple and sad story. Girl dates boy. Girl leaves boy for another boy. First boy confronts second boy and ends up dead. Darion Sawyer and Jeffrey L. Brown. Sawyer, a 29-year-old budding comic book artist, was fatally shot, and Brown, a 34-year-old grocery worker who had never before been arrested or even gotten a traffic ticket, is charged with killing him. The police and prosecutors say it is first-degree murder. Brown's lawyers, Margaret A. Mead and Catherine Flynn, call it self-defense.

Marsha and John Wise bought their home six years ago after losing out on another house in the same neighborhood because they had not made an offer quickly enough. The couple had fallen in love with the community of Hunting Ridge, a historic district near Baltimore's western edge known for solid homes in varied architectural styles amid huge trees and rolling terrain. They really wanted to live there - enough to write to community leaders, inquiring if they knew any homeowners in their midst who would be interested in selling.

Baltimore police were investigating the fatal shooting yesterday of a 33-year-old man in the 4100 block of Rockfield Ave. in Northwest Baltimore's Woodmere neighborhood. The killing occurred yesterday near the Rogers Avenue Metro stop and a city fire station. Police said a patrol officer received a report of gunfire about 3 a.m. When police arrived at the scene, the victim was found in the driver's seat of a car that was parked on Rockfield Avenue with the engine running, police said. He had been shot in the upper body, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman.

Two men were shot last night, one of them fatally, while they sat on the front porch of a house in West Baltimore, police said. No arrest had been made, and police knew of no motive. The victims, both in their early 20s, were on the porch of a house in the 3100 block of Clifton Ave. about 8:30 p.m. when a man approached and opened fire with handgun, police said. One man was shot in the chest and the other in the groin, police said. Both were taken by Fire Department ambulances to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the man with the chest wound died a short time later.