Gabler

When architect Bruce Finkelstein received the job of designing a new study in an existing home, he knew the secret of the room's success would be avoiding that feeling of closure often felt in a small space.At about 16 feet square, the addition would store a large collections of books, provide a retreat for a busy editor, contain the family's piano and, if necessary, serve as an extended dining room.Mr. Finkelstein, of H.B.F. Plus, made it his goal to create a multipurpose room that would function on all these levels, as well as act as a light and airy companion to the contemporary home.

The 20th anniversary celebration for Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service could best be described as an evening of "oohs" and "aahs." Sure, that dinner buffet at the National Aquarium looked scrumptious, and those honored for their service to the organization deserved that hearty applause. But the evening's big exclamations came from the 200 partygoers as they got an advance peek at the aquarium's new seahorse exhibit. Guests gasped as they gazed at the tiny creatures -- some delicately wrapping their tails around coral branches, others dancing in rows like free-floating sea grasses, and still others that looked like mutated twists of oak leaves capped by mini-horse heads.

To several generations, he was among the most popular men in America, commanding 60 million fans with his rat-a-tat-tat radio delivery. If Walter Winchell's name has receded with time, his impact has grown. As a newspaper and radio columnist, he shaped the country's fascination with celebrity and foreshadowed today's tabloid excesses."Biography," on cable's A&E Network, surveys his roller-coaster career in "Walter Winchell: The Voice of America" at 8 tonight.The program enlists a strong group of witnesses, including columnists Jimmy Breslin and Liz Smith; biographer John Mosedale; Jane Kean, a Winchell paramour; former press agent Ernest Lehman; and Herman Klurfeld, the assistant who ghost-wrote Winchell's column.

While celebrating the 100th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's classic "Hedda Gabler," the Western Maryland College Theatre's production contradicts some of the very principles of the play's genre.Theater history (and the program notes) hail "Hedda" as "a pivotal piece of realistic drama."The well-known and oft-produced play tells of the title character's marriage of convenience to an ineffectual, sexless, and constantlypreoccupied minor scholar who leaves his bride to rattle about in a large and cheerless house while he engages in his inconsequential research and attends "male" gatherings.

The Producers Club of Maryland recently announced the recipient of its second annual Producers Club of Maryland Fellowship.Rodrigo Garcia, a cinematographer who has photographed "Mi Vida Loca" and "Four Rooms," among others, received $10,000 to help bring his directorial debut script, "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her," to fruition.The Producers Club of Maryland, which was created by Jed Dietz in 1993 to help the Maryland Film Office promote the state as a filmmaking location, began awarding the fellowship two years ago in partnership with the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981.

As residents of the Jacksonville area of Baltimore County struggle to cope with a massive gasoline leak threatening their wells, they are getting help and guidance from neighboring Fallston, where widespread contamination of groundwater by a gasoline additive still troubles the community. In Jacksonville, the leak of an estimated 25,000 gallons from an Exxon service station at the junction of Jarrettsville Pike and Paper Mill and Sweet Air roads has so far been found to have contaminated one well, though more than 80 others are being checked.

When you ask Fred Mitchell about Perryman, the community in which he has spent the last 66 years, what you get is a history of a small area only slowly affected by the touches of time."

Was Mel Gibson an anti-Semite showing his true colors early Friday? Or was he just a drunk saying something offensive, as some observers suggested? Hollywood insiders and religious leaders speculated yesterday on how Gibson's career would be affected by his drunken tirade during a traffic stop, in which he reportedly blamed Jews for "all the wars in the world" and asked the arresting deputy, "Are you a Jew?" "When Mel Gibson gets pulled over by an officer ... and starts ranting about Jews around the world, it begins to look like a very dark character defect," says film historian Pat McGilligan, author of a forthcoming first biography of pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.

James Joyce's "Ulysses" is a language-loving, raucous ramble full of puns, ribaldry and thousands of acts of literary playfulness no one should be expected to understand any more than a concert-goer must play a violin. It is best read energetically and unhesitatingly in a state between limp relaxation and mad drunkenness.-- or --James Joyce's "Ulysses," arguably the most important novel in the 20th century, is a work of intense technical complexity, a modernist icon. Appropriately, it has sown and nourished more written analysis and scholarly commentary than any other single act of literature, sparing the Bible, if you register that as literature.

The Family that Shoots Together2 They couldn't buy her son. Yet she loved guns.Tom GillNorth BeachMock Trial ProgramOn behalf of the Gifted/Talented/Advanced Program Office and the Office of the Social Studies of the Anne Arundel County Public Schools, we would like to thank this year's mock trial students, judges, coaches and attorneys who participated in the 1994-1995 competition. The mock trial competition is one of the best programs for involving schools, community and the court system on a positive note, and for this, we heartily thank all those people involved.