Gift

Young or old, rabid or casual, Baltimore Orioles fans are a little poorer today with the announcement of the death of longtime Sun staffer James Bready ("James Hall Bready," Nov. 1). A true Renaissance man, Mr. Bready brought his remarkable talents to bear in the compilation of two indelible histories of the local nine, "The Home Team" and "Baseball in Baltimore. " Just as Brooks Robinson's artistry in the field and at bat inspired the remark that he must have been sent down from a higher league, Jim Bready's mix of wit, passion, drama and love for the game, as reflected in his singular prose, likewise proved he had no equal.

 Candy retailer The Best of Luck Candy & Gifts has moved to larger quarters at Power Plant in downtown Baltimore, next to Phillips Seafood. The Inner Harbor store, which specializes in bulk and nostalgia candy, gift baskets and custom favors, is double the size of the former location in Harbor East, with entrances on Pratt Street and the Power Plant promenade.  Besides candy such as Blow Pops, Pop Rocks and Charleston Chews, the store sells...

The ARC Northern Chesapeake Region accepted a check for $8,000 from The Aberdeen Rotary Club, proceeds from the rotary's annual bull, shrimp and oyster roast.

While many governments are moving toward posting ethics disclosure forms, residents of Baltimore still have to travel to City Hall and to a sixth-floor office to see the documents. To save you a trip, we're posting those forms from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and the rest of the City Council online. (The forms are posted to the left.) Ten members of the City Council report that they received no gifts from people who do business with the city, according to recently filed disclosure forms.

I too have had less than stellar success with the "new, improved" recycling ("Single-stream recycling isn't for us," Readers respond, Feb. 22). Home Depot told me I'd have to buy a $68 recycling container. My recycling was not collected several times when I put it out. Why can't we just put both paper and cans in blue bags out together? Why must they be in a special container? I too have pretty much decided to just not recycle if I have to gift wrap it. Leslie Johnston, Baltimore County Send letters to the editor to talkback@baltimoresun.

This deal expires tonight but can save you a lot of money if you were looking at Lowes for appliances, flooring, etc. Just visit Lowes.com and buy any gift card $500 or more. On March 18th they will automatically add an extra 10% to that card's value. So the card you paid $500 for will now be worth $550 in Lowes merchandise. It also works just like cash so is stackable with any other deal you can find at Lowes.

It is rare that one can find a truly heartwarming story about icemakers. When we were first married, my husband and I lived in a renovated old high-rise in Virginia. All of the new appliances were specified as "builder-grade," which indicates that builders on the whole must be extremely content with minimal features in their home appliances. The dishwasher had two cycles: on and off. The refrigerator had only two or three gradations on its dials, and the freezer had no icemaker.

Observers say the $1 million donated by Tyler Perry to the NAACP on Monday might spark several other hefty donations from wealthy black philanthropists, gifts that could help revive the civil rights organization as it continues to face questions about its relevancy. Perry's donation marks the largest gift from an individual in the Baltimore-based organization's 100-year history. Maxim Thorne, the NAACP's senior vice president, said he hopes it will mark a shift in black charity.

•••• A Super Bowl championship in Ray Lewis' final season.  Luke Broadwater, reporter, The Baltimore Sun •••• Peace. And by peace, that has to include education, employment, a clean environment, good nutrition, health care and better mass transit. I'm not asking too much, right?  Anne Tallent, editor,  b •••• An NBA team. I'd even be down with purple uniforms.  Wesley Case, reporter,  b •••• A magical way to eliminate all the rats.

Gabriel's Gift, by Hanif Kureishi. Scribner. 223 pages. $23. Gabriel's Gift, the sixth book of fiction by the man who brought us the Oscar-nominated screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette and the Whitbread Prize-winning The Buddha of Suburbia, is the half-hearted and only quasi-magical tale of a 15-year-old boy navigating his parents' dissolution. It is a sketch of a book, an idea more than a story. It is flat-footed and confoundingly awkward, a surprise given the considerable heft of Hanif Kureishi's reputation.

Two University of Maryland, Baltimore County employees resigned or were fired after a state audit and an internal investigation uncovered about $9,000 in questionable expenditures on their corporate credit cards. Their activities have been referred to the criminal division of the attorney general's office for further review, though no charges have been filed. One of the employees purchased $4,400 in gift cards — a violation of university policy — according to the audit, released Tuesday morning.

It was an embarrassment of riches for me this Mother's Day, I'm not going to lie. All I really wanted was to spend time with my husband and our sons -- and to get a picture of me with the boys. I take the vast majority of the pictures in our household, but I don't appear in that many of them. I got all of that and more, including waffles for breakfast, my favorite Thai food for dinner, farmer's market cupcakes for dessert, a card on whose envelope my 3-year-old wrote "Mommy" all by himself.

Here's a twist on buying Mother's Day gifts, whether a meal out or a box of chocolates. Pick from more than 2,600 online retailers and dozens of Baltimore area restaurants that make a donation to a favorite nonprofit charity for every purchase through GoodSearch, a Yahoo-powered search engine that works with more than 100,000 charities and schools. GoodShop.com, an online shopping portal that links to national chain stores such as Bloomingdales, Lands' End and Sephora, gives a percentage of each purchase back to the shopper's designated charity.

Why do politicians continue to take money and favors from developers and others? ("Kamenetz, council members got tickets from developers," May 2). Don't they realize how this looks and that favors are expected in return? One of the attorneys who represents a large land development corporation gave Orioles tickets to a Baltimore County councilman who has much influence on whether or not a big development gets cut back or not. A councilwoman, who got $732 worth of tickets says, "It was a nice treat for members of my family.

My child's school bus driver is a pleasure to greet every school-day morning. She always has a big smile and a kind word and wave. So, being curious about the world of school bus drivers, I asked a friend's school bus-driving daughter what kind of holiday and end-of-year gifts she likes to get the most. Her reply was that she gets no gifts from her students' or their families. She said that anything she could use to bridge the gap over the summer such as gift cards, coffee, cards, would be greatly appreciated.

The ARC Northern Chesapeake Region accepted a check for $8,000 from The Aberdeen Rotary Club, proceeds from the rotary's annual bull, shrimp and oyster roast.

Fitness-oriented gifts can be tricky if you're unsure how they'll be received. There's a risk of offending the recipients by implying they need to get off the couch and get in shape. But for many active people and others looking to get started, sporty presents will be welcome this holiday season. Whether it's a gift certificate, an interactive video-game trainer, pedometer, padded bicycle shorts or thermal accessories for winter sports, gifts that make exercise more comfortable can help motivate and keep people on track with their fitness goals, experts say. Smaller gifts such as yoga mats, exercise videos or DVDs, balance and stability devices and elastic bands will consume neither your budget nor all the space in your house, said Cedric Bryant, chief exercise physiologist for the American Council on Exercise.

For the people on your holiday shopping list who have everything, you can always make a charitable contribution in their names. But what about the people who don't have everything? Wouldn't it be nice if they could have their cake and eat it too, so to speak? If your present delighted the receiver and helped some worthy cause? If you could give a gift that kept on giving? It doesn't take holiday magic to make that happen, just a little careful shopping for presents where part or all of the proceeds go to a good cause.

In more than 30 states, if a corporate chieftain were to ask top executives to contribute to a politician, an inquisitive voter could easily learn that the firm was bankrolling the candidate. But not in Maryland. Campaigns are not required to disclose the occupation and employer of large contributors. That will change as of June 1 if Gov. Martin O'Malley signs legislation approved by the General Assembly that would require campaigns to gather such information from donors who give $500 or more to a single candidate during a four-year election cycle.