Goodbye

I was a member of the graduating class of 1972 at Cardinal Gibbons. What an incredible time to be a teenager in the late '60s and early '70s for many reasons. I was so proud when I received my acceptance letter to attend an all-boys Catholic high school with such a great reputation. In looking back, they were the most formative years of my life. I will never forget the values we learned there. I will also never forget playing junior varsity and varsity baseball on the same field as Babe Ruth.

Now it's time to say goodbye to the graduates at William McKinley High. This week's glee club assignment is, appropriately enough, "Goodbye. " Mr. Schu asks the underclassmen to perform a song for the seniors and vice versa. Then he delivers a heartfelt acoustic version of Rod Stewart's "Forever Young. " C'mon, Mr. Schu, you're going to make me cry and we're not even five minutes into the episode! Then we segue to Kurt's reflection on his last four years at William McKinley, where he spent ample amount of time in both the closet and the dumpster.

T housands of people skipped work and some even kept their kids home from school. In a chilling January rain, they lined downtown streets and sank into the mud of Memorial Plaza - all for a glimpse of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, a silver obelisk with the power to warm Baltimore's collective soul. All of those kids and many of their parents were too young to remember the city's last Super Bowl win, 30 years earlier. With the Colts long gone, the city needed another hit of victory, craved it - a jolt of civic pride, an affirmation, a legacy.

The silence of the other shoe dropping pretty much describes the clamor that greeted the departure of Newt Gingrichfrom his overblown, self-centered fight for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The man who vowed he would go all the way to the convention slinked away at a sparsely attended farewell news conference, with yet another offering of the ersatz erudition for which he is infamous, and with an ungracious quasi-endorsement of the man who whipped him, Mitt Romney. The coming election, Mr. Gingrich noted, "is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan.

Phillips last day at Harborplace is Sept. 18 The iconic Maryland seafood restaurant will end it 31-year tenure in the Light Street Pavilion after the Sunday dinner service on Sept 18. Phillips will reopen in the nearby Power Plant Live balding in the space vacated by the ESPN Zone, sometime this fall. No firm date has been announced for the reopening, and no details about arrangements for the restaurant's employees were available.

A federal law was set to take effect today that would have quashed those recorded phone messages from telemarketers. But at the last minute, a court gave the sales pitches a reprieve, at least for now.Article on 2A

One of the longest goodbyes in TV history finally ends tonight with Johnny Carson's signing off forever as host of "The Tonight Show."Under the heading of "All politics are local," though, Baltimore area viewers might be seeing the taped broadcast of Carson's last show a bit later than the rest of the country.The show is scheduled to air at 11:35 p.m. tonight on Channel 2, but WMAR management said it won't start the Carson tape until the Baltimore Orioles' game against the California Angels ends and 35 minutes of local news with Stan Stovall and Sally Thorner have aired.

OAKMONT, Pa. -- He couldn't make it all the way up the 18th fairway at Oakmont Country Club without his eyes welling at the resounding ovation he received. He couldn't make it through a bunch of post-round interviews without breaking down.Arnold Palmer bowed out tearfully yesterday from the United States Open. Exactly 41 years after playing here in his first Open, the legendary king of golf closed what had been a memorable show. The memories came crashing down on Palmer, 64.His only Open victory, at Cherry Hills in 1960, a tournament many considered the seminal event in the popularity of the PGA Tour.

We started calling it "Jessie's Farewell Tour," and I think it lasted longer than Cher's. During all of August, as everybody packed up to return to college, Jessie and her friends gathered daily to say goodbye. To each other, to someone else, to the same person. She interrupted the family vacation to return home for a farewell dinner and then left vacation early so she could say goodbye -- to the same friend. Romeo and Juliet didn't say goodbye on the balcony as many times as these kids have said goodbye.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- It wasn't until after the speeches, after the tears, after the cracking voices and after the ovations that Magic Johnson sat and related just how difficult his retirement day had been."

Funeral services were held Wednesday for Michael Carter, a longtime Baltimore city schools advocate whose outspokeness landed him the position in the administration of CEO Andres Alonso as the director of the district's parent and community engagement office.  We wrote an obituary last week on Carter, who lost his battle with cancer last week, which included solemn, but colorful remarks and remembrances from a host of city school officials and...

Ann Lansinger has been a part of Baltimore's startup scene for three decades. In fact, she was involved in local tech startups before there ever was much of a scene. Lansinger, who has run Baltimore's Emerging Technology Center in Canton since 1999, is to retire April 5. She will leave behind a record of growth — and an energized tech culture in Baltimore. Lansinger has been a shepherd and witness to some of the region's most promising technology firms and their progress over the last few decades.

Technology has overtaken the U.S. savings bonds. After this year, you will no longer be able to buy a paper bond. All purchases will be made electronically. By going totally electronic, the government is expected to save $120 million over five years. You still will  be able to redeem paper bonds at banks, though. Since 1935, people have purchased the bonds to fund the government's operations. The bonds became a traditional gift for a newborn. The Treasury Department is saying good-bye with an online interactive timeline , which includes cameos of celebrities who promoted the sale of savings bonds over the decades.

Online shopping topped $30 billion with 10 days to go until Christmas, up an astonishing 15 percent over last year and providing a much-needed boost to the economic mood in this country. You're welcome. OK, I didn't spent the $30 billion myself. I had help. Online shopping has been available for Christmas for a while now, but this year I — and apparently a lot of other shoppers -- bought just about all my gifts with the simple click of a mouse. No traffic jams. No battle for a parking spot.

"Mr. Beverage" is back at the Midtown. Nathan Beveridge, who owned the Midtown Yacht Club in Mount Vernon from 1998 to 2005, is back at the helm, the interim operators having been pushed overboard in November. And that's the last of the nautical references, because the Midtown Yacht Club is now Midtown BBQ & Brew. You can just call it "Midtown," Beveridge says. Many folks always did anyway. In the 1990s, Beveridge earned a following, along with, inevitably, the "Mr. Beverage" nickname, at the bygone Conservatory high atop the Peabody Court Hotel, where the views of Mount Vernon were giddy.

Rub , Michael Marx's barbecue restaurant in Riverside, closed in July after a four-year run. Now its successor, Hersh's Pizza and Drinks , has opened. Owings Mills natives Josh and Stephanie Hershkovitz, brother and sister, are the new owners. Josh, formerly of Petit Louis , is the restaurant's chef. The new specialty is Neapolitan pizza, topped with things like fried eggplant, homemade sausage, and prosciutto and pistachio. Also on the opening menu are a few salads, pastas and fritti — anchovy-and-sage fritters and prosciutto balls inspired by the fry shops in Rome.

One of the longest goodbyes in TV history finally ends tonight with Johnny Carson's signing off forever as host of "The Tonight Show."Under the heading of "All politics are local," though, Baltimore area viewers might be seeing the taped broadcast of Carson's last show a bit later than the rest of the country.The show is scheduled to air at 11:35 p.m. tonight on Channel 2, but WMAR management said it won't start the Carson tape until the Baltimore Orioles' game against the California Angels ends and 35 minutes of local news with Stan Stovall and Sally Thorner have aired.

Donald DeLong wanted to say goodbye to his son before catching a plane back to Florida. The Carroll County Sheriff's Office said no.Mr. DeLong was summoned to testify in Carroll County Circuit Court, where Jason Aaron DeLong is on trial charged with first-degree murder in the 1993 stabbing deaths of his mother, Cathryn Brace Farrar, and her boyfriend, George W. "Billy" Wahl.The elder Mr. DeLong sobbed Monday as he recounted for the jury how he lost his last battle for custody of Jason.He and his wife, Kim, tried to get a farewell visit with Jason at the detention center after court ended for the day about 4:30 p.m. They reported yesterday that they were told to come back during regular hours by a sheriff's deputy who had said that if he bent rules for them, he would have to bend rules for others.