Gorgeous

THE KNOCK on the door came about 15 minutes before 10 on Tuesday night. I answered, and there stood Hannibal Brisueno. Hannibal Brisueno was just one of the neighborhood teens when I moved to the 4900 block of Edgemere Ave. in 1986. He was grown now, with kids of his own, and had long since departed. His appearance at my door brought sad news. "My father died about an hour ago," he said, knowing that I, and every soul on this block, would want to know. Anibal Ayala Brisueno, retired Marine Corps master sergeant, community activist, anti-drug crusader and scold, and nemesis of every scofflaw and lowlife in our Pimlico neighborhood, died Tuesday.

  "Things happen for a reason. " Potomac's Nana Meriwether, the reigning Miss USA, says that a lot. Especially when she talks about the road she followed to her title: two runner-up finishes at the Miss California pageant before being crowned Miss Maryland last year; another second-place finish, this time in June's Miss USA competition; then - finally - the Miss USA crown, but only after the woman who beat her, 20-year-old Olivia Culpo...

Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive When: 6:45 p.m.-7:45 p.m. today Why: Because local indie singer Angela Taylor will give a free concert at the BMA's outdoor sculpture garden as part of the museum's Free First Thursdays series. Taylor sings and plays the flute. She'll be accompanied by Rich Radford on the acoustic guitar and a trio of string players from the Peabody Conservatory. Information: Call 410-396-7100 or visit www.artbma.org. For more information about Taylor, visit www .angelataylor.

Has Saturday's sky been reported anywhere? Did anyone make a note of it? Did anyone photograph it? It was such a dazzling sky I can't believe I was the only one to see it and to savor it.Where's Monet when I need him?Make a note that this dazzling sky of chameleon clouds and seeping sunshine occurred between the hours of noon and 1:15 p.m. on Nov. 16, 1991. I witnessed its evolution, crescendo and dissolution while standing by a hay pile on a farm that borders the watershed around Prettyboy Reservoir.

SUN SCORE **1/2 In the French farce My Wife is an Actress, actor-director Yvan Attal spends as much time dodging emotional bullets as hitting comic targets. Combine the title with the image of a dazzling female and a frazzled male, and you've got the movie perfectly. The picture has its moderate appeal, thanks to elegant film craft, an even more elegant female lead, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and a second male lead, Terence Stamp, who is elegant to the third power. But it leaves you feeling as if you've seen a grab-bag pilot for a TV series that didn't make the cut. As a sportswriter also named Yvan, who is married, just like him, to Charlotte (the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, she goes by her first name in the movie)

Imagine running a 10-kilometer race more than 185 feet in the air, looking down and seeing the Chesapeake Bay. For those who've sat in traffic for what seemed like hours trying to get from one side of the Bay Bridge to the other - and even for those who haven't - Sparrow Rogers and Peter Paris want you to have another kind of experience on the 4.3-mile span. The Queen Anne's County commissioners recently approved use of the bridge for the inaugural Chesapeake Bay Bridge Run, and the event is expected to gain the support of the Department of Natural Resources for use of the parking lots at Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis, where the race is scheduled to begin.

CUMBERLAND -- Dan McMullen, a lifelong resident of Allegany County, grew up with a regional inferiority complex."You grew up in this community hearing your parents and grandparents say over and over again, 'We're the forgotten. This is the forgotten land,' " he says.That was before the Rocky Gap Country Bluegrass Festival.The three-day festival, which begins today at Rocky Gap State Park, is not the only reason the state's western counties are feeling frisky these days. But Rocky Gap, as the festival is called, more than any other event or happenstance, has drawn attention to this once-forgotten land.

Next week is National Children's Book Week, and here are a few ways to celebrate.* Visit the Peale Museum to catch "Through Sisters' Eyes: Children's Books Illustrated by African-American Women Artists." This gorgeous exhibit, which runs through Dec. 10, highlights the work of 10 award-winning illustrators: Moneta Barnett, Carole Byard, Pat Cummings, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Cheryl Hanna, Margo Humphrey, Dolores Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones, Dindga McCannon and Faith Ringgold.The exhibit designers -- Linda DePalma, Paul Daniel and Angela Franklin -- have transformed the museum space into a sanctuary for flights of fancy.

WASHINGTON, VA. -- I don't need much of an excuse to wangle a trip to the Inn at Little Washington, the celebrated Virginia restaurant regarded as one of the best in the United States. Recently I went there to check out the tony establishment's link to a Dundalk factory. In short, I pursued the local angle to feast on foie gras.The inn has put in a new oven. And the inn's oven, like its meals -- $88 per person on weeknights, wine extra -- is far beyond the ordinary. Instead of a big, black hunk of metal shoved up against the kitchen wall, the new oven is a gorgeous mixture of gleaming copper and shimmering porcelain that serves as the dramatic centerpiece for a new kitchen layout.

New York.--The contest to determine who will preside as mayor during the next four years of this city's accelerating decay is between the incumbent, who is a Democrat, and Rudolph Giuliani, a former prosecutor, who is not. The outcome will not matter much because it is certain to lengthen the ruinous reign of the municipal liberalism that has reduced this decrepit and dyspeptic city to the role of a warning.Still, the campaign merits scrutiny. It illuminates the city's reputation as the nation's thyroid gland, and it illustrates the kind of conditions in which sensible voters will support a third-party candidate who cannot win but who could determine the winner.