Graceland

The Elvis memorabilia are gone from the Graceland Cafeteria in the basement of Baltimore County's old courthouse in Towson."It's not Graceland anymore," Betty Lou Hanes, the widow of the former manager, said Friday -- her last day behind the cash register. She said that the cafeteria's new blind manager had not made her a fair job offer.The cafeteria's operation has been in dispute for two months, since the death of Mrs. Hanes' husband, Lou, who had managed it under the state's blind vendor program.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of occasional features on prominent local residents and the possessions they treasure. You can get a pretty good idea of someone's journey through life by looking at the objects with which he surrounds himself. For Gary Vikan, who stepped down this spring as the director of the Walters Art Museum , those objects include a pair of tickets to Woodstock, a piece of the gate guarding Graceland, a collection of Russian icons and a miniature replica of the Shroud of Turin.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- President Bush doesn't get a lot of tender love these days on the world stage. But yesterday, taking his Japanese counterpart on a private tour of Graceland, Bush received a big hunk o' love. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi - calling it a "dream" to see the home of his longtime idol, Elvis Presley - was reduced to almost uncontrollably giddy giggling as he broke into a serenade for Bush, first lady Laura Bush and Presley's former wife, Priscilla, and daughter, Lisa Marie.

Lois Gresdo has long enjoyed hearing the little voices and the peals of laughter just outside her front door. But her street will be a quieter place when Sacred Heart of Mary School shuts its doors after 87 years of providing a Catholic education. "The school is a very positive presence for these children - and for this neighborhood," Gresdo said Wednesday after word of the school's demise reached this middle-class neighborhood in far East Baltimore, a stone's throw from Dundalk.

Kathy Jean Sidlowski was 13 when she saw the movie "Elvis Aloha from Hawaii."It changed her life forever.She had fallen for The King, and yesterday, almost 20 years later, on the 14th anniversary of his death, Kathy Jean finally made it to Graceland."

TOKYO -- Junichiro Koizumi is about to leave the building. After five years as Japan's prime minister, the curtain is coming down on the leader who alternately charmed and bullied his country into overhauling atrophied political and economic systems, while casting its lot more deeply with Washington. Japan is on the cusp of the post-Koizumi era. The race to succeed him is under way, lending a victory-lap aura to the prime minister's visit to Washington that begins tomorrow. Unless North Korea fires a long-range missile in the interim, there won't be much business on the table when he meets President Bush.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Graceland is having a blue Christmas, a really blue Christmas.The blue lights Elvis Presley chose to outline his driveway have been joined by 2 million more lights, mostly blue, that twinkle like stars in the night.For the first Christmas since Presley died 22 years ago, something belonging to someone other than Elvis is on display at his home.That someone is Jennings Osborne, known as the king of lights in his hometown of Little Rock, Ark., a man with a serious affection for illumination.

People at the Walters Art Gallery first began to take notice of the face about 20 years ago. Carved on the corners of a marble sarcophagus dated at 210 A.D. and discovered north of Rome in 1885, it's called the Victory Sarcophagus. It is one of the finest pieces in the gallery's antiquities collection.Comments have been made about the face through the years, the kind of jocular remarks that images out of time or place often provoke. Some people find it eerie. But it's doubtful anybody has ever suggested it's anything more than an interesting coincidence.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of occasional features on prominent local residents and the possessions they treasure. You can get a pretty good idea of someone's journey through life by looking at the objects with which he surrounds himself. For Gary Vikan, who stepped down this spring as the director of the Walters Art Museum , those objects include a pair of tickets to Woodstock, a piece of the gate guarding Graceland, a collection of Russian icons and a miniature replica of the Shroud of Turin.

Elvis Presley was only 42 when he died in 1977. I was 31 then, so I didn't have the sense that Elvis had been denied a big hunk of life. Now that I'm 50, I feel differently, of course.At the time of his death, the musical era he represented hadn't yet lived long enough to get old -- though Elvis had aged significantly, it seemed, even at 42. Many of us thought he had outlived his piece of an era, along with his youth, transforming into a Las Vegas lounge act in a preposterous jumpsuit: the Liberace of rock.

The Rev. Leon Klemens Warczynski, a former longtime pastor of Sacred Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Graceland Park who enjoyed collecting clocks, died Sunday of Parkinson's disease at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 91. Father Warczynski, the son of a streetcar motorman, was born in Baltimore and raised in Fells Point, where his mother owned a bar at Fleet and Ann streets. "His mother wanted him to become a priest, and when she found out that he wanted to become a Franciscan, she told him no, he had to become a diocesan priest," said his niece, Leona Andryszak, who lives in Baltimore's Beverly Hills neighborhood.

Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis." Barry was being funny, as always -- but was he right? As America marks the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death today, the singer is still very much with us. Perhaps you've seen the new commemorative DVDs of Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas, or the custom-made Elvis bikes that Harley-Davidson is offering, or the Elvis banana-and-peanut-butter cups Reese's is selling....

GUIDES 'Encounter' the world Lonely Planet has introduced a new series of pocket guidebooks, called Encounter, designed for short visits to cities around the world. The series just launched books on Barcelona, Spain; Hong Kong; Istanbul, Turkey; Las Vegas; London; New York; Paris and San Francisco. Each book features a full-color pull-out map, plus neighborhood maps, with a list of not-to-be-missed highlights in each destination and sample itineraries, plus attractions, restaurants and shops listed by neighborhood.

My family gravesite is the other Graceland - the one Elvis Presley wouldn't be caught dead in. The Graceland I'm speaking of isn't an opulent Memphis, Tenn., estate. It's a cemetery carved out of scruffy terrain in overpopulated northern New Jersey; a harried location where the expression "rest in peace" is meant figuratively, much like you might say "Have a nice day!" to a resident of Beirut or Darfur. Nobody cries at my family's burial services. Well, they cry, but no one can ever hear them.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- President Bush doesn't get a lot of tender love these days on the world stage. But yesterday, taking his Japanese counterpart on a private tour of Graceland, Bush received a big hunk o' love. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi - calling it a "dream" to see the home of his longtime idol, Elvis Presley - was reduced to almost uncontrollably giddy giggling as he broke into a serenade for Bush, first lady Laura Bush and Presley's former wife, Priscilla, and daughter, Lisa Marie.

Like you, he had great hair. Like you, he was known to sing in public. And like you, he won admirers in countries far from home. That man was Elvis."

HIGH POINT, N.C. - Elvis is back in the building. And soon in your bedroom, if the good ole' boys at Galax, Va.-based Vaughan-Bassett furniture makers have their way. The Elvis Presley Collection, unveiled at the spring International Home Furnishings Market here, are not reproductions of the furniture at Graceland, Elvis' home in Memphis that attracts 600,000 visitors each year. These are relatively low-key designs inspired by Graceland and the King's time in Hollywood. The "Graceland" group features the large "Love Me Tender" bed ($599)

On Monday, July 5, 2004, JOHN "Jack" JENKIN HOWELLS; beloved husband of Joan Pfister-Howells; devoted father of Clark Howells; loving grandfather of Maggie and Josie Howells; dear stepfather of Hazel Berthold, Arthur Pfister, Jr., and Joyce Leggett. A Memorial Service will be held on Thursday 12 noon at Graceland United Methodist Church, 6714 Youngstown Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21222. Contributions may be made in Jack's name to Graceland U.M.C. Budget Fund. Arrangements by Peaceful Alternatives Funeral & Cremation Center.

TOKYO -- Junichiro Koizumi is about to leave the building. After five years as Japan's prime minister, the curtain is coming down on the leader who alternately charmed and bullied his country into overhauling atrophied political and economic systems, while casting its lot more deeply with Washington. Japan is on the cusp of the post-Koizumi era. The race to succeed him is under way, lending a victory-lap aura to the prime minister's visit to Washington that begins tomorrow. Unless North Korea fires a long-range missile in the interim, there won't be much business on the table when he meets President Bush.

Back in 1998, Gretchen Mol appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair's September issue, wearing a nearly transparent white gown and looking about as alluring as humanly possible. The accompanying article (and one got the feeling it was the cover photo that prompted the article, not the other way around) proclaimed her the next big thing. In fact, it treated the 25-year-old actress as though she already were a major star. Eight years later, thanks to her winsome, absolutely unselfconscious performance as a 1950s pin-up queen in The Notorious Bettie Page, she may finally be living up to the magazine's hype.