Ground

It just doesn't feel right. At a time when everyone in real life is harboring hopes and making promises for the new year, the Hollywood studios are intent on breaking every resolution they ever made about creating fresh and exciting popular art. Unless you're catching up to November or December award contenders, you'll find January is the dumping-ground month for low-expectation movies, from the pseudo-inspirational Stomp the Yard to manic action-exploitation films...

Maryland's worst aviation disaster occurred on May 31, 1947, when Eastern Airline's nonstop Flight 606 from Newark, headed to Miami, crashed and burned near Port Deposit, killing all 53 passengers and crew aboard the DC-4.As the plane hit the ground, the resultant explosion shook windows and buildings for a 5-mile radius.Five months earlier, on Dec. 20, 1946, another Miami-bound Eastern Airliner, flying at 2,000 feet, collided in clear weather over Aberdeen with a twin-engine C-47 chartered by Universal Airlines.

I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland!The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland!She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumbHuzza! she spurns the Northern scum!She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!Maryland! My Maryland!-- James Ryder Randall, 1861ON A MAP, Maryland might be a page badly torn from a book, nothing like those boxy states from the plains with their stolid square corners. True, there is the straight-edged northern border, the work of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, trudging through the woods in the 1760s to settle boundary trouble between Penns and Calverts.

The state Board of Public Works is expected to approve $81,175 next week to clean up a minor gasoline spill at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville.The spill involved soil only and has had no adverse effect on any water supply, state officials said yesterday."The contamination is basically around the site," said Quentin Banks, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment. "There is no threat to private wells."Frequent monitoring and ground-water sampling have shown no contamination to water sources for the hospital or to private wells for the past four years, Banks said.

Top-ranked Gilman captured the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference championship with a 37-15 win at St. Mary's yesterday.The Greyhounds improved to 9-0 on the season and will go after their second perfect season next weekend when they meet McDonogh.Senior wide receiver Chisom Opara accounted for 218 yards of offense with six catches for 125 yards and 93 more yards on the ground -- including a 73-yard touchdown run.No. 4 Bel Air 35, North Harford 0: Adam Rafalski threw three touchdown passes, two to Chris Reynolds, and rushed 67 yards for another at home for the Bobcats.

Quote: "I didn't even know. I'm not a strikeout pitcher. I'm just trying to get them to hit balls on the ground." -- Indians' Charles Nagy, when informed he had reached 1,000 strikeouts.It's a fact: Bret Saberhagen of the Red Sox hasn't walked a leadoff hitter who has scored. With everybody else, nearly 40 percent of leadoff walks score.Who's hot: The Rangers' Juan Gonzalez has a 15-game hitting streak.Who's not: Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra's error in the first was his fourth in the past 10 games, his 23rd of the season.

NOTEworthy Day:Let it be said loud and clear that the Ravens, a relatively young team in age and experience, don't truly realize how good they can be. There's an ideal balance of youth and veterans, and excellent coaching by Ted Marchibroda. They are in position to beat the Oilers today and the Steelers next Sunday. Improvement has been ongoing.Major League Baseball was hoping to get control of its umpires a decade or so ago, but then commissioner Peter Ueberroth, long on the public relations aspect, caved into the pressure and submitted to the umpire union's demands.

They're millions of years old, hundreds of feet below the ground and dripping with calcium carbonate formations. And many of them are just a day trip away from Baltimore.Caverns are natural wonders carved out by underground rivers millions of years ago. Water that has seeped into the limestone caves creates formations that crystallize. The crystals come in many shapes and sizes: columns, ribbons, stalactites (hanging crystals) and stalagmites (crystals that grow up from the ground).Below is a list of caverns found in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

MILLINGTON -- Anthony Guessregen sees himself as just another farmer trying to eke out a living from his land. But others in this rural Kent County community, including some farmers, say the 35-year-old former fisherman from Long Island, N.Y., gives agriculture a bad name.Guessregen and his wife, Patricia, plan to raise 3,000 hogs on their 313-acre farm nearby. Rather than wallow in the mud, though, these porkers will spend four months bulking up in stalls inside a "finishing house" before being trucked to slaughter.

Office-supply retailer Staples Inc. broke ground in Hagerstown yesterday for a huge distribution center that will create 700 jobs in Washington County by the end of 1998.The warehouse, located outside Hagerstown near the intersection of Interstates 70 and 81, will begin supplying products to 370 stores across the eastern United States in the first quarter of next year, according to Staples President Martin Hanaka.State and local governments offered Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., $4.2 million in incentives to build the $43 million distribution center in Washington County, where it will become the fourth-largest employer.

Parts of Colorado lie freezing beneath 2 to 3 feet of snow today. That's why we live here. The biggest October snowstorm of all time (at least since 1883) in Baltimore occurred on this date in 1925, leaving 2.5 inches on the ground. It arrived amid some very unseasonable cold. The day before the storm, the mercury stalled at 46 degrees - still the chilliest high on record for an Oct. 29 in Baltimore.

Mayor Sheila Dixon ceremonially broke ground on Baltimore's first permanent 24-hour shelter yesterday, the centerpiece of her 10-year plan to end homelessness in a city where more than 3,400 have no place to live. Dixon called the building, a former city Department of Transportation brick warehouse at 620 Fallsway in downtown Baltimore, a "gateway to independence" that is not meant to "warehouse" homeless people but will serve as a one-stop resource center where they can receive counseling and other help.

Ken Legace of Stewartstown, Pa., writes: "I thought lightning happened when positive-charged clouds and negative-charged earth connected electrically with a huge ZAP. Then what causes cloud-to-cloud lightning?" While the tops of thunderclouds become positively charged, the bottoms go negative, which induces a positive charge in the ground. Wherever the difference reaches 15 million volts per mile, it discharges. Bolts fly twice as often within clouds as between clouds and ground.

Francis Scott Key lacrosse co-captain Ryan High was the scoring leader (42 goals, 12 assists) this season for the Eagles, despite battling a thyroid condition that forces him to have blood work done every six weeks. High was quarantined for four days of his Christmas break after undergoing a medical procedure in which he swallowed a pill with some radiation to "adjust his thyroid out." However, the 5-foot-11, 205-pound senior attackman did not miss any lacrosse games this season for the Eagles.

It just doesn't feel right. At a time when everyone in real life is harboring hopes and making promises for the new year, the Hollywood studios are intent on breaking every resolution they ever made about creating fresh and exciting popular art. Unless you're catching up to November or December award contenders, you'll find January is the dumping-ground month for low-expectation movies, from the pseudo-inspirational Stomp the Yard to manic action-exploitation films...

A large, sickly tree that appeared in danger of toppling on the grounds of Summit Park Elementary School has been removed, according to Baltimore County school spokesman Charles A. Herndon. A new trash can has been installed at a bus stop at York Road and Northern Parkway. This can is attached to the side of the small bus terminal and cannot be moved. Others were dragged away and people threw trash on the ground. More than 450 similar cans will soon be at city bus stops.

In Sunday's convincing 35-22 victory over the New Orleans Saints, the Ravens took a grounded philosophy, establishing the run to set up the pass. It's unknown whether this will be the Ravens' offensive profile heading into a pivotal final two months of the regular season. Bengals@Ravens Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 13, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Ravens by 3 Seeing 30/30 Since the 2002 season, the Ravens have scored more than 30 points six times. They have followed half of those games by scoring at least 30 points.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. // Top-ranked Virginia posted a 12-6 win over crowd of 7440. With the win, Virginia also received the inaugural Doyle Smith Cup, which will be presented annually to the winner of this game. The Cavaliers extended the nation's longest home winning streak to a record 17 games as they remain undefeated with a 9-0 record. Johns Hopkins evened its record at 3-3. Virginia got balanced offense as 10 different players scored goals; Ben Rubeor and freshman Danny Glading led the way with two goals apiece.

I bought some trees, shrubs and perennials, but freezing weather will arrive before I get them in the ground. What do I do now? The nursery lady told me to keep the dogwood in the garage. Most containerized plants can be planted any time of year, even when the ground is frozen, provided a hole can be dug. Some trees, however, such as dogwoods, are more successful when planted in spring and should be held over. The root systems of plants in containers are subject to air temperatures colder than they experience in the ground.

WE LOVE OUR house and now we are attacking it. That thought coursed through my head one morning this week as a hammer-wielding work crew made the structure shudder. We are having our kitchen done. The old galley-style layout that had served us for more than a quarter century is being replaced with a roomier design that promises new cabinets, a new floor, new positions for the appliances. To build this new kitchen we must first destroy the old one. Hence the hammers, and the reverberations.