Guilford

A fire of unknown origin burned out a house in Guilford yesterday afternoon and left six people homeless.The blaze, which apparently started in the kitchen near the stove, began about 2:50 p.m. and was put out by Howard County and Prince George's County firefighters about 40 minutes later.The six people inside the house at the time of the fire tried to put it out themselves before calling 911, said Lt. Dan Merson, a Howard County fire and rescue services spokesman.No estimate of damage to the house in the 7300 block of Hidden Cove was available immediately.

CONGRATULATIONS on your editorial on "Putting the 'mass' in mass transit" (Jan. 6). You were right on target on almost everything said.One important point you missed is the strong need for extending the central light rail system through Penn Station and down Guilford Avenue/South Street to serve the office areas that flank the east side of the central business district.Extending light rail to the eastern part of downtown would greatly increase the viability and utility of the line, because it does not serve where most people work.

A FEW YEARS ago, my sister, Ann, was going through the cubby holes in our late mother's writing desk. It was a curious piece of furniture that over the years was used more for storing precious things than for issuing letters. My mother, a voracious, rapid and excellent letter writer, preferred a clipboard. But deep within one of its compartments was a gold-foil-covered pasteboard box. The box held a set of silver rosary beads, while in its top was a small newspaper clipping, from this paper.

I'VE ALWAYS admired the fine Georgian-style windows, slate roof and brickwork of 3903 Greenway, the house that has been in the news of late as the home of Mark L. Perkins, the recently resigned president of Towson University, which somehow wound up with a $2 million bill attached. It is one of many stately Guilford mansions on a street that looks dreamy on a cool April evening, when the whole neighborhood is all pink, purple, white and light green, thanks to a spectacular show of vegetation and the presence of some dedicated gardeners.

For schoolchildren, the nastiest word in the English language is homework.These warm and hazy September afternoons remind me of this horrible ritual. Children full of pent-up energy jump off buses after a day's imprisonment at desks. They are no more in a mood to sit down and hit the books than I was all those years ago. It's cruel to send these budding scholars home with canvas backpacks bulging with books.I guess it has to be this way.A wise nun once explained it all to me: "Children need homework.

Follow the hand-lettered signs from Sherwood Gardens along Greenway, and you might find Ed Johnston in front of his large brick home carrying a big blue macaw on his shoulder.This is Margaret, he tells visitors."Come on, sweetheart," he coos, as he rubs her side and kisses her on the beak. "That's a good bird."Margaret is Mr. Johnston's prize bird. She's the one he brings into the yard to perch on children's shoulders so their parents can take pictures.Inside a glassed porch are the rest of Mr. Johnston's birds.

This time, the hole was just too deep. A day after overcoming an 18-point deficit to beat Villa Julie, host Johns Hopkins couldn't overcome a 17-point deficit last night as it lost to Guilford, 80-73, in the second round of the NCAA Division III tournament. "It seems like all year we've dug holes for ourselves, but we always play with heart," said Blue Jays senior guard T.J. Valerio. "Today was just too big of a hole to climb out of. One thing about us is that we always play hard until the end. If we're going to go out, I'm glad we went out playing hard."

THERE'S TROUBLE around the bend in Guilford these days.While some residents would call it progress, the tony neighborhood off North Charles Street succeeded in reconfiguring some streets last year, limiting entrance to the community.Blocked is the Guilford gateway off St. Paul Street, restricted by ugly Day-Glo orange spikes that mar the landscape of stately brick houses and manicured lawns. Drivers must use other avenues -- and that's where the peril comes in.Greenway is now the prime entrance from the north.

Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Baltimore said yesterday that it offered $15 million of stock in an initial public offering that was scaled back by a third because of a weak financing market for biotechnology firms.The company, which was spun off from Scios Nova Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. last year, sold 1.875 million shares of stock at $8 each. In March, Guilford had said it planned to sell 2.8 million shares, hoping to raise $22.4 million."The market for biotechnology companies in general and the appetite for them has been down," Guilford chief executive Dr. Craig R. Smith said.

A Baltimore biotechnology company yesterday won the next-to-last federal approval needed to commercialize its cancer-fighting brain implant, and Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it will press for final approval early next year.Guilford said the Food and Drug Administration approved a "treatment investigational new drug" application for thecompany's Gliadel brain implant. The product is a wafer saturated with chemotherapy drugs that surgeons implant in the cavity left in a patient's brain upon removal of a malignant tumor.