Habitat

Saturday was full of mixed emotions for Sandtown Habitat for Humanity members as they celebrated another homeowner's new beginning while mourning the loss of one of their leaders. Allan Tibbels, who died Thursday of multiple organ failure, was the co-executive director and the force behind Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, which held its 278th ribbon-cutting, this time for new homeowner Diane Stewart. About 40 volunteers in T-shirts and ripped jeans with paint splatter, current Habitat homeowners and members of Stewart's family poured out into one lane of Fulton Avenue, in front of the Formstone home with a purple front door, for the first ceremony since Tibbels' death.

Repentant drug dealers and gang members streamed into Allan Tibbels' home Thursday without knocking. Children who once went hungry dove into food spread on the kitchen table. Community leaders from Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and elsewhere sat together, swapping stories of inspiration. The scene, said Susan Tibbels, reflected nothing less than her husband's lifelong dream. Allan Tibbels, a quadriplegic who abandoned a life of suburban prosperity a quarter-century ago to toil on behalf of his adopted city neighborhood, a pious man who expressed his convictions through hammers and nails and drywall, died of multiple organ failure early Thursday morning at Mercy Medical Center.

Several times a day, Monetta Dennis leaves her tiny home in Shady Side and walks down the road to her father's house. There, she fills a bucket with water from his faucet for drinking and cooking. Dennis' little house has no running water. There's an outhouse in the back. But the dilapidated home has been in her family of farmers and watermen for more than 100 years, and though she had little money to fix it up, it earned her loyalty. Her uncle lived there, and then her mom. When her mother died six years ago, the lifelong Shady Side resident and caretaker for the elderly moved there with her 16-year-old twin sons.

Another premier Maryland trout stream has become tainted by an invasive algae feared worldwide for its ability to coat the bottom of rivers and lakes and smother the habitat and food supply of fish. Biologists at the Department of Natural Resources announced Wednesday that didymo, known by anglers as "rock snot," was found in Garrett County's Savage River late last month. "There's nothing we can do short of closing the area down, and that's draconian," said Don Cosden, inland fisheries director.

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. joined officials from Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake on Tuesday to celebrate the opening of the nonprofit housing agency's new offices in Halethorpe. The organization, which helps provide new or refurbished homes for eligible needy families, recently combined its Anne Arundel and Baltimore County facilities and staff. Leasing the 38,000-square-foot office on Commerce Drive triples the space for 38 full-time employees, two VISTA members and 11 AmeriCorps members.

H ow can this be? On a day of such great celebration, the 40th anniversary of "Sesame Street," Big Bird wants to leave the urban nest that has been home for four decades and migrate to the rain forest? The rain forest! Elmo is so rattled he can barely speak as Big Bird comes to say goodbye. "But Sesame Street is where Big Bird lives," Elmo squeaks to the group of old friends, including Gordon, Maria and Snuffleupagus, who have gathered to see the yellow feathered one off. The rest of the world might be focused on first lady Michelle Obama coming to The Street today to show Elmo and some of the children how to plant their own vegetable gardens.

OAKLAND - -Successful bear hunts run in Yvonne Taft's family. Last year, her husband and son-in-law each shot a bear. This year, it was Taft's turn, and she made the most of it. Less than an hour into Maryland's sixth black bear hunt Monday morning, the Essex woman and her husband were walking along a trail on Garrett County's Meadow Mountain on the way to their hunting spot when a 232-pound bear ambled out of the woods to their left. It crossed the trail, stopped and looked at them. Her gun was unloaded.

The future health of the Chesapeake Bay may well depend in part upon how much respect we pay to history. Granted, it may be a small part. But as we struggle to piece together workable plans to improve bay water quality, the little pieces are what make up the big picture. For proof, we need only to recognize the link between muskets and mollusks. More than a century and a half ago in the Mid-Atlantic, from the rolling countryside of lower Pennsylvania to tidewater Virginia, Union and Confederate soldiers fought at scores of locations during the bloodiest and most tumultuous period of our nation's story.

Cherise Jones is so excited to be buying a home - a new home - that she drops by the site two or three times a week just to look. This morning, it's only a foundation, one of nine on a vacant East Baltimore block. Next month, Jones' home will be complete. Tonight, Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake is trucking in modular houses to set on the foundations, a first for the nonprofit and an emerging trend in affordable-housing efforts. Factory-built houses aren't just quick to put up, they're cheaper than homes constructed on-site.

Jeff Brauner of Baltimore was in Atlantic City last month, "and for the first time I can remember I saw some terns on the beach in addition to the usual sea gulls. Does that have any weather significance?" The state Department of Natural Resources' Dave Brinker says no. You just got lucky. Tern populations are in long-term decline because of the loss of low, predator-free island habitat as sea levels rise and land subsides around the Chesapeake.