Habits

Inside Westminster Abbey, eight 20-foot-tall live trees lined the center aisle during the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William. The trees transformed the space, doing what even the most elaborate floral arrangement could not — providing a natural, living sense of permanence and an air of drama. The move was unexpected, unpretentious and bold. A potted tree on your patio or deck can have the same effect. While not every tree is well-suited for a container, there are a surprising number of options, ranging from crape myrtles to hollies.

Less than a week after Courtney Upshaw acknowledged that he weighed 285 pounds, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said that the second-year linebacker has to improve his eating habits in order to reach his full potential. "Courtney's weight issue - [and] he does need to lose some pounds - is that  he doesn't eat right,"  Harbaugh said today following the Ravens' organized team activity. "Courtney eats too much and he doesn't eat all of the right foods. He knows that and that's something he's going to have to get a handle on or he's not going to be the best that he can be. " For the second year in a row, Upshaw reported to offseason workouts and immediately faced questions about his playing shape.

In what everyone wants to be the final words on the brouhaha over Tyler Clary's takedown of Michael Phelps ' work habits, both swimmers addressed the issue on Thursday. The short version: Clary said, my bad. Phelps said, whatever. The long version, according to news reports from Knoxville, where the Olympics-bound swim team has been training at the University of Tennessee natatorium, is that the two cleared the air and that they're focused on beating up on the rest of the world at the Games in London rather than each other.

Last week, the Takoma Park City Council voted 6-1 to change its charter to become the first city in America to lower the voting age to 16. While we are the first city to adopt this policy, we have little doubt that others will follow. Maryland already has been a national leader in extending voting rights to younger voters when it opened its primaries years ago to 17-year-olds. That practice has spread to more than 20 states, and the case for a lower voting age in local elections is similarly strong.

Perhaps government banning of sugary drinks oversteps. It is a meaningful effort to reduce the burden of obesity on everyone. One thing that has stood out in the debate over health care reform is repeated statements from health care consumers that they do not want to pay for the other guy's health problems. There is one sure way to get consumers on board with changes in habits and consumption and to take more responsibility in their lifestyle choices. Through the wallet. How about higher co-payments for folks whose BMI, which does not lie, is over the recommended goal?

Some people have made the analogy that the politicians in Washington running the federal government are spending money like drunken sailors, but this is a false analogy. When a drunken sailor runs out of money, he stops spending. Iver Mindel, Cockeysville

Old habits die hard, especially bad ones. Racialdiscrimination in America is older then the Republic, so it is not surprising that it lingers long after the Civil War, Reconstruction and the grisly decades of Jim Crow oppression.What is surprising is that so many opponents of progress expect anyone to believe the whole fight can be terminated by mere expressions of good will. One example, and there are many, is a letter from Samuel Podberesky, written in response to last week's column on his son's attempt to derail the Banneker scholarships at College Park.

We hear so often that Americans are poor savers that we forget there are plenty of workers who amass sizable sums with little fanfare. They might be in the next cubicle, next door or next-of-kin. It's not that they save because they make tons of money. Many good savers have modest incomes. They just don't spend every penny of it. Savers say they don't deny themselves the fun things in life. They spend on things that are important to them but don't waste dollars on the other stuff. But you can't help but wonder: Why are some people such good savers while others - even those with healthy six-figure incomes - live from paycheck to paycheck?

DESPITE THE recent rain, it appears that Maryland and much of the East Coast is becoming, if not a desert, a lot drier than normal. The statistics are already terrifying since winter is traditionally our wettest season, and most days in recent months have been sunny and warm with cold, dry nights. Gov. Parris N. Glendening has said that Maryland is headed toward one of its severest droughts ever, having experienced its fourth-driest winter since records were first kept in 1871. I've lost track of how many times we've been asked to cut back on our water consumption over the years.

I COACH GIRLS' 12U FAST-pitch softball, and some of my players have already developed bad throwing habits. Could you share some teaching tips and drills for improving overhand throwing mechanics? Steve Nichols, Milwaukee, Wis. DEAR STEVE / / Poor throwing habits are abundant in youth baseball as well. The best way to overcome them is to break the throwing motion down into its various parts. With throwing, the biggest issues we see are: failure to use a four-seam grip, getting the hand under the ball as it is taken out of the glove and up (pie throwing)

I have a 5-year-old black lab who has a nasty habit of eating other dogs' feces if she's not carefully watched. She's in good health, eats organic dry food, and is exercised regularly. We've tried everything to break this habit - even our vet is at a loss. Any ideas? Ingesting feces is known as coprophagia. It is considered normal behavior during certain life stages, e.g. it's normal for nursing mothers to eat their own puppies' feces and for a young puppy to sometimes eat it. We're not sure why healthy adult dogs that are eating high-quality food eat their own feces.

Shirtless, hair flowing, legs pumping, Dr. Theodore Houk is a familiar sight running along North Charles Street on his twice-daily, 5.5-mile trek between his Lutherville home and his job at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. "You always see him out there," said Kathleen Wrona, who has seen Houk, an internal medicine specialist, often during her commute. On Thursday, she saw him again, witnessing as the vehicle in front of her struck Houk, critically injuring him and sending him to Maryland Shock Trauma Center via helicopter.

Notre Dame's habit of living dangerously backfired on the team. After registering back-to-back overtime wins against Penn State and North Carolina, the No. 3 Fighting Irish dropped an 8-7 decision to No. 20 Hofstra last Saturday. It is Notre Dame's first loss in four contests, but coach Kevin Corrigan - and perhaps his health - would prefer a few games where the outcome isn't as tight. “If you said to me that I could win every game between now and the end of the year and never come close to anybody, I'd take it, but I don't think that's the case,” he said Monday morning.

Perhaps government banning of sugary drinks oversteps. It is a meaningful effort to reduce the burden of obesity on everyone. One thing that has stood out in the debate over health care reform is repeated statements from health care consumers that they do not want to pay for the other guy's health problems. There is one sure way to get consumers on board with changes in habits and consumption and to take more responsibility in their lifestyle choices. Through the wallet. How about higher co-payments for folks whose BMI, which does not lie, is over the recommended goal?

Buck Showalter is in need of some coffee. The Orioles manager pops a plastic cup into the well of a newfangled instant coffee maker in the visiting clubhouse at Tropicana Field, not hesitating to say it pales in comparison with the old-school percolating coffee pot back in his office at Camden Yards. The season is long, and he's tired. His right knee hurts, and in a few moments he will have an ice wrap on it the size of large melon as he hobbles around on the second-to-last day of baseball's grueling 162-game regular season.

This has not been a banner year for the meat industry. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health confirmed once again that meat consumption raises the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, and World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan warned that routine use of antibiotics to promote animal growth on factory farms is causing "the end of modern medicine. " No wonder U.S. per capita meat consumption has been dropping by nearly 4 percent annually. October offers several excellent opportunities for dropping animal products from our diet.

They're your problems, but we're going to be nice -- one o our many New Year's resolutions -- and tell you how to solve them.We've decided that in 1993 we're going to break these horrible habits, once and for all. And we're going to help you do the same.* How to tame nervous tics -- or, at the very least, how to stop biting your nails, twirling your hair and bouncing your legs.Keep a "bad behavior diary" so you know when you're biting your nails or twirling your hair or bouncing your leg up and down.

The prosecutor in the Gary Hart rape trial kept the real estate broker on the stand for nearly two hours yesterday, answering a litany ofquestions ranging from his sexual habits to how he feels about the woman's accusations.At times, Hart said he could not remember specific details, including a scar on the woman's body, although he said he had sex with her six times in three months.Hart berated county police for the way they handled the complaintand the way the press reported it. He repeatedly denied raping and choking the 34-year-old womanat his Thomas Point Road home Oct. 16, saying sex they had that morning was consentual.

At Linden Market in Reservoir Hill, shelves are heaped high with miniature pies, cupcakes, and candy. Three dozen flavors of salty snacks burst from cardboard boxes. Around the corner at the Whitelock Community Farm, deep green leaves of chard fan from raised beds, cucumber vines wind up trellises and Japanese eggplants resembling glossy purple commas dangle from stalks. Beginning this week, the corner store and the farm, which are just a couple of blocks apart, will forge an unlikely partnership.

Stephen Covey, the management guru who died this week, would have had a hard time selling his books in Benjamin Franklin's America, or Abe Lincoln's. His best seller "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" would have been considered a self-evident truth, one drummed into earlier Americans by schools, churches and the Puritan ethic. Today, Mr. Covey's thoughts about how to become a success by applying principles with a proven track record seem innovative and cutting edge. His work is a rebuke to the notion that government can do it all for you. Contrast Mr. Covey's ethic with what President Barack Obama said during a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., last Friday: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that.