Holy Water

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Too bad Pope John Paul II visited Aqueduct a couple of weeks ago instead of planning a stop tomorrow at Belmont Park.He might have been able to bestow a papal blessing on Irish filly Ridgewood Pearl, who will run in the Breeders' Cup Mile in the pontifical yellow and white colors.The pope doesn't own the horse, who is favored over her 13 rivals in the Mile. But, one of the pope's Irish faithful, Sean Coughlan, is an intensely religious man, and carries his devotion with him to the track.

On the eve of Easter, a religious group is coming down hard on the Fells Point bar Ale Mary's. Why? Well, its name for starters. And all of the other things the church-themed bar does for kitsch value. They decorate with photos of nuns. They post their draft list on a hymn board. They offer Father Luies Grilled Wings and Father Tom's Fried Ice Cream Sundae. And, possibly their most serious transgression according to the group: the bar's "chalice" club where people can get their beer served in a chalice.

MADRID, Spain - The Islamic extremists responsible for the Madrid train bombings financed their plot with sales of hashish and Ecstasy, and drank holy water from Mecca in ritual "purification acts" before the attacks, acting Interior Minister Angel Acebes said yesterday. In a final news conference before the newly elected Socialist government takes office, Acebes described the March 11 attacks as a local, independently organized operation led by people with "connections to other fundamentalist groups in Europe and outside Europe."

It's been said that families that pray together stay together, and through this weekend, many homes will include their four-legged - or feathered, finned or scaly - family members in worship. Around Baltimore and the nation, Christian and some Jewish congregations honor creatures great and small with blessing services, a reflection of people's devotion to pets and, more recently, society's growing environmental awareness. Many are scheduled near Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and ecology.

The start of the Sept. 5 game between the Orioles and Cleveland Indians was delayed 89 minutes by rain. Denise Hirschbeck and her three children rode down an elevator to the sub-concourse level at Camden Yards, in search of her husband, John, and a new family friend, Indians second baseman Roberto Alomar.John Hirschbeck was in the umpires' room, waiting out the delay. His wife and children were visiting from Poland, Ohio. He led them to a hallway outside the visitors' clubhouse, and asked an Indians player to summon Alomar.

Ouch! English adventurers Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Michael Stroud are more than halfway to the South Pole in the first unassisted crossing of Antarctica, an expedition spokesman said yesterday. The pair had penetrated "well within 400 miles of the South Pole and 1,300 miles of their own destination at Scott Base," said spokesman David Harrison.Mr. Fiennes, 49, and Mr. Stroud, 36, hope to raise $3.2 million for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. They are dragging 400-pound sleds behind them during the estimated 100-day crossing.

It looked like a small yard sale displayed shrine-like before the altar at St. Anthony of Padua/Most Precious Blood church in East Baltimore. A clarinet rested on a pedestal. Monkey wrenches, hammers and rasps bloomed from a toolbox like a flower arrangement. A firefighter's coat dangled from a coat rack, the floppy rubber boots beneath it. A funky microscope sat atop an old school desk near an electric-blue upholstered massage chair and an ancient Radio Shack computer. Then, halfway through yesterday morning's Mass, Deacon Joe Krysiak explained the incongruous display to his sparse congregation and asked members to "honor and remember the people who use these things."

On the eve of Easter, a religious group is coming down hard on the Fells Point bar Ale Mary's. Why? Well, its name for starters. And all of the other things the church-themed bar does for kitsch value. They decorate with photos of nuns. They post their draft list on a hymn board. They offer Father Luies Grilled Wings and Father Tom's Fried Ice Cream Sundae. And, possibly their most serious transgression according to the group: the bar's "chalice" club where people can get their beer served in a chalice.

Armies have fought over it, priests have blessed it and scientists have searched for it in distant worlds. Life as we know it cannot exist in the absence of water, and from time immemorial water has been celebrated and revered as the indispensable fluid on which all life depends. So perhaps it's no surprise that this ubiquitous but essential liquid, is now the subject of a sometimes serious, often lighthearted exhibition at the American Visionary Art Museum. Holy H2O: Fluid Universe is an extended essay of some 150 works by 40 outsider artists on the many meanings and associations of water throughout history.

I KNOW: We shouldn't even look back at this one anymore because all we'll see is September. At a holiday brunch over the weekend in Little Italy, I heard Antonia Keane, associate professor of sociology at Loyola College, say: "Give me a double shooter of holy water and call in an exorcist. Let's purge this year and get on with the next one." I'm for that, though I'd like a little something to chase the holy water -- perhaps a tawny liquid from the James B. Beam Distilling Co. of Clermont, Ky. Still, before we go, here's one last look over the shoulder at 2001, TJI-style, with smiles, salutes and only maybe a couple of sneers.

It was 1995 and the Rev. Ronald P. Pytel of Baltimore's Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church believed he was dying. He and his parishioners prayed to Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who had been recently beatified, and suddenly the congestive heart failure and degenerative aortic valve that doctors had said would be the end of Pytel were healed. The priest's amazing recovery, documented by doctors, was one of the miracles that led to the nun's canonization by Pope John Paul II in Rome in 2000.

Armies have fought over it, priests have blessed it and scientists have searched for it in distant worlds. Life as we know it cannot exist in the absence of water, and from time immemorial water has been celebrated and revered as the indispensable fluid on which all life depends. So perhaps it's no surprise that this ubiquitous but essential liquid, is now the subject of a sometimes serious, often lighthearted exhibition at the American Visionary Art Museum. Holy H2O: Fluid Universe is an extended essay of some 150 works by 40 outsider artists on the many meanings and associations of water throughout history.

MADRID, Spain - The Islamic extremists responsible for the Madrid train bombings financed their plot with sales of hashish and Ecstasy, and drank holy water from Mecca in ritual "purification acts" before the attacks, acting Interior Minister Angel Acebes said yesterday. In a final news conference before the newly elected Socialist government takes office, Acebes described the March 11 attacks as a local, independently organized operation led by people with "connections to other fundamentalist groups in Europe and outside Europe."

The concept of grouping a musician's greatest hits has been a gold mine for decades. Can the concept work with poetry? Greatest Hits 1981-2000 by Robert Cooperman, part of The GOLD Invitational series published by Pudding House (28 pages, $8.95), invites you to answer. The volume highlights Cooperman's amazing diversity in shaping the historical past into the poetic present. In "For Annie Ney," a woman hides a stranger from the Nazis, "suspicion dancing in their skulls / narrow and vicious as Doberman pinschers."

I KNOW: We shouldn't even look back at this one anymore because all we'll see is September. At a holiday brunch over the weekend in Little Italy, I heard Antonia Keane, associate professor of sociology at Loyola College, say: "Give me a double shooter of holy water and call in an exorcist. Let's purge this year and get on with the next one." I'm for that, though I'd like a little something to chase the holy water -- perhaps a tawny liquid from the James B. Beam Distilling Co. of Clermont, Ky. Still, before we go, here's one last look over the shoulder at 2001, TJI-style, with smiles, salutes and only maybe a couple of sneers.

It looked like a small yard sale displayed shrine-like before the altar at St. Anthony of Padua/Most Precious Blood church in East Baltimore. A clarinet rested on a pedestal. Monkey wrenches, hammers and rasps bloomed from a toolbox like a flower arrangement. A firefighter's coat dangled from a coat rack, the floppy rubber boots beneath it. A funky microscope sat atop an old school desk near an electric-blue upholstered massage chair and an ancient Radio Shack computer. Then, halfway through yesterday morning's Mass, Deacon Joe Krysiak explained the incongruous display to his sparse congregation and asked members to "honor and remember the people who use these things."

It's been said that families that pray together stay together, and through this weekend, many homes will include their four-legged - or feathered, finned or scaly - family members in worship. Around Baltimore and the nation, Christian and some Jewish congregations honor creatures great and small with blessing services, a reflection of people's devotion to pets and, more recently, society's growing environmental awareness. Many are scheduled near Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and ecology.

The concept of grouping a musician's greatest hits has been a gold mine for decades. Can the concept work with poetry? Greatest Hits 1981-2000 by Robert Cooperman, part of The GOLD Invitational series published by Pudding House (28 pages, $8.95), invites you to answer. The volume highlights Cooperman's amazing diversity in shaping the historical past into the poetic present. In "For Annie Ney," a woman hides a stranger from the Nazis, "suspicion dancing in their skulls / narrow and vicious as Doberman pinschers."

The start of the Sept. 5 game between the Orioles and Cleveland Indians was delayed 89 minutes by rain. Denise Hirschbeck and her three children rode down an elevator to the sub-concourse level at Camden Yards, in search of her husband, John, and a new family friend, Indians second baseman Roberto Alomar.John Hirschbeck was in the umpires' room, waiting out the delay. His wife and children were visiting from Poland, Ohio. He led them to a hallway outside the visitors' clubhouse, and asked an Indians player to summon Alomar.

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Too bad Pope John Paul II visited Aqueduct a couple of weeks ago instead of planning a stop tomorrow at Belmont Park.He might have been able to bestow a papal blessing on Irish filly Ridgewood Pearl, who will run in the Breeders' Cup Mile in the pontifical yellow and white colors.The pope doesn't own the horse, who is favored over her 13 rivals in the Mile. But, one of the pope's Irish faithful, Sean Coughlan, is an intensely religious man, and carries his devotion with him to the track.