Hopscotch

Hopscotch tiles through a vegetable garden are one clue that Bethany Ziman's garden isn't just for grown-ups, but for kids, too. Tomorrow, see how she combines food, flowers and fun in her backyard by going to baltimoresun.com/gardener.

When it comes to back-to-school shopping, why should the kids get all the goodies? What about the mothers who have to keep track of the soccer games, bake sales, music lessons and doctor appointments? So here are a few items to celebrate the cool and organized mom. Leopard-print organizing tote Price: $20 Where to get it: Aaron Brothers Art and Framing, 55 W. Aylesbury Road, Suite A, in Timonium and 9097 Snowden River Parkway, Suite A, in Columbia. Why we like it: A stylish way to organize all the many mom papers that come your way. Mom Family Desk Planner and Mom's Family Calendar Price: $13 each Where to get them: At bookstores, online book retailers and mass merchandise stores Why we like it: The cute Sandra Boynton drawings add a touch of humor to these practical organizers that come with stickers, phone lists and plenty of space to write down the family's activities.

All the jumpy, hopscotch-style editing in the world can't save Haven, a blow- and weed-scented drama written and directed by young Cayman Islands native Frank E. Flowers. It's one of those fragmented narratives, the curse of the success of Pulp Fiction and Crash, wherein we see in passing somebody throwing up on a lawn, and then a half-hour later in flashback it's revealed who the puker is and why he's upchucking. I don't know about you, but when I see someone hurling I want immediate identification.

Hopscotch tiles through a vegetable garden are one clue that Bethany Ziman's garden isn't just for grown-ups, but for kids, too. Tomorrow, see how she combines food, flowers and fun in her backyard by going to baltimoresun.com/gardener.

It is a damp, bleak morning. Deep in the bowels of her Columbia town house, Ruth Glick sits drumming her fingernails in the shadowy light.Tap. Tap. Tap.She and co-author Eileen Buckholtz quietly plot their next Harlequin novel. Their heroine, Jessica Adams, is trying to make a vampire movie. Unfortunately, cast members keep showing up dead with neck bites.But the vampire angle isn't quite enough. The novel needs more danger.It needs . . . birds.It's Mrs. Buckholtz's idea. A flock could attack Jessica while she scouts out an old house for filming.

Labanotation is a kind of shorthand for recording movement -- any kind, from dance to athletics to hopscotch -- in abstract terms.Invented in 1928 by Rudolf von Laban, a German choreographer and movement theorist, it has become the most widely used method of preserving choreography in the world. And now that some genius has invented a Labanotation program for computers, it is much easier to use than the old laborious drawn-by-hand technique.The University of Maryland, College Park will offer a training program in Labanotation starting in September.

When it comes to back-to-school shopping, why should the kids get all the goodies? What about the mothers who have to keep track of the soccer games, bake sales, music lessons and doctor appointments? So here are a few items to celebrate the cool and organized mom. Leopard-print organizing tote Price: $20 Where to get it: Aaron Brothers Art and Framing, 55 W. Aylesbury Road, Suite A, in Timonium and 9097 Snowden River Parkway, Suite A, in Columbia. Why we like it: A stylish way to organize all the many mom papers that come your way. Mom Family Desk Planner and Mom's Family Calendar Price: $13 each Where to get them: At bookstores, online book retailers and mass merchandise stores Why we like it: The cute Sandra Boynton drawings add a touch of humor to these practical organizers that come with stickers, phone lists and plenty of space to write down the family's activities.

SINCE Cleveland Avenue Elementary School near Atlanta, Ga. opened two years ago, students have sat in ergonomically correct desks, eaten in a modern new cafeteria, even pecked away at computers. Cleveland is a school with its eye on the future.It's hard to imagine those students having fond memories of the place 30 years from now.This isn't the little red schoolhouse. It's a school that might have been designed by efficiency experts, one whose main purpose seems to be productivity. There are no monkey bars, no swings, no ball field.

The Harford County Council's public hearing on a bill to abolish a 20-year-old law that allows farmers to transfer development rights to adjoining properties drew an emotional crowd of about 80 people last night, sparking a decision to postpone any amendment motions until April 15. More than a dozen people spoke on the bill. Many laid the fault on a lack of designated development areas. Farmer Ed Snodgrass of Street echoed the opinions of many when he said he believes the county has a transfer development rights law, but no program to guide or regulate the transfers.

THE BULLDOZER has knocked down the unique Spanish architecture that housed many of the neighborhood businesses in Forest Park. For a few days, the block looked liked a bombed version of London during the World War II blitz. Amid the rubble, a proud indestructible safe was left standing alone; the last remnant of the long vanished Union Trust was still holding out. Today, Forest Park could be as viable as it was 50 years ago. Instead, progress has caused its demise. The drug wars have arrived.

All the jumpy, hopscotch-style editing in the world can't save Haven, a blow- and weed-scented drama written and directed by young Cayman Islands native Frank E. Flowers. It's one of those fragmented narratives, the curse of the success of Pulp Fiction and Crash, wherein we see in passing somebody throwing up on a lawn, and then a half-hour later in flashback it's revealed who the puker is and why he's upchucking. I don't know about you, but when I see someone hurling I want immediate identification.

If you're traveling about the country during the next few weeks, don't be surprised if you bump into a major player from Baltimore's cultural stage: Marin Alsop, music director-to-be of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She's conducting from coast-to-coast, starting tonight, when she leads the New York Philharmonic in a free concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park. Despite the heat wave, this may turn out to be one of the cooler spots in Manhattan. Alsop has programmed a fun piece by John Adams, The Chairman Dances, derived from his opera Nixon in China, and Beethoven's evergreen Symphony No. 5. In between will be Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, with Leila Josefowicz, a fast-rising young talent on today's scene, as soloist.

There are at least two Nicolas Cage personae. One is the wildly eccentric, Oscar-winning character of Leaving Las Vegas, as well as similar loose cannons in Adaptation, Raising Arizona and Wild at Heart. The other is the action hero of The Rock, Con Air and Gone in 60 Seconds. National Treasure, which opened Friday, combines both of them. Cage plays an eccentric, scholarly treasure hunter who seeks riches possibly buried by our Founding Fathers, who wanted to prevent the booty from falling into British hands.

The Harford County Council's public hearing on a bill to abolish a 20-year-old law that allows farmers to transfer development rights to adjoining properties drew an emotional crowd of about 80 people last night, sparking a decision to postpone any amendment motions until April 15. More than a dozen people spoke on the bill. Many laid the fault on a lack of designated development areas. Farmer Ed Snodgrass of Street echoed the opinions of many when he said he believes the county has a transfer development rights law, but no program to guide or regulate the transfers.

With her school locked down by the sniper shootings, one Prince George's County principal organized a diversion for her increasingly restless pupils: Popsicles and hopscotch. The 712 children at Barnaby Manor Elementary School, near the District of Columbia line, needed more relief than inside recess, so Principal Laura Barbee scheduled afternoon parties this week. The "Shutdown Socials," as Barbee calls the 20 minutes of playfulness, are among a host of activities that principals across the region have instituted as the school lockdowns enter their third week.

IN A THROWAWAY society, the beautiful things sometimes get the chance to stick around. It happens now at 4801 Liberty Heights Ave., in Northwest Baltimore, where once there was a place called Howard Park Elementary School No. 218; now it is The Oaks at Liberty. They are the same place at opposite ends of the life cycle. In its youth, the building was home to schoolkids in the morning of their lives. Now the elderly will live there in their twilight, in 75 cozy apartments officially opened last week with the mayor of Baltimore on hand, and housing officials, and a city councilwoman, Helen Holton, who understood better than anyone the sweetness of the moment.

Magic may or may not be in the air at this year's Baltimore Symphony Decorators' Show House -- but there's no doubt it's on the walls and on the floors and on the ceilings and on the woodwork and on the cornices and on the kitchen cabinets and on the basement stair walls.It's the magic of paint, and it's everywhere in the 106-year-old Lamb house -- once the summer home of George and Annie Lamb, well-to-do Quakers. We're not talking here about the merely faux -- the simple marbling of a cornice-style molding, though the house has that, too -- but about true trompe l'oeil, the witty and imaginative use of paint to decorate, disguise and duplicate other surfaces.

As bad weeks go -- and the Canadian Football League has had its share lately -- this one marked the low point of 1995.The league's three-year experiment with U.S. expansion has never been in a more perilous position.Lagging attendance has been a problem all year in the United States, which has produced four of the five lowest averages in the 13-team CFL. A lack of television revenue continues to dog the financially troubled league, and the CFL took its biggest hits this week with two announcements just hours apart.

THE BULLDOZER has knocked down the unique Spanish architecture that housed many of the neighborhood businesses in Forest Park. For a few days, the block looked liked a bombed version of London during the World War II blitz. Amid the rubble, a proud indestructible safe was left standing alone; the last remnant of the long vanished Union Trust was still holding out. Today, Forest Park could be as viable as it was 50 years ago. Instead, progress has caused its demise. The drug wars have arrived.

Labanotation is a kind of shorthand for recording movement -- any kind, from dance to athletics to hopscotch -- in abstract terms.Invented in 1928 by Rudolf von Laban, a German choreographer and movement theorist, it has become the most widely used method of preserving choreography in the world. And now that some genius has invented a Labanotation program for computers, it is much easier to use than the old laborious drawn-by-hand technique.The University of Maryland, College Park will offer a training program in Labanotation starting in September.