I Remember

New York -- Maybe it has to do with Carrie Fisher's not-so-repressed wish to have a session with her psychoanalyst, or maybe it's because after four days of talking to reporters she's just plain tired. Whatever the reason, Carrie Fisher is conducting an interview from a semi-reclining position in her suite at the posh St. Regis Hotel."The other day I got on the elevator here and I pushed 16 because that's the floor my shrink is on," says Ms. Fisher, visibly amused at the sly way her unconscious expressed itself.

The building on West Street that housed the Annapolis Evening Capital for nearly 40 years finally fell victim to bulldozers and progress yesterday, six years after the newspaper moved to new offices.Crews began demolishing the building, where many journalists got their start, early in the morning. By afternoon, it was rubble."It was deteriorating pretty badly," explained Edward D. Casey, executive editor of the Capital. "It just was in very bad shape."The building housed a bowling alley before the newspaper moved there in 1948.

PASADENA, Calif. -- The three sat together in pews at Calvary C.M.E. Methodist Church in Pasadena Friday during the funeral service, trying to comfort one another and erase feelings of guilt created by their friend's death.These were three of Alan Wiggins' closest friends growing up in Pasadena, staying together from Little League to junior high to the Senior Babe Ruth League to being high school teammates.There was Warren Hollier, a 6-foot-6 pitcher and the star of the group, who eventually earned a baseball scholarship to Oral Roberts.

IT'S NOT OFTEN A PERSON HAS THE chance to see the future and relive the past in the same day. so when such an occasion presents itself -- as it recently did to me -- the experience can take on the shape of a personal message from the cosmos."

After nursery rhymes, the first poem I ever memorized came, I believe, when I was 6. I could read pretty well by then, but I remember having a good deal of help with it from my father. He used to read aloud to me and my sister Joan. But there was something entirely different about learning something by heart, which then and now is miserably difficult for me .So, bereft of the gift, I bitterly envy the capacity for memorizing things. Decades after my struggles as a 6-year-old, I have acquaintances who insist my terrible difficulty with learning word-perfect is simply laziness, that if only I applied enough will, character and mind-muscle I could do it just as well as those awesome creatures I have known who can and do - drunk or sober - recite entire acts of Shakespeare's plays flawlessly and then throw in a scene of two of Moliere in nicely disciplined 17th century Parisian inflections.

It was a fine week for bad football. It started with the Sunday night showdown between the Niners and Bears. But wait, I'm confused. Craig Krenzel? Ken Dorsey? Is this the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl? Sadly, it was not. It was what passes as professional football for teams whose best days came in the 80s. Kind of like Eddie Murphy. But I tuned in, because my fantasy opponent started Kevan Barlow and the Chicago defense, and because I'm too young for Desperate Housewives. The game wasn't pretty, and I wasn't swayed by comments from the announcers, such as, "There's no quit in the 49ers," or, "These are two of the hardest working teams in the league."

The sudden rise of Mike Huckabee in the Republican jousts is a cool plot turn, one that makes you lean forward and turn up the sound. An amiable, well-spoken Southern conservative with a Gomer Pyle face challenging the teeth-baring Rudolph W. Giuliani and the sleek Mitt Romney. You watch him field questions for a few minutes and the man's appeal is pretty clear. He comes off as a real person, not a caricature: He sounds like a guy talking to you, not a stiff with a set of applause lines.

Chase Gardner played a big role in Harford Tech making it to yesterday's Class 1A state baseball final. The junior third baseman led the team with a .539 average heading into the state semifinals, where he went 2-for-4. Gardner says he feels fortunate just to be playing at all. He had to make a long recovery from an accident last summer, when he fell off a 3-foot ladder while working in a local retail store, breaking the right occipital bone in his head. He was flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center and, despite not having surgery, he couldn't do any physical activity for six months.

If you've been wondering about Elise Armacost, who left this page a few weeks ago for a six-month maternity leave, I can report that at last she has had her baby.Although Elise never misses a deadline, her daughter did not inherit the same flair for punctuality. Juliet Anne arrived on Tuesday -- exactly three weeks overdue. This little girl has a promising future with the Baltimore post office.In The Sun's Anne Arundel County bureau, we're relieved this baby has finally been born. We've been anticipating her arrival for months now and talking about the changes she will bring.

NEW ORLEANS -- They have been here as players, and now have returned to the Louisiana Superdome as young assistant coaches trying to build their careers. The memories came back in floods for them this week.Matt Doherty, now an assistant at Kansas, was the starting small forward on North Carolina's 1982 national championship team that beat Georgetown with the help of a jump shot by a freshman guard named Michael Jordan.Billy Donovan, now working for his college coach, Rick Pitino, at Kentucky, was the starting point guard on the 1987 Providence team that made an amazing run to the Final Four, only to be awakened from its fantasy by Syracuse in an all-Big East semifinal game.