Ice Storm

The successor to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII in the great pantheon of calendar-tinkerers has emerged in Baltimore: Sheila Dixon. Per mayoral decree, yesterday, Feb. 15, was Valentine's Day in Charm City. And by the powers vested in City Hall's second floor, it will remain Valentine's Day through Sunday. "We're going to keep the love alive a few extra days," declared Dixon, decked out in a bright red dress and surrounded by heart-shaped balloons, fancy pastries and enough flowers to make City Hall smell like a funeral parlor.

A hazardous mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow fell across the Baltimore region yesterday and into this morning, threatening to create dangerously icy roadways for the early commute. Two inches of snow and about a half-inch of ice were expected to accumulate, with temperatures plummeting into the teens and wind gusts topping 40 mph by the storm's end this evening, according to forecasts. Most public school systems around the region dismissed children hours early yesterday in anticipation of the storm, and Carroll County simply closed schools for the day - with the status of school openings across much of the state uncertain today.

Joan Allen jumped onto movie-lovers' radar almost 20 years ago in one of the most sensuous and berserk scenes ever filmed. In Manhunter (1986), she played a blind woman stroking the fur, muzzle and fangs of a drugged but semiconscious tiger, feeling its warm breath on her flesh and pressing her ear to its pounding heart. Her wholesome, direct features lit up with excitement and delight. For seconds, she became a red-hot beauty. That didn't happen often for the next decade and a half. She began to get cast (and win acclaim)

It takes a few beats staring at the screen -- or the poster -- before the "I know her" kicks in. That really is Katie Holmes underneath the dyed frosted hair, the pigtails, the SoHo chic wardrobe, the boots and the tattoos. Right, that Katie Holmes: the baby-faced Dawson's Creek ingenue with the tomboy name (Joey Potter) and the Ivory soap image. It's a very different Holmes who is front and center in the family drama Pieces of April, opening tomorrow, having noisy sex with her boyfriend and clumsily trying to dress an uncooperative turkey.

Milton Ay Yuhn, retired General Motors Corp. supervisor, died Monday while being taken from a hospital to a nursing home after suffering a fall nearly a month ago. The Parkville resident was 92. Born in Baltimore and raised on Cliftmont Avenue, he attended city public schools until the seventh grade. Mr. Yuhn told family members he left the city at age 16 and traveled across the country by jumping on railroad boxcars. He lived in California for several years before returning home and working in a relative's gas station.

Trucker James Bedford left North Carolina on Tuesday night to deliver a load of building supplies to a Carroll County construction company. He was only about a mile from his destination yesterday morning when he fell victim to the freezing rain. His tractor-trailer jackknifed on Stone Chapel Road, a lane between Westminster and New Windsor. He was uninjured - even though he slipped and fell four times while crawling from his disabled rig. "I've been up here in the summer. This is my first winter in Maryland," the 32-year-old Southerner said.

This is ice skating's magic moment. Without warning or advance reservations, people are swarming into rinks everywhere with new skates and fantasies of jumping gracefully into the spotlight. The pros haven't seen anything like it - for four years. That's the power of the Olympics. "The whole thing sells," said Pat Muth, who has taught at Columbia Ice Rink since 1971 and has seen the quadrennial trend again and again. "The clothing sells, the lessons sell - [our] phones are ringing off the hook because they've been watching the television."

Icy roads throughout Carroll County caused at least 50 traffic accidents yesterday, including one fatality, doubled commute times, and made hundreds of students late for school. Slick conditions snarled traffic for several hours on the county's major road, particularly in South Carroll, according to state and municipal police. Gary P. Haines, 47, of Eldersburg was killed when he was hit by a skidding car as he directed traffic in his neighborhood, police said. Hundreds of Carroll County students arrived late to school yesterday morning because of slippery, clogged roads and accidents, interim Schools Superintendent Charles I. Ecker said.

Their first school board meeting was delayed two hours by an ice storm and punctuated by an angry mob of parents. Ann M. Ballard and Joseph D. Mish Jr. called it a "baptism by fire." Their last meeting this month, though much less eventful, was a bit rushed - because of an approaching ice storm. In between the storms - a span of 10 years - Ballard and Mish saw the school system through some of its best and worst years. There were years - 1994, 1996 and 1997 - when Carroll schools ranked second in the state, barely trailing Howard County in Maryland's annual pupil assessment exams despite being severely outspent by its affluent neighbor to the south.

Their first school board meeting was delayed two hours by an ice storm and punctuated by an angry mob of parents. Ann M. Ballard and Joseph D. Mish Jr. called it a "baptism by fire." Their last meeting this month, though much less eventful, was a bit rushed - because of an approaching ice storm. In between the storms - a span of 10 years - Ballard and Mish saw the school system through some of its best and worst years. There were years - 1994, 1996 and 1997 - when Carroll schools ranked second in the state, barely trailing Howard County in Maryland's annual pupil assessment exams despite being severely outspent by its affluent neighbor to the south.