Iced Tea

JOSEPH C. PALCZYNSKI'S troubled life is over. Lynn Whitehead and Andrew and Bradley McCord are alive and can return to their lives and families. Order is returning to Lange Street, after 97 surreal hours of terror, frustration and helplessness in Dundalk. Other families have to bury loved ones and comfort wounded relatives. The police strategy of waiting produced this outcome. From the beginning of the standoff, police had two goals: talk Palczynski into surrendering or wait for the opportunity to attack and rescue his hostages.

The end that everyone had anticipated for days lasted about 30 seconds. That's how long it took police to storm the first-floor Dundalk apartment where three hostages had been terrorized for four days by their captor, Joseph C. Palczynski, who was accused in four killings. At 10:45 p.m. Tuesday -- knowing that Palczynski lay asleep on a sofa in the apartment, drugged by one of the hostages -- SWAT team members stormed the rowhouse, shooting Palczynski to death and freeing the last captive.

SEPTEMBER WAS the month when the ice tea disappeared from the table. The canvas porch awnings came down. It seemed as if a crazed wasp or bee got into the house every day. And, after a summer spent alongside the sand dunes and boardwalk, the women who ran the Guilford Avenue house where I grew up were ready and rested for domestic vigilance.By the second week of the ninth month, the supply of homemade ketchup would have been boiled down and bottled. It was supposed to last through the upcoming spring.

If you've got the iced tea and portable toilet concession at the Medinah Country Club near Chicago for this weekend's PGA Championship, you could make a handsome profit, especially if you set up shop around the CBS compound. Lance Barrow, CBS' coordinating producer for golf, will be at the helm of the network's 11 hours of coverage of the year's final major, and where Barrow is, a cold glass of Lipton or Tetley is probably not far away. "I'm a big iced tea drinker, and by Monday, I'll have 20 or 30 gallons in me," Barrow said.

What is the perfect summer quencher? America agrees, it's a cooling and refreshing tall glass of ice tea.Commercial ice teas are hitting it big across the country and have become one of the hippest segments in the beverage category. There are some sticky-sweet, flavored, bottled ice teas such as an artificial-tasting peach and a raspberry-lemon concoction that reminds me of Kool-Aid. Then there are some pretty clean and refreshing un-sweetened bottled teas.With all the availability and popularity of exotic teas and flavored bottled ice tea creations, I thought it was time I created some that you can whip up at home.

I HAVE SIPPED many of the new-fangled iced teas -- the lightly sweetened concoctions that taste like berries and flowers -- and I think they have their place. They are OK on days when you aren't working too hard, when the most strenuous event on your schedule is munching a crumpet. But on those broiling days when you're stuck doing some heavy lifting, you gotta refuel with old-fashioned, sugar-sweetened ice tea.A mere sprinkle of the sweetness won't do. It has to be more like a thundershower of sugar.

Only a few years ago, nerds were the main buyers of Swiss Army watches, the ones with the red heart logo on the dial. But judging from the way these things sell today at the Inner Harbor, there is not the least hint of style incompetence associated with the watch I once thought only Appalachian Trail walkers and science teachers owned.What is it today? The most ordinary, commonplace objects have been transformed, then marketed into semiluxuries.We buy T-shirts with silk-screened blue crabs and the word "Baltimore" on the front.

MY GRANDMOTHER had her own way of announcing that it was lunchtime. She would walk from the kitchen through the dining room to the stair hall. Then she called up to her sister with two words, "Tea's made."That was it. The sentence meant that it was time to come to the table for lunch because the water she had put on had come to a boil a few minutes earlier. It was now filling the big brown ceramic pot, which also held a metal tea ball stuffed with loose tea.When the leaves had time to steep, the sisters had a couple of cups and whatever they wanted for their noontime meal.

New in Little ItalyI tend to think of Little Italy as a little piece of Baltimore that never changes, but obviously that's not so. Within the past six months or so, three new restaurants have opened: Antney's Bar and Grill, Il Porto and La Scala (where Raphael's used to be).The splashiest opening yet is scheduled for mid-May: Di Vivo's Pastries and Cafe at 801 Eastern Ave. It sounds modest, but Di Vivo's will be a full-scale Italian restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. The new building should be a traffic stopper, with a glassed-in rotunda in front and a huge tree growing inside.

Four snifters of pricey, artfully made bourbon sat in front of me. Then there were three, then two, then one, then none.This was a small-batch bourbon tasting, an example of America's increasing interest in bourbons that taste better and cost more than ordinary whiskeys. This was news. The ballroom in Washington's Grand Hyatt hotel was full of 200 well-dressed guests who, according to a brochure, were there to educate themselves "as to the finer points of bourbon connoisseurship."One table of sippers seemed at the top of the class.