Jamestown Settlement

My friend Ralph thinks he's the sweetheart of the stars, because:* Barbara Bush has sat on his doorstep.* Elizabeth Taylor gives him flowers.* Dolly Parton tries to peek in his windows.Big deal. Ralph's famous friends are plants, not people. They are roses named for the rich and famous. Dolly Parton is growing alongside Ralph's house. Elizabeth Taylor produces deep pink blooms each year. And Barbara Bush has thrived since its arrival by parcel post last spring.These are the "other" women in Ralph's life.

BOY, TIMES sure have changed when it comes to war. Sixty years ago, when we fought in Europe and the South Pacific, Americans were asked to help the war effort by enlisting in the armed forces, demonstrating sacrifice and vigilance (Remember "Loose lips sink ships"?) and focusing our national resolve on defeating the enemy. Today, Americans are asked to help the war effort by "getting back to our normal lives." Which apparently means: spend, spend, spend! You get the feeling if everyone in the country would only break out the MasterCard, we could whip these terrorists in a matter of days.

EATING AND shopping, two of my favorite sports, are on top of tomorrow's got-to-do list.The Rotary Club of Lake Shore is sponsoring its fall pancake and sausage breakfast from 7 a.m. to 11: 30 a.m. tomorrow at Mount Carmel United Methodist Church, 4760 Mountain Road.Admission is $4 for adults, and $2 for children.Proceeds benefit local Rotary community service projects.Autumn fairAfter breakfast, you can travel a short distance down Mountain Road to shop at the Chesapeake High School Band Boosters Autumn Fair.

Washington. --- King James I, author of ''Counterblast to Tobacco,'' denounced tobacco as ''harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs'' -- this in the 17th century -- and increased taxes on it 4,000 percent. Now Virginia, the state that began with Jamestown settlement, named after James I, has flinched from increasing cigarette taxes even half as much as it should.A rejected bill would have put the tax at 20 cents a pack. Virginia's tax has been 2 1/2 cents since 1966, when it was cut from 3 cents.

WASHINGTON -- Better practice your royal wave. The queen is coming to Maryland. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has added a stop at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt to the schedule for her state visit to America next month. The 81-year-old monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 85, will spend about two hours at Goddard on May 8, the British embassy and the space center said yesterday. They will visit mission control and speak with astronauts on the International Space Station.

Debate on the financial overhaul bill now under way in the Senate promises much fiery rhetoric for the headlines over the coming weeks. Having been raked over the coals by the finance industry during the last few years, the American public may well wonder why it should care a whit for the fate of the money moguls. The short answer is that it is very much in our own best interest to care a great deal. We must not make the mistake of demonizing an entire industry because of the admittedly grand transgressions of certain players.

Nearly 250 years ago, a small ship sailed up the Potomac to a space where the river widened into a circular bay. Its Scottish passengers settled there, on the south shore, in what would grow to be Alexandria, Va. Across the river, a swamp dominated the north shore.Today, a small ship sails up the Potomac in the fall and docks on the south shore at Alexandria. Cruise passengers board. Across the river, Washington dominates the north shore.The departure point for the Nantucket Clipper suits the overriding theme of the itinerary.

The children were running and jumping all across the village green in Williamsburg, Va., trying out stilts and rolling wooden hoops.Some had just gotten out of "school" -- held under a tree behind a house. Dutifully, they had scratched the answers to math problems on slate boards and answered questions about the story the teacher had read from the tiny book.Others were drilling with the Army militia, marching down to the encampment, following the tough sergeant's orders, standing by as the cannon was fired.

Lania D'Agostino, one of Baltimore's busiest plastic surgeons, works in a dirty, dusty studio on Canton's waterfront. She operates without anesthesia, without her clients' consent and without a medical degree.Her patients are all dummies. They have to be to seek her expertise.D'Agostino makes her living improving the appearances of manhandled mannequins and creating new ones for a diverse clientele -- from backyard gardeners to museum curators.Her shop, on the fourth floor of the old Broom Factory on Boston Street, is a cluttered cross between a warehouse and the laboratory of a mad scientist.

Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg evokes images of holidays past and Dickens remembered, of warbling carolers, flaming yule logs, brimming wassail bowls, cobblestone streets and doors trimmed with evergreens.The setting is perfect. Colonial Williamsburg lives today just as it did nearly three centuries ago, when it was the social, cultural and political capital of England's largest and perhaps most influential colony in the New World. Later it became the only important Colonial capital that, for practical matters, could be restored to its pre-Revolutionary appearance.