Jane Eyre

Sarah: My one and HBOnly By Tamara Ikenberg SPECIAL TO THE SUN I have about the same chance of getting tickets for "The Producers" as I do of stealing Matthew Broderick from Sarah Jessica Parker. And that's just one of the reasons why I'm tuning in and turning on to HBO's "Sex and the City" tonight instead of the Tonys on CBS. Call it "Producers" envy. Call it lack of culture. Call it a preference for watching four female carnivores carnally conquering New York instead of a bunch of sissies breaking into song.

The first year was the hardest.Even now, six years later, I can remember with amazing clarity waking up that Sunday morning two months after my mother's death and thinking:Today is Mother's Day. And for the first time in my life I will spend this day as a motherless child.It was a mournful thought, one that played over and over in my head like a dirge. But since I was a mother as well as a daughter I put aside my sadness, or tried to, in order to concentrate on the Mother's Day surprises planned by my sons for me.But when I was alone that night -- the night of my first Mother's Day without a mother -- I found myself sitting under a small circle of light in my bedroom, rereading parts of "Jane Eyre."

"Rapist Caught by Own Cat."That headline from the Sun, Rupert Murdoch's London tabloid, writes Robert Sherrill in the current the Nation, is part of the formula that has made it the largest English-language newspaper in the world. The rest of the formula is "nude women on page three, sex advice, fabricated news and racial scares."Mr. Sherrill's dense, splenetic attack on "Citizen Murdoch" cautions that Mr. Murdoch's "empire building on the edge, financial loosey-goosey" has been propped up by the FCC's refusal to strip him of his Fox TV stations even though its May 4 ruling acknowledged him as "an outlaw in the industry."

Rachel Kempson, 92, the matriarch of the Redgrave acting clan and one of the clarion voices of British stage and screen, died Saturday at her home in Millbrook, N.Y. The cause of death was not released. Ms. Kempson was perhaps the least known of the Redgraves in the United States. But in Britain, her performances in large and small roles in Shakespeare's plays were greatly admired, as were her appearances in other treasured British classics, including Richard Sheridan's 1777 comedy, The School for Scandal, in which she appeared over the years both as Maria and, earlier, as Lady Teazle.

I'll never forget the summer I first read "Little Women." Twenty-six years later, that memorable opening (" 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug") is a literary madeleine, taking me back to an earlier time when reading was an unmixed pleasure and a book a magical charm that sealed me off from the world.I recently turned to "Little Women" again, partly out of a need to recapture that old feeling -- I had just moved and felt lost and disconnected -- and partly out of a critic's curiosity to see if it "held up."

The Chesapeake would be a pretty body of water if they ever got the junk out.The deal is that Bill will help Boris' re-election if the latter promises to stay out of his.Bill turns out to be our greatest foreign-policy president sinceGeorge Bush.Hollywood made still another remake of ''Jane Eyre,'' even though it isn't even by Jane Austen.Pub Date: 4/22/96

Elizabeth Taylor, who died early Wednesday morning of congestive heart failure at age 79, did something no other actor ever did. At every stage of her career she became a superstar all over again. As a magical little girl, a pristine ingénue and a voluptuous woman, she created characters and images that enraptured or fascinated international audiences. In the second half of the 20th century, no other Hollywood-bred celebrity was as frequently photographed, celebrated or vilified.

Novel Exhibit `Eyre Apparent' Go see the Eyre Apparent exhibit, which showcases memorabilia related to Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. The exhibit shows the novel's cultural significance and the different ways in which it has been interpreted. The exhibit is at the George Peabody Library, 17 E. Mount Vernon Place. Admission is free, and the library is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 410-659- 8179 or go to www.georgepeabody library.jhu.edu. FYI Kevin Cowherd is on as signment. His column returns Wednesday.

On August 16, 2005 JULIE SHAWMc COLLOUGH CHANCE, beloved wife of the late John S. Mc Collough and Paul D. Chance; loving mother of Liberty S. Walke and her husband Ed, J. Huston Mc Collough II and his wife Joan, Jane-Eyre M. Spier and her husband Scott, Edythe M. Fallon and her husband Rodney, and Cynthia S. Armiger and her husband John; dear sister of Jane-Eyre Collins, Ruth Crowell, Virginia Sherwood and the late John Eyre Shaw; loving grandmother of...

James Franciscus, who starred in the TV series "Naked City," "Mr. Novak," and "Longstreet," died Monday of emphysema in Hollywood at 57.The actor was born in Clayton, Mo., and attended Yale University. After a stint in summer stock, he was cast in a 1956 film "Four Boys and a Gun." His TV career began in 1958 as Det.Jim Halloran in ABC's "Naked City." He became a teen-age heartthrob playing English teacher John Novak in the 1960s and twice portrayed insurance investigators, first on "The Investigators" and later as blind Mike Longstreet on the ABC series "Longstreet."