Kennedy Center

With some paint and glazes, a few tools and a little time, a plain, functional front door can become a home's welcoming statement, with the rich colors and grains of oak or mahogany. A concrete column can look like marble, a ceiling can become a cloud-dappled sky and old cabinets can get new life. To get those looks and more, all homeowners have to do is go to school. The Faux School, founded in Frederick by artist Ron Layman, 41, offers classes on decorative painting techniques to amateurs and professionals alike.

With some paint and glazes, a few tools and a little time, a plain, functional front door can become a home's welcoming statement, with the rich colors and grains of oak or mahogany. A concrete column can look like marble, a ceiling can become a cloud-dappled sky and old cabinets can get new life. To get those looks and more, all homeowners have to do is go to school. The Faux School, founded in Frederick by artist Ron Layman, 41, offers classes on decorative painting techniques to amateurs and professionals alike.

The most direct road to old Baltimore next week might run through Washington. Actor Laurence Fishburne takes to the stage at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday to perform the title role in "Thurgood," a one-actor play about the first African-American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And, as Fishburne embodies Thurgood Marshall delivering a lecture on his life at Howard University, audiences will also get a glimpse into the city where the future justice grew up. Theatergoers will meet Marshall's formidable grandmother, Annie, who launched possibly the first sit-down strike ever held in the city from her grocery store at the corner of Dolphin and Division streets.

Check the web site for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and you'll see an array of performances on the boards for this weekend alone that would make for a wonderful summer season in Harford County. Tickets for performances range from $18 for the hour-long family play "The Wings of Ikarus Jackson," to $130 for a box seat for a performance of "La Cage Aux Folles. " The demand for what might be characterized as high art is substantial in this area, and the general success of the Kennedy Center is a testament to how successful a major high-end arts venue can be. Scale down, and the success of organizations like the Havre de Grace Arts Commission has long been evident.

Impervious to cynicism and layered with critic-retardants, "Mary Poppins" has plopped into the Kennedy Center Opera House for a nice long stay that should keep the box office humming. The musical, a Disney/Cameron Mackintosh presentation that boasts the theatrical bells and whistles expected from those forces, might not fully satisfy folks devoted to, and expecting a copy of, the popular 1964 movie that inspired it. Devotees of the children's book series by P.L. Travers that started it all might find a nit or two to pick as well.

In 2010, your initial reaction to the iconic '60s musical "Hair" might be a yawn. A show without a plot to speak of? They've long been a dime a dozen. Nudity? Please. Some seasons, you can't find a show without it. Someone in drag? See previous answer. Anti-establishment preachy-ness? As if we've ever run out of that. Heck, even hip-hugging jeans are back. But, as last year's Tony Award-winning Public Theater revival makes plain, there's a force churning beneath the "American Tribal Love Rock Musical" that can jolt even jaded theatergoers out of condescension and ennui.

Baltimore-born billionaire and philanthropist David Rubenstein pledged $10 million Wednesday to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, with half of those funds earmarked for the National Symphony Orchestra. The five-year gift will include $5 million to the symphony in connection with the arrival of the group's new music director, Christoph Eschenbach; $2.5 million for a major annual cultural program at the institution; and $1.5 million for a program that brings the arts into classrooms around the U.S. The remaining $1 million will be used to support such major events as the center's annual honors gala and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Copenhagen, Michael Frayn's 2000 Tony Award-winning play about a mysterious 1941 meeting between Nobel Prize-winning physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, begins a monthlong run at Washington's Kennedy Center Tuesday. Len Cariou stars as the Danish Bohr, opposite Hank Stratton as the German Heisenberg. Mariette Hartley plays Bohr's wife, Margrethe. Michael Blakemore, who won a Tony for his direction, serves as the director here. Show times at the Kennedy Center are 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, with matinees at 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through March 24. Tickets are $20-$68.

Broadway soprano Barbara Cook's tribute concert, Mostly Sondheim, competes for a Tony Award this Sunday, and just three days later she brings the program to Washington's Kennedy Center as part of its continuing Sondheim Celebration. The word "mostly" refers to the fact that the selections include a number of songs Stephen Sondheim says he "wishes he had written," including works by Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, and Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Cook, who will be accompanied by her long-time music director, Wally Harper, has performed Mostly Sondheim in London and New York.

Children's program Oakland Mills Community Association's "Lively Arts for Little Ones" presents "Anansegromma of Ghana," a performance of traditional West African music, storytelling and dance, at 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 20, at The Other Barn in the Oakland Mills Village Center, 5851 Robert Oliver Place. Tickets are $5. Information: 410-730-4610 or go to oaklandmills.org. Gardening class The Hickory Ridge Community Association sponsors "Grow it! Eat it! Spring Vegetable Gardening" from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, at the Hawthorn Center, 6175 Sunny Spring.

Ocean City Nautical & Wildlife Art Festival The 27th annual Nautical & Wildlife Art Festival brings together artists, including painters, carvers, sculptors and model ship builders, to showcase their work. The festival takes places alongside the North American Craft Show at the Ocean City Convention Center on 40th Street. The festival is Jan. 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Jan. 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for students ages 13-17 and free for children age 12 and younger with a paying adult.

I am off for a few days to deal with some minor medical stuff, and I did not intend to write any reviews, believe me. But I sat down last night to watch one segment of the preview DVD for  "Kennedy Center Honors," and I got up some two hours later feeling like I had been on a wild, joyous, pop culture rollercoaster ride. And I wanted to at least give readers of this a blog a heads-up to catch this brilliant production at 9 tonight on CBS (WJZ-Channel 13). As usually happens, and as I annually forget, the segments on the honorees that I don't care so much about are the ones that blow me away -- and make me want to run out and buy their DVD or get a Netflix of one of their greatest movies.

Here's something Howard County can brag about: It hosts the state's only "Nutcracker" holiday extravaganza on ice, perhaps even on the entire East Coast. Presented each year by the Columbia Figure Skating Club , it's a pretty cool show in more ways than one. Dozens of darling little skaters share the ice stage with some real pros, making this a must-see family outing for all "Nutcracker" fans. My family wouldn't ream of missing a production. I actually prefer the Sunday-before final dress rehearsal.

Purchasing the perfect holiday gift can be tricky. And when you have a picky recipient, gift-giving is downright stressful. Enter personal shopper Stephanie Bradshaw. "Gifts are suppose to be something that they wouldn't get for themselves," she says. "Instead of thinking about getting them the utilitarian things, it is nice to think of the indulgence of it. For us the challenge and the thrill of it is to chose something that they wouldn't chose for themselves. It's suppose to be a treat.

Someone once said that ballet and modern dance would merge when a contemporary dancer donned toe shoes and ballerinas went barefoot. Well, that did happen in an Alvin Ailey piece years ago, and it was evident again last week in the dance kickoff of “China:  The Art of a Nation,” at the Kennedy Center now through October. As I watched the National Ballet of China , I was reminded just how much classical ballet has changed since the company's last appearance here in 2005.

On the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, I watched the Ground Zero commemoration ceremony - or all of it that NBC was willing to show us - I read the Baltimore Sun, and I watched President Barack Obama's speech at the Kennedy Center memorial concert. Out of all these, the only really thoughtful reflections I found were in Dan Rodricks ' column that day ("The deaths of others"). No one else made a effort to synthesize the lessons of the terrorist attacks and the decade of war and paranoia that ensued.