Kent County

At a former Civil War-era schoolhouse in middle-of-nowhere Kent County, a glitzy international trade show was taking shape. An icy rain fell on the darkened fields of little Locust Grove as Joe Karlik sat designing a set in 3D for a springtime event that his client, MTV, plans for that sunny coastal paradise, the French Riviera. "There it is," Karlik said. He referred to the outline of a virtual 105-inch plasma television he was dragging electronically onto the mockup emerging on his computer screen.

CHESTERTOWN -- A 19-year-old paratrooper from Kent County, eight months past his high school graduation, was killed in an accident outside Baghdad, becoming the eighth casualty from Maryland since U.S. forces invaded Iraq nearly a year ago. Pvt. Bryan Nicholas Spry, a driver with the elite 82nd Airborne, died Friday after the Humvee he was driving turned over, landing upside down and pinning the former junior varsity baseball player in a water-filled ditch,...

MILLINGTON -- The sun was setting when the three black women in the old Plymouth Horizon rolled past the few dozen houses and family-owned stores that make up Millington, a little Kent County town that has suddenly found itself in the spotlight. Soon after leaving Millington, one of the women would end up dead. Charged with her killing would be two men who only minutes before her death had called police to look for her car. The day began pleasantly enough for the women. After a day of shopping across the border in Delaware, they passed through Millington about the same time as David and Daniel Starkey, brothers who had enjoyed their own successful-enough day hunting deer.

MILLINGTON -- Anthony Guessregen sees himself as just another farmer trying to eke out a living from his land. But others in this rural Kent County community, including some farmers, say the 35-year-old former fisherman from Long Island, N.Y., gives agriculture a bad name.Guessregen and his wife, Patricia, plan to raise 3,000 hogs on their 313-acre farm nearby. Rather than wallow in the mud, though, these porkers will spend four months bulking up in stalls inside a "finishing house" before being trucked to slaughter.

STRANGE things are sprouting in Marylands farm fields. Like an asphalt plant in a Kent County cornfield. Like a golf course on a Carroll County farm. Like mobile communication towers all over the countryside.And, of course, the burgeoning crops of houses and subdivisions on once green acres.Less land is needed these days for agricultural production; other uses are more lucrative -- for the developer and the county treasury. And for local employment. So in spite of high-sounding rhetoric about farmland preservation by Maryland and the counties, the states agricultural open spaces continue to shrink.

Kent County isn't exactly known for its artwork. One of Maryland's most rural areas, the county is better known for its tractors, crabs and antique shops. The folks at Artworks would like that to change. The organization, which promotes local arts and culture, hosts its annual Studio Tour this weekend with about 35 studios in the county. Participants have all day Saturday and Sunday to drive across Kent County and some of Queen Anne's County, soaking in the scenery and stopping to meet local artists and peruse their wares.

Police divers today recovered the body of a 4-year-old Kent County boy from the Chester River. He had fallen overboard from his family's boat moments before a Fourth of July fireworks display was scheduled to begin last night.Divers and recovery teams from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police and other rescue workers found the body of the child about 150 feet downstream from where he went into the water, said a DNR police spokeswoman.The discovery was made about five hours after the search resumed this morning.

MASSEY -- The Kent County planning board has approved plans for building an asphalt plant in a cornfield on the edge of this town near the Delaware line. Neighbors fear an environmental disaster.The approval came last week after the county commission rewrote the zoning law in July to accommodate David C. Bramble, a prominent Eastern Shore paving contractor.Opponents say a plant at the headwaters of Swantown Creek, a tributary of the Sassafras River, would destroy wetlands and habitat for salamanders, pollute water and affect the flavor of the milk from Lester "Bucky" Jones' cows on an adjacent farm.

CHESTERTOWN - This little town on the Chester River woke up on television Tuesday. Not the occasional camera crew, across the Bay Bridge for a feature about the charm of the 300-year-old Kent County seat. Not even the quick-hit spotlight of the stations from Baltimore and Washington on a particularly intriguing murder trial or some gruesome killing. This was definitely Tee-Vee. Big-time national exposure. Lead story on the NBC's Today show. A nonstop crawl across the bottom of the screen and a prime topic for the cable news and news talk shows.

Rex and June Kershaw's dream began as a vague desire to find an old dwelling and make it into their retirement home. That vague desire eventually became a massive project which is still under way in Rock Hall.To date, Mr. Kershaw, with the occasional assistance of his two sons, has spent more than 10 years and $60,000 refurbishing the huge, 100-year-old Queen Anne-style Victorian that his wife and their daughter, Lisa, found in Kent County back in December 1988.The Kershaws' journey began in the mid-1960s in their native New Zealand, where they built a 45-foot, steel-hulled ketch.