Lace

Almost any drive -- or even better, walk -- along Harford County roads will bring you to a direct link with the past that isn't found in tour guides or maps -- the magnificent stone walls that farmers created hundreds of years ago, some still standing and well-kept. Back roads offer much to the leisurely traveler, and Sunday afternoons are surely made for that. Away from the house on a clear day you can venture along roads that verify county lore by such names as Mahan Road, Carsins Run Road, Carrs Mill Road and Whitaker Mill Road.

Oscar Wilde is known for slick epigrams, and Lady Windermere's Fan contains some of the playwright's most famous quips. But glossy as the writing may be, director Irene Lewis' production at Center Stage proves that this is also a play with a lot of heart. Set on the title character's 21st birthday, Lady Windermere's Fan paints a poignant portrait of a young woman coming of age emotionally as well as chronologically. At the start of the play, Mahira Kakkar's wide-eyed Lady Windermere expresses a moral view that strictly differentiates good from evil, black from white.

Ryan T. Furlough, the Ellicott City teenager who fatally laced his best friend's soda with cyanide last year, was sentenced yesterday to life in prison by a judge who said he did not want to cut off any chance that the 19-year-old could one day earn his release. The sentence - a middle ground between life without parole, which prosecutors sought, and the shorter term requested by defense attorneys - was imposed at the end of an emotional four-hour hearing that brought a simmering debate over the use of antidepressant drugs by youths to the forefront.

Sensing a growing threat from the New York Mets to sign free-agent right fielder Vladimir Guerrero, the Orioles have added to their own best offer in recent days. After sitting on a five-year, $65 million proposal for weeks, Orioles officials said they have recently increased the offer to five years, $67.5 million. At $13.5 million a season, that's not as much money as Guerrero could reportedly get from the Mets, but all of it is guaranteed. Reports surfaced yesterday that the Mets have offered Guerrero a three-year, $30 million base salary with incentives and two vesting options that could make it a five-year, $72 million deal.

Harper's Choice resident Naomi Nelson is a crafty lady whose trademark product is a handmade stuffed apple made of silk and lace. She is one of the many artisans who will be exhibiting their wares Oct. 17 at the new Street Fair at Howard County's fifth 50+ Expo, the popular health fair for seniors. "I love to make things," said Nelson, who is retired from a government job at Fort Meade. "I make everything. I make stuffed teddy bears with matching photo albums. I make stuffed cats. I make decorative hats and floral arrangements out of dried flowers and silk."

THERE THEY sat. A sporting relic in a small glass box. The pair of crumpled, black, high-top cleats Johnny Unitas wore during his last game as a Baltimore Colt. Someone had left them on a table in the press box hours before the NFL's greatest quarterback was honored in a pre-game ceremony at Ravens Stadium yesterday. The sight of those cleats was enough to send a chill down your spine. At least mine, anyway. Everyone talks about that "Golden Arm," but that arm was only as good as Unitas' iron will, his competitive fire, his radar read of the defense and, yes, the feet.

The fishmeal cakes smell awful, bad enough to nauseate the people who have to ride in helicopters and drop them into the woods. But raccoons gobble them up, and Anne Arundel County health officials hope the vaccine hidden inside the cakes will immunize the wild animals against rabies and help to reduce the disease's threat to county residents and their pets. This morning, weather permitting, two dozen public health employees and volunteers in Arundel -- some on foot and some in the air -- will start scattering more than 17,000 baited vaccine packets across the Annapolis and Broadneck peninsulas.

Jean Smith uses her hand as a miniature loom to create such lace pieces as this tiny basket. Stitching up the competition A few years have passed since Jean Smith, "The Queen of Tatting," was a contestant instead of a State Fair judge. Years spent studying other people's handmade lace, eyeing their collars and cuffs, examining their hand towels and handkerchiefs, has her eager to compete this year. Smith, who is now 69, was not interested in tatting when her grandmother was alive to teach her. She taught herself the hobby 20 years ago when she worked part-time at the Craft Corral in Bel Air. The challenge has always been to make lace using a 2-inch bobbin and one's hands as a mini-loom.

Nothing in particular pushed Andrea Keefer over the edge. Rather, it was the daily parade of cleavage and bare midriffs, barely there miniskirts and micro-shorts that convinced the former Francis Scott Key High School Student Government Association president and other student leaders in the county that Carroll County's public schools needed a stricter dress code. "Once it gets really hot, people wear everything other than their bathing suits to school," said Keefer, 17, who graduated this month from Key and will start classes this fall at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va. "When you see people wearing things like that to school, you know they're not there to get an education.