Lady Bird Johnson

NBC agrees to give `Friends' another year NBC's six Friends aren't breaking up yet. The network announced a surprise agreement Saturday to keep the top-rated comedy on the air for another season. No details were released, but NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks confirmed the deal had been sealed early Saturday morning. When NBC announced in February that Friends would be back this fall, it was said then that this would be the final year. But in the months to follow, NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker consistently refused, in speaking publicly, to rule out the chance it would return.

Gardeners get a fresh start every year. Glossy catalogs full of new plants, ideas and inspiration fill the mailbox in January, and before you know it, you're making lists, plans and decisions. The New Year is upon us, but it's really never too late to make New Year's resolutions, and gardening resolutions are the kind you won't regret. A gardener's resolutions don't have to involve giving anything up. When you resolve to make your garden more beautiful, the changes don't have to be expensive or difficult or involve plants with names you can't pronounce.

THEATER LIGHT UP THE SKY -- 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Through Feb. 10. Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway. $15. 410-563-9135. Moss Hart famously quipped, "Theater is not so much a profession as a disease." In his classic 1948 comedy Light Up the Sky, he skewers the men and women who have been afflicted with a particularly virulent strain of the infection. The story is set in a Boston hotel room during the out-of-town tryout of a Broadway-bound drama by an unknown playwright.

SAN FRANCISCO - The recent visit to Baghdad by actor and director Sean Pennhas added fuel to a public debate about whether celebrities should venture from the art of make-believe to the flashpoint realities of politics. But when the stakes are large in the real world, there's no value in trying to maintain the illusion that celebrities inhabit a different world than the rest of us. Often overlooked is the simple and illuminating fact that celebrities rarely get into public relations trouble for aligning themselves with popular views.

Havre de Grace. -- Along with her husband's popularity and all those 1,000-page health-care bills, the old Hillary Rodham Clinton has slowly slipped from sight, leaving behind a diminished public personality and a few fading memories of what might have been.Less than two years after her husband's election, she has managed to make herself the first truly unpopular First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. As a political liability to her spouse she has eclipsed the sainted Eleanor, and has easily outdone Nancy Reagan as an object of national derision.

Visitors to Carroll County often expect to be greeted by flawless rows of corn and soybeans or the historic farmhouses that have made the county famous.But when they cross the border on Route 140 from Baltimore County, they are more likely to be sold on the latest athletic shoes, the "pleasures of Newport" cigarettes or the new Volkswagen bug.Billboards cluster around the busy entry point, making Carroll home to more billboards than almost anywhere else in the state. Only Baltimore City and Prince George's County have more outdoor advertisements than does this rural county of 150,000, according to State Highway Administration officials.

In yesterday's Howard County edition, a student was incorrectly identified in a photo caption accompanying an article about Joe Fisher, founder of First Generation College Bound Inc. The student is Jessica Roy-Harrison.The caption also should have made clear that Miss Roy-Harrison is a student in Mr. Fisher's class at Harpers Choice Middle School and not involved in the College Bound program.The Baltimore Sun regrets the errors.The message on Joe Fisher's classroom bulletin board itelling of his attitude: striving for excellence.

Amid the stirring images of Inauguration Day, the television cameras recorded a more human moment.Following a tight schedule, the president-elect and his daughter, Chelsea, emerged from Blair House Wednesday morning on their way to greet President and Mrs. Bush at the White House. Chelsea hopped into the waiting limousine, but her father stood looking back to the doorway, calling, we assume, to his wife, Hillary.A few tense comments were audible, something like, "Come on, we have to be there," "Chelsea's in the car," or "Somebody can find it and bring it to her."

WASHINGTON -- In many ways, Bill Clinton's glittery, four-day journey to the White House picked up where his campaign caravan left off, with the same bus rides and handshakes and made-for-TV moments, all spun this week with the sunshine and blue skies of a winner.Just as the Clinton team constructed a campaign so consistently on target it even earned praise from then-Vice President Dan Quayle, so it carefully crafted an extravaganza that struck notes of populism and inclusion, poetry and hope like no other inauguration in recent history.

Several thousand people are expected to take part in a singing and praying procession from Baltimore's Memorial Stadium to Clifton Park beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday.It is part of an international celebration of Christianity called "A Day to Change the World.""I've been thrilled by the coming together of various faiths, cultures and races to plan this event," said the Rev. John Cummins, pastor of Joppa Road Baptist Church and an organizer of the Baltimore march. Across the United States, about 2 million people are expected to participate and, worldwide, the number of registered marchers is estimated at 100 million.