Lancelot

WHAT FOLLOWS are some footnotes to footnotes of history regarding Jacqueline Kennedy and Camelot.As is fairly well known, she put the "Camelot" tag on the administration of her husband President John F. Kennedy.What happened was, the journalist Theodore White was known to be preparing an article for Life magazine on John Kennedy shortly after his assassination. At her request he interviewed Jackie. He wrote in his article that Mrs. Kennedy told him that at her husband's request she played the album of the songs from the musical "Camelot" each night as they were drifting off to sleep.

MARDI GRAS will be nearly two weeks past, but that won't matter when the St. John Christian Day School holds a Mardi Gras festival at 7 p.m. March 15. The evening will begin with a concert by the Young Audiences of America Jazz Ensemble - part of the Maryland contingent of the national cultural arts organization Young Audiences of America. Founded in Baltimore in 1950, the organization has grown to 31 chapters in 22 states and the District of Columbia - its twofold purpose to see that every child in America has an opportunity to experience and gain insight to the arts, and provide career opportunities for artists and performers.

CAMELOT -- Acorn / $29.99 With a new revival of Lerner and Loewe's Arthurian musical, Camelot, scheduled to play the Hippodrome Theatre next season, the release of the DVD version of the 1981 Broadway revival seemed like a good way to become reacquainted with this sumptuous work. Originally broadcast on HBO in 1983, this DVD is essentially an archival recording of the stage production that starred Richard Harris, re-creating his 1967 movie role. The liner notes by Harris' co-star, Meg Bussert, explain that the taping was done over several days and included some re-staging specifically for the cameras.

Food, frivolity and friendship is what St. Benjamin (Krider's) Lutheran Church is promising at its third annual dinner theater this weekend.Proceeds from the youth group's production of "Two for the Money" will benefit its service and social programs for the next year."

THE SHIP docked mid-morning Friday, Nov. 22. Friends and I were returning to New York City from a cruise in the Bahamas and planned to complete the vacation with a weekend of fun and frolic in the Big Apple.Immediately after our hotel check-in, we were off to "do the shops" on Fifth Avenue. First stop was Saks. I bought a blue and white silk scarf, which today I can't wear without the memories of that day flooding back.Going up in the elevator at Saks, we overheard two ladies discussing "yet another tragedy in that family."

Thousands of miles away, in the mountainous capital of the historically conflict-ridden country of Georgia, there sits a college that was recently founded on the pedagogic principles of a single institution - Annapolis' St. John's College. The Organization for Liberal Education in Georgia, a student group at the Annapolis school, will be host for a jazz benefit Saturday to raise money for a summer trip to the New Gelati Academy in Tbilisi, Georgia. The proceeds will pay for a group of students and teachers from St. John's to travel to the 10-month-old college and help establish a learning environment modeled after St. John's College, which emphasizes independent thought and intimate class discussions on Western literature.

A Mount Airy man was arrested yesterday on charges of assault and reckless endangerment after a three-hour standoff with police, in whichhe reportedly fired five gunshots from his house, county police said.Ronald G. Hoover, 33, of the 16300 block of Newport Road, fired the shots during a domestic argument with his estranged wife, who hadwent to his home to collect her belongings, police said.Hoover's wife arrived at approximately 12:30 a.m., accompanied byher father and a police officer.After collecting her possessionsfrom the house, she began walking out to her car when Hoover allegedly fired several shots from a semiautomatic shotgun, police said.

IT HAS BEEN said that history is the biography of heroes, but what hero can ultimately survive the age of information and mass media?Mikhail Gorbachev is already yesterday's man, while Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian republic, went from boor to giant to autocrat in less time than it once took for an ocean liner to cross the Atlantic.Past or present, no hero is safe, because after him comes the deluge -- of words.So it's not surprising HowardStringerthat just as we are getting ready to celebrate the Christopher Columbus quincentennial, revisionists are cheerfully judging his accomplishments as if he were alive today.

Police reports in Baltimore city and county: Northwestern Baltimore Shooting A man, 27, was shot in the right foot about 7:45 p.m. yesterday at Garrison Boulevard and Piedmont Avenue and was treated at a hospital. Central Baltimore Robbery Police were seeking two men, one armed with a knife, who robbed a woman, 25, of $40 about 5 p.m. Wednesday at a service station in the 1000 block of W. North Ave. The woman was standing near her car with the money in one hand when she was approached by the men who demanded the money.

Everyone knows if you want to grow tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet peppers or any other vegetables that need a longer stretch of warmth to fruit than we have here in Maryland, you need to put plants (sometimes called transplants) -- not seeds -- in the ground in late spring. Gardeners have long had a choice about how to do that. We could grab whatever varieties of vegetable transplants the garden center offered in mid-April. Or, if we wanted to grow eight different tomatoes, five kinds of sweet peppers and some really wild hot peppers to say nothing of leeks, we could start them from seed -- indoors in late February -- ourselves.