Life

The long-planned Metro Centre in Owings Mills is set to finally stir to life this week with the opening of Baltimore County's largest library. Officials envision the library branch, to open in a building called the County Campus next to the Owings Mills subway station, as the anchor of a cluster of shops, restaurants and apartments that they have long hoped would form a new center in the northwestern suburb. Also planned for the County Campus are dozens of classrooms and offices for the Community College of Baltimore County.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported this week that ancient rocks on Mars analyzed by its Curiosity rover, which landed on the Red Planet in August, show that what is today a barren and inhospitable environment might well have supported living organisms quite comfortably in the distant past. Several billion years ago, scientists say, Mars had a thicker atmosphere and warmer weather and was awash in water flowing across its surface that was safe enough to drink. Humans, of course, did not yet exist in that primeval past, which long predated even the appearance of the first dinosaurs on Earth some 230 million years ago. But microbial life could easily have flourished during that era. Though Curiosity's lab isn't equipped to detect Martian life, past or present, it can determine whether the kind of organic molecules that are essential to life - at least as we know it - are present in the Martian environment.

Since the the death penalty has not been carried out in Maryland since 2005 and is not anticipated to be used again, the debate over whether it should be abolished is almost academic ("House committee approves death penalty repeal" Mar. 8). However there is at least one compelling reason to retain it. If an individual now pleads guilty in a plea bargain to murder to avoid the death penalty, winding up with accepting life in prison without parole, serves justice. However without the death penalty, when the prisoner would plead guilty, instead of agreeing to life without parole, he or she will demand a lesser sentence and even for the most heinous crimes will be eligible one day for release.

Erin Callan was the face of Lehman Brothers in 2008 as it battled insolvency rumors. Fresh, pretty, smart and confidently articulate, she worked feverishly to try to talk nervous investors out of jumping ship. But when the company imploded in 2008, she did, too. After taking a couple of place-holder jobs, she disappeared. The most powerful woman on Wall Street before it all came tumbling down was only 41. The New York gossips eventually found her in East Hampton, in what passes for a cottage in the woods there, taking spin classes and living on the cash-in of her Lehman shares, now married to a high-school classmate, a handsome New York City firefighter.

One of two Pennsylvania men involved in an early Monday morning crash on the Harford County side of Conowingo Dam has died, Maryland State Police confirmed Monday afternoon. Anila Vadala, 28, of the 4000 block of Locust Street in Philadelphia, died following the two-vehicle accident, which occurred around 5:45 a.m. Monday on Route 1 near the dam, according to State Police. The accident involved a pickup truck and Honda, according to Sgt. Comer, duty officer at the Maryland State Police Barrack, which is investigating the crash.

Congratulations to Maria Santo for so eloquently stating the pro-life attitude toward the unconscionable killing of 55 million children over the past 40 years through abortions ("Dishonesty underlies abortion law," March 5). That it is a crime for a mother to kill her infant after its birth, but perfectly legal to kill the same child in the womb just doesn't make sense. The baby has no say in the mother's decision to exercise of her right to an abortion. The better solution is to choose life for the baby and then allow it to be adopted by a loving family.

I would counter the headline on Maria Santo's criticism of pro-choice advocates ("Dishonesty underlies abortion law," March 5) with one of my own: "Extreme sanctimony underlies pro-life argument. " Anti-abortionists - please, can we call them what they really are? - can make a cogent argument for their cause, and I agree with them that "killing babies" is a crime. However, I find it ironic that the same folks who think it is reprehensible for a mother to abort a baby she can't afford, hasn't the skills to raise or simply can't abide how the child was conceived - rape, for instance - never offer any solutions to those problems.

When a program captured five national championships - most recently in 2011 - it's almost impossible to be ignored. But that's how Virginia has been feeling this season. Despite a 5-1 record, the No. 13 Cavaliers have been coasting through February and March without much media scrutiny or fanfare. And that doesn't bother coach Dom Starsia one bit. “This is a year in which we're better served to be able to work on ourselves for a while before we step out,” he said Friday morning.

A plain set is the congenial setting for the home truths imparted by Samm-Art Williams' "Home" at Rep Stage. Like the several wood platforms on which most of the action occurs, this play gets down to basics. The three actors have very few props or costume changes with which to contend, so they have plenty of time for storytelling. The central story involves an ardently ordinary man, Cephus Miles (Robert Lee Hardy), who grows up on a North Carolina farm and then moves to an unnamed northern city in search of economic opportunity and upward mobility.

In the second and best installment of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour,” the follow-up to “I Love Lucy,” the guest star is Tallulah Bankhead, playing herself as a new neighbor of the Ricardos and Mertzes. During a clash of temperaments, Lucy mockingly imitates Tallulah's famed basso voice and “dahling”-peppered phrases, leading to this exchange: Tallulah: “You do a revolting impression of me.” Lucy: “So do you.” There was a lot of truth in that funny scene, and it finds a telling echo in Matthew Lombardo's entertaining play about Bankhead, “Looped,” currently onstage at the Hippodrome starring a persuasive Stefanie Powers.