Lifestyle

Farming has been a way of life in Maryland since the first European settlers set foot on St. Clements Island in 1634. But it is a tradition and a lifestyle that has been disappearing from the landscape at an alarming rate in recent decades. Since 1970, Maryland has lost more than 36 percent of its farms and nearly 34 percent of its farmland. The state's farms and farmland have been vanishing at a rate that is nearly four times the national average. The same is true in neighboring states, especially Delaware, which has lost more than 40 percent of its farms over the past 36 years.

TWO IMPORTANT lifestyle reports concluded last week that almost half of this country has trouble with sex, and there is too much of it on television.A report in the current Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that sex is often disappointing in the bedroom, while a survey of shows by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that things are getting hotter in the TV room all the time.Once again, science states the obvious. This time, about sex. I am now waiting for a think tank to report that this is where babies come from.

He cast himself as an up-from-the-hood gangster gone legit in real estate. He had style, a sense of elegance, a quick wit and ready smile that won the instant attention of some very pretty women. He drove a royal blue Rolls.At nightclubs from Columbia to Manhattan, George A. Dangerfield Jr. was a walking blizzard of cash, bestowing trays of drinks and sizzling skillets of filet mignon on his adoring entourage.Not yet 30, he already had it all."I'm the K.O.B., can't nobody mess with me," he decreed to friends.

John Robinson and Lou Holtz are among college football's biggest names, having spent a majority of their respective careers in the glare that comes with coaching at schools such as Southern Cal and Notre Dame. Eleven years ago this week, their careers and teams collided at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, with the Fighting Irish beating the Trojans and going on to win the national championship.They are now far removed from that moment and those programs, with Robinson at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Holtz at South Carolina.

When you turn onto Lakeside Boulevard, what you will see is a tree-lined thoroughfare that at day's end is lined with yuppie joggers, making the trek from one end of Owings Mills New Town to the other.But try to follow the road to its namesake and there will be no such luck.Turn onto Groffs Mill Drive -- another main artery that runs through the community -- and the village strip center greets residents with everything the planners said would be there. An athletic club. Restaurant. Grocery store.

WASHINGTON--The message in Hillary Rodham Clinton's firm declaration of her candidacy for the Senate is that she needs to stop the political bleeding. It may not be that simple, however.The growing criticism of her campaign over several weeks has given rise to widespread speculation in the last 10 days that Ms. Clinton might change her mind and decide against making the race. After all, that's supposed to be the reason for an exploratory committee -- to reach a decision.That speculation, in turn, has discouraged her partisans and, according to some knowledgeable New York Democrats, put a damper on her fund raising.

Always want to go for a sail and never had the opportunity?US Sailing offers the chance at the U.S. Sailboat Show with a hands-on demonstration area for adults and children.Newcomers of all ages can have the opportunity to sail Optimist dinghies, Club 420's and Vanguard 15s provided by Vanguard Racing Sailboats.The short test sails will be conducted by instructors certified by US Sailing.Sailmaker ChallengeThe du Pont Sailmaker Challenge will be raced at the U.S. Sailboat Show again this year in Melges 24s. Races, which may be seen from the show docks, will be held Sunday at 10: 30 a.m. and 4 p.m.Top sailmakers compete against one another, and the test is as much in making the best set of sails from du Pont products as it is on-the-water racing.

It's a typically busy day for Barbara Smith, former model, current restaurateur, author, chef, TV star and lifestyle maven: Started out as a guest disc jockey at a New York jazz station, did her workout, headed for a marketing meeting for the Culinary Institute of America. Caught a 5 o'clock flight to Washington, D.C., where, at her restaurant in Union Station, B. Smith's, the American Council of Negro Women was to honor African-American women chefs. Caught a 9 o'clock flight back to New York to make a next-morning board meeting at the Culinary Institute.

WASHINGTON -- Isolated behind the highlands that rise above New York state's Hudson River, Jewish people of the Satmar Hasidic sect live quietly and apart in a village all their own. But they also live in the limelight of a constitutional saga.For nearly 15 years, Satmarer parents in the village of Kiryas Joel have sought a way that they can afford to teach their disabled children in a setting that does not force the families to forfeit their religious beliefs or their culture.Getting the state legislature to help -- by creating a public school that qualifies for state and federal aid but is able to conform to the Satmar lifestyle -- has created a classic constitutional controversy over government accommodation of religion.

When Cheryl Nokes worried about whether she would make it through nursing school, she went to Union Bridge Hardware Co. next door to her home to recharge her confidence.When Town Councilwoman Karen L. Kotarski returned from a trip to Iceland, she went to the hardware store to share vacation stories.When Margaret "Rosie" Rinehart picks flowers from her garden on Farquhar Street, she always takes a bouquet to Thomas R. and Irene Winebrener at their store.For nearly half a century, the store in this town of 1,000 has been a symbol of Carroll County's rural lifestyle -- a place where folks drop in as much for conversation as for cans of paint, lag bolts or lengths of pipe.

E-cigarettes may be harmful, FDA says Electronic cigarettes - smokeless devices marketed as a way to deliver nicotine without the harmful effects of tobacco smoke - may be just as unsafe as the products they mimic, officials with the Food and Drug Administration said last week. For months, the FDA has wanted to keep e-cigarettes, as they are known, from being sold in the United States. They have blocked shipments at the border. They have warned that people can't know what they are inhaling when they use the product.

Events FOOD-BILL CLASS: Learn to become a smart shopper, find out where to go to buy pantry necessities and keep track of your savings. Dietitian Mark Rifkin offers tips and recipes for inexpensive meals in a two-part class from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Aug.13 and from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Aug.17 at Hill House Community Health Center at Ruscombe Mansion, 4803 Yellowwood Ave. $45 for both sessions, or two tickets to both sessions for $75. Call 410-764-8343....

How do you turn 17,000 acres, 5,000 acres or even 300 acres into a single community that works? By thinking about what kinds of infrastructure, amenities, recreation and vocational opportunities will attract residents to the area over the long haul, community planners and developers say. "We try to understand what [and who] that user is, and that's not easy to do," notes Robert Folzenlogen, director of planning and design for AllianceTexas Hillwood Properties. The company is developing Alliance Town Center, a 1,000-acre piece of a 17,000-acre parcel outside Dallas.

Amid the torrent of unhappy economic news comes this from The New York Times: Our children shouldn't expect to inherit anything from us except, perhaps, a tendency toward male pattern baldness. Ron Lieber wrote last week that boomers have so many more demands on their retirement savings - from health care costs to a desire for a comfortable lifestyle - that there won't be anything left in the piggy bank for the kids when we go. Whether that is good news or bad depends on whether you are me or my kids.

Once, the intersection of Cator Avenue and Old York Road in the Pen Lucy neighborhood was so troubled that people wouldn't sit outside on their porches or walk through on their way to church. Young men were being shot and killed on the street. And the corner lot was grassy and overgrown. But 22 years ago, Emma Worrell began tending to the broken lot, trimming the grass, inviting neighbors to plant flowers and, eventually, dedicating the rectangle of green to members of the community who had been lost to violence.

The setting sun peeks through the large bay windows in the living room of Irene Hofmann's home in Owings Mills. Strewn across the black dining room table are tiny booklets of literature, or lifestyle tracts: a sort of collection of miniature place mats and the food for thought they provide. The brief words on the small folder paper are often satiric in nature, a twist on the Christian tracts that inspired them. Hofmann, the executive director of the Contemporary Museum, sorts through them with artists Lisa Anne Auerbach, who conceived the collection, and Fritz Haeg.

BOSTON - During the Vietnam War there was a phrase that came to symbolize the entire misbegotten adventure: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." It was said at first with sincerity, then repeated with irony, and finally with despair. I have heard similar thoughts in the weeks since Texas authorities invaded a ranch in Eldorado and rounded up hundreds of children from the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Did they traumatize the children in order to protect them?

It's been so long since the Towson stretch of York Road has been a bustling shopping area, you may have forgotten there's anywhere else to shop but Towson Town Center. Not so. True, York Road looks a little like Main Street in Small Town America these days, with many storefronts deserted and boarded up. But if you get out of your car and walk up and down York and its cross streets, you'll find some great stores, many small eating places and more day spas and salons than you can shake a stick at. Why not spend part of an afternoon exploring the Other Towson?

JANEZ DRNOVSEK, 57 Former president of Slovenia Former President Janez Drnovsek, who helped lead Slovenia to independence from Yugoslavia and later enthralled many of his countrymen by adopting a New Age lifestyle, died yesterday, his office said. Mild-mannered but resolute, Mr. Drnovsek became a political icon in part for working to keep violence at a minimum when Slovenia gained independence in 1991. He later led the country to European Union and NATO membership. In recent years, as he battled cancer, he made a radical transformation to a holistic lifestyle and wrote several New Age-influenced books.

While economists debate whether the United States may be in a recession, a majority of Americans have already decided that economic hard times are here. Nearly three out of five said their incomes were falling behind the rising cost of living in a respected national survey taken in recent weeks. The Pew Research Center poll found several factors driving this economic pessimism: concerns about rising prices of energy and health care, the availability of jobs and problems in the housing market.