Make Maryland

Bigger doesn't mean better for Illinois, which has followed three outstanding guards, none taller than 6 feet 3, to a 28-0 record, 12 weeks atop the polls and a serious run at history. Major college basketball's last unbeaten was Indiana, in 1976. As convenient as it is to seize that bit of Big Ten inspiration, the stylistic muses are harder to find for the Fighting Illini, but one can be found in the same era. A recent Sports Illustrated article traces the current emphasis on perimeter play to Arizona, where Lute Olson took a three-guard attack to the 1994 Final Four, but that view is a tad shortsighted.

Wending their way into a crowded Maryland House of Delegates hearing room yesterday, the four 16-year-olds were worried they'd face tough questions from legislators. The bill the girls conceived and came to Annapolis to support would widen the pool of bone marrow donors by lowering the eligible age to 16, with parental consent. Minority patients have a particularly hard time finding donors and the girls, who are all African-American, are keenly aware of that. But it's a technical, medical subject, not a feel-good symbolic issue that politicians can support without much thought.

Wending their way into a crowded Maryland House of Delegates hearing room yesterday, the four 16-year-olds were worried they would face tough questions from legislators. The bill the girls conceived and came to Annapolis to support would widen the pool of bone marrow donors by lowering the eligible age to 16, with parental consent. Minority patients have a particularly hard time finding donors and the girls, who are African-American, are keenly aware of that. But it is a technical, medical subject, not a feel-good symbolic issue that politicians can support without much thought.

When the House of Delegates convenes today, it will observe a 300-year-old tradition distinctive among the world's legislative bodies. Mary K. Monahan, chief clerk of the House, will carefully withdraw a 2-foot long "speaker's mace" of wood and silver from a State House vault and place it in its cradle on the lower rostrum of the marble-walled chamber -- marking the start of the 418th session of the General Assembly with a flourish that dates to 1698,...

Kendel Ehrlich pauses on her way into the Sheraton Hotel in Columbia and bends her head to listen to an aide before she gives a breakfast speech to the Howard County Chamber of Commerce. Then she takes a deep breath and strides ahead, painfully aware that she is out of bed far too early for an Ehrlich. It's a rare sunny day in a spring of rain, and Ehrlich, first lady of Maryland, wears a lime green suit, the hem four, maybe five, inches above her knees. She's tanned from a six-day vacation with her governor-husband, and stockingless.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - You know the old saw about lightning never striking twice? Forget it. Consider this copycat thunderbolt that has struck Maryland. Two years ago, Audrey and Allen Murray bought the castoff stallion Our Emblem from a prestigious Kentucky farm and moved him to their farm in Maryland. One year ago, the stallion's son, War Emblem, won the Illinois Derby, Kentucky Derby and Preakness, bringing fame to Our Emblem and fortune to the Murrays. Last year, Don Litz and two silent partners began standing the stallion Eastern Echo at a farm in Maryland.

Excerpts from Gov. Parris N. Glendening's State of the State address: For the eighth time I come before you to deliver the State of the State. But before I report to you on the progress we have made in the last year, I want to take just a moment and reflect on what we have accomplished. ... Eight years ago, Maryland was in the bottom 10 in job creation. By last year, we had overtaken 26 states to be ranked 15th in the nation. In the last eight years, the rate of violent crime committed with a gun in Maryland has dropped by 40 percent.

This year's Maryland Film Festival may go down as the year Baltimore's annual celebration of all things cinematic had to go it alone - and did just fine, thank you. Its first two years, the MFF kicked off with a never-seen Barry Levinson film and an Oscar-winning short subject; this year, it opened with a documentary by a member of the festival's advisory board. Although the four-day event always has focused on filmmakers rather than actors, previous festivals brought out such familiar faces as Giancarlo Esposito, Liev Schreiber, Jill Hennessy, even the Amazing Randi; except for festival mainstay John Waters, this past weekend brought nary a star to Baltimore.

Poke around the barns at Maryland racetracks and you won't find many horses worth more than the laid-back filly at Laurel Park named Xtra Heat. She's worth a million dollars if she's worth a dime. And she's for sale, although if she leaves the state the fans will miss her. It's not often that Maryland racing is graced by a horse of Xtra Heat's stature. A Daily Racing Form handicapper recently called her a win machine. She's won 10 of 11 races at six different tracks. Three times she's cruised up the interstate to New York and cleaned house.

Inside the state, it's no secret that the Maryland of today is a much-improved version of the Maryland of a decade ago. But it's taken awhile for the economic makeover that created this "New Maryland" to finally get some recognition from outside the state. Just last week, for instance, Maryland earned high marks in the 14th annual "Development Report Card" created by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development, which tries to foster economic development by working with state and local government agencies, private companies and other organizations in various roles.