Namesake

In a column several weeks ago concerning the proposed resumption of Chesapeake Bay ferry service, I mentioned the names of several well-known ferries that used to ply the route between Annapolis and the Eastern Shore. Several readers called inquiring as to the identity of John M. Dennis, for whom one of the ferries was named. "We recognize the names of Gov. Albert C. Ritchie and Gov. Emerson C. Harrington, but who was John M. Dennis?" a caller asked. John McPherson Dennis Sr. (1866-1936)

No one knows exactly what Marylou Whitney said last week to Maxwell Anderson, the director of the museum that bears her name -- except that he could fuggedabout the $1 million she was planning to give them. Whitney was offended by a work by Hans Haacke, which compares New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to a Nazi. Haacke's piece, called "Sanitation," is part of the Whitney Museum of American Art's biennial survey of contemporary art that opens March 23. "Sanitation" consists of a wall of garbage cans with speakers blaring the sound of marching jackboots.

IT'S ONLY four small buildings that are home to, among other things, goats, rabbits and tilapia. But it's a first for Gov. Parris N. Glendening.Next week, Garrett Community College in Western Maryland will have a ceremony to dedicate the complex as the "Parris N. Glendening Advanced Technology Center for Sustainable Land Use."The center's four buildings include two that are used for agriculture and aquaculture demonstration projects -- one for raising goats and rabbits, the other for tilapia, an African fish that has become a staple of American aquaculture.

THE HORSE THAT RAN in Wednesday afternoon's 10th race at Laurel was no ordinary entry. His name was Joe Kelly, proudly named after my father, the Joe Kelly who resides in the Guilford Avenue house that I so often recall.My father joined this newspaper in 1944 and soon began a lengthy career covering horse racing. One of my earliest childhood memories is the drive to Pimlico, over the spindly iron Belvedere Avenue Bridge to Old Hilltop. My father retains the same parking space today as he had in 1954, perhaps 1944.

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- In 1892, J. Fred Wolle, founder of the Bethlehem Choral Union in the Pennsylvania industrial town, presented chorus members with a daunting challenge: to learn Johann Sebastian Bach's "Mass in B Minor."It wasn't to be. Wolle's chorus performed the first American productions of Bach's "St. John Passion" in 1888 and "St. Matthew Passion" in 1892. But the titanic Mass defeated it. As Wolle later recalled, the "choir looked it over and their ardor wilted."So he got another choir.

He is listed as a "distant" relative of the former Baltimore Colts defensive great of the same name, but isn't sure how distant.Gino Marchetti (christened Michael Jay Marchetti) is playing football on a left knee that has undergone three operations and may prevent him from engaging next spring in rugby, a sport in which he was an All-American for the West End Rugby Club.But the Navy defensive end carries on in the family tradition (his father, also named Gino, was a running back at the academy)

TRENTON, N.J. -- The USS New Jersey now belongs to the state after which it is named.At a ceremony Wednesday on the steps of the War Memorial in Trenton, Gov. Whitman signed a proclamation formally taking from the Navy the title to its most decorated battleship."

The Derby is a raceof aristocratic sleekness,For horses of birth toprove their worthTo run in the Preakness.-- Ogden NashThe Preakness Stakes, which will be run at Pimlico Race Course today, can't help but evoke the specter of great horses. There have been many: Sir Barton, Citation, Whirlaway, Gallant Fox, War Admiral, Challedon, Count Fleet and Secretariat all conquered the challenging 1 3/16-mile course and passed into racing history."Inevitably, the Preakness and Derby are compared," Joseph B. Kelly, racing historian who was for many years racing editor of the now defunct Washington Star, wrote on the race's 100th anniversary in 1975.

Wynona M. Lipman, the first black woman elected to the New Jersey Senate and the longest-serving member of the upper house, died Sunday in Trenton, N.J., of cancer. She never disclosed her age; Democrats said she was about 70.Mrs. Lipman, first elected to the state Senate in 1971, had championed the causes of women, minorities, children and small businesses. Bills she had proposed that became law included measures to increase the penalties for adults who patronize child prostitutes and to expand the state's domestic violence laws to protect more victims and provide more services for children.

IF A GAS STATION, convenience store and car wash are built across from historic Waverly Mansion in western Howard County, what can we expect next: the golden arches beside the Statue of Liberty? Wal-Mart next to the White House? Disney World at a Civil War battlefield? Oh, scrap that last idea -- it's already been raised, and rebuked. It's senseless to sully a Marriottsville building that is on the National Register of Historic Places for the sake of a gas-and-go that could go elsewhere.