National Geographic

Stroll with Lynn Abercrombie through her clapboard house on the West River and check out the alabaster mask from Yemen, the head-to-toe woman's cloak from Afghanistan, the smoking implements from Egypt and the shrunken head from Ecuador. You'll see mementos of a life the retired photographer, a Shady Side resident, never set out to lead. "Oh, heavens, no! When I was a girl, if you went to Canada, it was a big deal," says Abercrombie, 81, who grew up in rural Minnesota and ended up seeing and chronicling the world with her husband, the late National Geographic photographer-journalist Tom Abercrombie.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Gil Grosvenor reminisced about his years at the top of the National Geographic Society last week, several times he began a sentence like this: "What's most fun about this job is "Only, each time the sentence ended differently.In order, the most fun was accompanying National Geographic divers to the site of an ancient shipwreck off the Dominican Republic, or watching the magazine's remarkable photographers at work in the field, or hearing firsthand accounts of National Geographic Society explorations from the lips of legendary scientists with names such as Fossey and Leakey and Cousteau.

Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. and the National Geographic Society said yesterday that they are teaming up to offer a nationwide after-school program that would give latch-key kids a place to learn and have fun until their parents get off work.Held in school facilities from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., the Sylvan/National Geographic After School program is scheduled to get under way early next year with pilot programs in the Baltimore area and possibly in Los Angeles."If there's one problem with programs existing today, they tend to be places to leave kids where you know they'll be safe as opposed to educational programs or enriching programs," Douglas L. Becker, co-chief executive officer of Sylvan, said from his headquarters in Baltimore.

It sounds incomprehensible. Someone must have gotten the facts wrong. But, no. Roff Martin Smith really did it. He took a trip, a 10,000-mile excursion, on a bicycle.He did it in Australia. Through some harsh Outback territory. Fighting off flies, snakes and ants. Dodging dingoes, kangaroos and wombats. Pedaling through strong head winds and temperatures that sometimes soared to 120 degrees."Some people did ask me if I was crazy," says Smith. Crazy or not, Smith says he is a changed man after his trip.

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ -- The Arkansas River begins in which state? (Answer below) Quiz answer (FROM ABOVE) Colorado. Questions from the National Geographic Bee, a program of the National Geographic Society.

The average person carries around several pounds of bacteria, most of which are not harmful. -- National Geographic's The New Everyday Science Explained

"Chesapeake Circle" by Robert Burgess and "Fort McHenry: Home of the Brave," by Norman Rukert. Sea history and yatching magazines, the National Geographic, these are the kind of things I read.JoAnne Ditch,Inner Harbor dockmaster,Baltimore City