Neighbors

Tuscany-Canterbury's long-standing aggravation with the lone fraternity house in its midst has come to an end, Baltimore's zoning board ruled last night. Phi Kappa Psi, among the last of the Johns Hopkins University's Greeks with a true fraternity house, has lost the right to remain in the mansion at 3906 Canterbury Road, its home for about 30 years. The zoning board unanimously agreed, after a heated two-hour hearing, that the fraternity cannot remain grandfathered in the residential neighborhood after it vacated the property for more than a year to fix a laundry list of code violations.

It was a sunny Saturday that began normally enough. It just didn't last. The first hint came as I was using a small portable car vacuum that plugs into the dashboard socket to suck up the dust and dirt from my wife Liz's car. To get the thing to work, I had to put my car key in the ignition and turn it to get electricity. So far so good. I finished, locked the car and realized that the key was still inside, draining juice from the battery. Then I realized I had locked the front door of the house behind me and Liz was in the shower.

President Bush's message on Iraq last night was that Congress and the nation should give American troops the chance to win. The new general in charge of the Iraq effort, the well-regarded David H. Petraeus, told a Senate committee yesterday he believes he can find a way to make the small-scale American escalation work. But this misses the essential point: The mess in Iraq is not the consequence of an ineffective military strategy. It is a political problem. It stems from the hostility between Sunni and Shiite forces, from the weakness of the Iraqi government - and from the inability of the U.S. to address either.

WHAT HAPPENS to a neighborhood when a group home opens? Often, nothing.Police surveyed throughout the Baltimore metropolitan area said group homes do not increase crime. Officers' rare visits to group homes are to quell domestic disturbances that might occur in any neighborhood. Yet intense fear of group homes persists.Some people in Hamilton in northeast Baltimore wanted someone to step in two years ago to block nonprofit operator Forward Motion from opening a group home for troubled teens.

Peter Kahl's two-year fight to save his Glen Arm snake-breeding operation went to Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday as lawyers squared off over the fate of his $500,000-a-year business.Attorneys for Kahl's neighbors -- who say his 50- by-100-foot breeding barn could damage their property values -- argue that his operation is only permitted in business zones where pet stores and other commercial uses are allowed."He's stretching the definition of agriculture to suit himself," said Carole Demilio, who argued the case with J. Carroll Holzer.

Late at night, tractor-trailers rumbled in behind a row of warehouses in Jessup and delivered mysterious cargo that was quickly spirited into Ace International.That caught the attention of neighbors perplexed by irregular deliveries and secretive handling of supposed perfume shipments."We really thought they were running guns or drugs," said Rob Wilson, president of Benchmark Industries, a neighboring business. "It just wasn't right."He was close to the mark. It was marijuana -- by the ton.On Tuesday, the last of three suspects arrested in December by a federal-led task force in connection with the fictitious Ace International pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt on conspiracy charges stemming from one of the largest marijuana rings busted in Maryland.

Late at night, tractor-trailers rumbled in behind a row of warehouses in Jessup and delivered mysterious cargo that was quickly spirited into Ace International.That caught the attention of neighbors perplexed by irregular deliveries and secretive handling of supposed perfume shipments."We really thought they were running guns or drugs," said Rob Wilson, president of Benchmark Industries, a neighboring business. "It just wasn't right."He was close to the mark. It was marijuana -- by the ton.On Tuesday, the last of three suspects arrested in December by a federal-led task force in connection with the fictitious Ace International pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to conspiracy charges stemming from one of the largest marijuana rings busted in Maryland.

The front porch of Lynn Supp's 92-year-old Victorian-style house in the country used to overlook a corn and wheat field. When she noticed this summer that it had been left to weeds, she figured the rumors were true about a different kind of plant coming in.Sweetheart Cup Co. held its ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday to celebrate the new 1.034-million-square-foot distribution center to be built just outside Hampstead, off Houcksville Road, across from...

Gene, Charles and Judy Iager live in the same Fulton community that people like Harry Brodie, Peter Oswald, John Adolphsen and hundreds of others call home. They're neighbors, and some of them see each other at church on Sundays. These days, however, they're not very neighborly.This week a public trial of sorts will begin for the planned development of hundreds of acres of Iager family farmland into nearly 1,200 homes -- a project that would not only change the neighborhood, it would dwarf it.On Wednesday night, the Howard County Council will begin holding weeks of public hearings, and many neighbors plan to voice their opposition to the proposal.

IN MANY PLACES, the prospect of turning 60 acres of open space into a subdivision of 150 homes usually generates instant opposition. Neighbors of C. Earle Mace's Baltimore Airpark in northeastern Baltimore County seem resigned, however, to losing this airstrip to new housing."

Beans & Bread, a soup kitchen in Fells Point, feeds 300 people a day. That's not expected to change, even if Beans & Bread wins city approval to build an addition. What would change is that the people who already line up for food would get to queue up inside the building instead of out on the sidewalk. Some of them would have a place to shower and wash their clothes. The expansion would also give Beans & Bread staff offices rather than cubicles, so when they're trying to help someone find services for, say, AIDS treatment, they can discuss that in private.

A man and woman were found shot to death early Wednesday in a house on a quiet Annapolis street that was preparing for a neighborhood July 4th celebration, and police arrested a suspect late Wednesday night. The Associated Press reported that Elbert Gardner, 56, was charged late Wednesday night in the slayings. Police say he lived in the basement of the home where the two victims were found and that he confessed to both killings. The victims were found together shortly before 5:30 a.m. in a small, beige house on Goodrich Road in the Admiral Heights neighborhood, just west of the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

What does it take to build public will to protect children? A successful campaign to address a human need or a societal problem often begins with a person, a group or a neighborhood deciding to get involved. The starvation death of 2-year-old Andrew Patrick Griffin in Rodgers Forge and this month's sentencing of his parents have slipped out of the headlines in the wake of two tragic family annihilations in Maryland. These incidents could be symptoms of a level of social disconnectedness that has pervaded our society over the past few decades and continues to grow.

Police swarmed the Crofton neighborhood, knocking on doors and questioning residents, but there was one thing they didn't mention: Earlier that day a little girl had been lured away from a playground and raped. The reason, police say, is that if the suspect had known police were investigating the attack, he might have destroyed evidence or fled. "The reason we did this was not to be secretive," said Sgt. Sara Schriver, who supervised the case. "The reason we did this was to protect the integrity of the investigation."

Concerns raised recently about crime statistics in North Baltimore demonstrate serious deficits in one of the city's major crime-fighting tools: communication. It is easier to track your neighborhood pothole than local break-ins, suspicious persons or armed incidents. Crime stats are posted only after someone has been victimized - and usually weeks after the fact. Why is it so difficult to forewarn citizens who may be in the line of fire from area thugs? Or has Baltimore succumbed to the theory that everyone is already in danger and thugs are everywhere, so we'd all better keep our collective guard up?

The words "tight-knit" can be overused when describing a community, but not in Relay, where neighbors have formed their own book and card-playing clubs. Residents get together in the Baltimore suburb for the "Victorian Tea" in the spring and for community day in the fall. They take turns as hosts of the monthly covered-dish dinner. Faith Hermann borrowed an egg recently from her neighbor, who in turn took some butter. She has lived in her 1911 home for the past 20 years. "I like being in Relay because of the people," said Hermann, who lives with her husband, William, and enjoys sitting on her home's wraparound porch.

On a quiet, wooded street of well-kept homes, Erin Alban's front yard is a sight to behold - but for all the wrong reasons, her Howard County neighbors said. Stuffed animals and signs, some with religious slogans, cover virtually the entire yard, the house and the carport. Used-car-lot-style pennants run between trees. Plastic reindeer. Smiley faces painted on the driveway. Lampshades tied to bushes. And, protruding from what had been the mailbox support, a bent plastic middle finger.

On my street I have many neighbors, but in recent days my attention has been focused on two who are not people. They are large tracts of trees and fields, set aside long ago to offer city dwellers green space for recreation, enjoyment and health. Last Tuesday's Sun brought me photos of both my neighbors, in typical poses. One photo showed a man enjoying the sunny weather by batting a tennis ball against a faded cement wall; the second featured a businesswoman by a high chain-link fence, behind which stretched trees, open fields, and a stream.

The bodies of two adults and two teenagers were discovered last night in a home in Cockeysville by a 17-year-old boy who lived at the home, Baltimore County Police said. The dead were discovered shortly after 5 p.m. when the boy, who had spent the previous night with friends, returned home in the 10900 block of Powers Avenue. Upon entering the home, the boy saw one of the bodies and returned to his friends, who were still outside, and police were called, said Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the Baltimore County Police.

SAN DIEGO -- In Rancho Bernardo, ground zero for the Witch wildfire that burned more than 1,700 homes in San Diego last month, neighbors are adjusting to the "new normal." Firetrucks have given way to street sweepers, utility vans and contractors. Signs thanking the firefighters are being replaced with ads for power washing and something called a smokeater, an industrial-strength air purifier. Neighbors are walking dogs, pruning roses, feeding finches and skateboarding. They've done their best to clean up - hauling away downed trees and charred cars, sweeping, raking and scrubbing the signs of destruction.