Neighbors

An angry, hammer-wielding group of neighbors last night attacked and injured a Baltimore man who police said robbed a couple in West Baltimore.Police said robbery and assault charges were pending against Brian Wendell Vandiver, 28, of the 3800 block of Grantley Road.No assault charges were pending against the neighbors who attacked Mr. Vandiver, said police spokesman Doug Price.Mr. Vandiver was arrested after Effrim Guice of Hampton, Va., and Nicole Barber of Baltimore were robbed of cash, car keys and Mr. Guice's driver's license in the 1900 block of Edmondson Ave.During a struggle, Mr. Guice was grazed in the head by a bullet fired by Mr. Vandiver, police said.

Martin Day cringes every time he looks across the street at his grandmother's old home.His automatic response is not prompted by the peeling paint or sagging door frame. Nor does Day have any painful childhood memories that cause him to flinch when he glances out the window at the family homestead.A large, white sign posted to the right of the ramshackle house in Glen Burnie is the source of the 34-year-old's daily irritation.The placard informs neighbors and passersby that the property owners, Alexander and Eldora Graboski, are seeking a zoning variance to build clustered town houses on the 1.38-acre site off Glen Oak Lane, an extremely narrow, short street between Lee's Oldsmobile and Maple Lane.

Bruno Reich says his decade-long home restoration project using granite stones and marble from an abandoned 19th-century manor is a work of beauty in progress.But his Wilde Lake village neighbors view Mr. Reich as a dreamer and see his project at Hyla Brook Road and Pasture Gate Lane as a violation of Columbia's architectural guidelines, saying it looks like a cross between a junkyard and a graveyard.And now neighbors in the Birches community, directly north of the lake, say they have even more reason for concern: Last week, Wilde Lake's Architectural Committee granted permission for Mr. Reich to operate an in-home architecture and contracting business.

YOUR next-door neighbor just shot up a school/office/day-care center. Any comment?" "I thought he was pretty nice . . . But then again, I knew that his beliefs were way out of line. They were good neighbors, but, well, I got blue eyes, so I guess that helps." -- Meda VanDyke on her neighbor, neo-Nazi murderer Buford Furrow"He used to say, `They're watching me through your satellite dish.' I'd tell him, `No, no, Rusty, no, they aren't watching you.' I tried to convince him, but it made no difference.

A Westminster man accused of threatening two neighbors with a pistol after he was asked to turn down loud music is being held in lieu of $50,000 bail at Carroll County Detention Center.Garland D. "Hank" Powers, 53, is charged with two counts each of first-degree assault and reckless endangerment and three weapons counts.Charging documents said a woman living in a Sullivan Road apartment building went to a fellow resident's door to request that the music be turned down.The woman said the man refused and yelled, drawing the attention of another neighbor in the building, the report said.

Neighbors of Francis Scott Key High School are appealing a decision allowing the school to discharge effluent from a new septic waste treatment plant to a tributary of Little Pipe Creek.The Maryland Department of the Environment approved a permit in April for the school to discharge up to 17,000 gallons of treated effluent daily into the unnamed stream.Bark Hill Road residents protested at a January public hearing that they should have been notified individually of the school system's plan.

Herbert Gates, recipient of what came to be known as "Meals on Feet," a network of generous neighbors who cooked him dinners so he could continue living at home, died Monday of cancer. He was 57.Eight women from his Eldersburg neighborhood in Carroll County delivered home-cooked meals to his house for more than a year. They began after his wife, Carol, was diagnosed as having bone cancer. As she suffered through the final stages of her disease, Mr. Gates learned he had inoperable cancer.Like his wife, who died at home, Mr. Gates wanted to stay in his house on Tamarack Circle as long as he could.

According to county zoning regulations, a homeowner can build a tennis court on the front lawn regardless of how annoying it is to neighbors across the street.But start giving tennis lessons on that court and those neighbors can cause you trouble.Robert Anderman learned that lesson the hard way after building a tennis court and then giving tennis lessons on the front of his 3-acre parcel off Route 97 in Glenwood.The regulations say he can build a tennis court for his own personal use on his lot even if his neighbors across the street may be annoyed.

The $7.50 an hour Charles Glaser earns driving a propane truck never provided extravagant Christmas presents for his wife and son.But with the unexpected burden of thousands of dollars in medical bills for a back injury this year, Glaser had to ask for help from the Neighbors in Need program to have any kind of holiday, he said."

Pat Jeddock just adores purple. Purple ice trays and purple window shades. A purple picket fence and heart-shaped purple petunias. And, oh yes, a Charles Village house that's as purple (well, it's really more of a dark lavender) as possible."Purple's been my favorite color ever since I can remember," says Ms. Jeddock, 29, while beating the summer heat in her purple flip-flops. "Eventually, inside and out, the house is going to be purple."But neighbors talk, and the talk around the Jeddock house at 32nd Street and Abell Avenue has not been at all complimentary.