New Cards

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.

Consumers who have Giant-branded Visa credit cards must apply for new cards this month to continue receiving rebates when they purchase items at Giant Food Inc.The grocery store chain said it has reached an agreement with Chevy Chase Bank to offer new Visa credit cards to customers, replacing the M&T Bank of Buffalo's cards.M&T said last fall it was pulling out of its contract with Giant. Giant sued M&T to stop it from dropping the card in December. At a court hearing, M&T agreed to continue offering the rebates until Chevy Chase takes over.

It's back, a year early, bigger and smaller than before.Sports Collectors Digest has added 68 pages to its "1996 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards," but lighter paper makes its 1,214 pages less hefty than the 1995 edition.The catalog is usually published every two years, but Krause Publications says it brought out its fifth edition a year early to reflect current market trends and to add more than 200 previously unlisted sets. The newly listed sets include regional issues.Phone cards are listed for the first time.

How old is the report card used in Carroll elementary schools?Older than some teachers.So old that Dorothy "Dottie" Mangle, director of elementary education, isn't even sure how old."This report card is the only [one] I remember," she said. "I've been in the school system 25 years."But that card is changing, as educators and parents prepare a new kind of card in time for the school board to vote Wednesday night.The board will vote on a version to be used as a one-year pilot program in grades one and two at four schools: Carrolltowne, Eldersburg, Manchester and Mechanicsville elementaries.

Even Bill Haelig is boggled.For the past 11 years, Haelig has compiled a checklist of Cal Ripken collectibles -- everything from cards to watches and magazine covers. But the plethora of insert sets and commemorative cards featuring Ripken that have been issued in 1995 and 1996 has him shaking his head."My problem is just keeping up with all the new issues," he says.He says the sheer number of new cards, as well as the number that are listed by Beckett for $100 or more, has changed his collecting habits.

In the new report cards for some Carroll first- and second-graders, the card is only part of the report.More important, say teachers and parents who have developed the new report card, is a 30-minute parent-teacher conference in November.The conference will replace what otherwise would have been the first report card. Teachers say when first report cards normally come out in October, they're just getting to know the students.At the conference, parents will receive a checklist from the teacher that indicates the child's progress, strengths and weaknesses.

There was no World Series in 1994. But there were World Series baseballs -- and they have become popular collectibles.According to Scott Smith, director of marketing services for Rawlings, which manufactures the balls for Major League Baseball, the balls sold as souvenirs are identical to the ones put in play.Smith says these are sold to authorized Rawlings sporting goods dealers, who sometimes resell them to hobby dealers or sell them by mail order.He would not disclose production figures but says, "It is not a numbered collectible or a limited edition.

CHICAGO -- Never before has a set of trading cards had so many people with such extraordinarily high foreheads.And, outside of ads for the optical department at Sears, rarely has there been such an extensive display of thick-framed eyeglasses.It is sometimes lamented that trading cards lost their innocence when children began looking at them as investments, as economic instruments. But it is difficult to look at, say, the brand-new R. H. Coase trading card and see it from anything but an economic perspective.

NEW YORK -- Warning: Keep an eagle eye on your mail.Thieves are targeting postal deliveries in the hope of snaring Social Security and welfare checks, as well as phone and credit cards.They are also looking for bank statements or other financial information, such as Social Security numbers, that could help them loot a bank account.Consider the antics of Phillip Kousnetsov and Yuri Kosnogov. As the pair walked out of an East Side Manhattan apartment building last July, federal postal inspectors followed them to their car. Once inside, the authorities nabbed them.

There's always something new from Hallmark, the sappy, greeting-card people, and this year is no exception. This year's ground-breaking innovation is: Mother's Day cards that let you record a 10-second message to Mom and play a clip of the song that's apparently become synonymous with motherhood, Tag Team's "Whoomp! There It Is." OK, maybe you're thinking: Gee, I didn't know that song was big with mothers. Well, neither did I. In fact, I seem to recall lyrics about shaking derrieres and swilling gin and juice and puff- ing something stronger than a Marlboro Light.

First, Ray Ascheman paid the $132.50 cost of the new security ID. Then the Minnesota trucker proved who he was with a driver's license and a second identity card. At last, he was fingerprinted, minus the messy ink, pressing his digits on a scanner plate. It is not just the longshoremen along the waterfront who must register for a long-delayed federal ID required by the Transportation Security Administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trucking farm equipment in and out of the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, Ascheman is one of up to 25,000 workers at the port who will be subject to more thorough background checks as they apply for the new Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, cards.

First there was reality TV, a vast entertainment wasteland that demeaned all who participated and dulled the minds of millions of Americans and turned a grinning mannequin like Ryan Seacrest into an international celebrity. Then came reality videos on the Internet, and suddenly you could click on YouTube and MySpace and see everything from Girls Gone Wild on South Padre Island to Michael Richards doing his Klansman impersonation in a comedy club to a blotchy Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck dropping through a gallows trap door.

The crash of the American baseball card industry became official yesterday in a lawyer's office in New Jersey. Twenty-five years after breaking the Topps Co. Inc.'s monopoly on the industry, Fleer Corp. - bankrupt and $33 million in debt to a list of creditors, including $12,800 to Cal Ripken Jr. - was expected to be sold at auction last night, the most visible casualty of a pastime that has suffered sharp declines and a significant demographic shift over the past decade. What was once a hobby for boys, who stuck cards in the spokes of their bikes or flipped them on neighborhood playgrounds, has become an exclusive marketplace for adults.

The crash of the American baseball card industry became official yesterday in a lawyer's office in New Jersey. Twenty-five years after breaking the Topps Co. Inc.'s monopoly on the industry, Fleer Corp. - bankrupt and $33 million in debt to a list of creditors, including $12,800 to Cal Ripken Jr. - was expected to be sold at auction last night, the most visible casualty of a pastime that has suffered sharp declines and a significant demographic shift over the past decade. What was once a hobby for boys, who stuck cards in the spokes of their bikes or flipped them on neighborhood playgrounds, has become an exclusive marketplace for adults.

Since Otar Left Unrated; Score ***1/2 Contrived dialogue can lead believable characters and plots astray and ruin everything in its path. Thankfully there's a flip side, displayed most beautifully in Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left, a gem in which fictional characters become human by talking as real people really talk. Otar tells the story of three generations of Georgian women - Eka, her daughter Marina and her granddaughter Ada - who live in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet republic.

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.

Consumers who have Giant-branded Visa credit cards must apply for new cards this month to continue receiving rebates when they purchase items at Giant Food Inc.The grocery store chain said it has reached an agreement with Chevy Chase Bank to offer new Visa credit cards to customers, replacing the M&T Bank of Buffalo's cards.M&T said last fall it was pulling out of its contract with Giant. Giant sued M&T to stop it from dropping the card in December. At a court hearing, M&T agreed to continue offering the rebates until Chevy Chase takes over.

In the new report cards for some Carroll first- and second-graders, the card is only part of the report.More important, say teachers and parents who have developed the new report card, is a 30-minute parent-teacher conference in November.The conference will replace what otherwise would have been the first report card. Teachers say when first report cards normally come out in October, they're just getting to know the students.At the conference, parents will receive a checklist from the teacher that indicates the child's progress, strengths and weaknesses.