Partners

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

Violinist Ellen Pendleton Troyer has struggled for years with the constraints of wearing evening attire for physical, sometimes-strenuous performances. And she considers herself luckier than her male counterparts, who have a stricter dress code of bow ties and evening jackets adorned with tails. "Our issues with the dress stem from a functionality standpoint," said Troyer, who plays first violin with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. "What we do is quite physical. There is a lot of sweating under the hot lights.

After months of delays, the owners of Northwoods restaurant in Annapolis have scrapped plans to buy the recently closed Rustic Inn restaurant on West Street and convert it to a steak house.Gonzalo Fernandez and Russell Brown, owners of Northwoods on Melvin Avenue, had planned to open their second restaurant and call it Westwoods, but said they tired of waiting for Rustic Inn owner Ronald J. Dalgliesh to solve his financial woes."We spent way too much money for nothing," Fernandez said yesterday.

The O'Malley administration has notified state employees in same-sex relationships that they won't be able to include domestic partners in their health insurance anymore. If they want coverage, they'll have to get married. The policy change is the result of the new Maryland law allowing same-sex marriage, which took effect Jan. 1. The thinking is that offering health coverage to an unmarried same-sex partner doesn't make sense anymore, officials said, particularly since an unmarried heterosexual partner doesn't have the same right.

Colliers International, a commercial real estate firm headquartered in Columbia, named partners Matthew Haas, SIOR, and Kevin Haus managing directors and principals. Haas and Haus specialize in leasing and selling office and flex real estate throughout the Baltimore region. Haas, of Stevenson, previously was vice president of Manekin LLC after serving as president of Haas Tailoring Company, his family business. CoStar recognized Haas as Power Broker of the Year for four straight years, and the Baltimore Business Journal recognized him among the Top 25 Real Estate Brokers in Baltimore for seven years.

The Eldersburg-based company, Partnership and Inspiration for Engineering Education and Entrepreneurship (or PIE-3) recently formed a partnership with South Carroll High School to help the school form a robotics team that will eventually complete in sanctioned robotics events. PIE-3 program coordinator Thomas Milnes, has already begun working to provide materials, and has met with school advisor Sean Lee. The firm is also helping provide funds for competition kits that the students will use to create robots.

Since at least August, some concertgoers have been traveling to Merriweather Post Pavilion by way of the party bus company Rock & Bus. Today the concert venue formally announced a partnership. Rock & Bus, which also offers "luxury tailgate travel" to Madison Square Garden in New York and M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, will be the venue's official shuttle service. Tickets for an upcoming round trip, say, to see Incubus, cost $40. The buses have pick-up stops in Maryland, Virginia and the District.

A partnership hoping to buy the bingo license held by a businessman with reputed ties to organized crime figures pledged yesterday to make an honest business out of his Brooklyn Park bingo hall."

Salesmen, a pair of brothers, an unresolved relationship with a father. These may sound like the makings of an Arthur Miller play. But in this case, the play is Paul Bogas' Partners, the final entry in this summer's Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Miller is a tough precedent to follow, but a solid one, and Bogas is definitely on terra firma with this account of Harry and Sammy Waldman, two discontented, middle-aged brothers. For more than a quarter century, Harry has been running his late father's hat store in Brooklyn.

The Baltimore law firm of Weinberg and Green suffered a major defection yesterday as three partners announced they would leave the firm, including the head of Weinberg's banking and commercial law group and the head of its bankruptcy practice.Stanford D. Hess, Deborah Devan and Stanley Neuhauser will join Neuberger, Quinn, Gielen, Rubin & Gibber, a 15-lawyer firm founded in 1989 and populated by lawyers who also left larger firms.Mr. Hess is the second present or former member of Weinberg's five-person executive committee to leave the firm this fall.

Two weeks after Beverly Poyer married her husband in 2007, he was deployed to Afghanistan. When he came home a year later, she was thrust into a role she hadn't expected: caregiver. Army Spc. Max Poyer, exposed to frequent mortar blasts in Afghanistan, suffered brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Now the life the Southern Maryland couple had planned - to finish college, buy a house and have more children - had to be redefined. That's when Beverly Poyer, 32, found a new calling: helping military families overcome emotional battle scars and transition back to civilian life.

Arthur W. Machen Jr., a retired attorney who was also the chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and a legal advocate for the poor, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The former Ruxton resident was 92. A well-respected corporate lawyer, he helped 1950s Baltimore Colts players Gino Marchetti and Alan Ameche incorporate their food businesses, and he often espoused liberal causes. "His range was enormous," said a legal colleague, Alan Yarbro of Ruxton.

On Monday, Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler is expected announce a partnership with Facebook on a national campaign to educate teens and parents about safety and privacy when using social media. Gansler, president of the National Association of Attorneys General, will discuss the initiative as he kicks off the NAAG Presidential Initiative Summit, "Privacy in the Digital Age. " The summit is being held at National Harbor, in southern Prince George's County. According to a release from the attorney general's office, the goal of the summit is to bring together attorneys general and representatives of the information technology industry, government and education and others to explore privacy risks and how to limit them.

I found Dan Rodricks ' column on Dr. Ben Carson jaded and biased ("Ben Carson's biblically based conservatism," March 31). Mr. Rodricks accused Dr. Carson of making homophobic remarks, but it was just his opinion that the remarks were homophobic in nature. Mr. Rodricks should write a column every week denouncing those who oppose gay marriage for their anti-gay bigotry. I believe that homosexuals should have the same rights as any other citizen. However, if they need to legalize their actions they should do so and call it something other than marriage.

Those of us who appear regularly in the North Avenue courthouse, where Baltimore City's domestic violence cases are heard, were already aware of the "spike" in domestic violence homicides noted recently by The Sun. We knew that some of those women had asked for the legal system's protection, and that some had not received it. But some of us also knew that even if they had gotten protective orders, or pressed charges, or participated in prosecution, those...

High Street Partners, a business software and services company based in Annapolis, said Monday it received $8 million in financing, the largest round of funding in its 10-year history. The company said it would use the proceeds raised from venture capital investors - Baird Capital, Sigma Partners and Gold Hill Capital - to accelerate the launch of applications in its HSPOverseasConnect platform. High Street's offers software and services that help companies with back-office operations, such as payroll.

The Baltimore law firm of Piper & Marbury said yesterday that it had hired three partners from Venable, Baetjer & Howard, including the head of that firm's taxation practice.The move represents a minor coup for Piper, which has boasted a strong corporate law section that has not been matched by its tax practice. At the same time, Venable's taxation section, once nationally known, is a fraction of the size it reached in its heyday in the mid-1980s.Venable partner Stephen L. Owen, 40, who chaired Venable's tax practice for several years, joined Piper Wednesday as a partner in that firm's tax section, which is headed by Larry Katz.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The law firm of legal gunslinger Melvin Belli is on the verge of breaking up after a squabble over admitting two lawyers to the partnership.In papers filed last week in San Francisco Superior Court, four of the 85-year-old lawyer's partners contend that he broke the partnership agreement by continuing to practice with an attorney they had rejected for partnership and then fired. They also say his son and partner, Caesar, wrongly stopped another lawyer from joining the firm.