Pilot

Baltimore native Jason Winer knows something about family comedy. He's been an executive producer on ABC's "Modern Family" and won a Directors Guild Award for his direction of the hit series' Emmy Award-winning pilot. This week, "1600 Penn," a family sitcom about a fictional first family that he co-created, joins NBC's Thursday night lineup. (A sneak preview of the pilot aired in December.) On Wednesday, Winer and the cast will be guests at the real White House where the series will be screened for President Obama.

Sherri Ingram-Hudgins steps into the homeless resource center on U.S. 1 in Jessup on the cold, rainy afternoon after Christmas, just about two years to the day since she began her effort to help people living on the margins. The place has been open more than an hour and is already crowded with people stopping in to do laundry or use a computer, get a meal, maybe pick up donated clothing or canned goods. She walks into the meeting room she's been using for gatherings of a nonprofit organization she founded in the spring as a kind of experiment — giving small, direct cash grants to help people get a job, or a place to live, or perhaps to aid them in achieving better health or emotional well-being.

When you enter Julie Chang's world languages class at Waverly Elementary School in Ellicott City, you leave English at the door. Then, if you know the answer to a question and are told to " qing ju shou ," you raise your hand. If you're told, " bu shou hua ," then you must keep quiet. And if someone asks about the weather and it's sunny outside, you say, " yin tian . " Chang teaches Chinese, one of two languages offered in the Howard County school system's world languages pilot, which is in its second year at Laurel Woods and Waverly elementary schools.

Wherever he has lived, whatever he was doing, Kimball Byron has always been drawn back to his running roots in Western Maryland and a 50-mile race that recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Byron, now 57 and a commercial pilot, followed a family tradition started by his father, Goodloe, who represented Maryland's 6th congressional district in Congress before his death in 1978. The elder Byron began running the JFK 50-mile race in 1967. "I watched my dad leave one day and he was gone all day long, and I wondered where he was," said the younger Byron, who grew up in Frederick and now lives in Owings Mills.

Milton B. Sachse, a former trailer company executive who later was chairman of the board of the Association of Maryland Pilots, died Friday of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Lutherville resident was 92. Milton Boyd Sachse was born and raised in a home on Willow Avenue in Towson. He was a 1938 graduate of Towson High School. Mr. Sachse was working in the engineering department of the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River at the time of his enlistment in the Navy in 1943.

Baltimore native Jason Winer signed a new deal with 20th Century as NBC announced a premiere date for his sitcom, "1600 Penn," according to the trade publication Variety . The deal will keep the Friends School graduate writing-producing and directing at 20th Century Fox where he's been since 2007. During that time, he won a Directors Guild Award for his work on the pilot of "Modern Family," while an executive producer on that series. Winer's new series, "1600 Penn," will premiere Jan. 10 on what is now the top-ranked prime time network.

All 6,000 Baltimore educators will take part this year in testing a new teacher evaluation system that ties their effectiveness more closely to student performance, school officials announced this week. This system, tested in the city last year for 309 teachers, comes as preparation for the state's implementation of more rigorous evaluations next year. Two areas of the evaluations — both used to measure student performance — will account for 50 percent of a teacher's score: student growth and schoolwide factors called the school index.

Carroll County Public Library announced this week that the Westminster Library branch, 50 E. Main St., Westminster, is beginning Sunday operations, starting Oct. 7. The library will be open 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays through April 28 (closed December 23 and March 31). Library officials said the Sunday hours are a pilot project, made possible in partnership with the City of Westminster. Other hours at Westminster are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.; and Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.    

The National Weather Service has launched a pilot project in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas that aims to help local leaders better respond to weather emergencies, officials said Saturday. As part of the initiative, the weather service has added three specialists who will be available to staff local emergency centers, like the Maryland Emergency Management Agency's command center, during extreme weather events. Officials also plan to provide more information on how weather might impact society and how governments can prepare, better explanations of the possibilities within weather forecasts, and better maps of flood threats.

At Linden Market in Reservoir Hill, shelves are heaped high with miniature pies, cupcakes, and candy. Three dozen flavors of salty snacks burst from cardboard boxes. Around the corner at the Whitelock Community Farm, deep green leaves of chard fan from raised beds, cucumber vines wind up trellises and Japanese eggplants resembling glossy purple commas dangle from stalks. Beginning this week, the corner store and the farm, which are just a couple of blocks apart, will forge an unlikely partnership.