Plaster

Nearly 30 years after the wreckers leveled Lexington Street's Valencia Theatre, this rococo plaster castle is getting some belated professional recognition.The Valencia was the work of John Eberson, a flamboyant architect who specialized in fantastic theaters. Eberson (1875-1954), born in Bukovina (now the U.S.S.R.), got his training in Dresden and Vienna. His specialty was the "atmospheric" theater -- essentially a large auditorium wherein the walls were built out to resemble castle battlements, Castillian patios and Turkish gardens, with a strong -- of Sunset Boulevard.

What are the season's hottest colors, and how do you properly incorporate them into your home? My season's hottest colors are a deep turquoise peacock and gray. I love turquoise peacock. Right now, I'm working on a master bedroom of a young couple who are world travelers who have been everywhere, including Morocco. In their bedroom, they have a lot of oversized wood furniture. I'm doing a finish on the wall that is an Americanized plaster version of tadelakt — a Moroccan plaster technique.

With its Louis Comfort Tiffany windows and Lombardy-Gothic design, the interior of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is one of the most handsome sanctuaries in Baltimore.But in recent weeks it has looked like a construction site, with scaffolding erected above the chancel to protect parishioners and clergy from falling plaster.The scaffolding will be up at least through the Christmas holidays, as restoration crews work to complete emergency repairs at the 137-year-old church, the fourth to stand at the southeast corner of Charles and Saratoga streets.

In the prop department at Center Stage , crew members have worked themselves to the bone for their latest production. They had to create nearly 200 realistic-looking skulls and 400 femur, humerus and radius bones — not to mention pelvises — needed for the run of Martin McDonagh's bleak and brilliant comedy, "A Skull in Connemara," which closes next weekend. At each performance, two actors go through a pulverization ritual in Act 2, seizing mallets and laying waste to three skulls and a handful of other human remains sitting on top of a big wooden table.

THE SKY MAY not be falling, but our ceilings are shaking.At home the other day, I looked up at what used to be a relatively smooth ceiling and saw that a chunk of plaster was missing. Immediately I had a suspect, our jumping, thumping teen-ager.He quickly confessed. He explained he had been out in the hallway and had slapped his hand against the ceiling when, for no reason at all, this chunk of plaster came loose and fell to the floor. He had meant to tell me about the incident, he said, but it had slipped his mind.

The constellations on the painted ceiling are falling in, the plaster on the walls is cracked and falling, but the spirit of the small band of congregants at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church is resilient. Lovely Lane in Charles Village is the mother church of American Methodism, a stunning architectural gem, built in 1884 by the architect Stanford White as the Centennial Monument to the Christmas Conference that started the Methodist church in this country. And a monument is exactly what the worshipers at Lovely Lane do not want, but what the church is in danger of becoming.

The politicians stopped talking.It wasn't that they had no proclamations to proclaim, no points to pontificate, no positions to make perfectly clear. It's just that their faces, at that moment, were frozen behind plaster casts -- all in the name of bringing elementary school civics lessons to life.If the goal of yesterday's exercise at Perry Hall Elementary School was to make lawmakers seem, well, human, it apparently worked. Said fifth-grader David DelGavio: "It's better than just looking at them thinking they're real high-up guys."

Vladimir Marinich's hand-painted holiday figurines come in a wide variety of styles - including Santa Claus golfing, fishing, wearing graduation robes and playing baseball for the Orioles. But they all serve one purpose: raising funds for a Howard Community College scholarship in honor of his late companion, nursing teacher Marion Durkan. The Howard Community College history professor started something of a holiday tradition at the school six years ago when he started offering his Santas, snowmen and other holiday figurines to support the Marion Durkan Memorial Endowment.

Who were those guys?Allen Plaster and Bobby Chouinard didn't exactly make names for themselves in the Orioles' farm system, and now they're gone to the Oakland Athletics for Harold Baines.The A's apparently decided to go for future rather thaimmediate help when they accepted right-handers Chouinard and Plaster for the veteran left-handed slugger.Both had losing records but impressive numbers while pitchinin Single-A last year. Both were repeat performers at that classification, with 85-mph fastballs.

On December 28, 2006, JOHN THOMAS TRUSLEY; beloved husband of Gaye Marie (nee Russell) and the late Margaret Junell (nee Kiser); devoted father of Sandy Lanza, Sherry Ayers, Wayne Plaster and the late Gene Plaster. Also survived by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A Funeral Service will be held at the family owned Duda-Ruck Funeral Home of Dundalk, Inc., 7922 Wise Avenue, on Tuesday at 11 A.M. Interment Gardens of Faith Cemetery. Friends may call on Monday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Expressions of sympathy may be made to The American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 43025, Baltimore, MD 21236.

Hurricanes Irene and Lee have created horrible flooding, damage, displacement and loss of life. Lives are forever changed by their fury.   North Baltimore, except for power outages and substantial property damage from falling trees, has been fortunate. At our house, a surprise leak in the flat kitchen roof occurred during Irene.  It was just a steady drip, drip, drip for a few days. By last Friday when someone came to take a look, he said that the corner of the ceiling was about to fall.

See the marble baseboard that matches the marble fireplace? Look again. Look closer. Unless you are on the floor, nose-to-vein with it, or touch it with your finger, you'll think that baseboard really is marble. But this is wood, a trompe l'oeil design handpainted and glazed, with green and cream veining to mimic the fireplace marble. "I love marbleized baseboards. It adds weight and character to a room," said its painter, Charlie MacSherry, who has a Baltimore decorative painting business.

My analysis of ethanol statistics last summer was close to perfect. I measured demand for the grain-derived fuel, calculated supply and concluded that "the industry has blown a nice little bubble for itself." Except - there is no ethanol "market." The ethanol business is driven by government planners, not freely acting buyers and sellers. I didn't consider opportunities to portray ethanol distilleries as weapons in the global war on terror. I forgot about the 2008 presidential election, in which farm-state pandering will be crucial.

On December 28, 2006, JOHN THOMAS TRUSLEY; beloved husband of Gaye Marie (nee Russell) and the late Margaret Junell (nee Kiser); devoted father of Sandy Lanza, Sherry Ayers, Wayne Plaster and the late Gene Plaster. Also survived by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A Funeral Service will be held at the family owned Duda-Ruck Funeral Home of Dundalk, Inc., 7922 Wise Avenue, on Tuesday at 11 A.M. Interment Gardens of Faith Cemetery. Friends may call on Monday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Expressions of sympathy may be made to The American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 43025, Baltimore, MD 21236.

SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the most wanted men in San Francisco - if he is a man - has no known name, no known mug shot and one very efficient sticker machine. For several months, the police say, someone has been plastering the city's walls, public phones and newspaper boxes with postcard-size stickers reading "BNE" in big black letters. Sometimes the stickers also have Japanese script that translates to "visit" or "come to." All of which makes for an amusing curiosity for pedestrians, but it has left city officials quite unhappy.

Dressed in rustic overalls and a red baseball hat, a terrapin stands in a field of vibrant sunflowers. Soon the plaster statue will be on display outside Symons Hall, home to classrooms in which University of Maryland, College Park students learn about the latest farming technologies. Though an academic setting may seem an unlikely one for a reptile, the sculpture's creator drew inspiration from the university's own history. "Maryland started out as an agriculture college," said John Nickerson, a 1985 university graduate and the terrapin's creator.

We're getting there. After weeks of demolition, tearing out both ugly "modernizations" and crumbling original walls and ceilings, and after a week or so of repairing structural flaws that have been there since the building went up, we're finally getting ready to start putting our rehab house back together.Like most of Baltimore's rowhouses, this one is brick, front, back and sides. Originally all the walls were plaster over brick (on exterior walls and party walls), and plaster over lath (on interior partition walls)

Q: Our teen-age daughter had a plantar wart on the sole of her foot for a long time. It didn't seem to bother her. Now she's getting another one on the ball of her foot. It hurts when she walks. Should it be treated? How?A: Warts on the bottom of the foot need be treated only if they are painful. It sounds like your daughter's has reached that point. The wart is pressed inward during walking, leading to pain. In addition, walking can stimulate further growth of the wart.There are a number of treatments for warts.

Herman C. Bell, a retired plasterer and World War II veteran who followed the Maryland racing scene, died of dementia Sunday at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 93 and had lived in Carney for many years. Born in Baltimore and raised on Dillon Street in Canton, he attended school until the eighth grade. He developed a love of horses as a young man and won an amateur riding trophy at age 17. He trained and owned horses, one named Star Turn. Throughout his life, he had an affection for Pimlico, and he attended the annual Maryland Million.

As City Councilman Robert W. Curran was holding a hearing at City Hall a year ago, a large chunk of plaster fell off the ceiling, landed with thud on the carpet and changed the way city officials viewed their venerable workplace. "I mean, at least it wasn't a well-attended meeting," said Curran, who said he made light of the incident at the time. "But it made a horrendous sound and, of course, it shattered." A year ago, portions of the 130-year-old City Hall were literally falling down, a result of water damage caused by the building's leaky slate roof.