Plastic

CCL Biomedical, a start-up technology company, has opened shop in Havre de Grace, where it will seek commercial applications of a discovery made by its two founders while working at the University of Delaware. Nina Lamba and Stuart L. Cooper, who worked together as researchers at the university, founded the company. Lamba is a resident of Joppatowne and was doing postdoctorate work at the school. Cooper was a faculty member. Like many technology companies just starting out, CCL Biomedical's operations will be small.

ATLANTA - When my 13-year-old daughter gets finished with one video game, she's likely to take the disc out of the machine and toss it casually onto a table where the rest of her games are piled. I grew up carefully sliding vinyl long-playing records back into the paper sleeves, then gingerly slipping the paper sleeves into cardboard covers that had to be stacked meticulously onto shelves. Seeing my daughter tossing discs around makes me cringe. Game discs, CDs, DVDs and computer program discs are much tougher than vinyl records used to be, and discs are all my daughter knows.

Anything you can drill a hole in the bottom of can be a planter, according to English author Adam Caplin, a modern, madcap Johnny Appleseed, intent on stuffing every bit of urban flotsam and jetsam with greenery and flowers. In his new book "Planted Junk" (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2001), he and talented photographer Francesca Yorke show lovely plants spilling out of everything imaginable - from a threadbare Pirelli tire to a Rubbermaid wastebasket, or a hard hat turned upside down. Is this more landfill than landscape?

The newest section of the WB&A Trail cuts through a rural part of Odenton, a thin, neat mat of pavement on an old railroad bed. And as people drawn to the yet-to-be-opened path are discovering, it also bisects a sprawling and potentially dangerous mess: hundreds of tons of plastic debris strewn about. County officials, who started construction last spring on the new 2-mile segment, said they discovered the waste in July and don't know where it came from. The county spent about $47,000 to remove 230 tons of trash to make way for the trail section from Strawberry Lake Way in Piney Orchard to Patuxent Road.

Hannah Lerner certainly dressed the part yesterday for the Easter egg hunt at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, wearing bunny ears, a light pink jacket and matching colored gloves. She had just helped her family a day earlier celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim, but Hannah, who was born in China seven years ago, was at the zoo with her mother for the fourth consecutive year, getting their hands on some chocolate treats. Sharon Lerner of Pikesville makes sure Hannah celebrates all the Jewish and Chinese holidays.

A young woman waits demurely in a stark room. Before her on a table sit scissors and one half of a pair of Crocs. For the next two minutes and 35 seconds, as a jaunty Cole Porter score plays, she takes scissors to shoe, shredding the rubbery yellow thing into sad little slivers. The slivers she pulverizes in a blender. A smile never leaves her face. The dismemberment, enjoyed by more then 60,000 people on YouTube, comes compliments of the folks behind Ihatecrocs.com, an Internet site dedicated to the elimination of Crocs and those who think that their excuses for wearing them are viable.

Paper or plastic? That question may be a tough call for some grocery shoppers, but it doesn't faze at least one local artist whose work just went on display in a provocative new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Maren Hassinger chose both paper and plastic for the works she created for The Janet & Walter Sondheim Finalists: Artscape at the BMA, a juried exhibit featuring six visual artists who are vying for a $25,000 prize to support their careers....

Out of the mouths of babes come trends: Believe it or not, th pacifier may be this year's hot accessory.Anyone past puberty wearing or using one isn't regressing, but being fashion-forward.Pacifiers and peace pendants hang side by side in local teen accessory stores -- and some kids admit to scouring baby departments for the right touch.Do pacifiers signify a yearning for inner peace in the youth of the '90s? Nah, they're more of a fad than a philosophy.Young sales clerks at Contempo track pacifiers to rap and Public Enemy's Flavor Flav.

Q. I am looking for a large shrub to plant in a shady area and came across a plant called the bottlebrush buckeye. Do you recommend this plant? A. I do recommend the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) for planting in shady conditions. Though it starts slowly and typically looks a little awkward when young, it matures into a very nice plant. Like most other "shady shrubs," it is best adapted to partial shade like that found along the edge of woods. I have also seen bottlebrush buckeyes growing very well under large trees where they never received full sun during the day but got filtered light for much of the day. Q. Several weeks ago, you suggested that plastic should not be used as a weed mat in gardens; however, I have seen growers use plastic under their vegetable crops and it was very effective.

The concrete straightaway never lessened. The zig-zag defense, working so wonderfully for so long, was failing. The plastic wheels ground louder, closer. And then it was there. The Green Machine, in all its hideous green, sleek, menacing glory, was there. Powered by legs two years older and two inches longer than mine, the machine was about to overtake my wee-little Spider-Man Big Wheel. "No! Cut the wheel," my Spidey-sense tingled. With a superhero-fast jerk of the handlebars, pebbles bounced, tires crunched, plastic met plastic, and the machine was pushed right, right into old Emma's wall.