Ruins

Gunpowder Falls State Park ranger Robert Bailey will lead a Mill Hike on Feb. 25 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Winter is the best time of year to see the ruins of mills that once operated along the Gunpowder Falls. The hike begins at the Paper Mill Road parking lot of the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail. Participants will visit the site of Ashland Furnace, an anthracite-fired furnace active in the mid-19th century, as well as other buildings from that same time period. Bailey will have old photographs showing the area in its prime.

A visibly increased police presence greeted Orioles fans Tuesday as they ventured to Camden Yards for Baltimore's first major sporting event since the previous day's deadly bombings at the Boston Marathon. Nonetheless, fans, players and team officials spoke defiantly of refusing to give up day-to-day pleasures because of the specter of terror. "There are so many places where someone could do so many things that you can't worry about everything," said Kevin Ridgely of Severna Park, who attended the game with his 19-year-old son, Will.

You might have seen her in the audience, drawing pad on her lap, pencil swiftly sketching the drama before her - King Lear going mad, witches chanting over a bubbling pot, dueling Capulets and Montagues, or a brooding Hamlet. For as long as the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has performed these classic plays in the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, local artist Mary Jo Tydlacka has captured the tragic and sometimes funny stories with her pencil and parlayed them into wildly colorful expressions worthy of the pathos of The Bard of Avon himself.

My NCAA tournament brackets are in shambles. The South regional, in particular, looks like a vast Loser Wasteland. And no amount of Smithwicks (left over from St. Patrick's Day) can put a happy face on the horror that has been done there. Believe me, I've tried. Did I mention I had Georgetown going to the Final Four? I should probably mention that. And you know who knocked Georgetown out of the Big Dance, of course. Yes, the team that torched my dreams is none other than America's new darling, that scrappy bunch from the school no one's ever heard of, Florida Gulf Coast University, coached by Andy Enfield, who no one had ever heard of after he played for Johns Hopkins years ago. Thanks, Eagles.

The woman wailed outside the ruins of Cathedrale de Notre-Dame de Port-au-Prince, the Roman Catholic cathedral that symbolized Haiti's religious fervor. "This is what God did!" she cried Friday morning. "See what God can do!" Tuesday's earthquake brought down the roof of the enormous pink-and-cream cathedral, filling the apse and nave with tons of rubble. The quake punched out its vivid stained-glass windows, twisted its wrought-iron fencing and sliced brick walls like cake. The western steeple, which had soared more than 100 feet in the sky, toppled onto parishioners praying at an outdoor shrine to St. Emmanuel.

If you were to compile a list of structural ruins as tourist attractions, you'd most likely think of sites in foreign countries -- Pompeii in southern Italy, or numerous decrepit castles throughout Europe.The United States, a relatively young nation, doesn't rate as a destination for devotees of ruins. The same could be said of Ellicott City (its reputation for antiques aside). But a private group, with help from the state and Howard County, aims to turn a local ruin into an attraction by making a seven-acre public garden park out of the crumbled stone building that once housed a young women's finishing school.

"Love Among the Ruins," by Robert Clark. W.W. Norton. 333 pages. $24.95. Lately, I'll be reading a book, come across a bogus line of dialogue, an improbable turn of plot unpersuasively written, an interior monologue that stinks of unprocessed journal entry, and I'll have to stop reading the book. I'll try to get back into the narrative, but no matter what psychological game I play with myself, I just can't do it. It's as if the book has broken in my hands. The spell is weak. The book doesn't work.

NEW ORLEANS -- The imaginary line between past, present and future has been under assault in America for a long time, but in New Orleans it has been breached beyond repair. A monument to this idea stands now at the heart of New Orleans, right by the Mississippi River, the Convention Center and the Aquarium, all prime tourist real estate.It's the two-thirds-finished Harrah's Casino. This architectural, civic, social and political nightmare is snarling traffic, making politicians foam at the mouth, and it gives the moralists among us a reason to shake our heads.

More than 150 years ago, on a hill overlooking the mill town that would become Ellicott City, young women of privilege walked the formal parlors and terraced gardens of the Patapsco Female Institute.There, the girls, many of whom had left Southern plantations for the middle and high school, were sequestered from the temptations of the town below. And there, the story goes, only old men were permitted on the grounds. Young men -- even cousins and brothers -- whom the headmistress considered potential distractions to her students, were forbidden to visit the institute.

You might have seen her in the audience, drawing pad on her lap, pencil swiftly sketching the drama before her — King Lear going mad, witches chanting over a bubbling pot, dueling Capulets and Montagues, or a brooding Hamlet. For as long as the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company has performed these classic plays in the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, local artist Mary Jo Tydlacka has captured the tragic and sometimes funny stories with her pencil and parlayed them into wildly colorful expressions worthy of the pathos of The Bard of Avon himself.

The confetti from Tuesday's Super Bowl parade was hardly cleared before Baltimore's fiscal health jolted everyone back to reality. Warning of impending "financial ruin," a new report from the advisory firm Public Financial Management tallied Baltimore's cumulative 10-year deficit at a stunning $750 million, driven largely by the city's pension and retiree health obligations. While sobering, the report hands city leaders a rare opportunity to remake Baltimore into a championship city.

Chris Hayes, an editor at large of The Nation and host of the talk show bearing his name on MSNBC, was raised in a working-class neighborhood but attended some of the most exclusive schools on the planet. "I grew up in the Bronx," says the affable, 33-year-old anchor of "Up With Chris Hayes. " "My mother was the daughter of an Italian deli owner. But I'm also hugely a product of the meritocracy, and for that reason I have my own affection for it. " Both experiences provided fodder for his much-discussed first book, "Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.

In case anyone missed the news - and judging by the fact that there aren't angry mobs storming Washington, everyone missed the news - Congress recently absolved Jon Corzine of being criminally responsible for actions that "wiped out thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of customers' and creditors' money. " The congressional report states, "Choices made by Jon Corzine during his tenure as chairman and CEO sealed MF Global's fate. " Turns out, these choices include the unlawful transfer of its customers' money.

Falita Liles marked Thanksgiving eve by inviting some of her best friends to what could be grimly described as a condemnation party. The Upper Fells Point resident hauled possessions out of her tiny historic rowhouse Wednesday, after a city inspector ordered it vacated because an unexplained water flow had undermined the foundation. "You can see I'm not real thrilled right now," she said. Liles' home was one of two condemned in the 200 block of South Madeira St., an alley street of roughly century-old homes near Patterson Park.

When we check back in with the Housewives, Kim's daughter Kimberly is getting ready to head to prom. Kim's storyline has been put on the backburner, so far, but this was pretty cute.  Kimberly's boyfriend picks her up and it's all adorable and perfectly awkward with Kim talking about chicken salad and trying to get them to have a cup of lemonade or some other such nonsense. We also get to spend a little more time with Kyle's teenage daughter, Alexa, who is in the process of learning how to drive.

The thing that bothered me about the Kansas City fans' treatment of Robinson Cano at the Home Run Derby wasn't the boos. I thought it was, until I realized that if I were a Kansas City fan, I would've booed too. I think the thing that really bothered me about the Home Run Derby, the thing that made me and others squirm in our couches on Monday, was that it wasn't fun. They yelled at his mother in the bathroom. His dad was dead serious. Cano wasn't laughing. And sure the fans in Kansas City were laughing, but they were laughing at Cano's misfortune, which is certainly their right as paying fans, but it wasn't fun, and forgive me but sports are still supposed to be fun, right?

FEW PLACES ARE spookier on Halloween than the ruins that sit atop Mount Misery in Ellicott City.A large, imposing granite structure, the Patapsco Female Institute ruins are open to the sky. On Halloween, mists rise from the depths of the structure, and the air is filled with an eerie light.In fact, when ghost hunters came to town last summer, they found evidence of ghosts at the site. Tales have been told about Annie, an apparition of a young girl dressed in white seen lingering in the ruins.

The fate of the Chesapeake Bay may be found in its tributaries. Mattawoman Creek, one of the bay's healthiest, is losing ground to development and now stands "at a turning point" as Charles County plans for future growth in its watershed, a state-led task force warns. The combined state-federal task force, led by the Department of Natural Resources , says that the Mattawoman is losing the "near to the ideal" condition that characterized its waters nearly two decades ago. Although its watershed is still largely forested, and the stream itself retains one of the state's most diverse populations of fish, "possible signs of stress associated with human development have appeared.

I have always held the Supreme Court in the highest regard, but after reading recent articles about the court if feel compelled to write. The court allowed PACS to spend whatever they wanted in our primary and general elections, usually favoring Republican candidates. And it once again has bowed to pressure from the National Rifle Association by permitting every citizen to carry a gun. Heaven help us. Now the Supreme Court is about to decimate President Barack Obama's health care plan, which would give every American the right to health insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions.