Sacred

•A sacred music concert with Ray and Ann Gibbs will be held at 10:30 a.m. April 4 at Anchor Baptist Church, 320 W. Pasadena Road in Millersville. Child care for children up to age 3 is available. Call 410-647-9614 or go to anchorbaptistonline.org for more information. •Spring concerts will be held at Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church, 611 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd., at 7:30 p.m. April 16 and 3 p.m. April 17. Admission is free. There will be a free-will offering, with donations supporting the Arundel House of Hope and Ministry of Hope.

A South County environmental group is asking the county administration to scale down plans for a grocery store and strip mall - a last-ditch effort in a two-year battle against the development. Safeway Inc. has proposed building an 88,000-square- foot shopping center on a 16-acresite at Routes 256 and 258in Deale, which some critics say is too large for the area. The project had stalled in January, when Safeway was denied a waiver to build on a flood plain, but the county reversed its decision last week, saying the site is not on a flood plain.

FRIENDSVILLE -- Twenty men and women, some with feathers dangling from coal-black hair, some with moccasins as footwear, step purposefully in a circle around a barren pole they say reaches to the sky.In pairs, they walk in cadence with the rhythmic beating of a drum, oblivious to the panoramic views the lofty pasture affords them of the surrounding forested mountains -- exploding in brilliant hues of red and yellow -- and the river valley below.From distant vantage points in the ridges that fortress the Youghiogheny River, these conspicuous people might lead you to believe you've slipped into another century, when the Shawnees roamed these parts, hunting and fishing.

Here are our picks for what horses to bet in the 2011 Preakness Stakes: Race 1 10:45 a.m. Analysis: Expect Boreal Forest to set the early fractions, as he has in his previous starts. He will have less competition on the lead than in previous efforts. As a result, he could carry his speed a long way. He is tested at this level, so the class is no problem. Issues and Answers comes in off just a maiden win, but he did win at a good level and should compete well here.

Baltimore police officer Robert W. Mitchell faces a second-degree assault charge after police and prosecutors accused him of overstepping his powers and beating a young man more than a year ago. The Baltimore state's attorney's office also charged Mitchell on Friday with two counts of misconduct in office. Prosecutors allege that Mitchell beat Baltimore resident Tiyon Williams in the 1000 block of N. Mount St. on May 19, 2012. "The allegations against Mr. Mitchell are reprehensible," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said in a statement, "and I promise we will continue to aggressively target those who sacrilege the good men and women of this department and the sacred privilege of serving our community.

TUSCOLA, Texas -- Even if you've never seen him before, Amigo Yates looks familiar. Reddish hair. Big brown eyes. He's 11 years old, weighs maybe 1,300 pounds. His horns measure 103 inches from tip to tip and spiral outward in what old-time cowmen call a "Texas twist."Amigo Yates is a longhorn steer, a champion of his kind, a classic. He could be the model for the longhorn that shows up everywhere in Texas on signs, billboards, TV commercials, menus, company stationery, business cards, calendars.

Women's lacrosse has been warning its people for years: Dial it back, or they will make us wear helmets. Coaches, players and referees knew that if their elegant game got rough, the powers that be would impose helmets. Goggles were required in 2005, and that was just the warning shot. Thanks to the National Football League and the National Hockey League, concussions are no longer the accident that sometimes happens to someone else's kid while playing sports. Brain injuries caused by repeated blows to the head are causing dementia - or worse, suicide - among yesterday's heroes in professional sports.

I am not a big fan of travel programs on television.If you are interested in travel, go travel. Don't sit on a couch with a bag of potato chips and watch an 8-inch-tall video image of someone else traveling.Forget the loss of any sense of adventure or participating in life as a doer instead of a viewer; television can't even really deliver much of a visual sense of the exotic or the different. The scope of the screen is too small for panorama, too flat for texture; and television deals best in the repetition of the familiar until it becomes cliche or stereotype.

Saying that the Pam Basu carjacking has changed the community into "forever more a hostile place," a Howard County judge sentenced a Washington youth to life in prison yesterday for his role in the crime.Bernard Eric Miller, 17, will be eligible for parole in 17 1/2 years under state guidelines after Howard Circuit Judge Dennis Sweeney turned down the prosecution's request to deny the defendant the possibility of parole.Miller received the life sentence for the Sept. 8 slaying, which made motorists nationwide fearful and prompted state and federal officials to toughen carjacking laws.

RIO GRANDE, PUERTO RICO / / Manuel Maldonado showed us hummingbirds, walking sticks, giant albino snails and other rain forest residents, but couldn't find a single coqui -- although they were singing all around us. Our visit to El Yunque, the Caribbean National Forest, had been delayed that morning. The rain forest was closed because of rain. Actually, a storm that ebbed as we arrived had scattered tree limbs, and U.S. Forest Service rangers had to make sure the roads were clear. "The Taino Indians called the land sacred, so the rain up here is holy water," said Manuel, our guide and driver.