Sage

It was a "duh" moment. I was staring at an herb garden, trying to figure out which plant, if any, was sage. This was stuff I should know. A car mechanic is supposed to be able to distinguish between a carburetor and a fuel injector. A copy editor is supposed to be able to spot gerunds. And a food guy is supposed to be able to name that herb. Usually I employ a time-honored system to find herbs. I go to the produce section of a grocery store, I pick up packages of herbs and I read the labels.

An ancient role of the poet is to transmit a culture's stories from one generation to the next, a process that once was almost exclusively oral. The tradition of Anglo-American poetry is long removed from its oral roots, though we may hear it at times in secular and gospel ballads, the blues and work songs. When I first met Edgar Silex a decade ago, shortly after he had left his job as a systems engineer for Hughes Aircraft to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing at the University of Maryland, one aspect of his poems that struck me was their story-telling function.

Two close ones prevented Prophet Pat from having a 6-0 week, and therage of a sage had to settle for a 4-2 slate on his high school sports predictions.As a result, the Prophet is now 153-72 for a percentage of .680.The St. Mary's girls lacrosse team and the Glen Burnie baseball team were the only ones the sage missed on in a week that even the Prophet's old buddy Pete Trau of Severn came through.Old Mill was the one-goal favorite over St. Mary's in girls stick action, but the Saints were victorious, 15-14, in OT. Otherwise, the game went the way the sage forecasted it. The Prophet said it would be "a high-scoring affair, something like 16-15."

I recently read an interesting claim about the herb sage. It is said to increase mental acuity when taken orally. Apparently this is not brand-new. Sage has been used this way since the Middle Ages, which might account for the herb's name. Have you heard about this? Is there any evidence to support it? Should I be swallowing handfuls of the stuff right out of my wife's spice cabinet? We were surprised to discover a number of scientific studies of sage relevant to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, February 2003)

Due to the rampage your local rage of a sage has been on, the time has come to upgrade the title of this all-seeing legend. From hence forth, it shall be Prop-HOT Pat and not Prophet Pat.In the last three weeks, Prop-Hot Pat has gone an incredible 31-2, including last week's 9-1 slate in which the main man was the only local prognosticator to accurately call the Annapolis at Old Mill Class 4A high school football game.Yes, there was only one man who tabbed Old Mill to win that "big game," and it was Prop-Hot Pat. And the winners easily covered the sage's four-point (14-10)

It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.That's what Prophet Pat is saying about his performance with Christmas tournament predictions.The rage of a sage picked the winners in three of six holiday tournaments, covering 19 games last week. The Prophet hit on 12 of the 19 games and actually had the winner in another game, only to have theteam come up short in points.With the 12-7 card, the Prophet ranhis overall record to 97-43, a percentage of .693. That's a drop of nine percentage points from last week's starting number of .702.

While he hit the "Game of the Week," thanks to an assist from Old Mill coach Paul Bunting, the Prophet had an otherwise disappointing 3-3week, leaving his overall record at 113-51 (.689).The Annapolis boys hoops team (11-1) took the marquis game 84-81 over South River (12-2) Tuesday night in the Cap City. The Panthers were favored by twopoints, thanks to Bunting's tip that "if the game gets to the bench,Annapolis will win."It got to the bench, and the Panthers pulled out a squeaker, withsenior catalyst Rob Wooster scoring a career-high 34 points.

THE IMMORTAL George (Hunky) Sauerhoff, founder and President for Life of the Loyal Sons of Pigtown, hoists himself slightly in his bed at the Caton Manor Nursing Home. A couple of old friends have popped into the room. Naturally, this immediately puts Hunky into the political mode. "DiBlasi," says Hunky, in a high, happy, slightly hoarse voice. "Hunky," says Joe DiBlasi, the former city councilman out of south Baltimore. "DiBlasi," Hunky says again, eyes all twinkly, "you gotta run." "For what?"

The Prophet is back in the groove, pigskin fans.After a dismal 4-5 week, Prophet Pat bounced back to go 8-2 in his high school football picks last week, running his overall record to 57-18, a percentage of .760.Faced with only an eight-game card this week, the rage of a sage expects to breeze once again.His only misses last week came in his botch of his "Upset of the Week" with the Glen Burnie Gophers, and the Southern Bulldogs burned the sage as well.For the second week in a row, Glen Burnie made the Prophet look bad but barely.

At a celebration of H.L. Mencken's life and works in 2003, a guest speaker from Ohio stood before a crowd of admirers of the "Sage of Baltimore" at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. George Thompson, an accountant and book collector, detailed 44 years of collecting books, letters, photographs, even T-shirts associated with Mencken, some 6,000 items in all. "So, what is one to do with all this material?" Thompson asked those assembled for the Mencken Society program. "As of today, I plan to take them with me!"