Salon

There were twice as many stylists working as on a usual Sunday and every seat was taken, with pre-teens getting their curly locks blown straight and toddlers getting their hair trimmed, too distracted to cry as they watched Elmo DVDs. The phone had been ringing nonstop, not including the half-dozen messages waiting when she arrived. It was barely 11 a.m. yesterday, about the time Marci Messick opens her children's hair salon in Pikesville on a typical Sunday. But this was no typical Sunday.

Henry N. Baker Sr., a longtime jazz musician and the owner of a chain of beauty salons that changed the African-American hair care business in Baltimore, died April 7 at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. He was 87. Born in New York City, he was the youngest of four children and the only son of a Georgia-born businessman and a homemaker. When he was still young, the family moved to Washington, where his father was shot and killed, plunging the family into poverty.

The Baltimore-Washington Corridor Chamber of Commerce will host the Baltimore-Washington Regional Workforce Solutions Summit from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute, 692 Maritime Blvd., Linthicum Heights. The summit includes exhibitor tables, networking time and lunch, and will focus on hiring challenges facing area employers. The cost is $75 for members prepaid, $95 for nonmembers and at the door. Information: Shirley Redd, 301-725-4000, 410-792-9714, or shirley@baltwashcham ber.org.

Lice salons: lousy idea or necessity? Perched in a hairdresser's chair, 9-year-old Grace Lasky raised her eyebrows as a woman slicked one of the salon's specialty products through her long, straight hair. No, Grace wasn't getting her hair styled in the swank Chicago boutique. The woman pulling a fine-toothed comb through the girl's hair was looking for nits, the eggs laid by lice and a recurring annoyance for the third-grader. "It sort of feels itchy," Grace said. Experts don't agree on the usefulness of delousing salons, but that hasn't stopped them from multiplying.

Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black And Other Stories By Nadine Gordimer Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 180 pages / $21 When you've won a Nobel Prize, you can do pretty much anything you want, including write a short story from the point of view of a tapeworm. And that's what Nadine Gordimer has done: "Tape Measure" is one of the 13 works included in her new collection, Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black. We join our astonishingly articulate parasite friend as he - it? - recounts his shock at having been banished from his host's body, catapulted into the toilet bowl and flushed into whatever lies beyond: "And now!

FILM EYES WITHOUT A FACE / / 2:30 a.m. Monday. Turner Classic Movies. ....................... Get into the Halloween spirit early with TCM's wee-small-hours-of-the-morning screening of Georges Franju's 1959 Eyes Without a Face (or, better yet, TiVo it). It's a hyperaesthetic horror classic with more impact than any gorefest. Like some exotic arachnid, it transfixes, then stings you. Pierre Brasseur stars as a surgeon who lays waste to one young beauty after another as he attempts to replace his daughter's face -- totaled in a car accident -- with massive skin grafts.

Housing fair to be held tomorrow Howard County's Department of Housing and Community Development will hold its "Come Home to Howard County" housing fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow at Wilde Lake High School, 5460 Trumpeter Road, Columbia. Three Howard County homes are being offered at sharply reduced prices to families who will be chosen in a lottery, to be held at 1:15 p.m. at the fair. Those entered in the lottery must have submitted an application to the Department of Housing and Community Development and must be present at the drawing to win. The fair will feature displays and information about renting, buying or fixing up a home in Howard County.

Nine beauty salons will present the 11th Cuts Against Cancer, a fundraiser to benefit the Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center, from 10 am. to 4 p.m. Sept. 30. Customers can get $25 haircuts, and services are to include manicures, waxing and massage. A "Day of Beauty" raffle and a silent auction of trips, restaurant, food and wine gift certificates, Ravens and Orioles tickets, works by local artists and other items are planned. The event will be held at Mason and Friends, 6770 Oak Hall Lane, Columbia.

Nestled in the shadows of towering apartment and office buildings along a busy stretch of Joppa Road, the salon would be easy to miss if it didn't look like a house that has sprouted from nowhere with its creamy beige vinyl siding and covered porch. Most of the customers who find their way to Usha's Salon and Day Spa in Towson are like 16-year-old Jasmine Osima and her mother, Joan, of Owings Mills. Mother and daughter began making biweekly visits about a year ago after a family friend raved about owner Usha Gupta's increasingly popular use of threading, an ancient facial hair-removal process.