Sasha

"The New Sweet Style," by Vassily Aksyonov. Translated by Christopher Morris. Random House. 480 pages. $27.95.Exuberant, sardonic and outspoken, the Russian satirical novelist Vassily Aksyonov has been a leading writer of his generation since the 1960s. Born in 1933, he witnessed firsthand Stalin's reign of terror, Siberian gulags, Khrushchev's illusory "thaw," and the 1966 show trials of Andrei Sinyavsky nand Yuly Daniel that crushed all the hopes of intellectual freedom this thaw had raised.

BOB ENGLISH and Arlene Blume, an Ellicott City husband and wife, woke up Christmas morning to greet two excited children and a grandmother.Their little girl exclaimed, "There are boxes under the tree and boxes under the window!" to weary parents who spent Christmas Eve assembling the dollhouse and Matchbox car garage.Nothing unusual, you say?Last year, Bob and Arlene were alone in their house.It's an understatement to say that 1996 was a big year.After taking a class on adoption from Adoption Support Network, Bob and Arlene flew to Lithuania on a Saturday in April, met Sasha and David -- their family-to-be -- on a Sunday, and signed adoption papers the next day.The adoption was final Memorial Day, when they brought the children home.

Language isn't a barrier where there's love."Potselui mama," Dee Dove says in Russian with a hint of a Virginia accent, as she purses her lips and places them against ** her new 3-year-old son's cheek, waiting patiently for a return peck.Since adopting Alexander Victorovich from an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia, nearly two months ago, Mrs. Dove, 32, and her husband, Kenneth, 35, have depended on a combination of love, a foreign language dictionary and handwritten notes of phonetic spellings to communicate statements such as "I love you" and "Don't throw."

Language isn't a barrier where there's love."Potselui mama," Dee Dove says in Russian with a hint of a Virginia accent, as she purses her lips and places them against ** her new 3-year-old son's cheek, waiting patiently for a return peck.Since adopting Alexander Victorovich from an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia, nearly two months ago, Mrs. Dove and her husband, Kenneth, have depended on a combination of love, a foreign language dictionary and handwritten notes of phonetic spellings to communicate statements such as "I love you."

Orphanage. It's a word that can create a mental image of sad-eyed children in drab clothes shuffling into a gloomy dining hall to eat cold mush on tin plates. Or coughing and weeping as they huddle under tattered blankets in their dark, drafty dormitory.The adult keepers of this place would be grim, penny-pinching tyrants with thin lips and quivering nostrils who take sadistic pleasure in tormenting the little waifs.Of course, I've never been in an orphanage, so my vision is based on old British movies about orphanages as they may have existed when Charles Dickens was writing about them.

MOSCOW -- When Sasha entered the hospital for tests a few weeks back, he already knew what the diagnosis would be. His parents had bribed the doctor to "discover" a stomach ulcer.Sasha, 17, has received his draft notice and is scheduled to report for duty soon. But the hospital certificate, which cost his parents several months' pay, should get him a deferment."All my friends are doing stuff like this to stay out of the army. Only kids with no money and no connections get drafted these days," said Sasha, who asked that his last name not be used.

FREDERICK -- You could say that Diana and Mike Bartel became instant parents. They didn't do it the nine-month way. Nor did they go through a long, drawn-out adoption process. Six weeks after the Bartels saw pictures of Russian sisters, Masha, 4 1/2 , and Sasha, 3 1/2 , the girls came to Frederick to live.Adoption had always intrigued Mrs. Bartel, 35, and Mr. Bartel, 34, who might someday have a biological child of their own. In late October, the couple went to a public meeting on adoption in Rockville, Montgomery County.

The Westview, one of Baltimore's earliest multiplexes, has recently begun an adventurous art film policy; so ambitious is the theater's management to crack the upscale market that at one point it had "Europa, Europa," "Mediterraneo," "Night on Earth" and "Where Angels Fear to Tred" playing simultaneously. That's a film festival in a bucket!But "For Sasha," the new film at the Westview, isn't an art film. It isn't even close to an art film. In fact, it's an anti-art film.In the original French, its title is "Pour Sasha," but I would call it "Poor Sasha," because poor Sasha is in a turgid, overwhelming and pulpy French romantic melodrama set against a somewhat mythologized version of the Six-Day War. It's derived, moreover, entirely from long-defunct Hollywood formulas; it even has violins at the mushy parts.

The Westview, one of Baltimore's earliest multiplexes, has recently begun an adventurous art film policy; so ambitious is the theater's management to crack the upscale market that at one point it had "Europa, Europa," "Mediterraneo," "Night on Earth"and "Where Angels Fear to Tred" playing simultaneously. That's a film festival in a bucket.But "For Sasha," the new film at the Westview, isn't an art film. It isn't even close to an art film. In fact, it's an anti-art film.In the original French, its title is "Pour Sasha," but I would call it "Poor Sasha," because poor Sasha is in a turgid, overwhelming and pulpy French romantic melodrama set against a somewhat mythologized version of the Six-Day War. It's derived, moreover, entirely from long-defunct Hollywood formulas; it even has violins at the mushy parts.

HEAD ON WITH NATUREFrom: Robert GardnerEllicott CityOn Saturday, Dec. 14, I was walking my dog, Sasha, along Deep Run Creek. This is a wetland area behind the village of Montgomery Run in Ellicott City where there has been much debate over the location ofthe proposed Route 100.To my surprise, surveyors had been through the area, placing markers and leaving a straight path from Montgomery Run to the University of Maryland Horse farm. For those familiar with Route 100, the trail appears to be the center line for the original alignment agreed in 1987.

Ever since she was a little girl bouncing off the furniture, Sasha Smallwood has liked flying through the air. Now, as a sophomore pole vaulter at Pikesville, she does it almost every day - reaching a Class 1A state-record 11 feet, 1 inch in winning the state indoor championship two months ago in only her second year in the sport. Small for a pole vaulter at 5 feet 2, Smallwood, 15, hopes to reach the Olympics someday, but first she wants to qualify for the Junior Olympics this summer. She will be vaulting Thursday at the Penn Relays.

Tanya Lawson's brightly painted orange fingernails glide along the keyboard, tap-tap-tapping under the fluorescent perma-glow of the NeighborCare pharmacy data processing center. Lawson, 43, handles one billing claim after another from a lonely cubicle by the wall. About the only other sound is the gurgle and hiss of the fax machine spitting out more prescriptions. It's Monday at 5:30 a.m., and Howard County is just waking up under a streaky graphite sky. Lawson, on the job four hours already, has barely begun her workday.

This year has been a sports fan's feast. The Wimbledon men's final Sunday, the unforgettable Rafael Nadal-Roger Federer duel, is only the latest gem, after the Super Bowl, the NCAA men's basketball title game, Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, Game 4 of the NBA Finals and the playoff for the U.S. Open golf championship. Can it get any better? Maybe. But a better question is: Can 2008 make us forget 2007? Probably not. But this year does offer a soul-stirring reminder of why we are all addicted to sports.

Red Wings@Stars 8 p.m. [Versus] Mr. Flip plans to watch while wearing an understated ensemble from the Don Cherry collection. NBA playoffs Spurs@Hornets 8:30 p.m. [TNT] At least this Game 7 doesn't feature Sasha Pavlovic as a key player.

61 Pat Sajak TV host 60 Hillary Rodham Clinton Senator 55 James Pickens Jr. Actor 40 Keith Urban Country singer 23 Sasha Cohen Figure skater

Petropolis Anya Ulinich Viking / 324 pages / $24.95 Debut author Anya Ulinich fits many tantalizing and telling details into the opening pages of her smart, comedic, cross-cultural, picaresque novel, Petropolis. She briskly conveys the surreal poverty and dilapidation of Asbestos 2, a desolate Siberian town. Not only is Asbestos 2 named after a carcinogenic mineral, the town was also the site of one of the gulag's many labor camps. It's a rough place even in 1992, but Lubov Alexandrovna Goldberg, the head librarian and a proud member of the intelligentsia, is determined to bring culture into her 14-year-old daughter's life.

Skulls and crossbones might sound like a good idea for millionaires with live-in stylists. But how can the rest of us pull off the trend without looking like a weirdo? The trick, fashion experts say, is to keep the macabre to a minimum. "It's an easy thing to incorporate into your wardrobe," says Dannielle Romano editor-at-large of DailyCandy.com. "Remember, we never dress in costume. It's done in a very playful way." That means pick one skull piece and wear that and that only. If you have a skull scarf tied around your neck, leave the skull earrings at home.

Suddenly on April 16, 2006, LOUIS T. NEMPHOS, JR.; devoted father of Nicholas T. Nemphos; beloved son of Louise and Louis Nemphos, Sr.; loving brother of Karen Scelsi Giblin, Edward F. Nemphos and Sharon Lynne Nemphos; dear uncle of Cynthia Niles, Rachel Giblin, Zachary Viccica, Gregory Viccica, Sasha Nemphos and Nicholas E. Nemphos; former husband of Christine Nemphos (nee Brewer). Friends may call at the Family Owned Ruck Towson Funeral Home, Inc, 1050 York Road (beltway exit 26A) on Wednesday from 7-9 P.M. and Thursday from 2-4 and 7-9 P.M. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at the Immaculate Conception Church on Friday at 11 A.M. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

COURMAYEUR, Italy -- The contrast could not have been more stark. In a practice with top-secret Pentagon overtones, Sasha Cohen worked out behind locked doors yesterday and then slipped out a side door without talking to reporters. Ice dancing Belbin turns past political obstacles. PG 9F

Turin, Italy -- The melodrama of Michelle Kwan's last Olympics deepened yesterday, when the U.S. figure skater looked like anything but a five-time world champion during her first public practice since making the team on a medical waiver. Kwan missed three triple jumps and fell hard before leaving the ice early looking dejected. At a news conference afterward, Kwan, 25, left the door open to withdrawing from her third Olympics. "Physically, if I'm not able to skate, I would give my spot up," she said.