Slant

Q: I want to turn the top floor of an old Victorian into a separate apartment, but I'm confused by the ceilings, which slant down beside the dormer windows. Should I just paint them the same color as the walls and hope they disappear?A: You have the right idea if you want to make light of your eccentric ceilings. One color, used overall, will camouflage architectural oddments and practically eliminate the negative.However, you could take the other lyric from the song and accentuate the positive: Play up the architectural characteristics that will give your apartment added personality.

Frances Gast does not speak for me ("Most women agree with Palin," Readers respond, Sept. 28). How she can presume that most women are conservative is beyond the pale. I don't know when the word "liberal" became anathema, but "liberal" can also imply "expansive. " I enjoy Susan Reimer's column. She consistently produces thought provoking and entertaining work. There aren't enough women candidates out there with the intellectual gravitas of Hillary Clinton. I wish there were more women candidates period, but the climate in this country still has a distinct misogynist slant.

Q: We want to make an apartment over our garage for my son and his wife while he's finishing medical school. Later we can rent it to other tenants, which will be a nice supplement to our retirement income. My question is about the sitting room space. It's tiny, and there's a slanted wall on one side. How can we (a) cope with that slant, (b) give such a tiny space a little grace? I have a few antiques I can contribute.A: That slant can offer you an attractive new angle, as you can see in the photo we show here of a sitting room -- also tiny -- designed by Ann Lind Bowers of Far Hills, N.J. She has used it to create an intimate nook for seating that's visually embraced by the angled ceiling on one side and balanced by an added-on bookcase on the other.

Far be it from me to tell a Sun writer how to cover an issue, but Childs Walker abandons some of the paper's recent major journalistic improvements in his analysis of the state university system tuition freeze ("O'Malley to use tuition freeze as issue in re-election effort," June 7). The article's weaknesses include choices of whom to interview and apparent lack of research into the effects of the freeze. To preponderantly use Democratic sources and a chancellor who may fear upsetting political decision-makers with any stated misgivings and to ignore tenured chairmen and chairwomen of university departments who experience the consequences of their operational funding being slashed significantly simply ignores the real repercussions of a tuition freeze, much less a four-year freeze.

Wake Forest at No. 12 Miami Quick slant: Miami must win to have a shot at the ACC title and the resultant BCS bid. About Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons have lost their five league games by a total of 30 points (none by more than seven), with two coming in overtime. Wake relies on a ground game. About Miami: The Hurricanes have hit a rough spot. The defense has struggled against the run, and that has to be the priority today. The offense has been solid, though the tailback pair of Frank Gore and Tyrone Moss hasn't been as productive as expected.

Frances Gast does not speak for me ("Most women agree with Palin," Readers respond, Sept. 28). How she can presume that most women are conservative is beyond the pale. I don't know when the word "liberal" became anathema, but "liberal" can also imply "expansive. " I enjoy Susan Reimer's column. She consistently produces thought provoking and entertaining work. There aren't enough women candidates out there with the intellectual gravitas of Hillary Clinton. I wish there were more women candidates period, but the climate in this country still has a distinct misogynist slant.

Seasoned shoppers shop out of season. Some of the best buys around now are to be found in the post-holiday clearance racks. Now that prices have been reduced by as much as 50 percent, slightly more adventurous choices can be justified. With an eye to what designers showed for the year ahead, here are fashion points that can carry a woman through this winter and next.The diagonalAnything with a suggestion of asymmetry or a slant is the newest line for '97. That could be a side-wrapped sweater or skirt, a one-shouldered jersey top or a side-buttoned jacket.

When Katrina Concholar and Donald Stallworth come to Baltimore, it's usually by car. Once they arrive from their homes in Laurel, the two friends walk around the Inner Harbor or maybe see a play at Center Stage. Yesterday they saw the city from an entirely different vantage point as they traveled by bicycle, exploring Baltimore on a 20-mile route through many of its parks, from Carroll Park in the southwest to Patterson Park to the east to Wyman Park up north near the Johns Hopkins University.

Not long ago, a granola bar was enough. A little oats, a little honey, enough fiber and virtue to get you through the day. Once fat was all anyone wanted products free of. Remember when ingredients you couldn't spell seemed suspicious? It's a whole new natural world now. As the nation's top dealers showed off the latest in guiltless cookies, cleanser and Kashi at Baltimore's convention center this week, one thing became abundantly clear: Natural is no longer simple. To stand out at the Natural Products Expo these days, that granola bar had better boast outrageously nutritious additives or be able to prove a dangerous something-or-other has been removed from it or show that it's helping to save, if not the planet, at least a small tribe in the Amazonian jungle.

THE ASCENSION OF KATIE Couric to the anchor desk at CBS on Tuesday and of Meredith Vieira to her place on the Today show gives us a prime-time look at the status of women in the workplace. When it comes to women, it is still about looks, age and clothes. The Wall Street Journal picked over Couric's wardrobe as if it were hanging in a secondhand shop. And women's magazine writers keep making the point that Vieira looks great without makeup and doesn't care a fig about what she wears. Television reporters asked ABC's Charlie Gibson about his anchor-chair clothing choices as a joke because they had asked Couric about hers.

A call to share ideas on safety, quality of life Recently, the press reported on a local deadly shooting that resulted in the emergency room of the Howard County General Hospital getting shut down for two hours because an unruly group of over 20 persons (friends of a deceased individual at the hospital) disrupted emergency room services. Also recently, there was an armed robbery at a local bank in which Dr. C. Vernon Gray, prominent educator and political leader, and others were ordered to lie on the floor.

Wake Forest at No. 12 Miami Quick slant: Miami must win to have a shot at the ACC title and the resultant BCS bid. About Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons have lost their five league games by a total of 30 points (none by more than seven), with two coming in overtime. Wake relies on a ground game. About Miami: The Hurricanes have hit a rough spot. The defense has struggled against the run, and that has to be the priority today. The offense has been solid, though the tailback pair of Frank Gore and Tyrone Moss hasn't been as productive as expected.

George Kokinis, the Ravens' pro personnel director, sizes up the Bills: Strength of offense Receiver Eric Moulds. If you want to say Terrell Owens, Torry Holt and Marvin Harrison are the NFL's elite receivers, then Moulds is right behind - if not among them. He has quickness to get separation and strength to go over the top of defenders downfield. A complete receiver, Moulds can stretch the field and do the dirty work underneath. Strength of defense Cornerback Nate Clements. Like Moulds, he is under the radar as far as a top name in the league.