Snow White

More than 200 artisans will be on hand for the Glen Burnie High School annual winter craft fair, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.The fair, sponsored by the Class of '97, the Key Club and the Interact Club, offers one-stop holiday shopping.To accommodate the increased number of craftsmen and women and shoppers, the fair site has been expanded to include the cafeteria, math wing and the industrial arts building.Coordinator Mary Huey has recommended a route that will allow visitors to "see it all."

Md. intrastate calls now less expensiveThe cost of intrastate phone calls in Maryland plunged by 19.8 percent in the past year, but remains slightly above the national average, a new survey says.National Utility Service Inc., a consulting firm, looked at the cost of a three-minute, 25-mile call within a "local area," in telephone terms. Maryland's cost fell from 86 cents in 1992 to 69 cents, compared with a U.S. average of 66 cents.National Utility Service attributed the drop, the second-largest in the country, to increased competition here.

The damsel cast an image of striking beauty: mocha-colored skin, captivating eyes, coiffed hair, posing in a feathery dress and see-through veil. For a character that won't be in an animated movie for another two years, her arrival has been the subject of discussion for years -- long before she was ever drawn. Maddy, a 19-year-old heroine to be featured in the coming film The Frog Princess, will be Disney animation's first black leading lady. That makes her the Sole Sister among a group of cartoon icons that brings out the inner princess in preteen girls worldwide -- characters like Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel and Mulan.

SNOWMAN construction:There is no real sense in trying unless you have genuine packing snow -- the kind that falls as silently as dandruff -- light, delicate flakes that drift to earth and lie together in a kind of fluffy mystical union. The snow must be slightly wet and clingy, not dry like the soap-powder snow spread on the plywood of Christmas gardens and creches.There are two basic techniques for making the snowman's round bottom layers.My wife is a packer -- decisive, fast-acting, making it up as she goes.

Down in South Houston, Texas, there are some indelible truths: Chicken fried steak is best cooked well-done, seafood better be fresh from the Gulf of Mexico and whoever is elected mayor will probably be impeached.This town scoffs at Congress' meager record of two impeached presidents in 131 years. South Houston's City Council has impeached and removed two mayors in the past five, the most recent in November. One of the mayors who served between those beleaguered administrations survived an impeachment attempt, and the other, battle-fatigued, quit.

WASHINGTON -- They say when you fall off a horse, you should get right up on it again. In one sense, Al Gore did that the other day by making a public appearance in Florida, the horse that threw him last November. The former vice president showed up in Orlando to make a nonpolitical speech for one of the first times off a college campus since losing the presidency. He confined himself largely to doing a self-deprecating stand-up comic routine, which is wise for anyone like himself who is known, unfairly, as unfunny.

Remember the movie ''The French Connection''? Gene Hackman and the New York City P.D. break up an international heroin ring.Well, listen. Those guys in the Big Apple have got nothing on us. Why, right here in Westminster, Maryland, the mighty Carroll County drug task force has just smashed a narcotics empire headed by the notorious ''Snow White.'' I hear Hollywood's going to make a movie about the raid. It'll be called ''The Disneyland Connection.''Here's the plot. A crack team of investigators got this tip from the narcs in California that a big load of dope would arrive at a farm outside Westminster.

If your children really loved "Aladdin" and if you're really tired of repeat trips to the neighborhood movie house, you might curb their appetites for the animated Arabian romance by buying toy figures of the characters.Don't be surprised, though, if the action figures aren't exact replicas of Princess Jasmine, Abu, Iago, Jafar and Aladdin -- the protagonist hailed by Newsweek as Disney's "first nonwhite human hero since Mowgli of the 'Jungle Book.' "Margaret Freeman of Dallas, who is white, makes a point of buying ethnically diverse books and toys for her nephew, Travis.

CHAIRMAN: Please state your name for the record.WITNESS: I just want to register to vote. I wasn't expecting a hearing.CHAIRMAN: Let the record reflect the witness refuses to answer. Guard, please lock the doors and let no one in or out during the questioning.WITNESS: But my husband is waiting in a no-parking zone!CHAIRMAN: The chair recognizes the totally vicious senator from Wyoming.SEN. SIMPSON: The witness has admitted she is party to a traffic offense. I move, therefore, she be beaten to death.

Albert Hall, a professional opera singer and choirmaster who began his singing career during his student days at City College, died May 13 from colon cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The Towson resident was 89. The son of a plumber and a homemaker, Albert Hall was born in Baltimore and raised on Rose Street. It was while he was attending City College in the late 1930s that he came to the attention of Blanche F. Bowlsbey, the legendary music teacher whom her students fondly called "Mrs.