Stout

WESTMINSTER - When Jennifer Knox was 4, her father, John, gave her "a tiny, baby violin." She has been playing strings ever since.Now a junior at Westminster High School, Jennifer, who also plays French horn and piano, said she has long since graduated to bigger and better violins. Until a few years ago, though, she could find no suitable outlet for the instrument that is her first love.Jennifer Bankard, 17, shares her schoolmate's devotion to the string instrument. A senior who crams marching band and two part-time jobs into her schedule, she still manages about eight hours of violin practice a week.

NEITHER RAIN nor wild beasts nor a scavenging cat could keep the Cub Scouts of Pack 618 from enjoying their fall family camp-out, held at Washington Monument State Park in Washington County this month.Cubmaster Dan Foley led his group of 28 Scouts in weekend activities that included a hike along the Appalachian Trail.Joining the pack for its first camp-out were Elwin Brown, Jimmy Geiser, Jared McAdoo, Evan Sturman, Kevin Caffrey, Harry Jessell and Brendan Smith.The adventures began before the Friday night sing-along, when one of the adults noticed a strange shape moving through the brush.

The No. 8 Old Mill wrestling team had an 18-2 mark going into last night's Class 4A-3A East regional dual meet championship, with its only defeats coming against out-of-state opponents. That changed in dramatic fashion as second-seeded Stephen Decatur of Worcester County fended off a late rally from the top-seeded Patriots to come away with a 31-28 win in Millersville. Stephen Decatur advances to tomorrow's Class 4A-3A state dual meet tournament at North Carroll. The host Patriots (18-3)

Having beer with dessert was a new culinary step for me.It was different than those nights, years ago, when I vainly searched the fridge for ice cream and ended up settling for a beer. That beer was the dessert of last resort.But this, this porter with rice pudding and whipped cream, was part of a planned menu. It was served by a real chef, at a restaurant.Most important of all, it was good. I could have eaten two helpings.I had the beer dessert last week when I was in Philadelphia at the Samuel Adams Brew House.

Herb Shaffer lifts his beer mug and admires its contents -- a dark, chocolate-brown stout topped with a good inch of creamy white mousse. He inhales to take in the full aroma. Then, after taking a long, deep swallow, he slowly places the mug on the table in front of him. After a moment of silence, he exclaims with great satisfaction in his voice: "This is real beer!"Seated across from Shaffer, Dan Sadler prepares to take a ceremonial first sip from his mug, only his choice of beer is lighter in color -- an India Pale Ale.Both men belong to a growing number of beer geeks -- connoisseurs of hearty, flavorful crafted suds.

Despite all our techno-ingenuity, "dumbth" continues to spread. This is Steve Allen's term for the long-running epidemic of intellectual laziness and the official sanctioning of the slipshod. National surveys keep reminding us how many students cannot read, write, or apply whatever concepts they do manage to retain. In 17 years of teaching college, I've witnessed a steady deterioration in academic skills and interest and a growing reliance on quilting. Students scoop other peoples' ideas off the Web and stitch them into clumsy patchworks they mistake for term papers.

The mother of a young woman who was raped and killed in Denver intends to sue Maryland for at least $102 million, charging that state officials released the man accused of killing her to a Colorado drug rehabilitation program without notifying authorities there. Patricia Tuthill of Mary Esther, Fla., filed a claim against the state in February, putting the state on notice that she would sue it for "gross negligence" in its supervision of convicted armed robber and burglar Donta Paige. Though Gov. Parris N. Glendening apologized to Colorado's governor last year for the state's actions in the case, Maryland officials denied the claim in March.

Documenting a subculture rarely seen by Westerners, local photographer Betty Rosen has returned from her recent trip to Thailand with more than 100 striking portraits of transgendered exotic dancers. Rosen's empathy and compassion for her subjects whom she met at a nightclub in the southeastern city of Phuket is clear in the large-scale ink-jet photographs on view at C. Grimaldis Gallery. But as a spectator, Rosenberg did not participate in the way of life her pictures describe. Consequently, they do not have quite the moral authority of, say, Nan Goldin's impassioned visual diaries of New York's East Village scene during the 1970s, or Larry Clark's spaced-out narratives of dysfunctional Midwestern youth.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The last time it had taken the court, Wisconsin made a terrible mess of the statistics sheet, shooting 25.9 percent in losing to Illinois on Sunday in the Big Ten Conference tournament final. That had some observers predicting a rapid exit from the NCAA tournament, but the Badgers responded with a dramatically different performance last night in their first-round Syracuse Regional game against Northern Iowa at the Ford Center. No. 6 seed Wisconsin made plenty of shots, several of the biggest ones from beyond the three-point arc, in surviving a stiff challenge from the No. 11 seed to win, 57-52.

Occasionally on the campaign trail, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley gets the rare chance to talk about something other than politics - such as in a restaurant during a recent Sunday swing through the Eastern Shore. "How's the band doing?" asked Jesse Bowden, the bartender in Salisbury's Chesapeake Steakhouse. Ah, the band. O'Malley beamed. But his press aide cringed at the mention of the mayor's Celtic rock group, O'Malley's March. Throughout the mayor's 15 years in elected office, his opponents have tried to portray him as all flash, no substance; as a man driven more by personal ambition than public service.