Structure

Tickets for the third Grand Prix of Baltimore will go on sale to the general public Friday, beating a Christmas deadline originally set by promoter J.P. Grant. Grant's company, Race On, has added incentives for buying tickets early, guaranteeing a paddock pass - a $45 ticket to enter the garage where racing teams set up for the event - for fans who reserve seats by Jan. 15. While the best reserved seats will cost $185 for a three-day pass, as they did last year, Race On introduced a new, lower-price reserved option for $90 and lowered general admission tickets by as much as $20 and junior tickets by as much as $30 to try to attract more families.

One of our articles has quoted a gentleman saying "jerry-rigged," and of course we let that stand. Our job is to report what people do and say; making them look good is a flack's task.  But if you wish to be precise, you will observe a distinction between jury-rigged  and jerry-built , even though the two terms are frequently confused.  Any thing that is jury-rigged  is an improvised solution to a problem. It's originally a nautical expression, deriving, the Oxford English Dictionary says, from jury-mast , a temporary mast put up to replace one that has broken off or been swept away.

Baltimore City fire crews are battling a four-alarm fire that began Tuesday morning in the 500 block of South Broadway in Fells Point. The fire was reported at 4:25 a.m. in a five-story building that has had a grocery store at street level. According to Captain Roman Clark, spokesman for the Baltimore City fire department, it is the same structure that was damaged by a five-alarm fire in June. Clark said fire fighters responding to the first alarm immediately called for assistance and the fire quickly went to four alarms.

A fire did minor damage to a storage shed in the Havre de Grace area Wednesday evening, according to fire investigators. Firefighters were sent to the 400 block of Robin Hood Road about 6:25 p.m. Wednesday after a neighbor reported a fire in a 8-by-10 foot wood frame shed on the property of Richard Forton, according to a notice of investigation from the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office. Twenty firefighters from the Susquehanna Hose Company of Havre de Grace brought the fire under control in 10 minutes, the fire marshal's office said.

Members of the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company watched as a house burned to the ground in Hickory over the weekend. It wasn't negligence, though, as the firefighters were participating in a live fire training session Sunday at 2228 Conowingo Road. The fire company burned to the ground a four-bedroom farmhouse recently acquired by Van Deusen Construction Company, which will be building an office building on the now-vacant property. "This is a rare opportunity for our members to train in an acquired structure," Eddie Hopkins, chief of the Bel Air fire company, said.

TORONTO -- A MRI performeced on Chris Tillman's right elbow on Tuesday in Baltimore showed no structural damage, but it revealed a inflamed ulnar nerve in the joint. Still, the 24-year-old right-hander hasn't yet been scratched from his next start. The Orioles are optimistic Tillman won't miss time. "I thought it was real good news," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "The exam, [team orthtopedist] Dr. Wilckens and the MRI showed the same thing, just some inflammation at the most.

Archaeologists have discovered what they think are remains of a barn or blacksmith workshop in North Bethesda that could date to the days of Josiah Henson, a former slave whose autobiography inspired the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin. " Looking for evidence of what slave life in Maryland was like, archaeologists with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission Montgomery Parks and the PBS program "Time Team America" began exploring the Josiah Henson Special Park on Monday.

Ravens tight end Ed Dickson only suffered a sprained right shoulder against the Atlanta Falcons and didn't incur any structural damage Thursday night as a magnetic resonance imaging exam confirmed the initial diagnosis, according to a source. With rest and rehabilitation, Dickson is projected to return in time for the Sept. 10 season opener against the Cincinnati Bengals at M&T Bank Stadium. Dickson is heading into his second season as the starter after catching 54 passes for 528 yards and five touchdowns last season.

Grout used to protect steel support cables in the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which carries Interstate 95 over the Potomac River, may be contaminated with an excessive level of chloride, a corroding substance known to accelerate rusting. The Federal Highway Administration warned 21 states — including Maryland — that as many as three dozen bridges were built with possibly defective grout manufactured in Ohio between November 2002 and March 2010. Chloride-contaminated grout was blamed in the collapse of a pedestrian walkway at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. in 2000, injuring more than 100 fans.

By any standard measure, Neil Parrott's place in Maryland politics ought to be toward the very bottom. He's a freshman Republican delegate in a very blue state, without pedigree or government connections. Yet through dogged organizing and clever use of technology, this tea party leader from Hagerstown has turned a little-used provision of the Maryland Constitution into a tool capable of overturning chunks of the ruling Democrats' legislative agenda. Parrott, a University of Maryland-trained traffic engineer, developed a website that makes it much easier to collect the 56,000 valid signatures needed to petition a law to referendum in Maryland.