Swamp

Did politicians exempt themselves from the litter laws the same way they exempted themselves from the "do not call" list? The primary election was weeks ago, yet countless signs for those who lost remain, many illegally placed on public land. It's time for these signs to come down. At what point do they officially become litter? The offending campaigns should be fined. Steve Raskin, Parkton

In the Orioles Banquet Room overlooking Camden Yards on Thursday night, $566,132 was exchanged for 37 baseball cards that a family almost threw out with the garbage in March. The cards were part of the so-called “Black Swamp Find,” named after the area in Defiance, Ohio where the cards were found by the Hench family. The family was cleaning out the house of an aunt who had recently passed away when they got to the attic, full of relics from the turn of century. The hidden treasure of 1910 E-98 cards was found in a non-descript box underneath a dollhouse, but weren't recognized as valuable because of how small they were in comparison to modern day cards.

A woman, dressed as a great blue heron, promised children tales from the swamp."I am going to talk to you about something we don't have at the aquarium -- a swamp," said Cathie Vincent, an educator with the National Aquarium on a visit to William Winchester Elementary in Westminster yesterday."

Rec sports The deadline for submitting sports copy is 9 a.m. on Mondays. We prefer email (howardcountysports@patuxent.com). We do not accept results by phone. When two Howard County teams play, players from both teams (first and last names) must be mentioned in the write-up. Questions? Call 410-332-6578. Running Storm in the Swamp The Long Reach and Reservoir field hockey teams combined to put together the Storm in the Swamp 5k run and Mommy Trot Sept.

EASTON, Pa. -- Wes Cooper scored 16 points and nine rebounds, leading visiting Navy to an 84-70 victory over Lafayette in a Patriot League game yesterday.The victory for Navy (13-8, 5-4) ended a three-game losing streak at Lafayette (2-19, 0-9), which has lost 16 consecutive games.In their last meeting on Jan. 11, the Midshipmen defeated the Leopards by 16 points. Yesterday, Navy was in command, leading 43-26 at halftime.The Midshipmen shot 16 for 33 from the field in the first half while Lafayette was only 9-of-24.

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A dense Eastern Shore swamp was no match this week for a 90-pound Boy Scout armed with a Charms Blow-Pop.Chris Belknap, a 13-year-old camper who got lost trying to take a shortcut, survived 32 hours in swamp waters up to his waist before he was rescued on a riverbank Thursday evening.He had no water to drink and ate only the Blow-Pop, a watermelon-flavored Jolly Rancher sucker and another piece of candy."I'm basically OK," Chris said from his Denton home yesterday, suffering from more than 40 mosquito bites.

Barbara Hurd steps off the dirt road, into a thicket of grasses so tangled they almost hide the still, murky water below. She puts a rubber boot forward, letting it sink down until it rests on something firmer, though invisible. "You just have to feel where the bottom is, because it's deceptive," she says. The sky is overcast as Hurd makes her way through Finzel Swamp in the Appalachian highlands of western Maryland. Scorched-looking spines of trees, their roots long since drowned in the flooded earth, rise starkly above the grass and bushes like gnarled tentacles.

MILLVILLE, N.J. - The 17 tree lovers shuffled, bent over, fighting their way through the low-hanging vines and branches, resplendent in their vapor trail of insect repellent, swamp and sweat. They were on the hunt, looking for the biggest, oldest trees in the Northeast, and on this day at least, New Jersey - known more for its turnpike than its timber - seemed a likely place to look. "Holy mackerel!" a voice bellowed from up ahead. "Look at the size of this black gum!" Every old tree, no matter where it has taken root, is a mystery story, a testament to time and perseverance wrapped in the riddles of growth rings and scarred bark.

MIAMI -- Helicopters hovered over the scorched swampland and recovery workers dodged alligators to dive into the muck. But the Everglades, desolate and mysterious, gave up only a few clues yesterday about the jet that disappeared into the mire Saturday afternoon, killing 109 people and leaving almost no trace.Local and federal officials gave up any hope of rescuing survivors from ValuJet Flight 592 and changed the name of the mission to "recovery." Then they set about trying to figure out how to find the plane -- or pieces of it -- in the swamp and pull its victims free.

City Councilman Carl Stokes said he surprised himself with his wide margin of victory over Odette Ramos in Tuesday's Democratic primary race to represent Charles Village. "It's much more than I expected, frankly," Stokes, an appointed councilman who was running for the 12th District seat, said on election night as he partied with Council President Bernard C. 'Jack' Young, who soundly defeated former Senator Theatre ownerTom Kiefaber. With all Baltimore voting precincts reporting in the Democratic primary race, Stokes led Ramos by 49 to 23 percent, with Devon Brown at 12 percent, Jason Curtis at 8 percent and three others at 3 percent or less, in one of the city's most hotly contested races.

It's cool one August morning in a forest near the marsh, quiet but for the occasional bellowing of a few green frogs, and two experts on Maryland's flora and fauna are preparing for a sticky mission. Earl "Bud" Reaves dons a wide-brimmed hat and pulls on a pair of hip waders. "A bad day in the woods is better than a good day somewhere else," says Reaves, a forester for Anne Arundel County. Chris Swarth, clad in a tie-dyed shirt, pulls a bright red flag from his jeans.

Did politicians exempt themselves from the litter laws the same way they exempted themselves from the "do not call" list? The primary election was weeks ago, yet countless signs for those who lost remain, many illegally placed on public land. It's time for these signs to come down. At what point do they officially become litter? The offending campaigns should be fined. Steve Raskin, Parkton

The Maryland women's basketball team finished its regular season with a 94-61 loss to ninth-ranked Florida State on Sunday in a game that juxtaposed the value of veteran leadership against the inconsistency often associated with youth. With three seniors in their starting lineup, the visiting Seminoles withstood Maryland's 6-0 burst to open the game, tied it soon after and used deft 3-point shooting to pull away before halftime. "I think from our end, it was a game that was not very typical of how we play," Maryland coach Brenda Frese said.

The Navy men's lacrosse team might have avoided the storm projected to hit the Annapolis area Thursday night, but the same could not be said for what North Carolina delivered. The No. 3 Tar Heels scored the game's first six goals as they overwhelmed the No. 11 Midshipmen, 11-4, at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. North Carolina senior attackman Gavin Petracca led all scorers with seven points on two goals and five assists, and senior midfielder Sean DeLaney added three goals and two assists for the Tar Heels, who improved to 4-0 for the third consecutive season.

All week, as Navy's players accepted pats on the back and compliments for the way they played in a close loss at Ohio State last weekend, coach Ken Niumatalolo worried that the Midshipmen might not have the proper mentality when their game against Louisiana Tech began Saturday afternoon. What he saw in the first six minutes of the game didn't make him feel better. The Bulldogs put together a long touchdown drive, Navy went three and out, and then Louisiana Tech junior Phillip Livas returned a punt 85 yards for another touchdown.

Isle of Wight Courthouse, Va. -- Some 25 miles west of Norfolk, in the center of what Virginians know as Isle of Wight County, and the rest of us would quickly recognize as the middle of nowhere, a rugged 4 x 4 bounces down sandy, barely discernible trails leading toward Rattlesnake Swamp.Inside, four improbable companions peek through the dust at the forsaken, broken scape of woodland, choked by layers of sweet honeysuckle and shrouded in bleak stillness.Three are armed, sober-minded men who look every bit like agents of the United States Secret Service.

Researchers digging along a rural Pennsylvania highway have unearthed what they say is the world's oldest known arm bone, once used by a slithery creature to raise itself up out of a prehistoric swamp. "We're looking at our very distant ancestor," said Neil Shubin, a professor of organismal biology at the University of Chicago who worked on the discovery. The bone formed the upper arm of an animal about 3 feet long that looked like a flat-headed salamander and lurked in swamps and shallow waters 365 million years ago. Lodged in a geological formation exposed by highway construction a decade ago, the bone will help scientists determine what kinds of aquatic creatures first ventured out of the primordial ooze to form the roots of our family tree.

Costume designer Melissa Webb keeps some pretty strange company, all of her own making. There's a Swamp Nymph, a Ghost Bride, a Grassman and a Topiary Woman, all looking like something out of an especially Grimm fairy tale. There's a Death Dance Bird, a collection of feathers on taffeta that is the stuff of an ornithologist's nightmare. And there are four Uppity Ladies, 8-foot-tall women swathed in silk and lace who, physically and emotionally, look down on the rest of us. "They're dramatic, they create drama," Webb, 34, says of her fabric creations, a mixture of earth-toned wariness and unexpected whimsy on display at South Baltimore's Gallery Imperato through Sept.

Parts of Charles County's Zekiah Swamp are every bit as inhospitable as the name suggests, choked with tick-infested woods and boot-sucking wetlands. But as archaeologists are discovering to their delight, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries Zekiah was a growth center for the young Maryland colony. The site of a 1674 courthouse was found last summer. Excavations this month have uncovered what might be traces of the "summer house" that Gov. Charles Calvert built to dodge his political enemies.