Table

While they wait for their meals to appear, many diners in Carroll County restaurants read those little red table tents.The tents are paper brochures, folded into triangles and placed at mid-table or over there by the salt and pepper. Restaurant owners say the tents are becoming as popular as menus.The county Office of Tourism developed the tents to tout local holiday happenings and offered them to fast food and formal restaurants. A quick read lets diners know what to do and where to go after their meals.

Recession has its benefits. It makes taxpayers more conscious about priorities and costs. And when taxpayers get vigilant, elected officials tend to become more responsive, too.In Virginia, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors has voted to spend $1,000 to cancel its order for a $35,000 custom-made granite conference table. That table was to be crafted for the county's new $100 million administrative building. "We want it to work and work well, but we don't want it to be extraordinarily elaborate," said the board's leader, Audrey Moore, of the plush building, which will include a gym for county employees, mahogany paneling, skylights and granite floors.

The place John Frederick Thanos may spend his last seconds on earth is a 300-pound steel table, bolted to the floor a few feet from the gas chamber in the Maryland Penitentiary's hospital wing.The lethal-injection table, which corrections officials displayed yesterday to prove they are ready for their first execution in nearly 33 years, was constructed in April by prison employees.It stands about 4 feet high -- a rectangle, covered with purple vinyl padding, with arms sticking out of each side.

Looking for inspiration to get set for the holidays? Turn your table into a bountiful harvest of fruits and vegetables. As you search for new twists on old traditions, you'll find everything from rainbow-colored goblets that happen to be lead-free to dinnerware and table linens whose patterns are derived from nature. Ecological concerns are nurturing a healthy appetite for some symbol of the great outdoors. While you are mixing what you have with real leaves or evergreens -- or persimmons, for that matter -- also consider an object made by hand instead of machine.

You might call it "cabaret verite."Center Stage's Head Theater has been totally, convincingly and stunningly transformed into a working cabaret for its production of Lanie Robertson's "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill."The multi-level seating area is filled with tables and chairs; there's a bar at the back, and waiters serve drinks throughout the show. So successful is this concept -- for which credit should probably be divided between director George Faison, set designer Christopher Barreca and Tom Sturge, who created the smoky, evocative lighting -- that it's difficult to imagine this musical biography of Billie Holiday presented any other way.But, in fact, this is an innovative approach to Robertson's 1986 off-Broadway hit, which was conceived as a traditional theatrical presentation.

Saturday's Maryland Voices page laid out a clear example of Baltimore governmental failure and the typical attempt to talk it under the table ("Laying blame," May 11). The Baltimore City Detention Center issue has made the city the laughingstock of the country. Del. Pat McDonough lays it out on the table clearly. It's time for action. Cut the head off of the snake and get rid of corrections chief Gary Maynard, who's has been in a deep sleep for six years, ignoring the incredibly dire circumstances of the public infrastructure which he has been appointed to manage.

You have the sofa. You have the chairs, the TV, the lamps. The last big piece for the living/family room is likely to be the coffee table. Finding a table can be a significant challenge. How do you know what size, height and shape? Chicago interior designer Mitchell Putlack offered some clues. Know thyself. Know how you are going to sit at the coffee table, Putlack says. "Are you going to sit on a sofa or chair and put your feet up" on the table? If so, look for an ottoman-style coffee table and put trays atop it to hold food and drinks.

Q: I'm looking for a coffee table to go with a contemporary-style sofa and chairs. Should it be rectangular or round? What sort of material and styling would be best? I want to avoid a heavy, traditional look.A: In choosing any piece of furniture, the first thing to consider is its functional aspect. For a coffee table, height is all-important. It needs to be no more than 16 inches and no less than 14 inches off the floor to ensure a comfortable reach from standard-height seating pieces.Size and shape are also crucial, but these qualities will in turn be dependent on the amount of available space.

Q: My 13-month-old son keeps climbing on the kitchen table. If there are no chairs nearby, he moves them. How can I get him to stop?E.N., Cooper City, Fla.A: Don't stop his climbing. Change what he's climbing on. To do that, batten down the furniture and invest in a climbing toy designed especially for toddlers.'You must realize that the child has to climb; he can't help himself," says Joan Baumler, a mother from Buffalo, N.Y. "What the parent needs to do is provide a safe place."Many parents who called Child Life suggest decisive measures to put the table and chairs off limits.

To the uninitiated, they're simply numbers: 1, 15 and 45.To the wealthy and powerful in Baltimore, though, they're the keys to the throne at the Polo Grill. Sit at one of these numbered tables -- as movie director Barry Levinson, TV personality Sally Thorner and BSO president Buddy Zamoiski do -- and it means something. In the grand social scheme, you have arrived.Location, location, location. The real-estate maxim also applies to a much smaller piece of property: a table at the top restaurants in town.