Tapestry

A photo caption in Sunday's Sun Magazine incorrectl identified the man escorting Adrienne Perkins down the aisle at her wedding. His name is John Scott. Mrs. Perkins is married to Willard Perkins Jr.The Sun regrets the errors.The 150 or so people grow quiet, stirring nervously in anticipation of the bride's entrance. Suddenly drums are heard in the distance. Three male drummers, clad in African dress, appear, pounding furiously, followed by four female dancers clothed in brightly colored African robes and sandals and moving energetically to the beat.

Unlike Britain, America isn't known as a country of needlepoint mavens. But a new mail-order business in Ellicott City is launching an effort to change that.Ehrman Tapestry -- an 18-year-old needlepoint kit company based in London -- opened an office earlier this month on Dorsey Hall Drive, its first office outside London.The office -- and the six Howard County residents who work there -- are key to the company's plan to market its kits in the United States, officials said."The market in America is a very good one," said Marjorie Adams, Ehrman's U.S. branch president.

There are many reasons why it's difficult to leave the show of "Matisse Cutouts" at the Baltimore Museum of Art, but above all there's a reluctance to leave the sense of affirmation of life that comes through these works, which were created by an ailing old man.Matisse produced all but two of the 30 cutouts in this show after 1941, when at 72 he had a major operation that left him largely unable to walk. From then until his death in 1954, bedridden or in a wheelchair, he created with scissors and painted paper a body of work that is beautiful and joyous.

To most in America, the Africa that exists beyond the game parks and tourist attractions is a continent mired in poverty and famine, rife with disease and despair, resistant to persistent efforts to raise it out of its terrible state. Even many who take pride in tracing their heritage to its soil can do little but blame those who have oppressed and exploited Africa for its seemingly never-ending travails. There is no doubt that these problems exist. In some parts of Africa, merely surviving is a daily challenge.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Capt. Thomas K. Kimmel, U.S.N. Ret., of Annapolis, received a letter from Richard G. Trefry, the military assistant to President Bush. It said the president would not posthumously promote Mr. Kimmel's father from rear admiral to admiral. Admiral was the rank the late Husband E. Kimmel held on a temporary commission on Dec. 7, 1941. He was then commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor. He and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Army commander there, were blamed for the infamous tragedy of that day. In a rush to judgment, a special commission headed by the chief justice of the United States said in January 1942 that the two officers had been guilty of "dereliction of duty" for not thwarting the Japanese attack.

Outhouses. Potbellied stoves. Four-mile walks in the snow. These are legacies of the Rosenwald Schools. For the past several weeks, county students have been studying the schools, a loosely affiliated network for African-American children that a white businessman, Julius Rosenwald, helped start with a grant in 1917. Twenty-three would spring up in Anne Arundel County alone. But what fascinated history students at North County High School in Glen Burnie and Southern High School in Harwood were the minutiae -- where children went to the bathroom, how they stayed warm and got to school, and what their classrooms looked like.

Sometimes the only barrier separating a pastoral paradise from hell on earth is a thin line of birch trees. Before she died in 2001 at age 74, Frederick dressmaker Esther Krinitz created 36 oversized fabric panels that provide persuasive proof that both worlds exist - sometimes within the same frame. In scraps of fabric and cheerily colored yarns, the panels tell the story of how young Esther and her sister escaped from the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. The panels went on display this weekend at the American Visionary Art Museum as part of a new exhibit, "The Art of Storytelling: Lies, Enchantment, Humor and Truth.

They sit hunched over a single needlepoint canvas that is bathed in astoundingly bright light, fingers flying. "Where am I? My needle is under here," Joy Wiley of Lothian says to herself as she stops to examine her work while feeling around beneath the canvas for her dangling yarn and needle. "We hate these tails," says Sheryn Blocher of Crownsville with a sigh, glaring at what look like weeds standing up from the canvas. She will imperceptibly secure the base of each wisp of yarn, or tail, before trimming it away.

In his search for meaning in life, Woodstock violin-maker Michael Kosman turned to the ancient religion and moral philosophy of Buddhism."It gave me the tools to find those answers in myself," says Mr. Kosman, who was raised in a liberal Jewish family and became a Buddhist in 1974. "At that time in my life I was struggling to understand what's up and what's down what's right and what's wrong."It is a path that a number of Howard County converts have followed, joining immigrants from Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Los Angeles -- Carole King is the latest artist to join the exclusive 10 million club, though it took her "Tapestry" album 24 years to get her there.Ms. King was certified last week by the Recording Industry Association of America for domestic sales of 10 million copies of the seminal 1970s album, which spent 302 weeks on Billboard's pop chart, compared with record-holder Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" with 741 weeks and third-place "Led Zeppelin IV" with 259 weeks.Ms. King joins only 21 other artists and 26 albums that have hit the stratosphere of the 10 million club.