Tent

"We Never Refuse Refuse" was the snappy slogan printed on a fleet of garbage trucks that served generations of Baltimoreans.Now the scion of a competing trash hauling family, the Bohagers, is giving that motto a new twist by erecting a 62-foot-tall inflatable dome that will trash Baltimore's waterfront east of the Inner Harbor.In the process, he's underscoring the need for stronger laws to protect areas where residents refuse to tolerate architectural refuse.The "BohDome" is the name of the soaring, bubble-shaped tent that Baltimore businessman Damian Bohager plans to erect by Dec. 1 over Bohager's at Parrott Island, a tropics-themed mega-bar at Eden and Aliceanna streets.

The urban landscape looked different yesterday because the homeless Sheila Brown pitched a tent on the concrete under the Interstate 83 overpass. There she lay and ate and slept in freezing temperatures in her blue-and-gray Winnebago tent from Sunny's -- The Affordable Outdoor Store.Harbored from the freezing rain, she was zipped up and wrapped up in blankets and coats with price tags still attached. Wanting her space, she talked only through her tent."I got a few dead friends back there in the dirt.

"Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl" is the tragic story of a young girl who in 1975 is sent from her home in bustling Chung-du to live and work in China's vast Tibetan foothills.As directed by actress Joan Chen in her filmmaking debut, "Xiu Xiu" draws a startlingly frank portrait of the most abhorrent and cruel elements of China's cultural revolution, and as a doomed love story, it conveys great sweetness amid the sweep of land and history. The bathos gets a bit thick, and Chen commits some glaring continuity gaps along the way, but the portrait she draws is a vivid one.Lu Lu plays Xiu Xiu, whom we meet as an idealistic teen-ager on her way to join the Cultural Youth Revolution, in which the Chinese government sent urban youths to the countryside to work and learn new trades.

The desk Bryan Loane sits at belonged to his father. His file cabinet, to his grandfather. But the company he heads, Loane Bros. Inc., is rooted much further back in his genealogy -- and Baltimore's history.The family business, now a $3 million-a-year party tent rental and canvas awning company, started out in 1815 as a sail maker's loft on Bowley's Wharf at the Inner Harbor.In the 184 years since Bryan's great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Loane, began producing canvas sails, the company has survived by adjusting and refocusing, abandoning the production of sails, shifting to canvas awnings and, later, party tents.

IT COULD have been called Frighty night. On Friday, the first evening of the Halloween weekend, east Columbia kids of all ages warmed up for Sunday.In the village center of Kings Contrivance, a line of brave souls wanting a good scare stretched halfway from a haunted tent to the parking lot. Inside the tent, Hammond High School students in ghoulish costumes did their best to accommodate the crowd.It was hard to tell who was having more fun -- the screaming teen-age zombies or their startled guests.

A large tent and lumber that former Carroll Sheriff John H. Brown purchased to build outdoor housing for inmates at the county detention center has been earmarked for donation, Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning announced yesterday.Complaining that the county jail, which was designed for 144 prisoners, was too crowded when inmate population exceeded 190, Brown vowed in November 1997 to set up a tent in the jail's fenced yard and form a posse of unarmed civilian volunteers to help stand guard.Brown's project ran into trouble when a wooden platform was constructed without proper building permits.

ROME, N.Y. -- Woodstock '99 is, in some ways, the biggest Woodstock of them all.It has big stars, big crowds and big acreage. Most of all, it has big buzz.Before the three-day festival was halfway through, Woodstock '99 was being dubbed by journalists, performers and audience members as "one of the greatest concerts in rock history" (a claim the promoters were quick to quote).Not only did the festival boast some of the biggest names in pop music -- Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, DMX, the Dave Matthews Band, Alanis Morissette and Metallica -- but it was also being cast as a pivotal event for Generations X and Y.The festival's 225,000 attendees were acutely aware that pay-per-view cameras ringed the two main stages.

Show up at most Maryland state park campgrounds with nothing but a sleeping bag, and you're in for a cold, dark night. But at Swallow Falls State Park, the rangers will provide a tent, propane stove and lantern, help set them up and even light your campfire.It's instant camping, available for a modest fee to novices and those who just don't want to buy or haul a lot of gear. In Maryland, the option is available only at Swallow Falls, the state's westernmost campground, on the Youghiogheny River a few miles from Deep Creek Lake.

Prague, after the rain; My best shot For several years, my daughter Sam, now 12, and I have enjoyed two- or three-week trips to the Southwest. But in 1995, I took a two-month leave of absence from my job in Baltimore, and the two of us set out on the adventure of a lifetime. Just me and Sam, our little minivan, a cooler, a tent, sleeping gear and, of course, my camera.When it was all said and done, we had traveled more than 7,000 miles cross-country, visited 14 national parks and monuments, and camped beneath the stars 25 nights.

WASHINGTON -- With increasing pressure on them from anti-abortion forces, conservative Republican presidential hopefuls for 2000 appear ready and willing to walk the plank again in opposing abortion, a position that has strong support within the party but is counter to public opinion outside it.The most recent Gallup poll for USA Today and CNN found that 17 percent of 1,004 adults surveyed favored making abortion illegal in all circumstances compared with...

A mentally ill homeless man was sentenced Thursday to 10 1/2 years in prison for setting fire to another homeless man's tent last fall. John Allen Wilder, 41, was charged with attempted first- and second-degree murder, assault, arson and other counts. He entered an Alford plea to first-degree arson, which does not admit guilt but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence to gain a conviction. The other charges were dropped under the plea deal. Wilder, who had been drinking, was upset at him when he settled in for the night Nov. 22, 2008, in a homeless camp behind BJ's Warehouse in Pasadena, John Kreimer said.

"Better dead than camping." - Motto of the Kayes family of Ohio Let me begin by making one thing clear: When it comes to the practice of sleeping outdoors in tents, cooking food over an open fire and so on, I do not share the opinion of Nancy Kayes. It is not, to me, a fate worse than death. Then again, Ms. Kayes has 17 children, which at last count is 14 more than my own brood. Nevertheless, I will confess here that the Kayes family motto flitted through my mind, however briefly, during a recent family vacation on the West Coast.

The man charged with attempted murder for allegedly setting fire to a tent last month while a man was inside it has a record of arrests dating back nearly 20 years, had threatened relatives with a metal skillet and broken into a lover's apartment, according to court records. John Allen Wilder, 40, of the 500 block of Crain Highway in Glen Burnie, was arrested Nov. 22 after police found him standing by a burning makeshift tent in the woods behind the BJ's Wholesale Club in the 8100 block of Ritchie Highway in Pasadena.

Sitting still was not an option. Thousands of live music lovers were torn between two stages yesterday at the third annual Virgin Mobile Festival at Pimlico Race Course. It was a popularity contest, with some of today's hottest musicians vying for the crowd's attention on two opposing main stages. The audience made the shape of a dumbbell: Two clusters of people at either end of the infield around the main stages and a stream of foot traffic steadily flowing in between. Some festivalgoers were flustered at having to pick between headliners Jack Johnson and the Foo Fighters.

Historic Savage Mill is presenting Art Jam, a weekend festival, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, featuring shows by resident artists (1 p.m. to 6 p.m.); free appraisals of antiques and collectibles (1 p.m. to 4 p.m.); demonstrations of photo restoration (2 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.), 10-minute massages (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.); wine-tasting (2 p.m. to 6 p.m.); the art of grilling (2 p.m. to 4 p.m.); live music, snacks and a fashion show (3 p.m. to 4 p.m.); and clowns, face-painters and caricature artists.

You probably won't miss what you don't see at Pimlico Race Course on Preakness Stakes day this year. A few sponsors are gone, along with some corporate tent buyers. There could be slightly fewer fans. They are small differences, ones that are not likely to have major impact on the May 17 event's bottom line. But at a time when Pimlico and its parent company are struggling to remain viable, anything that threatens the success of the Preakness is worth watching, economists say. With shareholders and taxpayers keeping a close watch on company and organization spending, lavish sponsorship parties can be hard to justify - particularly when it's hard to judge their return on investment.

WALKS THROUGH MARIE ANTOINETTE'S PARIS Ravenhall Books / $27.95 A life, anyone's life, is bound up in the place or places it is lived. Take, for example, the life of Marie Antoinette. She became famous because she traveled from her native Austria to marry in France. And because court etiquette kept her at Versailles for so much of her life, she eventually created an idyllic getaway resort on its grounds. Author Diana Reed Haig has captured the poignancy of Antoinette's life in what is a fast-paced and compassionate biography.

When her boyfriend proposed, Michelle Lose said yes. But when it came time to start planning the wedding, the 35-year-old Verizon engineer from Abingdon had a conflict - the Catholic Charities Dragon Boat races. "Initially, he suggested a fall wedding," said Lose, the captain of the boat sponsored by Verizon. "But I said, `Can I get through the dragon races? After Sept. 9, I can plan. How about a Christmas wedding?'" Participating in the fundraising event in the Inner Harbor involves weeks of planning and months of practice.

IF CAMPING REMINDS YOU OF a bad night's sleep and mosquitoes, well, you have a good memory. But the plus side to a $500 weekend with a tent is that the budget leaves plenty of cash for adventure. The three-day trip with my husband, David, included surfing lessons, a fishing tournament and meals that were anything but freeze-dried. And we suffered zero mosquito bites, even though the place we pitched our tent is known for them in the summer. Assateague is essentially a giant sand bar. The 37-mile-long barrier island is so narrow in places you could kick a soccer ball across it. The Eastern Shore destination is known for wild ponies and sandy campsites.

This year's Carroll County 4-H/FFA Fair will offer several new events and 4-H club exhibitions for all ages, from a silent auction to cow pie bingo to the carriage show to robotics demonstrations and lost arts displays. Some of the events are fundraisers to help pay for the purchase of animal pens for the growing number of livestock exhibitions. This week's fair has so many animal exhibits that the schedule had to be revamped to get them all in, said Andy Cashman, livestock superintendent.