Vain

Though top health officials are urging people not to stockpile antibiotics, worried Americans are continuing to do just that. Their fears that government supplies might not be mobilized for a large-scale attack is shared by some bioterrorism experts. Reports of an anthrax case in New York yesterday, coming after news coverage about three people exposed in Florida, promise to exacerbate what has been a month-long run on pharmacies. Some drugstores said they were being flooded with a wave of prescriptions for the antibiotic Cipro, a drug used for many common ailments such as urinary tract infections but also for anthrax.

IN THE middle of a great national conflagration 138 years ago, Abraham Lincoln said: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ..." Looking down on the soldiers buried at Gettysburg, he vowed that their deaths would bear fruit in "a new birth of freedom" and that our democratic government would perdure. In 1863, we were still a new nation, and the survival of democracy was at stake in a country divided against itself. As we, today, look through the billowing smoke and contemplate the lives lost in this terrorist conflagration, perhaps we also should "highly resolve."

THE DEATH of Ellen Roche, a 24-year-old employee and experimental subject at the Johns Hopkins University need not be in vain. The severity of the case led the federal government, in a surprise, to suspend all human research studies at a prestigious institution that was just ranked the No. 1 hospital in the country. The suspension recently was lifted except for studies that are "greater than minimal risk." The chair of the review panel at Hopkins took "full institutional responsibility" for Ms. Roche's death and suggested that her life was given for the cause of science.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its 84th season last night without music director Yuri Temirkanov, who isn't due in town until the end of October, and with a musical evocation of spring, which isn't due until a little later. But the ensemble was in the capable hands of Mario Venzago and sounded ripe and ready for the months of music-making ahead. Venzago, who memorably directed the BSO's recent Summer MusicFest, brought his characteristic spirit and sensitivity to the program, devoted to two staples of the German repertoire and one second-drawer Russian work that was lucky to be getting the attention.

Craig Hayward acknowledges he panicked. The sight of headlights he perceived as coming at him late on a December night was enough to make him jam on the brakes, sending his 1991 Honda Civic skidding into a curb. The source of the shining was an unmarked Anne Arundel County police car idling in a traffic circle on Housely Road in Annapolis, facing traffic. Hayward figured he had a good case. The county's insurance office would pay for $150 in repairs to his Honda, and that would be that.

There are two types of people in this world. Those who get Kevin Costner and those who don't.Those of us in the latter club believe that Costner hasn't made a watchable movie since "Bull Durham," and we scratch our heads at our friends and loved ones who will watch this blandest and most wooden of all movie stars in anything, including "Waterworld," "The Postman" and "Message in a Bottle.""For Love of the Game" will do nothing to clear this mystery up.Costner's fans will no doubt adore this two-hour-long orgy of Costner close-ups, slow-motion shots and other bits of the actor's metastasizing vainglory.

An ambitious and rarely seen film project by the late, great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski comes to the Charles Theatre this week. "Dekalog," a 10-part film series that Kieslowski made for television, will be shown at the newly expanded Baltimore art house over the next five weeks, starting Tuesday.Kieslowski made 10 one-hour films, each inspired by one of the Ten Commandments, and although the series is available on videotape (one of the movies, "A Short Film About Killing," has toured the festival circuit)

GENE AUTRY, Okla. -- There is the Gene Autry Chamber of Commerce, and there is the Gene Autry Volunteer Fire Department. The Gene Autry Methodist Church and the Gene Autry Baptist Church. Since 1941, when this dot-on-a-map town in southern Oklahoma renamed itself to honor one of America's first singing cowboys, only one important element has been missing:Gene Autry himself.At a rousing ceremony nearly six decades ago, Autry, then a dashing and beloved 34-year-old radio personality and movie star, spoke of bringing recognition to this small railroad community then called Berwyn.

A heroic rescue attempt by his older brother and the frantic efforts of relatives, neighbors and firefighters could not save a 4-year-old boy who was killed yesterday afternoon when fire swept through the upper floor of a two-story home in southwestern Baltimore County.Neighbors, many of them volunteer firefighters, and family members fought blinding smoke and flames but were unable to bring Scotty Tilghman to safety, fire officials said.When firefighters arrived three minutes after the fire was reported at about 1 p.m. in the 3000 block of Alabama Ave. in Baltimore Highlands, they found the child's body in an upstairs closet.

It's called "Quest for Camelot," but it's more like "Camelittle."Oh, Merlin and King Arthur make brief appearances, but there's no Mordred, no Morgan le Fay, no Guinevere. Instead, there's Kayley, a generically Disneyesque heroine who comes of age by helping a blind stud named Garrett track down the sword that's been plucked from the stone it's supposed to be in.Naturally, there's a bad guy -- Gary Oldman supplying the voice of Ruber, a vain brute.There are some pretty backdrops and a few of the jokes will crack up adults.