Vanished

The day after riding in the Kentucky Derby, Kevin Krigger packed his family and gear and headed for Pimlico Race Course - by way of Cincinnati. A woman there had captured his heart. She was Liliane Casey, 88, whose father, Jimmy Winkfield, was the last black jockey to win the Derby, or any Triple Crown race, in 1902. "I had to meet her," said Krigger, 29, who chatted with Casey in the living room of her apartment for nearly 2 1/2 hours. "We had a great time. She educated me as to what her father had gone through in racing.

WASHINGTON - In the continuing homefront debate over the war in Iraq, President Bush is fast losing ground as a result of the failure to back up his pre-invasion claims on why it was imperative to make war, and when. The interim report just made by David Kay, the former U.N. weapons inspector appointed by the administration to seek the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that the president cited to justify the invasion, says nothing has been found yet to have warranted such a contention.

Potential pension woes continue to mount for millions of Americans, as a hidden insolvency spreads like a virus through the retirement system.Total underfunding of private pension-plan obligations exceeds $45 billion, two-thirds higher than it was six years ago. General Motors alone has more than $20 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Bethlehem Steel owes $2.4 billion to the employee retirement coffers, and fellow steel maker LTV Corp. is short by $2.1 billion after years of bankruptcy-court protection.

Maryland's outstanding farmland preservation program is in danger of collapse. During the budget crunch of the early 1990s, state officials raided coffers set aside to protect valuable agricultural acres. With Maryland's fiscal stature improved, the General Assembly has an opportunity to restore money to this important conservation effort.State Sen. Larry Haines, a Republican from Carroll County, has offered one of the more promising solutions. He would change the allocation of the state's property transfer tax -- which is now split between Project Open Space (84.2 percent)

MARYLAND'S VANISHING LIVES. By John Sherwood. Photos by Edwin Remsberg. Johns Hopkins University Press. 232 pages. $29,95.WHEN was the last time you saw a cooper fashion a barrel; or a sailmaker, with palm and needle, work up a spinnaker from No. 1 canvas or Egyptian duck?Unless you hurry, you will not see these trades practiced in Maryland in a few short years, according to John Sherwood. His "Maryland's Vanishing Lives" is a compendium of the many crafts, trades and skills which will soon be lost, not only in Maryland but throughout the country.

It was 15 years after its sinking before French explorer Jacques Cousteau's cameras gave the world a glimpse of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the legendary ship of song and sea story. During a fierce November storm in 1975, she suddenly vanished and plunged 556 feet below the surface of Lake Superior with all 29 hands aboard. What Cousteau found in that quiet, silent netherworld where water temperatures never climb above 40 degrees and wrecks are perfectly preserved, was the Edmund Fitzgerald lying serenely on the bottom in two pieces, her name in large black letters clearly readable along her superstructure.

If you have never visited Texas -- Texas, Md., that is -- go quickly before the old quarry hamlet disappears.That is likely to happen later this year when McDermott's Tavern -- the town's watering hole -- and two other remaining buildings along Railroad Avenue will be torn down to make way for light-rail lines and an extension of Beaver Dam Road. After that, only St. Joseph's Catholic Church will remain as a landmark in a village that originally was settled by Irish stonecutters in the 1840s.

New Orleans -- The editor of a Romanian humor magazine, Ioan Morar, came to visit me around Mardi Gras. I asked him what happened to all the jokes that people used to tell before the fall of communism.It seemed to me that there were no new political jokes, a worrisome development that indicated some deep spiritual malaise. Before 1989 people used to live on jokes. There wasn't anything else.At the joke contest back then, there were three prizes: third prize, $100, second prize, $50, first prize, ten years at hard labor.

Just down the street and around the corner from my home is a little patch of paradise next to the Potomac River and the C&O Canal National Historic Park. Its sunny glades edge up to a clear, crawfish-filled creek that rushes around islands of perfect skipping stones. Its woods echo with the call of pileated woodpeckers and the bark of foxes. It is a place my family cherishes, and we visit often for picnicking, hiking, fishing or roasting marshmallows.