Variety

Seether, Sick Puppies and Charm City Devils performed at Pier Six Pavilion on Saturday night. Midnight Sun contributor Jay Trucker was there. The Autumn Equinox, a 98 Rock-sponsored concert featuring Charm City Devils, Sick Puppies and Seether, may not have sold as many tickets as Sunday night's sold-out banjo-and-acoustic-guitar-dueling kinsmen the Avett Brothers, but fans on hand were treated to an intercontinental array of hard-rock music...

Anne Arundel's three regional concert series offer entertainment bargains to county residents in search of live musical performances by classical, folk and jazz artists. Societies that have been around for at least 30 seasons hold the concert series at convenient locations, with two at local high schools and one at an arts center. Anne Arundel Community Concert Association, the 61-year-old organization based in Severna Park, has a reciprocal arrangement with South County Concert Association, which is opening its 37th season at Southern High School in Harwood.

Two cool summertime art exhibits located in different neighborhoods, and very much in different financial brackets, provide welcome diversion from the heat. C. Grimaldis Gallery in Mount Vernon offers a show that brings together several notable artists who have long been associated with the gallery, including Grace Hartigan, Eugene Leake and Anthony Caro. The price tags: $1,500 to $90,000. School 33 in Federal Hill has the diverse "Magically Suspicious" show on one floor, and two spaces devoted to individual artists upstairs.

Anybody who saw Jimmy Smith gingerly walked off the indoor practice field Thursday wasn't shocked by the Ravens cornerback's absence during Friday's session at the team's headquarters in Owings Mills. Coach John Harbaugh confirmed defensive coordinator Dean Pees' initial vibe that Smith had injured his back. “Jimmy's back locked up,” Harbaugh said Friday. “It's all muscular. It's stuff that has happened to him in college before. It takes a couple of days usually for that to loosen up.” Harbaugh also cleared up the mystery of defensive end Arthur Jones, who was not present for the second straight day. “Arthur got an MRI,” Harbaugh said.

John Cheney Wood, a Baltimore artist who worked in a variety of media, died July 20 of advanced Parkinson's disease at his summer home and studio in Ithaca, N.Y. The Mount Washington resident was 90. The son of a master carpenter and an executive secretary, John Cheney Wood was born in Turlock, Calif., and raised in Concord, Mass., where he graduated from high school. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1943, and after completing flight training, was a pilot stationed in Marfa, Texas.

Two of my three mophead hydrangeas have no flowers. I pruned all of them to the ground this spring like the nursery told me when I bought my Blushing Bride hydrangea. Now only the Blushing Bride has blooms. Are the other two getting too old to bloom? The nursery was right about how to prune Blushing Bride hydrangea, but it is not like your other mophead hydrangeas. They cannot be pruned the same way. All three are Hydrangea macrophylla, but Blushing Bride is an Endless Summer variety.

Renee Foose's call to education came around the 10th grade, when she says she "fell in love" with biology class. From there, she began a circuitous route to her career, and sometimes she was literally behind the wheel. Among the jobs Foose took to pay for her schooling: ice cream truck driver, bus driver and Maryland state trooper. While working full time at these various jobs and meeting the demands of college, she kept her sights on the path to a career in education; she earned four degrees and steadily moved up the ranks in local school districts.

After years of complex research, a small team of University of Maryland scientists says it has developed a simple solution to a killer Third World disease using salt. It's a bit more complicated than ordinary table salt, though the crystals have the same origins. The salt forms around an ancient microbe that has been genetically manipulated to act as a vaccine for salmonella, responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year globally. Discovered decades ago and the subject of intense research by many scientists, the microbe, called Haloarchaea, turns out to be such a good platform for vaccines that it could be employed against a variety of afflictions in poor and rich countries alike, said Shiladitya DasSarma, professor of microbiology and immunology in Maryland's School of Medicine.

The worldwide entity that acts as a traffic cop for Internet domain names, ICANN , today released a list of hundreds of proposed top level domain names that could supplment the current 20+ suffixes in use, such as .com, .org., .net, .org, and .xxx. ICANN billed it as likely the biggest expansion ever of the Internet domain system. It's a veritable gold rush for major companies to lock up domain names that mirror their companies or their product names, such as .Apple and .Android.

Asian Court could be the Chinese restaurant we've all been looking for. There's something for everyone at this unpretentious Ellicott City restaurant. If you're seeking well-prepared classic Cantonese and Hunan dishes made with fresh ingredients and careful attention, you'll be consistently rewarded at Asian Court And if you're on the hunt for the kind of cuisine we like to call authentic, you'll find plenty at Asian Court to challenge you. In fact, Asian Court helpfully lists these offerings, in English, in a menu section called "Authentic Cuisine.