Venice

VENICE, Fla. -- Jack Voigt pulled a blue piece of scrap carpet out of his trunk."Got a new backdrop today," he said.Voigt walked to the batting cage at Wellfield Park, where he played Babe Ruth and high school baseball.Two minor-leaguers, Todd Brown and Jim Felch, were already working out."Gas today, Jack," Brown said as he fed balls into the pitching machine. "Going about 92 [mph].""We'll have to take that down a little bit then," Voigt replied.It's not that Voigt was trying to avoid the heat.

VENICE, Calif. -- For years, this somewhat scrubby beach community on the southern fringe of Los Angeles has been known as a magnet for folks who want to be left alone to do their own thing.One of their own things has been keeping hundreds of ducks in four man-made canals tucked within a six-block rectangle inland from the beach. The canals were the brainstorm years ago of a local man named Abbot Kinney who decided to bring a touch of the "real" Venice to its namesake town. They even have Venetian-like humped bridges crossing each of the canals, providing enough headroom for a gondola to pass under, though none was sighted by a recent visitor.

VENICE, LA. // A platinum sun set on a warm March afternoon as I drove from New Orleans' Louis Armstrong Airport toward the mouth of the Mississippi River to a place known as "the end of the world." When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana nearly two years ago, it must have felt like the end of the world. But as I scanned the New Orleans skyline from a highway overpass, the only signs of destruction were the ones playing in my head: the flashbacks from TV news clips during the storm. The Superdome, once battered and overrun with evacuees, had a new roof, and the dry city streets flowed with activity.

MY BEST SHOTOld entrance to VeniceBy Georgia Benson, TimoniumLunch at al Todaro in Venice guarantees an afternoon of boat- and people-watching near the columns that once marked the main entrance to Venice from the sea. You might see a small wedding procession emerge from a nearby building, the bride managing a long white train, the groom in black tails, followed by a photographer and one attendant carrying a large bouquet. They sail along the crowded walk, San Giorgio Maggiore a shimmering backdrop across the waters of the Bacino San Marco.

"THE CONTESSA is not at home, my Colonel,'' he said. ''They believe you might find her at Harry's.''''You find everything on earth at Harry's.''''Yes, my Colonel. Except, possibly, happiness.''-- Ernest Hemingway, ''Across the River and Into the Trees''Hemingway is back in vogue in Venice and Harry's bar is thriving. The literati still show up; Gore Vidal was interviewed there recently by the International Herald Tribune about the Venice Film Festival. Certainly the prices let you know you're someplace special.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke wasted no time in throwing his support behind a $12.5 million plan to build a make-believe canal in the middle of Market Place. If everything goes well, this Venice on the Patapsco ought to be ready for the 1997 tourist season, complete with a fleet of old-time barges and fishing schooners doubling as vendors' kiosks and outdoor cafes.What's going on here?It may have taken Mr. Schmoke nearly six years, but he has finally come up with an economic development strategy for Baltimore City.

If you can't take the museum to the waterfront, then take the waterfront to the museum.That's the premise behind Baltimore's "faux canal," the $12.5 million combination floating open-air market, urban sculpture park and outdoor history museum planned for the stretch of Market Place between Pratt and Water streets.It wouldn't be a navigable canal but an elaborate public sculpture that simulates a boat-filled waterway. The goal is to extend the allure of the city's refurbished harbor front into the heart of the city, encouraging people walking along the Inner Harbor to venture three blocks in land to visit the proposed Baltimore Children's Museum at 34 Market Place, as well as the soon-to-reopen Fishmarket nightclub complex.

It's been 11 days without a cigarette in Building A at the maximum security prison for women in Jessup. Back and forth from the commissary, women carry brown sacks filled to the brim with Sugar Daddies, lollipops and Tootsie Rolls. Candy sales have doubled. Food consumption is up 25 percent. There's a run on Slim Fast. Inside the stark cell block, women in jeans and loose shirts emerge from their rooms holding mops and brooms. Anything to keep their hands busy. Forty percent of the state prison population smokes.

WATERMARK.Joseph Brodsky.Farrar, Straus & Giroux.135 pages. $15.Falling in love with certain books can be like falling in love with certain human beings. At first, there may be indifference, incomprehension and even dislike. Then -- gradually or suddenly -- the bandages of misunderstanding unwrap themselves to reveal one's touchable fate: the luminous doom of recognizing the almost intolerably high value of something or someone outside of oneself.At this point, I am no more than half in love with "Watermark," Joseph Brodsky's abrasively lyrical book on Venice.

Artist Edward Ruscha has been named the U.S. representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. A selection of his work, yet to be determined, will fill the American pavilion when the show opens in June. The veteran pop artist, whose works have often married vibrant graphics and language, was chosen by directors and curators from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This will be Ruscha's second appearance at the prestigious international exhibition.