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Forty-five farmers from Calvert County visited the Zimmerman farm in southern Carroll County on Nov. 12 to view the family's conservation and crop-management practices."

IF YOU'RE not already packed for Hawaii, Baja California or Central America, you're probably going to have to settle for a partial eclipse when the moon passes across the sun's face Thursday afternoon.Assuming skies are clear, the best you're going to be able to do in Baltimore or Washington will be to watch as a maximum of 7 percent of the sun's disk is nipped by the new moon.The partial eclipse will begin here at 2:57 p.m. and obscure part of the sun's lower right quadrant.The event will reach its maximum at 3:34 p.m., and it will all be over in Baltimore at 4:09 p.m.Marylanders who aren't looking for it probably won't realize anything's happened.

The gulf between the American left and right continues to widen against a backdrop of high unemployment, weak growth and high octane cultural battles. I got to thinking about this growing divide in the aftermath of the Colorado movie theater shooting spree that left 12 dead, 58 injured, and a nation in shock. Once the gravity of the story began to sink in, my mind turned to an inconvenient (for some) thought: How many lives would have been saved if someone in that theater had access to a firearm of their own?

A plan to televise the Nov. 16 Notre Dame-Penn State game on a pay-per-view basis was scuttled yesterday when ABC Sports, the College Football Association and SET Pay-Per-View agreed that one week was inadequate time to market the contest to potential buyers."

Nearly three years after leaving the Oval Office, the man many considered the most successful U.S. politician of his era is regarded as no better than average, a Los Angeles Times Poll has found.People still rate President Ronald Reagan's job performance positively, but not overwhelmingly so. And as the "great communicator" has slipped from public view, the public's overall impression of him also has slipped. In fact, people are closely divided over whether they and the nation are better or worse off because of the 40th president's policies, the poll showed.

COLLEGE PARK -- The view doesn't include the Washington Monument, and the players looked a lot smaller. But with Maryland's victory over North Carolina, the new upper-deck seating started warming over the crowd."

Admit it: You think that your company is a well-run business. Given the limitations of an imperfect world, you're convinced you do a good job of satisfying customers and employees. But do you? If you're like most entrepreneurs, a seed of doubt lingers in the back of your mind. You wonder if limitations in your management style, or in the company's products or services, is holding the business back.How should you view this seed of doubt? Is it the healthy skepticism of an open-minded entrepreneur, or a red flag indicating that serious problems lie beneath the surface?

If a Baltimore restaurant has a view of the Inner Harbor that rivals any in the city, it's as important a selling point as a great crab cake - at least judging from the requests I get. The new Watertable, a redo of what used to be Windows in the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, has a good, if not great, crab cake. The view, however, is nothing short of spectacular. With the redesign, the hotel din ing room is no longer staid but sleekly contemporary, with lots of wood and glass. It's handsome and a bit impersonal, the way good-looking hotel dining rooms tend to be. Of course, the tables by the floor-to-ceiling windows are most desirable, but every seat in the house now has a view of the harbor.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Co-promoters Bob Arum and Dan Duva were predicting record pay-per-view income from last night's fight based on early sales at $40 a household. Income from the venture could climb past $50 million.The fight last night was the first boxing venture produced by the new TVKO network, a subsidiary of the Time-Warner conglomerate.Ross Levinsohn, TVKO's director of marketing, said: "We're running 10 to 25 percent ahead of any other fight ever shown on pay-per-view. "We have 18 million addressable homes, and . . . would set a record" if 1.3 million bought the service.

What would it take for me to spend thousands of dollars in lawyers' fees, to actually go through a nasty legal battle, to force my neighbor to cut down 200 trees? It's hard to imagine. But let's try.Let's suppose...That I'm afraid of trees. Suppose, as a child, I was traumatized by the trees in the "Wizard of Oz," the ones that suddenly come alive and angrily start throwing apples at Dorothy and her odd traveling buddies. Let's say I have nightmares, and every time I look out the window I see a tree that looks like Lurch from "The Addams Family" reaching for my children and pets.