Volume

Ocean City wants boardwalk businesses to take it down a notch. The music, that is. The Town Council holds a final vote tonight on a proposal that would restrict noises and sounds from eminating more than 30 feet from the source. This includes playing music, instruments, sounds systems, karaoke - whatever your noise of choice.  Officials say the proposal actually comes at the behest of some boardwalk businesses that have complained they are being disturbed by noise from their neighbors.

Baltimore draws 117,027 commuters daily from Baltimore County, among the highest single-source commute totals in the nation, according to a survey released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The number - the equivalent of filling both M&T Bank Stadium and Camden Yards to capacity - ranks the city 16th in worker flow behind the New York, Los Angeles and Dallas suburbs and the number ofcommuters going from Prince George's County to jobs in Washington, D.C. Included in the total of 207,000 people who come to Baltimore each day for work are 21,719 from Anne Arundel County and 17,966 from Harford County, according to estimates from the American Community Survey.

The volume of general cargo moving through the Port of Baltimore continued its downward slide in August, with tonnage dropping more than 4 percent from the same month a year ago. The decline leaves the port nearly 13 percent below where it was at the same point in 1989.A key barometer of port health, general cargo consists of all goods that are not transported in bulk such as grain and coal. It includes autos, lumber, steel and merchandise carried in standardized cargo containers. The bulk of the jobs at the port are related to handling of general cargo.

W.H. Auden trawled the Oxford English Dictionary for old and obscure words, some of which he employed in his poetry. He was so fond of the OED that he often took a volume of it to bed at night. We here in Wordville understand that. Thus there is joy in Wordville, along with what might be described as excitement, at news of developments in lexicography. We find out from Allan Metcalf at Lingua Franca that Webster's New World College Dictionary , which appeared to be dormant, perhaps even moribund, under John Wiley's ownership, has been sold to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , publisher of the American Heritage Dictionary.

A large volume of sewage, which could be approaching 1 million gallons, spilled into a Southeast Baltimore creek throughout Thursday, said a Department of Public Works official. The overflow started about 8 a.m., coming from a pipe that leads to an underground vault in the 2200 block of Broening Highway and flowing into Colgate Creek, said DPW spokeswoman Celeste Amato. Public Works is working to re-route the sewage flow until the spillage stops, she said. When flow levels decrease enough, the department will be able to diagnose the cause of the overflow and provide a final estimate of the total spill volume.

In the mid-1970s, beginning work on the first volume of his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro moved for three years with his wife and indefatigable researcher, Ina, from New York to the Texas Hill Country where Johnson had grown up. "I realized that was a world I didn't understand, and I was never going to get to understand it unless I lived there," says Caro, a New Yorker. "It was a land of great isolation, loneliness and poverty when Johnson was growing up there."

Keyed to Black History Month - and just in time for Valentine's Day - is Hirschfeld's Harlem (Glenn Young Books, 128 pages, $75), a beautiful valentine to African-American artists of Harlem and beyond. The large, lush volume - with 30 color plates and 90 black and whites - is a greatly expanded reissue of a 1941 collection of illustrations by the great show-business artist Al Hirschfeld, who died in January 2003 at age 99. Curated by the artist's widow, Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, the book includes an introduction written by the artist shortly before his death.

Ever wonder why rock concerts are so loud?Sure you have -- especially on those mornings after, when you wake up and your ears are still buzzing from the night before. It probably doesn't bother you in the parking lot after the show; heck, everybody expects ringing ears after a rock concert. But when it's still there 18 hours later, even dedicated rock fans begin to wonder about the value of too much volume.Even in the music business, most people agree that rock concerts are often ear-crushingly loud.

Two thinly traded companies started by broker Nathan A. Chapman Jr. have suddenly become hot stocks, and yesterday they each soared at least 25 percent.Shares of Chapman Holdings Inc., a Baltimore-based brokerage and investment banking firm, jumped 32.7 percent, or $4.375 per share, to a high of $17.75 at the 4 p.m. close.Shares of Chapman Capital Management Holdings Inc., an investment management company, climbed 25 percent, or $3.75 per share, to a high of $18.75.In the past 2 1/2 weeks, the shares of both companies have rocketed 689 percent from their lows, Chapman Holdings zooming from a 52-week low of $2.25 on Dec. 8 and Chapman Capital rising from its low of $2.375 reached Dec. 6."

YOU MIGHT WANT MORE VOLUME IN YOUR car speakers. You probably wish for it in your hair. But in your clothes? In a society obsessed with slimness, can it be true that volume has sneaked its way into fall fashion, in everything from skirts to sleeves, coats to collars? It seems hard to believe, but fuller is in, and it's not really all that shocking. The plumping up of fashion has been coming for quite a while, albeit stealthily. On designers' runways two seasons ago, bubble skirts and egg-shaped dresses were the occasional artistic talk-pieces of otherwise unremarkable collections.

Gotta love a dog. They love unconditionally, they're loyal and always glad to see you. It turns out they can help a kid to read, too. Holly, a 70-plus-pound yellow Labrador retriever, has served as a patient, and interested, audience for countless youngsters excited to read aloud. But her Nov. 10 visit to the Lansdowne Library was the last for Holly and her human companion, Valerie Reidel, as volunteers with Pets on Wheels Maryland, who participate in the Paws To Read program at the library on Third Avenue.

While there has been much talk from local school systems about keeping students safe, much of it focused on weapons brought to school, it appears one basic safety concern is frequently overlooked — making sure school bus drivers aren't speeding on nearby streets. No doubt many parents were surprised to read of the recent investigation by The Sun's Scott Calvert that found more than 900 citations issued as the result of school buses caught speeding by automated speed cameras posted in front of schools.

Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton was a former "Jeopardy" champion who used a Ouija board to communicate with her dead mother. She was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who as an adult unabashedly celebrated her physical self. And in the newly released, 720-page volume of her collected poems, Clifton writes about cancer and racism and motherhood and her hips. "The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010" includes a foreword by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Cargo handling at the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore reached pre-recession levels for the first half of 2012, continuing a two-year surge in traffic, state officials announced Thursday. On the strength of roll-on/roll-off, vehicle and container business, a record 4.83 million tons of general cargo passed through the public terminals, besting the old mark of 4.69 million tons set in the first six months of 2008. The 2012 total is also 10 percent ahead of 2011 figures. The record traffic this year "proves that one of Maryland's main economic engines has fully bounced back from one of the most challenging economic periods in our country's history," Gov. Martin O'Malley said in a statement.

The first of the travel season's "go early, go late" advisories for the Bay Bridge is in effect this weekend as thousands of visitors head for Springfest 2012 in Ocean City . The Maryland Transportation Authority said motorists should avoid high traffic volume Thursday through Sunday by traveling to the annual spring block party during off-peak hours. If eastbound traffic conditions warrant it, the westbound span will operate with two-way traffic. The best times to travel this weekend are: Thursday before 2 p.m. and after 10 p.m.; Friday before 10 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; Saturday before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m.; Sunday before 11 a.m. and after 10 p.m. Officials note that full westbound bridge closures, with two-way traffic on the eastbound span, are scheduled during overnight hours Thursday, Friday and Saturday to accommodate maintenance work.

It was with a profound sense of personal validation that I opened Volume V of the Dictionary of American Regional English  to discover an entry for the term my family back in Kentucky used for the chamber pot: thunder mug .  There are also entries for thunder jar  and thunder jug,  little maps showing regional distribution. And I was also happy to see that what we called a sweat bee  is also known as the hayfield wasp , the ice-cream bee , and other terms.  For scholars of American English, this volume and the series it completes are a hoard of riches, and also a work of heroic proportions for more than four decades.

Of course size doesn't matter. Then again, it's hard not to get blown away by the sheer magnitude of the just-published, second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Not that the first edition in 1980 wasn't a monster - 20 volumes, 16 million words and a production budget of $7 million. But the 2001 contender, with 29 volumes, 25 million words and a $30 million budget, makes a decidedly imposing statement. Weighing in at just under 119 pounds and taking up 55 inches of shelf space, the latest dictionary has clearly eclipsed its predecessor in several key areas, and not just price - $2,300 in 1980 vs. $4,850 for the 2001 set. In 1980: 22,500 articles written by 2,400 contributors from 70 countries.

Take a biographer already trailing clouds of controversy. Have him write the third volume of a monumental work about an American president seemingly destined to be loved and hated for reasons as conflicted as the author and his subject. And what you get is a donnybrook in the book-reviewing fraternity that often reveals as much about the reviewer as the book. Such has been the case about the nonfiction event of the year, Robert L. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate.

Ocean City wants boardwalk businesses to take it down a notch. The music, that is. The Town Council holds a final vote tonight on a proposal that would restrict noises and sounds from eminating more than 30 feet from the source. This includes playing music, instruments, sounds systems, karaoke - whatever your noise of choice.  Officials say the proposal actually comes at the behest of some boardwalk businesses that have complained they are being disturbed by noise from their neighbors.

When Elton John played 1st Mariner Arena last year, his first Baltimore performance in more than a decade, more than 12,000 fans turned out. Sade, opening her first American concert tour in just as many years, drew an audience just as big later in the summer, and it became 1st Mariner's highest-grossing show of 2011. The demand to see pop singer Robyn, who was playing her only regional show at Rams Head Live , was so large that some bus companies set up trips from Washington to Baltimore for the night.