Wall

Shirtless, John Wall crouched and dribbled a basketball above his head with his right hand and another low to the ground with his left hand. Unable to keep the routine together as he reached half-court, Wall grunted as he lost control, started over, and tried the exercise once again. With Washington Wizards assistant coach Ryan Saunders looking on, Wall has concluded nearly every practice with ballhandling drills, something he had never done before a stress injury to his left knee produced his longest absence from playing the game he loves dearly.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be acquainted, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: SKINT You may find yourself momentarily embarrassed when the check arrives, or impecunious, penurious, or flat-out stony broke. But if you want a succinct term, you can use skint . It's British, a variant of skinned , and thus metaphorically redolent.

Wall Street might have turned its back on Democrats this election, but that's not the case among Maryland investment firms. The vast majority of contributions to candidates by T. Rowe Price employees went to Democrats. And Democrats were the beneficiaries of all candidate donations by Brown Capital Management workers - with President Barack Obama receiving the bulk. But even in this deep-blue state, Democrats don't have a lock on political contributions. The top recipient of donations by Legg Mason employees: Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney.

Corporate-sponsored groups have launched a campaign of litigation in the lower federal courts challenging the legality of the second major piece of President Barack Obama's legislative program, one that received a lot of attention in last week's first presidential debate: the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. When these cases reach the Supreme Court, we could very well see a reprise of the drama surrounding its decision on the Affordable Care Act at the end of this past term.

Jay Dackman's Canton home is bright, open, contemporary and directly on the waterfront at the Anchorage Marina. The three-story, six-level brick townhouse is filled with framed puzzles of Impressionist masterpieces, hung as they are completed by the 54-year-old attorney and real estate investor. In addition to the puzzles, a hobby which Dackman says relaxes him after a busy day, he revels in the whimsical collectibles placed on every wall and in most corners of his 2,000-square-foot interior.

If you were pitching Maryland basketball to recruits, what (and who?) would you emphasize most? That was the challenge facing coach Mark Turgeon, who is  giving his office a makeover that he hopes will appeal to recruits and other visitors. He wants displays that will imprint on the important guests. The basketball suite has plenty of wall space - - a veritable canvas for the coach. Here's what Turgeon chose to highlight: Maryland's basketball tradition and accomplishments, the school's membership in the “premier college basketball conference in the nation,” the Comcast Center and proximity to Washington and Baltimore, the ties to Under Armour and the coach's own lineage.

For some banks, green is more than just money.  PNC is wearing its commitment to green building on the exterior of its new Maryland headquarters downtown. The bank recently put the finishing touches on a massive "living wall" at One East Pratt Street. Measuring 84 feet tall by 24 feet wide, the wall is made up of 504 vertical planters filled with a variety of ground-cover plants, including phlox, euonymus and pachysandra, all arranged to form the image of a tree with the PNC logo at its base.  At 2,016 square feet, it's slightly smaller than the one gracing PNC's corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh.

Paintings in museum-quality frames are popping up outdoors around town - displayed on a post just outside the entrance to Baltimore's City Hall and along Patterson Park, mounted to the wall on a corner of the Avenue in Hampden. These high-quality reproductions of vintage pieces from the Walters Art Museum give a new meaning to the concept of art in public places. Within the next few weeks, 20 more works will be unveiled, from Fells Point to Meadowood Regional Park near Green Spring Station.

A 29-year-old Severna Park man was critically injured early Saturday when his Acura Integra ran off the road and hit a concrete retaining wall in Pasadena, police said. Thomas Owen Holt was traveling south on Catherine Avenue when his car veered off the left side of the road near Harlem Avenue around 1:50 a.m. for unknown reasons and struck the retaining wall, police said. Speed appears to be a contributing factor in the crash, according to police. When police arrived, Holt was resting outside the car with significant injuries.

By now, it should be pretty clear to anyone with even the faintest pulse that regardless of who ends up winning any future elections, they aren't going to change your personal economic reality quickly enough to suit your liking. And that's only if they even manage to find the courage to sufficiently cut through all the lobbyists and special interests to implement any significant ideas at all -- which is unlikely in all cases. Forget relying on politicians to determine your fate. Take charge of your own situation.