Wallop

As last weekend's performance of the Lewitzky Dance Company attested, the new Gordon Center for Performing Arts is a well-appointed theater nicely suited to viewing dance.With good sight lines, comfortable seats and a stage that could hold Ms. Lewitkzy's company with ease, the only thing out of whack was the sound of the stage manager's directions, which could be consistently heard over the music.Ms. Lewitzky, a veteran choreographer who has a solid following for her abstract works, presented three dances for her Los Angeles-based company.

A commercial rocket launch that was scheduled for Wednesday but aborted has been pushed to Friday, at the earliest. The next attempt is "tentatively" set for Friday, assuming that issues forcing the delay are resolved, according to Orbital Sciences Corp., the Virginia company behind the launch. NASA hired Orbital Sciences to ferry supplies to the International Space Station via an unmanned spacecraft. The launch was scrubbed because of " a premature separation of a launch pad umbilical connection to the Antares upper stage used for data communications," the company said.

"Zod Wallop," by William Browning Spencer. St. Martin's Press. 288 pages. $21.95 You don't have to be twisted to write for children, but it helps. By all reports Lewis Carroll had more than a soft spot for little girls. A. A. Milne appears to have been a weird father, Roald Dahl, a monster.Harry Gainsborough, the hero of "Zod Wallop," is squarely in the tradition - a tormented, guilt-ridden soul who writes books for kids and suffers a delusionary sense of his own power. The guilt stems from the death of his beloved daughter by drowning, which causes him to lose his heart, his mind, his ability to write and his wife.

NASA successfully launched five rockets early this morning after nearly two weeks of delays, and here's what it looked like in case you missed it. The rockets released chemical tracers that allow scientists to study patterns of the jet stream. The launch took place at 4:58 a.m. from the Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia portion of the Delmarva. To see more images of the launch, visit the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's page on Flickr .

A strong ebb current, a heavy chop, and gusty breeze from the north added up to a real challenge for the 67 starters in Saturday's Magothy River Sailing Association 17th Annual Race to Baltimore.Some sailors coming up the bay from Annapolis to the starting area north of Baltimore Light found just getting there on time to be more of a challenge than they could manage, in fact, and were so late for their starts they went on to the Inner Harbor finish rendezvous without sailing the 14.3-mile race.

Electronic Arts' Def Jam Fight for New York is a gritty, urban fistfight. You fight in a New York underworld of thugs and gangsters, trying to make a name for yourself. Each win earns you cash to spend on clothes, jewelry, tattoos and trinkets. You can get up to four players involved in a fight, but there's no online play. The fights are plenty of fun, even against the computer, and button-mashing does no good. To win a match, you have to knock out your opponent, and to do that you have to execute a specific move.

Once upon a time, when a journalist's dream was more apt to center on the Great American Novel than lucrative dot-com opportunities, a young writer named John Douglass Wallop III tried his hand at fiction. He was so serious about his craft that he gave up journalism to work in his father's Washington insurance agency, selling policies by day and writing at night. His first book, "Night Light," received some nice critical notices, but it came and went without much fanfare. In 1953, he was at work on a second book, when he set it aside and dashed off, in just three months, a novel devoted to his lifelong obsession: the Washington Senators.

1996 Borsao Campo de Borja ($5). This Spanish red has to be one of the great values in wine today, It's rustic but it sure packs a wallop with its concentrated fruit flavors. Yes, it's raw, but it is also loaded with flavors of fruit, herbs and chocolate. Buy it by the case.Pub Date: 7/6/97@

Big red is right. This blend of zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and valdiguie packs a wallop as it delivers a mouthful of spicy, robust, meaty flavors with hints of chocolate, blueberry and tomato. It's a little rustic, but graceful nevertheless, like a man who can wear cowboy boots with a tux and carry it off.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW what Ellen Sauerbrey really thinks about environmental protection, do as I did this week and check out the Web site of Frontiers of Freedom (http: //www.ff.org).The front-runner for Maryland's Republican gubernatorial nomination is on the board of FOF, an ultraconservative think tank and political advocacy group in Arlington, Va.She says she has been inactive and may resign, but as she also told The Sun's Michael Dresser this week, she joined the anti-regulatory organization because:"As I remember, what their goals were, was something I very much believe in."

The five-rocket launch scheduled for Wednesday night at NASA'sWallops Flight Facility is now slated for Sunday night -- but keep your eye on that launch schedule. The launch date has changed three times now: first to Friday night, then to Saturday night and now to Sunday night. If the weather still isn't right, the date could change again. The clear skies needed for launch also allow for a view of the rockets from across the East Coast. Observers will be able to see white clouds the rockets are emitting into the jet stream to help scientists study its wind patterns.

Eastern Shore readers -- and anyone with a computer -- can watch five rockets being launched 65 miles into the atmosphere Wednesday night into Thursday morning. NASA is planning to hold a launch between midnight and 1:30 a.m. at the Wallops Island facility in Virginia, just south of the Maryland line. The visitors center there will open at 10 p.m. Wednesday for spectators. The rockets are being used to study the winds of the jet stream. Once the rockets reach the intended height, they will release milky white clouds that scientists will be able to see from space.

The Ravens trounced the Indianapolis Colts Sunday, and there are indications they are peaking, but it is hard to tell. You like what you saw out of them. They had balance on an offense that produced 146 yards rushing and 227 passing. The Ravens' defense physically dominated the Colts up front with four sacks, while holding Indianapolis to 167 yards of total offense. But here's the rub: The Colts are terrible. They are pathetic and one of the worst teams in NFL history, including some of those from Cincinnati.

After a one day delay due to the weather, and another brief delay Wednesday night, the ORS-1 satellite was launched into orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Virginia's Wallops Island. The Air Force launched the battlefield imaging satellite atop a four-stage, solid-fuel 70-foot-tall Minotaur 1 rocket, the largest ever launched from the Delmarva peninsula. The launch, which happened shortly after 11 p.m., was expected to be visible across the Mid-Atlantic region, with past launches seen as far away as New York, South Carolina and West Virginia.

Weather postponed Tuesday's launch of the ORS-1 satellite attached to the Minotaur 1 rocket, according to NASA officials, leaving spectators in the Mid-Atlantic to wait for another day. The ORS-1 launch was scheduled between 8:28 p.m. and 11:28 p.m., from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Virginia's Wallops Island which will be visible between South Carolina up to New York and as far west as West Virginia. Officials said that if the launch was scrubbed, subsequent attempts will follow nightly through July 10, except for a three-day window around the planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from Cape Canaveral, Fla., set for July 8. The Air Force will launch the battlefield imaging satellite into orbit the first operational version of the Air Force's Operationally Responsive Space satellite series.

If skies are clear and all goes well Tuesday evening, observers throughout Maryland and much of the Mid-Atlantic region should be able to watch a big rocket launch from Virginia's Wallops Island. The Air Force will attempt to launch a battlefield imaging satellite into orbit from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The ORS-1 satellite will ride atop a four-stage, solid-fuel Minotaur 1 rocket, the largest ever launched from the Delmarva peninsula. Previous Minotaur launches have been seen from as far away as southern New England, eastern North Carolina and the eastern half of West Virginia.

Lucille Fletcher, the author of the spine-tingling radio play "Sorry, Wrong Number" and a 30-year resident of Oxford, died Thursday of a stroke at a Pennsylvania hospital. She was 88. Miss Fletcher wrote at least 16 radio plays, nine suspense novels and a Broadway play, using her maiden name as a pen name. She was married twice. Her first husband wrote the score to the famed Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane," and her second husband was the author of a novel that became the hit Broadway musical "Damn Yankees."

Oysterback, Maryland.--Fresh dispatches from the Oysterback Bugeye:More than a hundred people attended the 17th Annual Oysterback Mosquito Festival this month, breaking all records for attendance. Special thanks to Joey Buttafuoco, this year's Celebrity Host, for being the finish line for all those hungry skeeters. . .In other show biz news, don't forget the big dance recital over to Patti's Christian School of Tap and Ballet Saturday at 2 over to Wallopsville. Crystal Tiffany Hackett, 16, will be doing her tap interpretations of ''Teen-age Girls in the Old Testament.

Vladimir Guerrero will arrive in Baltimore later this week to take his physical, bringing with him a potential Hall of Fame resume, a towering presence and some questions about how much he has left in his soon-to-be 36-year-old body. If Guerrero passes his physical and finalizes a one-year, $8 million dollar deal that was agreed to early Friday evening, he'll become the team's biggest free agent addition since the Orioles signed Miguel Tejada to a six-year, $72 million deal before the 2004 season.

Snowstorms possess personalities. The angry thunder sounding Wednesday night, with brilliant, violent flashes of lightning, reminded me of another event, a daytime storm in 1983 that caught me downtown. There was an eerie similarity between that February 1983 storm and this week's event. I had no option but to head home on foot. Traffic disappeared. I recall near-whiteout conditions. Then came pounding thunder and silvery lightning. I had no company, no fellow foot travelers. I grew scared that afternoon and recalled four years before, when looting broke out as I made my way to work in the aftermath of the 1979 storm that started on a Sunday evening and went into Monday morning.