Wire

Preston "Bodie" Broadus wipes his hand down over his face and stands with his back facing the camera. In this scene from this past season's The Wire, the street-level drug dealer faces the future alone after the collapse of his drug enterprise and the murder of a friend. This moment, according to director Ernest Dickerson, represents a rite of passage for the character. His life in HBO's gritty crime series set in Baltimore is about to change. The camera zooms out slowly and opens the shot to show Bodie standing alone on the corner, facing rows of steps and abandoned homes.

Idon't believe in turning money over to kids to start a dynasty. They can get their own damn money. They'll be taken care of, a few million here and there. They won't starve." - LORRY LOKEY, 80, San Francisco philanthropist, on his three daughters; the Business Wire founder donated $163 million last year and plans to give away the bulk of his fortune in the next 10 years, mostly to schools, museums and symphonies

There is no shortage of criminals on the HBO series The Wire, but should producers want to add a burglar to the cast of Baltimore drug lords, addicts and murderers, Howard County police might have their man. The show's suburban soundstage - in Columbia, of all places - was the scene of a break-in over the weekend. Police said a security guard caught Michael Steven Arndt, 25, of Columbia walking through the immense concrete warehouse after he climbed in through a trash chute. Arndt was carrying an assortment of burglary tools, including a butane soldering torch, vise grip, pliers, flashlight, and rubber and leather gloves, police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said.

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq -- No one breaks stride on the elliptical trainers when the announcement blares over the loudspeakers every few hours. Nobody pauses at racquetball at either of the two multimillion-dollar gyms at this war zone base. "Attention, attention, attention, there has been an indirect fire attack," says a pleasant woman's voice, as if announcing the 8:20 Southwest flight into BWI instead of a potentially deadly rocket or mortar attack. Swimmers continue to plow furrows across the huge indoor and outdoor pools.

It's hard to hear Drew Greenblatt over the steady - and deafening - ka-chink, ka-chunk of machines snipping steel wire at his factory in Southwest Baltimore. So he turns it up a notch. "That's for Baxter," he hollers, pointing to a giant box full of special-ordered wire baskets ready to be shipped to the drugmaker. Nearby, an employee welds wire for biotech bigwig Amgen Inc. as Greenblatt ticks off a Who's Who list of his other pharmaceutical customers: Pfizer, Roche, Novartis. It is a client roster that is nothing like the one he had when he bought the business - Marlin Steel Wire Products - in 1998 and focused on selling metal baskets to bagel shops for displaying their products.

I grew up in Baltimore, and I live in Baltimore, yet I encounter my city most vividly on HBO. Sunday nights at 10 o'clock I sit in my living room, eat popcorn, and watch David Simon's critically exalted drama, The Wire. Like other fans, I can't wait for the fifth season to begin - hopefully this fall. Watching The Wire in Baltimore is surely different from watching it in Des Moines, Iowa, but not because its world feels like home. The violent, drug-saturated streets of West Baltimore that the series dissects with unsparing brilliance are about three miles from my house, but they might as well be 3,000.

Standing before the bar of justice to answer for his crimes, former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell was accorded a stature he never quite attained. He was hailed as a mighty poobah, one of the "most powerful," a lion of the legislature whose wish could not be safely ignored. Those who watched him in General Assembly councils remember a somewhat different figure. He was a bar owner who flaunted his rough edges. He was a big man with a dark, wavy forelock. He laughed a little too loudly.

Excitement filled the air at the Columbia soundstage where much of HBO's The Wire is filmed. Here fans had a chance to meet and mingle with the actors and crew of the Baltimore-based HBO series and take a tour of its sets. But, at this "A Night at The Wire" fundraiser for the Ella Thompson Fund, there was also a tinge of heartache. "I heard several [actors] comment about how sorry they are the show is going off the air. Not as sorry as we are," said Todd McCombs, the Rand Corp. IT manager, as he and wife Jennifer commiserated about their favorite show coming to an end. One actor took a more philosophical approach.

Astronauts successfully stitched together tears in a sheet of solar panels on the International Space Station early yesterday morning in a seven-hour operation that was one of the most difficult ever attempted in space. Spacewalker Scott E. Parazynski snipped a guide wire that had snagged on the long, wing-like solar array and another wire that had gotten tangled in the damaged area. He also laced five makeshift braces made of aluminum, wire and insulating tape - dubbed "cuff links" by the crew - into the panels to stabilize them.

Think "whisk" and the familiar balloon-shaped utensil surely comes to mind -- the bigger, the better for whipping cream and meringues to impressive heights. But for this Sunday's Easter brunches and dinners, cooks are just as likely to pull out the smaller "sauce whisk," essential for marrying the disparate elements of gravies, beurre blancs and other fragile accompaniments. The sauce whisk takes more forms: tightly wound coil, skinny balloon, flat wire. Which performs best? I tested four of these whisks on sauces that would be at home on the Easter table -- a curried mint sauce and a velvety hollandaise.

For five seasons, Sonja Sohn played Detective Kima Greggs on HBO's "The Wire," the gritty Baltimore crime drama. It was a breakthrough role for Sohn, who came from a troubled upbringing in Virginia and went from poet to actress. But on a recent weeknight, Sohn was not on a Hollywood film set. She was at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, speaking on a cell phone to the facilitator of a GED program, trying to figure out why 21-year-old Sean Hawkins hasn't been attending. She sat Hawkins down and crouched at his feet.

When Elise Siegel, the owner and curator of the intimate Positron Gallery in Mount Vernon, says her focus is contemporary art, she means contemporary. "My whole idea was to come up with a theme for each exhibit and have the artists make their art interpreting that theme in the month before the show. They can lie," she says with a laugh, "but they're supposed to create it in that time." Paul Maier, one of eight local artists in Positron's current exhibit, calls Siegel's approach "a wonderful challenge.

The last shirt Stringer Bell ever wore. Detective Jimmy McNulty's gun. Avon Barksdale's prison jumpsuit. For more than a year, those and about 150 other pieces of The Wire, the extended HBO morality play that spent five seasons exploring Charm City's meaner streets, have been on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. But just as the HBO show ended in March 2008, the BMI exhibit has reached the end of its run. What better excuse for a party? "Disconnecting The Wire ... What's Next?"

Raising money for the Hampden Family Center is no day at the beach, but it comes close. More than a hundred folks in chic summery togs gathered at the Clipper Mill Pool Pavilion for the Center's 2009 Flamingo Fling. A bit of South Beach infused the air. A DJ on a platform above the pool set the mood. Pink, yellow and orange was everywhere, including the inflatable balls floating in the pool. And guests sipped pink cocktails from martini glasses that featured flamingos as their stems. Event committee member Pam Malester pointed to the tiki torches poolside.

Man found dead in burning truck 3 State fire investigators and state police are investigating the death of a man found inside a burning truck in a Carroll County church parking lot. Firefighters were called to St. Mark's Lutheran Church in the 1600 block of Cape Horn Road in Hampstead about 4:15 a.m. Friday and put out a fire that had engulfed the Ford utility pickup truck. In the back seat of the truck, firefighters found the man dead. Police say the truck is owned by Sunrise Safety Services of Glen Burnie, a contractor working on the Hampstead bypass.

No. 1 McDonogh (18-1) vs. No. 2 Notre Dame Prep (17-1) What: : IAAM A Conference championship Where: : Gerstell Academy, Finksburg When: : Sunday, 3 p.m. Outlook: : The Eagles are seeking a wire-to-wire run as the No. 1 team and are looking for their first A Conference crown against the Blazers, who won their most recent title in 2003. The game features a clash of styles in McDonogh's modern approach and NDP's more traditional game, but both teams have speed, skill and balanced attacks as well as solid defensive units.

It's coming down to the wire - your income taxes must be filed by April 15. Get the answers to any of those last- minute questions during a live online chat with Internal Revenue Service representative Jim Dupree at 11 a.m. Friday on the Consuming Interests blog at www.baltimoresun.com/consuminginterests. You can submit questions in advance on the blog or send them to eileen.ambrose@baltsun.com.

1 Finally: ESPN and ESPN2 carry four men's conference finals starting at 7 p.m. Sort of like Big Dancing with the Stars. 2 Not must-see: Wizards-Timberwolves (8 p.m., Comcast SportsNet) qualifies as March Madness - as in, you must be nuts to watch this. 3 Heels' turn: North Carolina should be yet another new No. 1 when the poll is released this afternoon. Check baltimoresun.com/sports . 4 Listen in: The NFL Network's Live Wire (3:30 p.m.) features exclusive audio from last season's conference championship games, which includes you-know-who.

The General George Handicap at Laurel Park is supposed to be a seven-furlong sprint. True Quality, a 4-year-old colt who runs mostly in New York, turned it into a waltz early on yesterday and wound up going wire-to-wire to win the $150,000 Grade II stakes race. True Quality's jockey, C.C. Lopez, had plenty of horse left when the pre-race favorite, Fabulous Strike, ridden by Edgar Prado, made his move at the turn. True Quality, who had not raced seven furlongs, kicked into another gear in the stretch and won by 1 1/2 lengths.

City fathers and mothers tut-tut about how The Wire bloodied Baltimore's national reputation. If anything, the show thrust the city's urban realities into the minds of thinking viewers everywhere. Baltimore's cops, unlike Miami's, didn't always win, and, McNulty and Stringer excepted, the characters weren't mistaken for models, but at least they knew sidearms and pastels don't mix. Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas' Crockett and Tubbs wouldn't have lasted a Miami minute on the mean streets of West Baltimore.