Yardley

Q: I am enclosing a photograph of a rocker that we inherited. The carvings are unique.What can you tell me about this piece? Its age and value?A: This is called a platform rocker; the first one was patented in 1876.Yours was made between that date and the turn of the century. It would sell for about $365 to $385 in good condition.Q: This mark is on the back of a porcelain plaque that measures 12 by 8 inches. It depicts a man with a woman holding a child. They are seated in front of a small house.

Two programs remain in the "Odyssey Media Forum," a series sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University that features conversations on art and culture with well-known critics.Wednesday meet Robert Brustein, theater critic for the New Republic, director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, former dean of the Yale Drama School and founder of the Yale Repertory. He will talk about the function of theater criticism and his greatest challenges as a regional theater director.Jonathan Yardley, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for the Washington Post, takes a look inside the publishing world Nov. 12. He will talk about the life and choices of an irrepressible critic, including his nominations for 10 "must-read" books.

The sun is on the porch. It is one of those dank, heavy Baltimore days that spend the patience of men and animals alike, and even defeat the optimism of Roland Park's pert summer blossoms. Jonathan Yardley's two tiny dogs, immune to torpor, make a loud, hysterical dash for the edge of the porch, and the ankles of the arriving mailman."Hey, shut up! Please," Yardley shouts as he moves to restrain them.To a man like Jonathan Yardley, distilled from a "long line of preachers and teachers," made cognizant early on of his ancient English family's membership in the WASP aristocracy surviving in America, manners are not a matter of choice: Showing the face of civilization, no matter what the provocation, is as reflexive as breathing.

"The Paperboy," by Pete Dexter, New York: Random House, 307 pages, $23."There are no intact men." Those are the final words in this fast-moving novel of newspaper life. Characters who started out whole end up broken by sexual violence, abandonment, a sense of being out of sync with life. Those already broken are further damaged.This is an oddly disturbing story about the nature of journalistic truth, and the price people pay for the choices they make. Mr. Dexter, a former newspaperman and winner of the National Book Award for "Paris Trout," explores deep moral issues in "The Paperboy," but at a distance.

Elizabeth Glaser Dwelly, a native of Baltimore who did social work as a young woman, died Nov. 11 at the Meridian Nursing Center-Long Green after a short illness.Mrs. Dwelly, who was 85 and lived in Yardley, Pa., moved to Reisterstown about six years ago.The former Elizabeth Glaser was a graduate of Eastern High School, Hood College and the New York School of Social Work. She did social work in Baltimore, then in several Pennsylvania communities. While living in Yardley, she was active in the League of Women Voters, the Mental Health Association and as an adult leader in the Girl Scouts.

As recently as the late 1960s, the very existence of the National Security Agency — the Fort Meade-based defense organization that gathers intelligence from foreign countries — was such a closely held secret that insiders jokingly called the place "No Such Agency. " So when a New York newspaper reporter named David Kahn stood ready to illuminate it in a big new book in 1967, the government was less than pleased. "According to my editor [at Macmillan Publishers]

On November 5, 2003; MARY H. PATTERSON (nee Hendrix); beloved mother of Charles R. Patterson, William F. Patterson and Nettie Garner died at her sons (Charles') home in Yardley, PA. She is survived by four grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. A memorial Service to celebrate Mary's life will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Towson, MD in the Lindsey Ballroom for family and friends on November 22, 2003 from 12 to 3 PM. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the M.U.S.

Graveside services for Nathan Berkowitz, a retired poultry farmer in Jackson, N.J., will be held at 3:30 p.m. today at the Toms River, N.J., Jewish Community Center Cemetery.A native of Romania who settled in New Jersey in 1919, he lived for the past 20 years in Del Ray Beach, Fla., where he died Wednesday at age 89.His first wife, the former Fannie Ornstein, died in 1957.He is survived by his wife, the former Rose Ettinger; two sons, Dr. Richard Berkowitz of Owings Mills and David Berkowitz of Yardley, Pa.; a sister, Clara Berkowitz of Israel; and four grandchildren.

THE SUN IS BLESSED with what some readers often curse: two lively, provocative political cartoonists. Fewer and fewer newspapers are willing to foot the bill or withstand the flak that just one cartoonist generates. Baltimoreans are more fortunate than they realize to have Mike Lane and Kevin Kallaugher puncturing pomposities and sham. These award-winning artists ably uphold the tradition of the exceptional cartoonists whose work has appeared in The Sun for more than half of its 160 years.

"Give me a good cartoonist," H. L. Mencken once wrote, "and I can throw out half the editorial staff." Typical Mencken extravagance, no doubt, but the Bard of Baltimore had some basis for his observation.For among his colleagues at The Sun in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties were Edmund Duffy, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who could unmask a Ku Kluxer as a pitiful loser or portray Hitler as a strutting monster, and Richard "Moco" Yardley, whose sunny, whimsical drawings were love notes to the life and lore of Maryland.