Sordid Lives, a black comedy about white trash, rode a wave of financial and critical success for over a decade, from L.A.’s theater scene to film and TV credits. Playwright Del Shores did it by playing on stereotypes that feed social discord, from homophobia to fundamentalism, from the country club to the trailer park. His characters are as big as Texas, comic diversions of tragic proportions. Underneath the honky-tonk hijinks is a sweet story about a family’s struggle for unity amid fragmenting differences.

Avoid the occasion of sin. That precept of my Catholic education should, over the years, have kept me away from the U.S. Boat Shows, which occupy Annapolis October 6 though 16.

Look around Annapolis these two weeks, and you’ll see how the maritime industry helps the visitor industry thrive.     Recreational sailing and power boating are newcomers to this old city. We were a working seaport from colonial times through World War II.     So well known were Eastport’s skilled wooden boat builders that in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the grand and famous schooner America here to be restored.

The Chesapeake Beach Railway has always been a passage to altered states. It was laid a century ago to link the sweltering city of Washington with cooling Bay waters, breezes and panoply of fun. When cars pushed trains off the map, nature took back its right of way.