Finding strength amid the despair

May 13, 2008

We hate talking about it. We fear saying something awkward or intrusive. We think we'll only make it worse by acknowledging it, so we fall silent.

Recent columns

• Vilnius is wild about Zappa

  May 9, 2008

  The letter arrived, mayor to mayor, wishing the newly elected Sheila Dixon the usual "cordial congratulations" and wishes of "great success" on the "demanding and challenging" task she faced.

• Horse racing is beauty, tragedy

  May 6, 2008

  This time, it happened off-camera, and post-race.

• After the fish were gone

  May 2, 2008

  Towns usually die slowly in a cascading series of losses - the factory, the high school, the movie theater - making it hard to point to when or even why a once thriving community expires. But with Great Harbour Deep, a one-time outpost in a remote coastal stretch of Newfoundland in Canada, it was clear when the death spiral began and what triggered it.

• Baring your all for BWI security

  April 29, 2008

  The bad news: You still have to take off your shoes.

• Bus case points to sad truth about us

  April 25, 2008

  Many words have been spilled on the bus beating case in which a group of middle school students attacked a fellow passenger and nearly blinded her, and Circuit Judge David W. Young has heard just about all of them - in the courtroom as he presided over it, of course, but also in e-mails, on the phone and even on the street, where passers-by would accost him.

• Suspense not so bad for primary

  April 22, 2008

  If this is a marathon, surely we're approaching the last uphill. Long past any endorphin high, we're now into the oxygen-depleted, brain-benumbed, shin-splinting part of the race. But the finish line remains out of sight - in fact, it appears to be moving farther away rather than closer with every painful step.

• Fielding the setup for papal event

  April 18, 2008

  Even though he's planned events for presidential inaugurations and managed rock tours for the likes of the B-52s, and even though his company is known for staging hooplas like official election night parties and museum anniversaries, there are still some things beyond Ajay Patil's considerable multitasking, detail-wrangling skills.

• Housing crisis hits too close to home

  April 15, 2008

  Let's be clear here: We're not talking about people who foolishly bought more house than they could afford, or took out a subprime mortgage that they didn't understand or gambled that an adjustable rate loan that started low wouldn't ever, duh, adjust upward.

• Guess who's moving to town?

  April 11, 2008

  The painter, prepping to apply a couple of coats of linen white in advance of the new residents moving in? He didn't know. A neighbor? No clue. Even the seller didn't realize who had bought his South Baltimore rowhouse.

• Dancers cha-cha toward the gold

  April 8, 2008

  The elevator door opens to the fifth floor, and the gray skies that have shrouded the city all day are cast aside like a wet wool coat. Inside, the music throbs and the lights shine blindingly white, the better to illuminate the wildly plumaged creatures tangoing and foxtrotting about in a blur of satin, sweat and Swarovski crystals.

• Love lies bleeding in family court

  April 4, 2008

  Here's an idea: Before you get a marriage license, you have to spend a day in family court.

• Children casualties in divorce warfare

  April 1, 2008

  Lynn Shiner heard the news as she drifted off to sleep Sunday night, and when she awoke yesterday morning, she thought maybe she had dreamed it. A few taps on the keyboard, though, confirmed that the crime, however nightmarish, was no dream.

• Teaching team ready for a time of change

  March 25, 2008

  They're like an old married couple, but without the squabbling.

• Tragedy saddens Mount's NCAA run

  March 18, 2008

  Today, several buses will ferry Mount St. Mary's basketball fans to Dayton, where the small Maryland school is making an improbable run at the NCAA tournament.

• Sex cases' reality is too little, too much

  March 14, 2008

  OK, I've had enough.

• Finally, we might get answers on Utech

  March 11, 2008

  The other defendants, hands cuffed behind their backs, filed into the courtroom and piled into the first row of benches. The same scene no doubt plays out most days of the week in the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse - young men, waiting to face a judge on criminal charges, have final conversations with lawyers who crouch next to them and crane their necks to nod at family or friends who have come to see them.

• 'Runway' shows primary the way

  March 7, 2008

  For voters, it had come down to the confident, crowd-pleasing man and the intense, details-oriented woman. After months of back-and-forth wins and losses -- he's up, no, now she's up -- after millions of words blogged, spun and otherwise spilled in analyzing the matchup, it finally was settled this week.

• This call to prayer answered by few

  March 4, 2008

  The art student thought she could pray for summery weather, but given yesterday's sunny skies and shirt-sleeve temperatures, it looked like someone had beat her to it. The unemployed inventor might have prayed for a job, or at least money to continue his life's work, but he doesn't kneel very well since a skydiving accident.

• Fire chief offers city nice dose of Minn.

  February 29, 2008

  After some 150 years of promoting fire chiefs from within, Baltimore City has gone outside the department for the first time ever - way outside, like to the banks of Lake Wobegon.

• They got Willie; will we get him?

  February 26, 2008

  Talk about America's Least Wanted.

• A perfect public radio storm

  February 22, 2008

  It didn't take long - only to the ninth speaker of the night - for the first obscure reference to come up: something about French soldiers shooting the nose off a sphinx during an Egyptian campaign. Somewhere around the 13th speaker came one of what would be many pointed observations that the "Y" in WYPR stands for "your," and yet none of the yours trulys in attendance were consulted.

• Familiarity breeds contempt for safety

  February 19, 2008

  Yesterday morning, the driver in the lane to the right of me decided to turn left - and did. All I saw was a flash of turquoise as it cut first in front of me and then in front of the car in the lane to the left. But, hey, that's OK - what's a little heart-jolting fright among your fellow drivers, when you have this very important need to make that left turn, right this minute.

• Soldier in Iraq vying for city judge

  February 15, 2008

  Imagine you've applied to become a judge. Vacancies on the bench don't happen every day - it might be good to be king, but it's not so bad to be judge either - so you've polished your application to a high sheen, compiled an all-star list of references, practiced for the nominating commission that recommends whom the governor should appoint, maybe even though you did well enough that you start testing what "The Honorable" looks like in front of your name.

• Md. views the final act before the voting

  February 12, 2008

  One candidate lauded those serving in Iraq because they "did everything they were asked to do."

• Primary spotlight for Md.? Imagine

  February 8, 2008

  Call it Sorta Significant Tuesday.

• Marbella: Crime shatters myth of escape

  July 31, 2007

  On a rainy day, a beach town deflates. The whole myth of escape, of ceaseless fun and respite from reality, turns as sodden as day-old cotton candy.

• Another remake, same ol' Baltimore

  July 20, 2007

  There's a certain giddy if twisted glow that John Waters brings to his beleaguered Baltimore. The cheerfully perverse -- or is it perversely cheerful -- Waters clearly was born to play bard to so battered a burg.

• Blending into the woodwork until making his tragic mark

  April 20, 2007

  I went to Centreville, Va., to see where Cho Seung-Hui lived, but it turns out I went to the wrong place.

• Despite raids, illegal immigrants here to stay

  March 30, 2007

  Every once in a while, the door cracks open and we're forced to look at what's been hiding in plain sight all along.

• Trying to break the cycle of violence

  November 21, 2006

  You see it all the time in crime stories: "The victim was taken to Shock Trauma ... "

• Nikki's death stands out amid blur of statistics

  November 14, 2006

  The tributes flowed, from intimates and strangers alike, and some were read at Nicole Edmonds' funeral this weekend. Appreciative murmurs rippled through the mourners at the east-side church when a particularly famous name followed the "sincerely," like Martin O'Malley, the newly elected governor, or Ben Cardin, the just-minted U.S. senator.

• A modest people, a respectful distance

  October 4, 2006

  The customer awkwardly approached the young Amish woman, as many of us have done these past couple of days.

• Evil can lurk in even the smallest, most remote communities

  October 3, 2006

  Night had already cloaked the valley by the time I arrived, and snow had started falling, gently as it does in the mountains in springtime. Under the twin covers of darkness and snowfall, I didn't realize until the next morning just how beautiful and idyllic Littleton, Col., was.