PARRIS Glendening is a nuisance -- to headline writers, that is.
His last name is too long to fit neatly into one-column or one-line heds. Try it yourself.
You can't squeeze much else in that cramped space after typing the letters G-l-e-n-d-e-n-i-n-g.
Ellen Sauerbrey would have been a nuisance, too. (Not Helen Bentley, though.) The biggest trouble-maker -- by far -- would have been a victory by American Joe Miedusiewski.
But now headline-writers are stuck with squeezing in G-l-e-n-d-e-n-i-n-g for four years. (Of course, we could get folksy like journalists did with Dwight Eisenhower: They called him Ike in headlines. But with this governor, that's an invitation to bad puns, the worst being, "Is Parris Burning?")
All this is a break with Maryland tradition. Voters here have opted over the decades for governors whose names fit nicely into one-column headlines. William Donald Schaefer had been an exception. Before him it was Hughes, Mandel, Agnew, Tawes, McKeldin (a problem), Lane, O'Conor, Nice and Ritchie.
You have to go back to the two governors before Albert C. Ritchie to come up with nuisance-governors for headline writers: Emerson C. Harrington (1916-1920) and Philips Lee Goldsborough (1912-1916).
When headline writers go to sleep in Maryland, they all should say a special prayer in memory of the father of Spiro T. Agnew. Just think of the nightmarish typographical situations if his dad hadn't changed his name when arriving in this country.
Then Maryland's 55th governor would have been known as Spiro T. Anagnostopopoulos.
* * *
REESE L. STARNER, the Register of Wills in Carroll County for the past 28 years, took great pride in parsimonious ways.
During the last election he bragged that his office had the same number of employees -- a register and two deputy clerks -- it did when the county was founded in 1837. He also promised he would not install computers because they were expensive and would not add to office efficiency.
He died earlier this month, and it appears his successor, Nancy ** S. Airing, a deputy clerk for 17 years, will continue to follow Mr. Starner's past practices, with one slight exception.
She won't be adding any computers, but she will be adding four telephones. She's not about to put up with Mr. Starner's frugal practice of keeping the only phone in the center of the office.
* * *
MEMO TO those in charge of the Maryland Human Relations Commission:
Lying on the steps of the building at Franklin Street and St. Paul Place you occupied until last August are two packets containing envelopes marked "Deliver ASAP."
Pick up your mail -- ASAP.