20th Century

IF THERE is a symbol of this sorry century, it is the refugee -- shuffling along some dusty road, jungle trail, or mountain pass, with a haunted-eyed family and a few pathetic belongings, trying to reach safety but knowing that even if safety is reached, nothing will ever be the same again.Refugees are the byproduct of wars, social disruption, and disorder, and every century has had them. But this century has been awash with refugees from beginning to end.In the Balkans, where the century is ending with the forced exodus from Kosovo, the early years saw similar scenes in the wars of 1912 and 1913 -- similar tragedies with strikingly similar atrocities as various ethnic groups and nationalities sought to free themselves from the dying grip of the Ottoman Empire.

From 1909 until 1939, marathons were run from Laurel to Washington or Baltimore. After the first few marathons, they not only became AAU-sanctioned, but the race was one of the qualifying marathons for the U.S. Olympic team. There was one constant in all those years: The starting line was in front of the Laurel Hotel on the corner of Main Street and Washington Pike (Route 1southbound). When the modern Olympic Games were started in 1896, the marathon was included. The following year, the Boston Marathon was inaugurated.

The poet John Keats wrote that beauty and truth are two aspects of the same thing, that to know one is to know the other. But if the art of our time is to be truthful, how can it be beautiful too, given the terrible events this century has witnessed?The century started out by declaring war on beauty, or at least the notion that beauty was necessary for a definition of art. As the painter Barnett Newman declared in 1948, "the impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty."The misadventures of beauty in the 20th century -- its early exile by the avant garde and its shy reappearance as the millennium approaches -- serve as backdrop for an endlessly intriguing show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington titled, aptly enough, "Regarding Beauty."

Baltimore helped the avant-garde painter Max Weber forge a national reputation in 1915. Now, nearly 100 years later, this could be the city where the late artist begins his long-overdue comeback. It's not that critics and curators are unfamiliar with the Russian-born, Brooklyn-raised painter's work. As a new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art makes clear, Weber has long been considered one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century. But, at the peak of his career, Weber was a bona fide celebrity, with spreads in "Time," "Life," "Look" and 'The Saturday Evening Post.

CHICAGO -- Michael Jordan was the overwhelming choice of business and advertising executives asked to name the top sports endorser of the 20th century.Jordan received four times as many votes as golfer Tiger Woods, the runner-up, in a poll asking executives to name the sports celebrity from the 1900s that they'd want most to pitch their products. Chicago-based Burns Sports Inc., which hires sports figures as endorsers, conducted the survey.Golfer Arnold Palmer finished third.Even though Jordan retired before last season, the five-time National Basketball Association most valuable player is earning $69 million annually from endorsements with companies such as Nike Inc. and McDonald's Corp.

Hearing the words of actor Ossie Davis alone would be enough to justify seeing "I'll Make Me a World: a Century of African-American Arts," starting tonight on PBS."Art was at one time the only voice we had to declare our humanity," says Davis, one of the first voices heard in this six-hour documentary series on the history of black artists in 20th century America."When we were described as barely above cattle, certainly not human, it was our art that we had to show the rest of the world that possibly we were humans.

For Sir Richard Eyre, his six-part television series Changing Stages is an exercise in the art of the impossible. "Theater insists on being live, in the present tense," he says in the opening episode. "It can't be recorded. You can't show it on television." Or, as he puts it in the handsome coffee table book he co-wrote with playwright Nicholas Wright to accompany the PBS series, "Making television programs about the theater is as quaint a folly as putting ventriloquists on the radio."

Flacks, spinmeisters, press agents, publicity men, propagandists, social psychologists, political consultants, media mavens, opinion researchers, lobbyists, public relations counsels -- can anyone doubt that the 20th century is the PR century? No group has done more to influence how we live, shop, eat, dress, travel, indulge, invest, vote, think and envisage who we are, individually and collectively, than the tens of thousands of men and women who have chosen this line of work. Or its allied field of advertising.

To take the "Photo of the Century," there's no need for a fancy camera. The only equipment necessary is 100 people with good timing.These people -- each born on a different Fourth of July of the 20th century and representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia -- are the winners of the "Photo of the Century" contest sponsored by Kodak.The winners -- including two youngsters from Maryland, Chelsea Leigh Marsh and Casey Marsh -- were chosen from more than 25,000 entries from all over the United States, plus one entry each from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The U.S. Naval Academy wasn't built in a day. But the first decade of the 20th century was the boom time when the school's grand and important buildings were conceived, designed and built. Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1908, championed a muscular Navy as the 20th century's doors opened. Ninety years ago in November, The Baltimore Sun reported, bids were received for constructing a naval experimental station across the Severn River. The grounds of an old Army property, Fort Madison, was the proposed site.

I read with interest Jules Witcover's recent commentary, "Don't count Biden out in 2016" (Jan. 29), suggesting that Vice President Joe Biden might be a serious candidate for president in 2016. If history is a guide, the chances of a sitting Vice President Biden being elected president in 2016 are remote. In the 25 presidential elections of the 20th century, George H.W. Bush was the only sitting vice president elected president. Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and Al Gore all lost.

Tom Stoner made his fortune owning AM radio stations, where the weekly Top 40 was eagerly anticipated by devoted listeners. Would their favorite artists move up this week? Would that new release make it? "I remember how easy it was to decide who came on the list," recalls the Annapolis businessman and philanthropist, "but how hard it was to decide who went off the list. That was the part of the process that fascinated me. " At the Severn River home of Stoner and his wife, Kitty, "Top 40" takes on a new meaning.

A few years ago, it was fashionable for Democratsto describe themselves as "members of the reality-based community. " These days, it seems the foreclosure crisis has hit them so hard they've been forced to move to another neighborhood. Metaphorically, at least, they've set up a refugee camp in Charlotte this week. In this political Brigadoon, things are going well in America, so well in fact that President Barack Obama obviously deserves a second term because Americans are better off than they were four years ago, and that the Republican Party is little more than a haven for old-fashioned robber barons who think like Klansmen but dress like Mr. Monopoly.

There's a lot going on in Waverly, in case you haven't noticed. Late last month, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake signed a bill designating the old Waverly Town Hall at Greenmount Avenue and 31st Street as the city's latest historic landmark. The building's second-floor hall had once been a popular meeting place for 19th- and 20th-century politicians, as well as a neighborhood gathering place for Waverly residents. "A lot of us who live in the Waverly area are excited that this has happened," said Joe Stewart, a Waverly activist who is an attorney with the state Department of Assessments and Taxation.

I was finishing a new book about the same time my backyard got planted for summer. The deadline I faced for Sunday's Charles Village Festival garden walk worked wonders to motivate me. Reservoir Hill is also holding its garden tour this weekend. Both tours offer ways to snoop around and not be chased away, and both neighborhoods have a rich history of international intrigue. My reading mentioned one of the 20th-century's biggest spymasters, Allen Dulles, who operated a station in Bern, Switzerland, during World War II and was married to a Baltimorean, Clover Todd.

Dan Rodricks is right on the money in suggesting that the U.S. hire out our military to other nations. ("Street food and soccer, war and Westboro," March 24.) After all, until the modern age — i.e. post-Industrial Revolution — wars of aggression were always fought by hired armies; more often than not, the defending armies were also hired help. One of the great cons of the 20th century was the wholesale selling of patriotism/love of country as a reason for young men and women to go to war. Call me cynical, but I just see it as a way for the military men and corporations and the politicians who serve them to get cheap, easily replaceable, and thus expendable, hired help.

This special issue of The Sun paints a portrait of the people, events and achievements that shaped our lives and the world in the 20th century. It is not a full accounting of the historical events of the last 100 years but a visual essay -- a cavalcade of history.It is also a testament to the impact of photojournalism in this century. Born in the 19th century, the photograph became the main instrument of documentation in the 20th century. Its storytelling power was limited only by the keen eye of photojournalists and their ability to gain access to the events of our time.

THE END OF THE TWENTIETHCENTURY AND THE ENDOF THE MODERN AGE.John Lukacs.Ticknor & Fields.` 291 pages. $21.95.By now it's a commonplace that the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 marked the end of the struggle between communism and capitalism. But it is also true that the collapse of the East bloc heralded a victory for a third contender from the 19th century: nationalism. The ethnic upheaval in Eastern Europe suggests that 1989 was more of a triumph for nationalism than for liberal democracy.

Out of the water for the first time since 1998, the 1854 sloop of war Constellation looked pretty good to its caretakers Thursday as they walked beneath its grimy hull, now propped up in dry dock at the Sparrows Point Shipyard. "I think we're surprised she's as clean as she is, for being in the water for 13 years," said Chris Rowsom, executive director for Historic Ships in Baltimore. "It shouldn't be too difficult to get her washed up and painted. " High on blocks just aft of Constellation is the 1944 submarine Torsk, which faces much more extensive work.