21st Century

I read your editorial, "Kimco might learn a thing or two from Long Reach center," about the development in the Long Reach Village Center compared to the problems of the Wilde Lake Village Center. As a property owner in Wilde Lake, I have attended many meetings only to leave in great frustration. Kimco Realty proposed many attractive redevelopment programs only to be rejected. Many people want "things the way they were," with an anchor supermarket where the Giant used to be. A common objection to the development plans was traffic.

"Houston, we have a problem. " In reading The Sun's recent editorial on transportation funding, ("Congress creates a transportation time bomb," Sept. 6), I was reminded of Astronaut Jim Lovell's famous words during the ill-fated Apollo 13 space mission of 1970. At that time, a team of men and women from Mission Control worked under tight deadlines to undertake a historic rescue. Members of Congress need to take similar action today by approving a transportation funding package to keep our economy and infrastructure from further decay.

Peg Niland's father did not let the lack of a road stop him from building a summer cabin 64 years ago. When the Conowingo Power Co. made lots available for nominal leases in northern Harford County, he chose one on Broad Creek, had lumber tossed from a nearby bridge and then towed it downstream behind his boat. Niland and her adult children still return every spring to that rustic cabin, the oldest among the remaining 158 seasonal homes that line the Susquehanna River and its creeks just north of the Conowingo Dam. She and her neighbors all still pay the annual ground rent on the parcels to Exelon Generation Co., the successor to the utility that built the hydroelectric dam on the Susquehanna River.

At the turn of the 20th century, Professor Woodrow Wilson said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time. At the beginning of the 21st century, we can say that every person sent out from a university should be a person of the world as well as a person of his or her time. Globalization is here, and with it, the globally connected university has arrived. A world "flattened" by information technology has created a world without borders, rendering nearly every aspect of our lives global in nature.

Here's one Maryland politician who will never get swept up in a Weinergate-style scandal, despite his being named in a sexual harassment lawsuit and his participation in a very strange incident in a mall parking lot. Anne Arundel County Exec John R. Leopold doesn't use computers. That's right. Leopold doesn't tweet, doesn't Facebook. He's NEVER been on the Internet, he told The Sun's Nicole Fuller. In fact, Leopold doesn't even have a computer -- not in his office at the county government building in downtown Annapolis or at his Pasadena home.

How sad and degrading for women in sports that here we are in the 21st century and on the front page of The Sun ("March sadness," March 17), Kevin Van Valkenburg discusses the disappointment that no Maryland men's teams have made postseason play in the NCAA basketball tournament. In his research, Kevin unfortunately neglected to inform the public that Maryland fact does have representation in the NCAA Division I basketball tournament; it just happens to be a women's team. The University of Maryland women's basketball team is seeded fourth in its region and is scheduled to play Sunday, March 20 against St. Francis.

Bryant Bunch, who came from Prince George's County to attend college here at the far end of the Maryland panhandle, first saw the sign on Interstate 68 while traveling with a carload of friends a few years back. He remembers their reaction: Does that say what we think it says? Maxine Broadwater, born and raised on a farm outside Grantsville, and the town's librarian for three decades, recalls the first time she ever gave the name a second thought. It was the early 1990s, and people passing through had stopped at her library to ask about it. Her thought: Why would that bother anybody?

Before Mobtown Modern hit the scene or the Evolution Contemporary Music Series evolved, Baltimore area fans of new sounds could get an earful at UMBC, where the music department continues to champion adventurous repertoire. "That's kind of our thing out here," said composer and faculty member Linda Dusman. "We decided to consolidate this year into a festival. " That would be Livewire, a four-day presentation of concerts and lectures at UMBC next week exploring a hefty sampling of fresh music, including world premieres.

Work is scheduled to start this winter to transform the biggest state government complex in Maryland into a model of 21st-century urban design, a $1.5 billion "village" that clusters offices, homes and shops around mass transit and plazas in a now-blighted swath of midtown Baltimore. After years of planning and community input, and with a new development team at the helm, the overhaul of 28 acres at State Center will begin with an underground garage at Madison Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

I have had the pleasure of handing diplomas to some unusual people at commencement. Still, it was startling to see the child walk toward me. He was 9. He looked younger. He wasn't accepting the diploma for himself, of course. It was for his dad, on active duty in Iraq. He'd sent his son, living on a base in Germany, to get it for him. "Congratulations," I said. He and his dad deserved it. At University of Maryland University College (UMUC), our graduates are America's adult learners.