Age

At an age when many workers are thinking about winding down their careers, Victoria Baldassano of Silver Spring says she can't afford to give retirement a thought. The part-time English professor at Montgomery College said her income has been too low for too long to save for retirement, and she's carrying about $40,000 in credit card debt racked up to pay living expenses. "It's an awkward situation to be in at 61," said Baldassano, who said she thinks more about day-to-day bills than retirement.

When economic times are tough and the daily headlines remind us of our nation's deficit challenge, it's easy to use misinformation and anecdotes of abuse to demonize certain entitlement programs. Unfortunately, this has the unintended effect of stereotyping whole groups of people as lazy, unmotivated or, worse yet, committing intentional fraud. First, it was those living on the edge of poverty and relying on Medicaid for health care and other critical support services who took the hit. Now it's the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Two men were injured in a shooting on North Avenue in the early hours of Saturday morning, police said. An unknown number of people approached the two men, who were standing in the 2100 block of E. North Ave., shooting one victim, aged 19, in the chest and another, aged 26, in the back of the legs, according to police. The victims, who have not been identified, were transported to an area hospital and were in stable condition. The Eastern district, where the incident happened, has seen 8 shootings and 3 homicides as of Mar. 9, according to police data, a slight decline from the same point last year.

In a cheery room in Cockeysville, two dozen people sit with their heads down, focused on the papers in front of them. The only sound is the scratching of pencils on paper. The sight triggers memories of school days, but this is no group of middle schoolers eking their way through a math class pop quiz. It's the Brain Aerobics class at Broadmead Senior Living Community. Once a week, speech pathologist Chuck Warnke leads the class through a variety of mental activities, including riddles, word games and history puzzles - one activity challenged class members to remember the prices of products, from a gallon of milk to a pair of women's leather boots, from 1972.

When tickets to the third Grand Prix of Baltimore went on sale in December, race promoter Race On announced a drastic drop in the price for junior tickets. Now, some kids can watch for free. Race On announced Tuesday a revised ticket plan -- one already in place at other popular road races, officials said -- that will allow each adult with a general admissions ticket to bring one child 12-years-old or younger to the Labor Day event. “We know that Labor Day weekend is a time to spend with family, and we're excited to make it easier for families to attend one of the largest and most exciting sporting events on the East Coast,” said Grand Prix of Baltimore General Manager Tim Mayer in a news release.

On a recent cold, gray morning, state bridge inspector Van Swift jumped into his office: a 4-by-3-foot white bucket at the end of a 60-foot hydraulic arm anchored to a flatbed "snooper" truck. Working a cluster of joysticks, he swung the bucket away from the truck and over the side of the 800-foot Interstate 70 bridge spanning the Patapsco River between Baltimore and Howard counties. As the bucket descended, the whoosh of highway traffic gave way to the rumble of tires overhead. Swift maneuvered the bucket toward a web of girders, beams and turnbuckles about 120 feet above the rushing water.

If there is some good to arise from the tragic death of Nathan Krasnopoler - the 20-year-old Johns Hopkins University student killed while riding his bicycle on University Parkway by an 83-year-old driver who didn't notice him in the bike lane - it may be to call greater attention to the dangers of Maryland's aging driver population. Today, Mr. Krasnopoler's parents were in Annapolis to brief the House Environmental Matters Committee on the latest data provided by the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration documenting the threat.

Just when we were getting our heads around the idea that many (if not most) of us will lose brain function as we age, there is news that another one of those physical gifts we take for granted is likely to leave us. Our sense of smell. It is a bit of a blow, if you will excuse the pun. And it joins a growing list: balance, flexibility, muscle mass, strength, vision, hearing and hair, to name just a handful of the things the young take for granted. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that our sense of smell degrades as we age, reducing both pleasure and safety.

Baltimore water officials have been dogged in the past year by a series of extremely public problems: widespread billing errors that required millions in refunds, massive water main breaks that closed downtown streets, and a collapsed stormwater culvert that took five months and $7 million to fix. Accompanying those issues has been criticism from customers, many of whom are upset with rising costs and what they see as lapses in service. But city officials say that behind the scenes, they have been making progress on the city's aged and long-deteriorating water system.

If, like the Liz Lemon, you look for any possible distraction from Valentine's Day, perhaps a celebration of Anna Howard Shaw Day is in order. The fictional character's fictional holiday celebrates a very real preacher and doctor, born 166 years ago today in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Shaw was a polymath who broke boundaries, becoming both an M.D. and the country's first ordained female methodist minister. Raised in England, Massachusetts and Michigan, Shaw remembers in her autobiography an early experience around age 9 or 10 that shaped her later drive to challenge defined roles.