America Today

"The Day Before Yesterday: Reconsidering America's Past, Reconsidering the Present," by Michael Elliott. Simon & Schuster. 292 pages. $24.Since the days of Tocqueville, Americans have learned to understand themselves better and see themselves clearer through the eyes of foreign observers.Michael Elliott is not a passing visitor. Like Alistair Cooke, he came to this country from England, settled here and has been fascinated ever since by the American phenomenon. This book is a summary of his impressions as former Washington bureau chief of the Economist and as current editor of Newsweek International.

Text of homily by Pope John Paul II at Camden Yards:"Oh, that today you would hear his voice: harden not your hearts."(Psalms 95:7-8)Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,Each day, the church begins the liturgy of the hours with the Psalm which we have just prayed together: "Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord!" In that call, ringing down the centuries and echoing across the face of the globe, the Psalmist summons the people of God to sing the praises of the Lord and to bear great witness to the marvelous things God has done for us.Maryland's roleThe Psalmist's call to hear the Lord's voice has particular significance for us as we celebrate this Mass in Baltimore.

Shortly after dawn, on the running track at the neighborhood college, I was sure I would be able to get away from it.The walkers and runners there would have their minds on more important things. Health. Fitness. In some cases, plain old survival.No one there would bring up the question that was inescapable everywhere else.Wrong.Behind me, and catching up fast, was a tall man in a red T-shirt. When he reached my side, he asked the question."What's the matter with the Orioles?" he said.To tell the truth, I wouldn't mind being asked what's wrong with the Orioles if only I knew the answer.

KYOTO, Japan -- Preparing for its 1,200th anniversary, this ancient capital of Japan is trying to burnish its mystique as the repository of old customs and past splendor. But it has to contend with a national inclination to reconstruct everything in a modern way.And, for those who care about the old stuff, it may be too late."Nowhere else will you find such cultural stock," says Tomoyuki Tanabe, Kyoto's mayor.Indeed the Japanese, who tend to be precise about such matters, note that Kyoto, Japan's seventh-largest city and ancient capital, has 10 percent of the country's population but 15 percent of its officially certified "Important Cultural Properties" and 20 percent of the ultra-rare, also officially certified, "National Treasures."

In America, a man can shoot and kill a blameless kid, and a jury of his peers will let him walk.This is what we've become.A kid who did nothing wrong is shot dead. The jury says his killer is innocent.You know the story. A Japanese exchange student visiting Baton Rouge, La., is looking for a Halloween party. He's lost. He rings on a doorbell, and the woman who answers immediately thinks she is being threatened by the 16-year-old kid, whose most threatening act is to be dressed in a John Travolta costume.

Washington. -- I don't get infuriated often, or about many things, but my blood was boiling last weekend when I first read figures about rising teen-age unemployment.And then I read about our soaring prison population.You probably read or heard that in April the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 7 per cent. But did the media, or any of our politicians, tell you that unemployment for teen-agers rose to 17 per cent for whites and an outrageous 46.8 per cent for blacks?It bodes ill for this society when one white teen-ager out of six can't find a job; but calamities await all of us when one black youngster out of two can't find work, even though they need and seek it desperately.

The best memories? Gwynn Oak Park, I guess. All those summers with people gathered in the darkness, with that orchestration of fireworks in the sky and the imagined echoes of some ancient battles crackling above us, and everybody saying, ''Aaah'' in a kind of collective sigh.But it wasn't the fireworks exactly, so much as the notion of it all: It was the Fourth of July, so you belonged in a place like this. The sky was all lit up, and later a band would play patriotic songs, so this must be the America they kept telling us about.

Theatre Project patrons will realize they're in for something different as soon as they see the physical set-up for Double Edge Theatre's "Song of Absence in the Fall of the Ashen Reign," which opens Wednesday. Instead of the usual bank of seats at one end of the room, the audience sits on elevatedbenches on either side of an elongated playing area.Doing things differently is practically a way of life for Double Edge founder and artistic director Stacy Klein, a native Baltimorean whose work is being seen in her hometown for the first time.