Apprentice

Message to Donald Trump: If you really wanted to hear Aaron Altscher talk - if talking was truly the leadership indicator you were looking for in that boardroom when you fired Altscher from The Apprentice - then you should have been at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia on Tuesday morning to hear Altscher address more than 600 students at his alma mater. Altscher, 25, presented a compelling assessment of his experiences on the popular reality show, delivering the message that failure is opportunity.

IMAGINE a local teachers' union president who sees many positives in private schools, promotes charter schools, even runs seminars for teachers interested in starting a public charter.Just as radical, consider a union leader convinced that professionalism and rigorous teacher-to-teacher peer review need to replace protection by tenure and assignment by seniority. A leader who believes teachers unions should be more like craft guilds of professionals than simply defense attorneys for members in trouble.

Coast Guard Fireman Apprentice Eric D. Leese, son of Allison L. Leese of Westminster, recently graduated from recruit training and was promoted to his present rank.During training at Coast Guard Recruit Training Center, Cape May, N.J., students were taught military subjects designed to prepare them for further academic and on-the-job training in one of 26 Coast Guard occupational fields.Apprentice Leese is a 1990 graduate of Westminster High School.PoliceWestminster: A Baltimore resident reported Wednesday that someone removed the tags from her car while it was parked on Wimert Avenue.

An 18-year-old apprentice auto mechanic from Harwood was ordered held on $1 million bail yesterday after he was charged with murder in a rock-throwing incident that killed a father of three who was driving home from work.William Matthew Donely, of the 4500 block of Owensville Sudley Road was charged with second-degree murder in the April 3 death of Kevin Michael Gallagher after turning himself in yesterday at the Anne Arundel County Southern District police station.In an indictment unsealed yesterday, Mr. Donely also was charged in 10 other rock-throwing incidents the same night along Route 258 near Solomons Island Road.

Trainer Charles Hadry chose to chat in the racing office rather than watch yesterday's Goss L. Stryker Stakes from his box seat.But the veteran trainer was still all smiles after his 3-year-old, Private Faith, prevailed in the seven-furlong stakes race for Maryland-breds. Hadry, also the horse's owner, earned the $36,000 winner's share. Favored Centurian was second, a head behind. Shimmering Prince was third.It was the second win a row and third in 12 career starts for Private Faith, a son of Private Terms, the horse that took Hadry to the Kentucky Derby in 1988, and that probably made Hadry less than excited about yesterday's stakes race.

25 Years Ago (week of Nov. 30-Dec. 6, 1969):* An apprentice training program was set in place by the Howard County Board of Education. The program had been proposed by General Electric officials, the state Department of Vocational Education and the county's vocational department. Tool and die makers for General Electric's new manufacturing facility will be trained at the Howard County Vocational Technical Center.50 Years Ago (Week of Dec. 3-9, 1944):* The Warfield estate in Jessup was sold to W. E. Simpson of One Spot Farm in Elkridge.

John Faltynski, the agent for apprentice Kaymarie Kreidel, calls her "Special Kay."For good reason.The 22-year-old jockey has shown amazing courage in her brief riding career, refusing to give up after breaking her back three times and suffering a near-fatal spill last summer at Delaware Park. Now as her skills improve and her career gains visibility, she is starting to attract attention on the Maryland circuit.Kreidel is about the same height as Julie Krone, muscular as a gymnast and is one of the few people, said trainer Donald Souder, "who always seems happy.

Man, woman injured in separate traffic accidentsA man and a woman were injured yesterday afternoon in separate accidents on routes 27 and 97.The man was driving south on Route 27, when his car careened out of control at Hahn Road, crossed the center line and crashed into an embankment about 2:30 p.m. The vehicle flipped in a ditch and came to rest facing north along the highway.The driver, whose name was unavailable last night, was trapped in the automobile and had to be removed from the vehicle by the Westminster Fire Department.

Those who attended Kinetics Dance Theatre's second annual gala at the Baltimore Museum of Art Saturday night had something to celebrate.Dorothy Fried, reinstalled as the company's artistic director, and the school's director, Donna Harrington-Payne, have been working diligently. The result is that this Howard County-based company now has a technically skilled corps of dancers consisting of Amanda Thom-Woodson, Anne Parshall, Linda Garofalo-McDevitt, JoAnn Shay O'Neill, Jennifer Blizzard, Luke Loy and David Miller.

He stood on the highest step of the winners' platform as the gold medal was hung around his neck and thousands applauded."It was awesome," he said. "I knew I did a good job . . . but I didn't think I placed first."Kaui Stryhn, 21, of Hampstead was in Louisville, Ky., June 23 for the Skill Olympics, an event sponsored by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America, or VICA.His event: culinary arts.He placed first in the nation in the two-part contest.In the first part, the cooks were given a selection of ingredients, a menu and three hours to prepare a four-course meal.

Salisbury opened its Atlantic Central Football Conference schedule with a 48-17 rout of the Apprentice School yesterday at Apprentice Field in Newport News, Va. Salisbury (4-1, 1-0 ACFC), ranked No. 17 in the D3football.com poll, broke open a tight game early in the fourth quarter with two touchdowns in 14 seconds. The Sea Gulls capped a four-play, 45-yard drive when Randal Smedley (eight carries, 60 yards) scored his second touchdown of the game from 5 yards out with 13:30 left in the game.

Jockey Kent Desormeaux had just finished watching a tape from NBC showing his family in the grandstand two weeks ago when he won the Kentucky Derby on Big Brown. With luck tomorrow at Pimlico Race Course, Desormeaux could help stage a replay, guiding Big Brown to victory in the second jewel of the Triple Crown before his wife and children - as well as many Maryland racing fans who undoubtedly remember him breaking out as the apprentice with the Cajun name and the skills beyond his 17 years.

Maybe after all this time (seven months since the last edition) and a steady, unremitting, grinding and pitiless decline in audience favor, a refresher is in order. So here goes. The Apprentice: Once the most important program on NBC and a showcase for the world's most unstoppable ego! The future of television! The replacement for Friends! The new king of Thursday nights! An international phenomenon! An advertiser's best friend! Creator of indelible catchphrases ("You're fired!"). And, incidentally, when it first launched almost exactly four years ago, not a bad show, either.

Different in name and approach, The Celebrity Apprentice is both a whole new game and the whole old game as well. Obvious difference? Well (duh), celebrities! A boatload of 'em vying for Donald Trump's love and affection. Most important, the winner will deliver a $250,000 check to a charity of choice. There's a little bit of back-to-basics here, too (aside from its return to the Big Apple). Celebrities, for example, won't be constructing elaborate marketing plans to sell H3X Hummers, but elaborate marketing plans to sell hot dogs and the like.

Message to Donald Trump: If you really wanted to hear Aaron Altscher talk - if talking was truly the leadership indicator you were looking for in that boardroom when you fired Altscher from The Apprentice - then you should have been at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia on Tuesday morning to hear Altscher address more than 600 students at his alma mater. Altscher, 25, presented a compelling assessment of his experiences on the popular reality show, delivering the message that failure is opportunity.

The 14th season of Survivor kicks off Thursday - the folks are in Fiji. The twist this time around is that one tribe will live in the lap of luxury, while the other will be on its own in the wild. This would all seem so much more interesting if it weren't the exact same twist as on The Apprentice, whose most recent season started last month. Both shows are produced by Mark Burnett, so there's really no excuse for the overlap, either.

A young girl kneels on the floor as she shaves soap into a bucket of hot water in her traditional 19th-century servant garments - a white head scarf, a pink bell-sleeved shirt over a white ruffled shirt and a long linen skirt. The kitchen smells of burning wood from the open hearth and sunrays highlight the dust on antique chairs, a large wooden table, pots and a rack used to roast pigeons. "Did you bring the letter?" the girl asks onlookers. "My mother said she would send me a letter."

The major twist on this season of The Apprentice has been dividing the teams into "haves" and "have-nots" by forcing the losing team to sleep in tents outside the mansion where the winning team is living it up. On Sunday's episode, members of undefeated Kinetic muffed their task big time, meaning they not only lost but also had to move to the outdoors camp for the first time. While the just desserts were fun to watch, it was also nice to see Arrow finally win (thanks to the efforts of project manager Aaron, who is from Columbia)

Reality TV took a bit of a break for the holidays, but the schedule is heating up again. Tomorrow night at 9:30, the sixth season of The Apprentice kicks off on NBC. You probably already knew that, because the past couple of weeks have been rife with reports of Donald Trump's bizarre feud with Rosie O'Donnell, and those reports all seem to mention the show. This season, the contestants will be in Los Angeles instead of New York, but they'll still be competing in creative, business-based challenges to become Trump's (supposed)

Dickinson quarterback Matt Torchia ran for two touchdowns and the Dickinson defense held host Johns Hopkins to 46 yards rushing as the Blue Jays dropped their Centennial Conference opener, 21-13. The Blue Jays (1-3) drove inside the Dickinson 20-yard line in the final minute, but Michael Murray's fourth-down pass was batted away by Ryan Heinig. Dickinson (3-1) struggled to defend Anthony Triplin (Gilman), who led the Blue Jays with six receptions for 113 yards, including a 63-yard touchdown catch.