Atonement

NASHVILLE, TENN. -- Apparently, someone must have informed Ravens running back Jamal Lewis about the benefits of smile therapy. Rather than flip out about his team's 25-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans, his minimal role in it or the negative ramifications of an 0-2 start, Lewis kept flashing grins so wide you would have thought his team did not have a care in the world. Call it his way of muzzling himself. "Honestly, right now I'm on mute," Lewis said, almost laughing. "I'm going to keep saying the same things."

MINISTER Jamil Muhammad, the national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, pointed last Friday night to Minister Farajii Muhammad as a prime example of what their leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan, is trying to accomplish. "He's the youth minister for Mosque Six," said Jamil Muhammad, who at one time was the minister in charge of that mosque, which sits on Garrison Boulevard near Liberty Heights Avenue. Farajii Muhammad is 26 years old. He wore a bow tie, a sharp dark suit and a white shirt.

The young girl's gaze seems to teeter on the verge of emotion, like a summer afternoon that might suddenly erupt in thunder. It's a face that haunts artist Shane McCallum so much that he's already painted it five times. "I think her appeal is based on the honesty of the innocent, or perhaps the neutral," he writes in his artist's statement. "The longer I look, the more I imagine. ... What will be her next expression? A smile? A grimace? Will she pardon or condemn?" The 47-year-old artist writes, and paints, from his cell at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup.

BERLIN - Sixty years after the words Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald took on a terrible new meaning, Germany has offered the world a simple but dramatic gesture of public atonement. In the center of Berlin, in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate and the dome of the Reichstag, on ground where Adolf Hitler's ministries once stood, there now stands a memorial to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Berlin, an old imperial city reinvented as the capital of a new Germany, has its share of monumental architecture, but it never has had anything like American architect Peter Eisenman's Holocaust memorial, officially known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

That strange mix of wailing and whimpering you might have been hearing is not from folks sick of shoveling snow, but the Pavlovian reflex of certain music lovers upon learning that compositions from the Second Viennese School have been added to the winter calendar. Thanks to the Peabody Conservatory - and I really do mean thanks - concertgoers have an unusual opportunity coming up to sample the art of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. These revolutionary, Vienna-based composers generated the most provocative and influential sounds in that city since the days of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven (you could call them the First Viennese School, except that title isn't commonly used)

MRS. JOAN HALL ATON, of Park Chase Dr., Evans, GA, beloved wife of Dr. James K. Aton, entered into rest on Friday, January 21, 2005, at her residence. Additional survivors include two sons, Keyes Aton of Grapevine, TX and Herb Aton of Charleston, SC; two daughters, Randi Aton of Atlanta, GA and Tracy Quillian of Greensboro, NC; ten grandchildren, Alex Aton, B.K. Aton, Bret Aton, Emily Aton, Maggie Aton, Ben Aton, Cary Quillian, Randall Quillian, Aubry Quillian and Emory Quillian. A native of Baltimore, MD, Mrs. Aton was born on January 19, 1935.

NEW YORK - There was plenty on the line last night at the CBS News Broadcast Center, as about 300 employees were hunkering down for a long night covering a close race. "I don't want to be overly dramatic, but this is our Super Bowl," said Marcy McGinnis, the network's senior vice president for news coverage. It was also an opportunity for atonement for a poor job by CBS - and other networks - four years ago, when then-Vice President Al Gore was declared the winner of the election against George W. Bush - a report that was retracted hours later.

ATHENS - One of the worst mornings ever experienced by an American men's swim team led to one of its best nights. That turnaround was delivered by Michigan men and one who is headed there. As fragile as the dynamics are among the U.S. men in the 100-meter freestyle, they are that solid among the group that races twice as far. The resolve displayed by the 800 freestyle relay team repelled Australia and produced a third gold medal for Michael Phelps last night. The team found inspiration in a 60-something native of Hungary and a race that occurred the year before Phelps was born.