Calendar

Jeff and Laurel Huff traveled from their home in Reston, Va., to compete in Maryvale Prep's Rite of Spring 5K nine days ago. The trip proved worth the effort when Jeff finished fifth overall and Laurel sixth in the women's division.But the race proved doubly worthwhile when Rite of Spring race director Dave Cooley let the Huffs distribute order forms for their "Washington Area Racing Calendar," which they began producing this year.The first issue contained listings for about 225 races in the northern Virginia-District of Columbia-southern Maryland area.

If you like your life laid out in black and white (or even color), there's a software publisher somewhere who has your number.Appointment programs, calendars, schedulers and other time organizers have long been among the most popular personal software titles.Some people use these programs primarily to keep track of personal events, such as meetings, appointments, birthdays and the like. Others use them to publish calendars of events for their office, school or club.If you're primarily interested in calendars that look good in print, the new Calendar Creator Plus for Windows from Power Up Software will do the job -- and then some.

In the twilight of the holiday gift-buying season, a familiar emotion sets in among the ringing of sleigh bells and the comforting aroma of cookies baking: panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. And that is why Julius Caesar invented the calendar as we know it.A calendar is the ultimate easy gift, made easier by the calendar stores that have been popping up in malls. A calendar, however, is not a lazy gift, because it takes a lot of work to find the right one. There are thousands of subjects available, ranging from the standby "Far Side" cartoons to meditations from the pope.

ATLANTA - Coca-Cola Co. bought a Norman Rockwell original oil painting created for the soft-drink maker's 1931 calendar from a retired printing-company executive. The price wasn't disclosed. The painting, called The Barefoot Boy, has never been publicly displayed, the company said. The work depicts a Tom Sawyer look-alike wearing overalls and a straw hat, holding a bottle of Coca-Cola with his dog beside him. The company that printed the calendar kept the original painting, and the executive, who lives in Virginia, acquired it after the printer went out of business in the 1960s, Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan McDermott said.

Sarah Raymond has created a tool that abused children can use to get help: a pocket-size calendar with the names and telephone numbers of agencies that fight child abuse.The calendars, which children can put in school notebooks, help them fight back the prevalence of child abuse by providing a handy reference source, said Sarah, a 13-year-old abuse victim who is leading a crusade to put the "Caring Kids Calendars" in county middle schools this fall.Yesterday at Corkran Middle School, Sarah and classmate Meghan Kelly, 12, held a luncheon to thank their peers from Lindale/Brooklyn Park, Bates, Southern, George Fox, MacArthur, Central and Old Mill South middle schools for submitting drawings or writings about child abuse for the calendar, which covers August 1996 through July 1997.

THE LADIES of Rylstone Calendar, illustrated with discreet nude photos of English matrons, has crossed the Great Pond to sink or swim in the land of liposuction. Reconfigured to cover 18 months instead of 12 and beginning with June 2000 instead of January, it hit U.S. bookstores in time for Mother's Day, and what began as a self-mocking fund-raiser continues its metamorphosis into a phenomenon. The calendar was the inspiration of members of the Women's Institute of Rylstone in Yorkshire, a silver-haired sisterhood of the pearls-and-twin-set set that meets monthly to hear lectures on homespun topics and raise money for charity.

In response to parents' concerns, the Carroll Board of Education yesterday scrapped a proposed calendar for next school year and drafted a blueprint calling for schools to start one week before Labor Day instead of two.Other suggested calendar changes for the 1999-2000 academic year include the elimination of late start and early dismissal days and shifting the placement of unused snow days, which are typically used as extra vacation days.Under the plan agreed to by the board, schools could start next year Aug. 30 and finish June 9.The board did not vote on a new calendar but directed staff to study the changes before its next meeting Jan. 13. The board may not take an official vote on the calendar until its February meeting.

The Howard County school system is recalling 43,000 just-printed school calendars because of complaints that a photo on their covers is racially insensitive -- igniting an intense debate in the county over diversity and political correctness.The debate began last week when the school system distributed boxes of its annual school-year calendar to each of Howard's 58 schools -- a calendar bearing a photo of white students in the foreground and African-American and Asian students in its background shadows.

Zachary Harriss had a kidney transplant when he was 2 years old. With his seventh birthday approaching on Monday, he has two things to celebrate: life and a winning entry in the American Kidney Fund's art contest. Next weekend, the fund will fete Zachary of Glen Burnie, Iesha Wyatt of Baltimore and 11 other children and their families with a tour of Washington, including a stop at the White House, and two celebratory dinners. The winning artwork will be used to illustrate the fund's 2007 "Kid"ney Calendar, which is distributed as a thank-you gift to donors and sold for $6. As many as 100,000 people will see Zachary's drawing for June, a portrait of him and another young transplant patient playing outside among flowers and butterflies.

When the ladies of Rylstone, England, decided to take it off -- well, take it almost all off -- for a fund-raising calendar, they couldn't have foreseen the worldwide fallout. The Rylstone Women's Institute 2000 calendar, which showcased not nubile young women but nearly nude middle-aged ladies discreetly posed behind gardening or homemaking equipment, sparked international interest and the movie Calendar Girls. The calendar honored one of the institute's members, whose husband had died of cancer.