Canon

Carroll's providers of emergency food and shelter say they have been struggling to meet an increased demand for their services this summer, a season when requests for help typically decline.In the past two months, the county's largest food bank, Carroll Food Sunday, has had some of its busiest weeks of the year. And the county's emergency overnight shelter has been operating at capacity throughout the summer."My concern is we're seeing lots of new faces showing up and donations are down," said Tom Canon, the food bank manager.

Retiring benefactor GOING TO bat for those in need has been a lifetime mission of Sylvia Canon. There's no reason to suspect that will change when the 64-year- old founder and director of Human Services Programs of Carroll County officially retires this month. Under the direction of Mrs. Canon, HSP has grown from a homeless women's shelter to become the first stop for thousands of folks seeking help with housing, clothing, food or finding jobs. Working with other organizations, the agency aided more than 12,000 people last year.

IF THE COMPUTER and photographic industries have their way, the world will shortly embark on a frenzy of digital picture-making.People will take snapshots with digital cameras or capture photos with scanners or ask the photofinisher for help in turning images on film into a bunch of bits. Photo software will help make Junior's overbite a trifle less pronounced, his nose a trifle less prominent. Then the pictures will whisk away to Grandma via E-mail or the personal home page.A new digital file format called Flashpix is supposed to help make all this happen quickly and easily.

Carroll County Food Sunday is serving more people with less money and facing its worst crisis since its founding in 1982.The charity, which distributes food at three county locations, could be forced to close its doors or, at least, decrease the amount of food it gives weekly to 350 families, mostly the working poor."

Here's how tech manufacturers stacked up in PC Magazine's reliability poll of 15,000 readers. The total number of responses is shown next to each company. Desktops Dell (1,253) A Gateway (578) B+ Locally built (1,375) B+ IBM (217) D Hewlett-Packard (582) D-- Compaq (663) E Laptops Apple (100) A Hewlett-Packard (338) A IBM (910) A Toshiba (875) A Dell (1,684) B+ Fujitsu (106) B Sony (343) B-- Gateway (299) C Compaq (945) E Printers Hewlett-Packard (3,530) A+ Epson (1,258)

Faced with a slash in state funding, Carroll County Family Center is seeking donations for a program that provides licensed day care and support services to teen-age mothers and their children."

It was the "desert island disc" of my childhood: Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto performed with virtuosic fire by pianist Eugene Istomin, conductor Eugene Ormandy -- then at the peak of his powers -- and Ormandy's fabulous Philadelphians, the most sumptuous-sounding band of 'em all.I wore the grooves on that LP to dust.It was with great anticipation, then, that I attended Eugene Istomin's recital at St. John's College last Sunday afternoon, for there's no friend like an old friend.Now 68, Istomin is no longer the fire-breather who mesmerized me in my boyhood.

As director of Westminster's Department of Recreation and Parks, Ron Schroers has much more experience giving trophies than receiving them. So when the Community Services Council presented its first Sylvia Canon Humanitarian Award to Schroers at its monthly meeting yesterday, he spoke his thanks softly and quickly shifted the spotlight to others. He thanked God for giving him strength, his wife for understanding his long hours on the job, the city for its leadership, and the council for its spirit of voluntarism.

Name: Sylvia Z. CanonHonored by The Carroll County Sun for: Being one of five new members appointed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer to the state Housing Policy Commission; the 17-member commission was established in 1983 to identify ways to increase housing supply and ownership opportunities for people of low to moderate incomeAge: 54Residence; hometown: Westminster; born in Soso, Miss.,and raised in Washington, D.C.Education: Bachelor of arts in American civilization from Goucher College; Eastern High School in WashingtonFamily: Daughter: Laura Nusbaum, 27, of Snydersburg; son: Thomas Canon, 23, of Owings Mills; grandchildren: Michael Nusbaum, 5; Jennifer Nusbaum, 20 months; and Nicole Canon, 6 months.

The statement issued by the American cardinals at the conclusion of this week's meeting in Rome is, when stripped of its theological language, the sort of document any institution in crisis might issue as an exercise in damage control. While canon lawyers who are experts in church doctrine surely played a role in drafting the statement, it is not known whether lawyers retained to protect the church against civil and criminal actions played a part. In any event, the statement resembles the sort of full-page advertisement a company might place after an incident of product tampering or the discovery of corporate malfeasance.