Canon

On May 30, 2003, NORMAN W. NIEBERLEIN, of Canon City, Colorado; beloved husband of Dorothy O. Nieberlein; father of Richard W. Nieberlein and late James L. Nieberlein. Also survived by five grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Funeral services will be private and at the convenience of the family. J.J. Hartenstein Mortuary, Inc. 24 Second St. New Freedom, PA is in charge of arrangements.

Less expensive first-rate scanners are becoming as plentiful as inexpensive first-rate printers. Canon's CanoScan 9900F flatbed scanner impresses on a number of fronts, with only a few minor downsides. This is a 3200-by-6400 dot-per-inch scanner that is relatively fast without being a speed demon. The 9900F ($400) has four one-touch buttons on its face for copying, scanning, creating a file or e-mailing. It's not particularly slim nor light at 5 inches in height and 11.5 pounds. But like most flatbeds with an 8.5-by-11.

In the mid-1830s, the rector of St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore asked Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange to send over some sisters to work as domestics. With unfailing politeness, but unflinching firmness, the founder of the Catholic Church's first order of African-American nuns informed the white priest she would comply - with certain conditions. "As persons of color and religious at the same time, we wish to conciliate these two qualities as not to appear too arrogant nor miss the respect which is due to the state we have embraced and the holy habit we have the honor to wear," Mother Lange wrote to the Rev. Louis Deluol.

County closings for Labor Day announced Carroll County government offices will be closed tomorrow in observance of Labor Day. Offices will reopen at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Northern Landfill and the Recycling Center will be closed and will reopen at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Carroll County public libraries, schools and senior centers also will be closed. Nominations for Canon Humanitarian Award open The Community Service Council is accepting nominations for the 2002 Sylvia V. Canon Humanitarian Award, established last year to recognize Canon's many contributions to the county and its citizens.

GUATEMALA CITY - Pope John Paul II canonized Central America's first saint yesterday at a Mass that drew attention to both the Roman Catholic Church's struggle for human rights in this troubled nation and the church's concern over Protestant evangelization of indigenous people in Latin America. As hundreds of thousands of Catholics at an outdoor race track sang, cheered and waved brightly colored flags, the pope praised Pedro de San Jose Betancur, a 17th-century Spanish missionary, as someone who endured hardship to care for the sick and the poor in Guatemala.

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)

Canon S900 printer delivers sharp, fast copies of photos Canon's S900 Photo Printer ($400) dazzles with its speed and outshines similar printers with its photo reproduction. In many ways, with high-resolution pictures printed on the company's relatively expensive Photo Paper Pro, the Canon S900 (with a maximum 2,400-by-1,200 dots per inch resolution) surpasses regular photo-finish prints in color and sharpness. To make the printer faster, Canon doubled the number of ink spray nozzles to 3,072.

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.

PHILADELPHIA - In a curious moment for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua recently elevated a free-lance urban hermit to be its first "canonical hermit." The chosen one is a gentle soul named Richard Withers, 46. A convert to Roman Catholicism, Withers has lived alone since 1984, the last 10 years in North Philadelphia, under his own private vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Withers had petitioned the church for the official status, citing 1983 canon-law changes that restored the ancient category of lay hermit.

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.