Childhood

Courtney Upshaw once lived in a house with no electricity or running water. He slept some nights on a worn couch that barely contained his growing frame. He arrived at the University of Alabama with little more than the clothes he was wearing. April 26, 2012 was supposed to be the night Upshaw would be rewarded for his perseverance. Yet as he sat in Radio City Music Hall in New York City, surrounded by friends and family, Upshaw fought back tears. He watched four of his college teammates become first-round draft picks.

Wedding date: March 9, 2013 Her story: Julie Zuramski, 34, grew up in Lutherville. She works in sales at National Envelope. Her father, Joseph, is retired from sales, and her mother, Josephine, is a real estate agent for Long & Foster. His story: Matthew Shevlin, 38, grew up in West Conshocken, Pa. He is an employee benefits consultant for Engle-Hambright & Davies in Philadelphia. His father, Joseph, is a vice president for the Eastern region of AMG Resources and his mother, Kathleen, is a teacher.

AFFECTION IS an aimless thing, lighting its way across the landscape of childhood, more shine than beam.How else to account for a term of endearment like ''pumpkin?'' From a dark rumble of voices above, a hand, waving genially, would descend, brisker than a benediction, squashing a velvet hair ribbon flat. ''Hello, pumpkin!'' was even better than ''honey'' or ''sweetheart'' or ''buster.'' ''Pumpkin'' was pure gesture, jolly, dismissive; it required no answering back.Reluctant to be seen or heard, children in my neighborhood got ourselves dismissed from any table as fast as we possibly could.

As we struggle through the fifth year of recession, facing budget cuts, austerity and now the sequester, it may be a good time to re-evaluate our national priorities. Last year, the Reach Out and Read program that distributes books to low-income children from 6 months to 5 years lost its federal grant and this year the Head Start program is being cut back. These cuts will be borne by our most vulnerable citizens. These cuts come at a time when there is a growing mountain of evidence that the seeds for our health are sown in the first years of life.

Not everything in childhood is bowls of mush and little old ladies whispering "Hush," and Maurice Sendak understood that. Our children understand that, too. Instinctively. That's what makes his books, like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen" such a delicious experience for them. They could feel that frisson of fear and adventure without ever leaving the crook of Mommy's arm. This was especially true for our sons, who found kindred spirts in the unruly little boys of Sendak's stories.

In northern Israel, a shining-faced little girl with her curly hair in pigtails writes not on a customary blackboard, nor in a school notebook, but on the lethally armored nose of a heavy artillery shell. Her half-smile gives little clue to her message. What does a 12-year-old write on something that she knows is intended to blow someone to smithereens? Not far away as the rocket flies, in south Lebanon, the children are in school. But the blackboard is sullied with chalk drawings of bombers smashing apartments, while an Iranian-made Raad-2 155 mm shell flies toward the planes.

Children's book author Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard was born in Baltimore and spent many summer weeks of her childhood visiting a slew of relatives as she grew up in Boston and Brookline, Mass. Her Baltimore kin are the characters in her books, one of which, "Aunt Flossie's Hats and CrabCakesLater," the author read to a group of city schoolchildren at Wednesday's downtown luncheon honoring this year's "Reading by 9" teachers. Living in Pittsburgh and teaching library science at West Virginia University, Howard, 72, also has written "Chita's Christmas Tree" and "Vergie Goes to School With Boys," both based on African-American characters Howard knew as a child.

PBS begins a fascinating, ambitious project, titled simply "Childhood," tonight at 9 o'clock on Maryland Public Television, channels 22 and 67.This seven-week, seven-hour production could have been called "Wide World of Kids" as it spans the globe to bring you the constant variety of children.In tonight's first hour, called "Great Expectations," you begin to get to know several of the 12 families that the cameras of "Childhood" followed, in some cases for 18 months, recording their observances of important events in their family lives as well as the daily patterns that help to shape their children into adults.

LITTLE DO THE squirmy kindergartners realize that the silver-haired woman among them in the main Enoch Pratt Free Library knows them well. "Please," Iona Opie asks librarian and storyteller Selma Levi, "I haven't got a blue and a green." Levi tears bits of blue and green crepe paper from her own streamers, hands them to Opie and proceeds with Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are."When the children, fired up by Levi's telling of the tale, roar, gnash their teeth and wave their streamers in the wild rumpus that ensues, so does Opie.

President Clinton has revealed why he could be so surprisingly tough in the way he confronted Saddam Hussein of Iraq and disposed of the military thugs of Haiti.It all goes back to his childhood in Arkansas.When he was just a lad in school, Clinton told Time magazine, a bully wanted to pick a fight with him."There was a guy who was a year older than me but not as big as me."He started picking on me at school one day when I was in the 8th grade."I felt sort of sorry for him because I knew he had a difficult life and he was always in kind of a sour mood."

Scientists have long known that the human mind develops most rapidly during the first five years of life, a point President Barack Obama underscored in his State of the Union address when he urged states to provide universal access to high-quality pre-kindergarten programs. Investment in early childhood education is an investment in the nation's future, and Maryland is well-positioned to heed the president's call. Children who attend high-quality, public pre-K arrive at school better equipped with the cognitive and social skills needed for learning, and there is a large body of evidence suggesting that they retain that advantage throughout their school careers and beyond.

Just when we were getting our heads around the idea that many (if not most) of us will lose brain function as we age, there is news that another one of those physical gifts we take for granted is likely to leave us. Our sense of smell. It is a bit of a blow, if you will excuse the pun. And it joins a growing list: balance, flexibility, muscle mass, strength, vision, hearing and hair, to name just a handful of the things the young take for granted. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that our sense of smell degrades as we age, reducing both pleasure and safety.

Two Baltimore city lawmakers have proposed legislation that would draw funding from the state's lottery revenue to support expanding early childhood education programs. The legislation would create a program called "Race to the Tots," -- named after the federal "Race to the Top" program- - and allow local districts to compete for grants that would "stimulate innovation for and expand access to high-quality early childhood education in Maryland," according to a release sent jointly by the bill's sponsors Sen. Bill Ferguson and Del. Sandy Rosenberg.

Robert W. Gladden Jr.'s difficulties at school, including reports that he bullied peers, and his troubled home life emerged during Wednesday's daylong hearing to determine whether the teen charged in the Perry Hall High School shooting should be tried as an adult. The 15-year-old from Kingsville is accused of bringing his father's shotgun into the cafeteria and shooting fellow student Daniel Borowy on the first day of school. Gladden has been charged as an adult on 29 counts, including attempted first-degree murder.

Courtney Upshaw once lived in a house with no electricity or running water. He slept some nights on a worn couch that barely contained his growing frame. He arrived at the University of Alabama with little more than the clothes he was wearing. April 26, 2012 was supposed to be the night Upshaw would be rewarded for his perseverance. Yet as he sat in Radio City Music Hall in New York City, surrounded by friends and family, Upshaw fought back tears. He watched four of his college teammates become first-round draft picks.

Howard County is missing the mark on childhood obesity. If Howard County really wants to reduce childhood obesity, they need to work with our school system to protect the health of our students. They will need to protect time designated for recess and increase the time allotted for physical education in school across all grades. The current requirements are creating the obesity epidemic and failing our students. They need to allow opportunities for students with poor grades to participate in after-school physical activities. Howard County should look to New York state's requirements for physical education guidelines, which require 120 minutes per week.

When Bill Paxton was a boy in Fort Worth, Texas, his father, John, would scan the newspaper for lurid killings. He told his son that the culprits sounded like nice people whom the Paxtons should invite for dinner. Paxton said his dad's macabre sense of humor eventually rubbed off. "I've always been fascinated by crime stories and the idea of murder out yonder, where people are isolated and things go on for a long time undetected," the actor explained in a recent interview. When Paxton became frustrated by the roles he was offered a few years ago, he let his childhood interest guide him. Producer David Kirshner showed him Brent Hanley's script for Frailty, about a man who believes an angel has told him to slay demons disguised as human beings.

"YOU CAN MAKE your child a millionaire," says Family Circle magazine, Feb. 15. "Let's say you give your 12-year-old weekly chores around the house: cleaning his or her room, taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, washing the car. In exchange, you pay your child $20 a week, or $1,040 a year. But instead of giving the money outright, put it in a Childhood IRA for your son or daughter." In a Childhood IRA that's invested in good growth mutual funds, and if the funds grow at an average rate of 10 percent annually, the child's IRA will be worth $16,575 in 10 years, the article says.

Over the past decade many studies have reached the conclusion that investing in high-quality early childhood education is a successful hedge against poverty. Students who attend Head Start, America's comprehensive early childhood education and development program for poor children, are far better prepared to learn when they enter kindergarten. They are referred for special education services less frequently and they are also more likely to graduate high school. As adults they are less likely to be incarcerated and more likely to be successful, contributing members of society than those who do not attend such programs.