Childhood

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. gave nearly $1.38 million in grants yesterday to seven organizations as part of its support of early-childhood education.The programs that were selected deal with such issues as illiteracy, child abuse, parental skills and substance abuse.BGE Early Childhood Development Initiative Grants went to: The Dayspring Children's Place Respite Care, sponsored by Dayspring Programs Inc., $226,800.The "My Daddy Loves Me" program, sponsored by the Family Tree, $120,000.

Theodora K. Rytina, who taught education and early childhood development at what is now Towson University for more than two decades, died of emphysema Friday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 76. Dr. Rytina, who was a member of the Delaware tribe of American Indians, was born Theodora Randall in Borger, Okla. She earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1950 from the University of Oklahoma, and her master's and doctorate degrees in early childhood development from Columbia University.

WASHINGTON -- Immunization levels increased significantly in the past three years, to 75 percent of young children from 55 percent, the Clinton administration said yesterday.Donna E. Shalala, secretary of health and human services, said the data showed "real progress -- progress we should all be proud of."But she added that the nation had not achieved the goal set by the Public Health Service: to have 90 percent of 2-year-olds immunized with the full series of recommended vaccines by the year 2000.

Chrisette Michele, newly signed to Def Jam, will perform at Rams Head Tavern on Tuesday. On tour for her debut album, I AM, Michele's style is a melodic blend of soul, jazz and gospel. A native of Long Island, N.Y., she has performed and composed since her childhood. Michele performs at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at Rams Head Tavern, 33 West St., Annapolis. Tickets are $26.50. Call 410-268-4545 or go to ramsheadtavern.com.

County teachers have begun holding seminars for day care providers so they can learn what children need to know to be ready for kindergarten as part of the school system's program to enhance early-childhood development programs.The seminars are among a number of changes in early-childhood development that will be the focus of discussion at tonight's school board meeting at Southern High School.Dorothy Chaney and Barbara Griffith, leaders of Superintendent Carol S. Parham's Task Force on Early Childhood Development, are to tell board members what has been done since the task force presented its report last year.

Ellicott City resident Charlotte T. Holland, 59, wrote these unpublished stories about life on her family's Lisbon farm for her nieces and nephews. She lived there from 1947 to 1953, when most of the property was sold. This is one of several excerpts from her manuscript. Christmas, 1980 Dear Kids, You've heard us talk about the farm. It's a place you didn't experience, and many of you have never seen it, so you don't know it. I'd like you to know it, because it was so special to my brothers and me. It was our childhood, and Grandpop's childhood, and the childhood of many generations before him. Family roots can be deep.

WINTERTHUR, Del. -- One of the most startling objects in "KiDS!: 200 Years of Childhood," at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, is a "walking stool." It is a rigid, late-18th century contraption on wheels, designed to help babies learn to walk.Also known as a "go-cart," the stool, which has no seat, was thought to strengthen tiny limbs and prevented crawling, an enterprise some deemed unseemingly "animalistic."This wooden relic would appall most parents today. Beyond illustrating antique child-rearing theories, though, it begs a provocative question: What hasn't changed over centuries of child-rearing?

"The First Man," by Albert Camus, translated from the French by David Hapgood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 336 pages. $23.Albert Camus, the French writer and Nobel Prize winner, died in 1960 when he crashed his car. In the wrecked car was the incomplete first part of what, clearly, was a much larger project, an autobiographical novel. His son and daughter have now edited and published that manuscript.To read it is to visit a tomb and find that a spring is bubbling from it. One of the themes is a search for the father who was killed in World War I a few months after Camus was born; another is a rending, brilliant evocation of the long-submerged claims that Algeria's harsh landscape and history exert on him. A third is a joyfully vivid re-creation of a childhood in the teeming port of Algiers in the 1930s, a childhood constrained by poverty but wonderfully free in exploration and sensuous discovery.

Megan Noelle Markline and M. Thomas Newman II were united in marriage May 28 at Emory United Methodist Church in Street. Rev. John Galyen, uncle of the groom, officiated. The bride is the daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Markline, of Aberdeen. The groom is the son of Jeff and Susan Newman, ofHuntsville, Ala. The maid of honor was childhood friend Ashley Edwards. The bridesmaids, also childhood friends, were Juli Humphreys, Nicole Petersen, Kristie Bon and Kristen Frick.

MAURICE SENDAK'S "Where the Wild Things Are" is now 26 years old. Which means Max, the book's hero, is about 30.And what's Max up to these days?"He's still in therapy, and he still lives with his mother," Sendak said.Like Max in his wolf suit, Sendak is still making "mischief of one kind and another," challenging assumptions about how children see the world. His fantasies sometimes are lost on adults, but that's OK. Sendak has created some of the best children's books of our time, and he shared a bit of his mischief last night, speaking to an audience of about 600 at Towson State's University Union.