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Ovarian cancer is called one of the silent killers. The disease typically progresses without symptoms, and treatment often comes too late. An estimated 21,000 women will be diagnosed with it this year alone. About 13,000 will die.Still, those numbers are inadequate to measure the tragedy involved when the disease hits close to home, as it did recently in Howard County.The recent death of Diane Zdenek is a sad testament to the toll cancer of the ovaries can take. Because Mrs. Zdenek was a teacher.

For some of us, the pain of the dual tragedies of Yeardley Love and George Huguely is intensified by the fact that both children are so familiar to us. Raise your hand if you have spent any part of your child's life caught in the lacrosse whirlwind that sweeps through Maryland each spring. And summer. And fall ball. And the winter indoor league. It is something that ordinary civilians might not comprehend (though ballet parents or horse show parents might sympathize). Lacrosse can be a toxic mix of parental ambition and peer pressure.

One of the most intimidating high school softball pitchers in Anne Arundel County history, Crystal Ray, has chosen to attend the University of Maryland-Baltimore County on a full scholarship."

Jimmy Patsos was in his first season at Loyola when Pat Kennedy, then entering his second year at Towson and coming off a 5-24 season, proclaimed the Tigers to be Baltimore's college basketball team. Other local coaches might have chuckled at Kennedy's remark, but Patsos, raised near the chips on the shoulders of Gary Williams, took it as a personal challenge. "The last I looked," Patsos said at the time, " we're in Baltimore. " But deep down, Patsos knew that Loyola could have been on Mars when it came to Baltimore players.

He lived in a small Indiana town barely a half-hour's drive from Notre Dame, but Rick Mirer grew up dreaming of playing college football across the border, where he could wear the blue and gold of the Michigan Wolverines."

RICHMOND, Va. - It took just a day for this city to become fully initiated in the rituals of the sniper story. The Virginia capital, after thinking itself a world away from the shootings that have terrorized the Washington area, now shows the same signs of fear that have dominated the nation's capital for weeks. After police seized two men just outside Richmond, and as the latest victim of the sniper lay in hospital bed after a weekend attack just north of the city, the worries settled in here.

Seven-year-old Damesha Davis handed off her freshly finished math homework to Dare Johnson for his approval and pulled out the next set of problems from her aqua school folder.Johnson, a Morgan State University sophomore, looked over the math problems while Damesha scribbled sentences on a piece of paper.For another hour, Damesha and Johnson, 21, a computer science major, worked through the homework in a new after-school program at the Pleasant View Gardens Boys and Girls Club. The tutoring program, run by the Baltimore Urban Systemic Initiative (BUSI)

PHILADELPHIA - Sooner or later - preferably later - Robert Forrest and his wife, Patricia DePol, will move from their three-bedroom split-level to the mausoleum in the backyard. The size of a toolshed and built of pink Vermont granite, with horizontal accommodations for four, the tomb is conveniently located just a few hundred feet from the cedar deck off the living room of their Blairstown, N.J., home. "We see bear cubs play. A peacock visits sometimes," said Forrest, 61, a retired restaurateur.

The Champ is facing his toughest challenge.If New York Democrats reject Clinton, they ought to go back to New Hampshire and start over.Olympia & York, the Canadian property mega-developer, is losing money and may be forced to sell Nova Scotia.When they start cutting the National Guard, they are getting close to home.

Moderate Republicans are joining ranks with conservative Democrats and possibly other oxymorons like jumbo shrimp and public interest lawyers.The House Judiciary Committee has decided not to pursue the fund-raising end of President Clinton's activities. Money -- unlike sex -- hits a little close to home.Pub Date: 12/10/98@

High school graduates still "go away to college," but, more and more, "away" means not that far. For the grinning seniors proudly wearing their caps and gowns this graduation season, along with their beaming parents, these difficult economic times require the most bang from the college tuition buck. For many, that will mean a community college instead of a four-year college or an in-state institution rather than one out of state. The community college option has recently exploded in popularity.

We all had hope of the return of Phylicia Barnes ("Teen's family is left with a heartbreaking puzzle," April 25). No parent or family wants to hear about the disappearance of a family member let alone discover he or she has been killed. As a mother, I can feel the pain of Phylicia's mom and my heart goes out to her. After reading articles of her disappearance, I know she was well-loved by all who knew her. As time goes by perhaps the pain of losing her will heal, but for those who were closest to her, her memories will live on. May she rest in peace.

S o overwhelmed was Nadege Marc after viewing news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti that she couldn't even begin to face the prospect of seeing firsthand what she calls "the circle of death." A shadow fell over Marc's face as she described watching footage of the blanket-covered heaps of corpses on sidewalks and the mass graves of unidentified bodies. Yet the Veterans Elementary School teacher, who organized a fundraiser among students and staff, said she expects to summon the courage to head to the Caribbean country in the not-too-distant future.

It's a breezy morning in eastern Annapolis. Sea gulls squawk overhead. Boats bob beside a dock. And on the deck of a tied-up charter vessel, two folk musicians in ball caps strum a shuffle on a banjo and ukelele, looking every inch the easy-living Jimmy Buffetts of the Chesapeake. It's the final day of shooting for "Seize the Bay," the latest creation from Daphne Glover and Bob Ferrier, filmmakers from Severna Park, and as the two roll videotape, neither one can suppress a smile. "Fantastic," says Ferrier, the director, clapping his hands as the music ends.

With heated debates about reforming health care swirling across the country, professors from the University of Maryland's graduate schools told more than 200 students about how proposed changes might affect their future careers in medicine, dentistry, nursing, law, pharmacy and social work at a panel discussion Thursday night in downtown Baltimore. All the professors agreed that the U.S. health care system needs to be reformed. "We do need to control spiraling costs, but we don't want to do that at the cost of stifling innovation," said Dr. Mandeep R. Mehra, professor and head of cardiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Just off Interstate 83, the light turns red, and a couple of kids pounce, running a squeegee over nearby windshields and holding an open palm to windows. Stopped at the light, Carmelo Anthony is riding shotgun in a Rolls-Royce Phantom. It's silver, sleek and shaped like a flat-nose bullet. Anthony, in contrast, is long and trim, his cheeks round, a diamond cross hanging around his neck and Chicago Blackhawks cap covering his braids. "That was me," Anthony says of the squeegee kids. "It brings back a lot of memories."

Since Sept. 11 I have driven to the beach, flown to New York, served on jury duty downtown. I am trying to live my normal life, but with a backdrop of anxiety, there's something comforting about exploring new places close to home, sometimes very close to home. I live and work in the Roland Park house where I was raised. I know this community intimately -- the people, the houses, the schools. The neighborhood itself feels as familiar as home, yet because of its size and landscape, a walk through it still offers me new perspectives and pleasant surprises.

NEW YORK -- In the face of persistent recession, United Airlines took a big step back from an ambitious expansion strategy yesterday, announcing that it was cutting its capital spending by $6.7 billion over the next three years and postponing the delivery of new aircraft.The airline, one of the nation's strongest, had sought to keep its expansion drive going in spite of hard times, but continuing poor traffic and heavy fare discounting forced it to pull back.Both business and leisure travel have been low, showing only a small recovery from the disastrous levels of last year, when fear of terrorists during the Persian Gulf war caused many companies to eliminate international travel altogether and other travelers to stay close to home.

Anyone coordinated enough to lick his or her own elbow possesses a rare gift, like being able to hum and whistle at the same time. Kids shamelessly try to do it - as soon as you tell them most people can't. Yet the only time adults usually try is on or around the Fourth of July, when the watermelon is so ripe that the juice pools in the crevice of your thumbs, slides coolly down your forearms and beads on your elbows. It awakens something in us, that tickle of fruit sap. Consider the taste of summer's yellow cling peaches: No matter how far you lean over the sink to catch the nectar, you still end up with it slavering into your collar and down to your elbow - just out of range of your tongue.

Not very long ago, it seemed that Bobby Prigel's northern Baltimore County dairy farm was about to go out of business. Bellevale Farm, which has been run by four generations of Prigels, couldn't compete with large-scale operations that keep costs low by milking thousands of cows each day. But then Prigel tried a different approach - he returned to farming methods more common in his great-grandfather's day than in his father's. He allowed his cows to graze freely in pastures and adopted organic practices.