Crossroads

"Linchpin" and "crossroads" are two labels often applied to Turkey since World War II. The crossroads between Europe and the Middle East, the intersection of western and Islamic civilizations. The linchpin of the chain of alliances surrounding the Soviet Union that was supposed to contain aggressive communism.The strains on Turkey's commitment to joining Europe as a full-fledged partner and to maintaining its western-style democracy are great enough for President Clinton to confer today with Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, passing through on a private visit.

The Baltimore Washington Corridor Chamber is offering its annual Regional Business Showcase and Tasting on Wednesday, April 10 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Suddath Relocation Systems, 1710 Crossroads Drive, Odenton. Vendor Happy Hour is from 4 to 5 p.m. The networking event, which reaches 500 local business professionals, has more than 65 exhibitors, networking, food and beverage samplings and special guests. Cost is $25 each or $20 each for five or more people. Tickets include two drink coupons.

President Clinton's crusade to overhaul the nation's $900-billion-a-year health care system reaches another crossroads tomorrow when he sends one of the most sweeping legislative proposals in the nation's history to Capitol Hill. Once it arrives, perhaps 3,000 pages thick, it will become the obsession of the 103rd Congress until it finally adjourns to face the voters in November 1994.Washington lawmakers are well aware the president has already accomplished one of his major aims: Health care reform is front and center on the nation's political agenda.

When Virginia opened the season with four consecutive wins - including a 13-12 overtime decision over Drexel - the program appeared to have recovered from the graduation losses of attackmen Steele Stanwick and Chris Bocklet and midfielder Colin Briggs, defenseman Matt Lovejoy and goalkeeper Rob Fortunato. Since then, however, the No. 13 Cavaliers have dropped four of their past five games and their last three, including a 15-8 setback at the hands of No. 12 Johns Hopkins in the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore Saturday.

Wisdom says that most of us will come upon at least one crossroads in life. For Dorothy Moore -- Dottie to her friends -- the crossroads came in threes.The first was nearly 20 years ago, when her 19-year-old son was beaten to death outside the Wilde Lake Interfaith Center. Consumed by grief, she had nothing left but rage for the man who killed her son. She sat in the courtroom during his trial and found herself at a second crossroads, when she realized that her son's assailant also had a mother and father, grieving over what had happened.

The Crossroads Imaging Center, the first facility in Howard County to offer magnetic resonance imaging, is about to get a dose of competition just two months after opening its doors in Ellicott City.Last week, Howard County General Hospital began scheduling patients for its $1.7 million MRI unit, which is housed in a new building constructed on hospital grounds in Columbia. A grand opening was held Thursday.The new unit is a joint venture between the hospital, the Columbia Medical Plan and two groups of physicians and radiologists known asHealth Care Professionals of Howard County and Diagnostic Radiology Associates.

Two county men were arrested on handgun charges after two shots were fired in the Crossroads Square Shopping Center parking lot.About 11:45 p.m. Friday, two men exchanged words with several people in a car and one of the men told the people in the car that they should leave, police said.As they left the shopping center, the people in the car heard two shots, they told police. While making a police report across the street at140 Village Shopping Center, they saw two men drive by and pointed them out to police.

At Pasadena Crossroads, a supermarket is expanding into empty space and a new, undisclosed tenant is expected to fill another vacant slot.Across the street, a gas station closed for 15 months is scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt. And a tenant is on the way for a building vacated by Farm Fresh supermarket at the shopping center behind the gas station.Within six months, most of the vacant storefronts clustered at the busy intersection of Ritchie Highway and Jumpers Hole Road should be filled, according to leasing agents and owners.

COLLEGE PARK-- -- If you haven't seen it, here's what the crossroads looks like: There's wall-to-wall carpeting and a giant school logo covering much of the floor. There's a flat-screen TV hanging on one wall and wooden lockers lining the other three. And there are photos of each member of the Maryland men's basketball team and 24-inch stools in front of each locker. This is where each player sat during halftime last night and considered the only two directions possible. When the pivotal game against Florida State had reached its midpoint, the Terps entered the locker room as one team and a few minutes later exited as a different one. There will be bigger games and maybe the meaning of last night's 73-55 win over the Seminoles will fade with time.

NEW YORK -- America at a Crossroads did not get off to an auspicious start. From the beginning, the ambitious $20 million effort to examine the complexities of the post-Sept. 11 world through a series of documentaries - an initiative of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit organization that distributes federal funds to public television and radio - was greeted with skepticism. Independent producers and local station programmers, alarmed that CPB officials at the time were agitating for more conservatives on the air, feared the venture was driven by a political agenda.

A pioneering regional compact to fight climate change stands at a crossroads, as officials from Maryland and eight other Northeast states meet Tuesday in New York to weigh new limits on their power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. With emissions significantly reduced since the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative began in 2008 - though mainly from other factors - the states are weighing how much lower to try to push carbon-dioxide releases through the end of the decade without risking stifling their economic recovery.

The Ravens are at the crossroads. When they play the Browns on Sunday in Cleveland, they will be hitting the midway point of the season and preparing for the second half stretch run. So, there isn't a lot of time left to search for offensive or defensive identities, only to find strengths and how to build on them, and hide weaknesses. "This is a stretch during the year that is pivotal for every team because you're going into November and November is really when you're able to position yourself for that stretch run, which is December and January football," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said.

A Patriots fan's tweet Sunday night - intended for Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith - has ignited a firestorm on the web, raising new questions about the way online discourse intersects with real life. "Hey, Smith, how about you call your bro and tell him all about your wi--- ohhhh. Wait. #TooSoon?" wrote Baltimore resident Katie Moody, posting as @katiebrady12, as Smith caught two touchdowns in the Ravens' 31-30 win over the Patriots. The game and the Tweet came less than 24 hours after Smith's younger brother Tevin Jones was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Electronic Arts is confident that “Star Wars: The Old Republic” is a massively multiplayer online game that people will be playing in a decade. As they told GamesIndustry International, EA is also considering variations on a free-to-play model, surely in part to the 400,000 player dropoff in subscribers the game has seen. MMOs are in a tricky spot. Their development certainly isn't stagnant, but what “EverQuest,” “World of Warcraft” and “The Old Republic” have done may just be the tip of the iceberg.

The quiet, staggering problem at the center of the General Assembly's gasoline tax debate was this: Maryland does not have the money to maintain our transportation system ("Unfinished business," May 16). In the fervor, it was easy to miss the reason for the debate. The crisis began when we consumers, in response to the recession, turned to cars with better gas mileage, to carpooling, to transit - any means to decrease our own pain at the pump. The Transportation Trust Fund, already weakened from regular budget raiding, was further diminished as the main funding stream, the per-gallon tax, dwindled.

There's a real and serious problem in Bel Air at the intersection of Boulton Street and Gateway Drive. A traffic light at the intersection isn't going to fix it, at least not a traffic light alone. Consider the maze of alleys and side streets between Bond and South Main streets across town and across the street from Bel Air High School. The only thing that prevents the alleys from becoming a congested tangle is the judicious placement of one-way signs to ensure southbound traffic continues south on Bond Street until it joins South Main Street in front of Bel Air United Methodist Church.

For the better part of two centuries, the stately circa-1804 Dielman Inn has been a dominant features of New Windsor's quiet Main Street and a centerpiece of the town's architectural and cultural heritage. But for nearly a decade, this cornerstone of New Windsor's historic district has stood vacant and dilapidated, ravaged by roof leaks, termites, occasional vandalism and general neglect. Those contrasting factors — the building's overriding historic importance and its precarious condition — have earned the Dielman Inn inclusion on Preservation Maryland's 2010 Endangered Maryland list.

How many cars do you reckon pass each day through the intersection of Mountain Road and Belair Road in Fallston? Tony Ashe says about 85,000 cars, give or take a Buick, are swinging near the Mallet Restaurant and Crabhouse , his new multilevel, multipurpose establishment on this well-traveled stretch of Harford County. This crossroads has been home to a long succession of restaurants and roadhouses, most notably Pecora's , a nightclub that hosted acts like the Four Tops, Vic Damone and Frank Sinatra Jr. Its prime location is just one reason why Ashe, the head of an ownership consortium, is bullish on the Mallet's prospects.