Daniel Berrigan

Adrianna Amari is a pianist, photographer, psychologist, peacenik and poet. Now, the faculty member with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has assembled a book of poetry by Daniel Berrigan, the longtime antiwar activist who was convicted of burning draft records in the celebrated "Catonsville Nine" case. She placed the highly evocative poems side-by-side with dozens of haunting photographs of cemeteries that she had taken during the decade before she lost her vision as a result of an aneurysm.

Forty years ago next month, Tom Lewis and eight other Vietnam War protesters strode into the offices of U.S. Selective Service Board 33 in Catonsville and left a mark on history. The "Catonsville Nine" emptied file cabinets, hauled 600 draft records into the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm. Then they prayed and waited to be arrested. That act of civil disobedience on May 17, 1968, inspired headlines - and more than 200 protests at draft board offices across the country.

It was 30 years ago yesterday that a group of nine Catholic activists broke into the offices of the Selective Service on Frederick Road in Catonsville, seized draft records and burned them in the parking lot using homemade napalm.The action on May 17, 1968, by the Catonsville Nine, who were arrested and tried in federal court in Baltimore, became a nationwide cause celebre that led to as many as 100 similar actions in protest of the Vietnam War.The leaders were siblings who were Roman Catholic priests, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who became known colloquially as the Berrigan brothers.

Adrianna Amari is a pianist, photographer, psychologist, peacenik and poet. Now, the faculty member with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has assembled a book of poetry by Daniel Berrigan, the longtime antiwar activist who was convicted of burning draft records in the celebrated "Catonsville Nine" case. She placed the highly evocative poems side-by-side with dozens of haunting photographs of cemeteries that she had taken during the decade before she lost her vision as a result of an aneurysm.

NEW YORK CITY -- Daniel Berrigan listens to the joyous throng sing Happy Birthday and then flashes the wry, wide smile that has illuminated nearly four decades of protest in America.Hard-earned lines crease his famous smile. But it is as bright and radiant as on that day in 1970 when he was led away to jail as one of the Catonsville Nine anti-war "conspirators."The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, poet-priest of the peace movement, turns 75 on Thursday. His hair is silver-gray and silken under his trademark black cap, his eyes deep-set and shadowed, but still warm and penetrating.

Forty years ago next month, Tom Lewis and eight other Vietnam War protesters strode into the offices of U.S. Selective Service Board 33 in Catonsville and left a mark on history. The "Catonsville Nine" emptied file cabinets, hauled 600 draft records into the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm. Then they prayed and waited to be arrested. That act of civil disobedience on May 17, 1968, inspired headlines - and more than 200 protests at draft board offices across the country.

Roszel Thomsen, who died here Wednesday at the age of 91, served his nation as a federal district judge from his appointment 1954 almost until his final illness. He was one of the most respected lawyers in the state when he became a judge, and his tenure on the bench was regarded as outstanding by his peers and by other court watchers.Before he became a judge, he also was known for his public service. He was a member of the city's school board for 10 years, from 1944 to 1954. As president of the board in 1952, he led the city in ending its racial segregation policy at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

With the turmoil in Wichita, we Catholics have become unfashionable once again.It's high time, too.We have a long countercultural history in America. Now the most numerous religious community in the country, we started out here as an embattled minority, learning how to negotiate a culture formed and dominated by Protestant social ethics. One conspicuous example was our willingness to pay for, but not to patronize, public schools, preferring instead to build our own parochial school system, to educate our young in our own way at our own expense.

With his appearance on the cover of Time magazine this week, 19-year-old uber-swimmer Michael Phelps joins a gallery of heroes, artists and at least one rogue with Maryland connections who have graced the front of the weekly publication since its 1923 debut. In its Aug. 9 Olympics preview issue, Phelps' life story, from water baby to amphibious wonder, is told in the shadow of swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in 1972. Whether or not Phelps can snag eight gold medals is a "long shot," the Time article says, "but no one is better prepared to do it."

Mary Moylan always was the most elusive of the Catonsville Nine, that tiny band of anti-war resisters who ignited one of the most dramatic protests of the '60s with a small bonfire of draft records.Her name echoes out of the Vietnam era like a half-remembered lyric by Phils Ochs or Country Joe and the Fish, emerging from that time when anti-war protest was expressed in a kind of numerology: the Milwaukee Fourteen, the Baltimore Four, the Chicago Eight, the Harrisburg Seven, the Catonsville Nine.

With his appearance on the cover of Time magazine this week, 19-year-old uber-swimmer Michael Phelps joins a gallery of heroes, artists and at least one rogue with Maryland connections who have graced the front of the weekly publication since its 1923 debut. In its Aug. 9 Olympics preview issue, Phelps' life story, from water baby to amphibious wonder, is told in the shadow of swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in 1972. Whether or not Phelps can snag eight gold medals is a "long shot," the Time article says, "but no one is better prepared to do it."

It was 30 years ago yesterday that a group of nine Catholic activists broke into the offices of the Selective Service on Frederick Road in Catonsville, seized draft records and burned them in the parking lot using homemade napalm.The action on May 17, 1968, by the Catonsville Nine, who were arrested and tried in federal court in Baltimore, became a nationwide cause celebre that led to as many as 100 similar actions in protest of the Vietnam War.The leaders were siblings who were Roman Catholic priests, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who became known colloquially as the Berrigan brothers.

NEW YORK CITY -- Daniel Berrigan listens to the joyous throng sing Happy Birthday and then flashes the wry, wide smile that has illuminated nearly four decades of protest in America.Hard-earned lines crease his famous smile. But it is as bright and radiant as on that day in 1970 when he was led away to jail as one of the Catonsville Nine anti-war "conspirators."The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, poet-priest of the peace movement, turns 75 on Thursday. His hair is silver-gray and silken under his trademark black cap, his eyes deep-set and shadowed, but still warm and penetrating.

Roszel Thomsen, who died here Wednesday at the age of 91, served his nation as a federal district judge from his appointment 1954 almost until his final illness. He was one of the most respected lawyers in the state when he became a judge, and his tenure on the bench was regarded as outstanding by his peers and by other court watchers.Before he became a judge, he also was known for his public service. He was a member of the city's school board for 10 years, from 1944 to 1954. As president of the board in 1952, he led the city in ending its racial segregation policy at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

With the turmoil in Wichita, we Catholics have become unfashionable once again.It's high time, too.We have a long countercultural history in America. Now the most numerous religious community in the country, we started out here as an embattled minority, learning how to negotiate a culture formed and dominated by Protestant social ethics. One conspicuous example was our willingness to pay for, but not to patronize, public schools, preferring instead to build our own parochial school system, to educate our young in our own way at our own expense.

There is something solemn, hushed and reverent about the eternally still figures that populate Adrianna Amari's luminous color photographs of Baltimore graveside statues, on view at the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown. The silent stone angels and saints, with their century-old patinas of moss and grime, seem to speak through eloquent gestures of a higher realm, where there is no more death, no more sorrow, only the clear light of truth that shines out from these extraordinary pictures.

The Catonsville Nine have become legendary in the three decades since the group's May 1968 "action" against the war in Vietnam, perhaps the most famous protest during an epoch of dissent and discord in the United States. Filmmaker Lynne Sachs takes a fresh look at the seven men and two women who made up the Catonsville Nine, their friends and their detractors in her impressionistic documentary, "Investigation of a Flame," which opens the Baltimore Film Festival tonight. Sachs, who has been making films since 1989, moved to Catonsville about three years ago when her husband, Mark, also a filmmaker, took a teaching post at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.