Despair

Reporter Mary Carole McCauley quotes writer Adam Lankford as saying terrorist attacks are motivated not by politics or religion but by despair ("Inside the mind of a suicide bomber," Feb. 10). I am sick and tired of hearing this misleading despair excuse for murderous suicide bombers. The 9/11 suicide bombers responsible for the incineration of the World Trade Center and the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans were not poor, uneducated and despairing individuals. They were from affluent neighborhoods and well-to-do families.

It is hard not to give in to despair. In the hours since bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, forever marking in blood a day that celebrates spring, our nation's founding and the joy of the human body, there has been a lot of talk about resilience. About the resilience of the American people, of Boston people, of running people. "Boston is a tough and resilient town," President Barack Obama told the country. "So are its people. " The Boston Globe's columnists are defiant, too. "Tomorrow, this city is going to get up and live its life," wrote Farah Stockman.

We hate talking about it. We fear saying something awkward or intrusive. We think we'll only make it worse by acknowledging it, so we fall silent. "I think, in large part," Kathleen Kennedy Townsend says, "we don't have a culture that knows how to deal with death." Townsend, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, is, of course, sadly expert on the subject of death. When she was 12, her uncle was killed; when she was 16, her father. That these intimates were President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is something that is a well-known part of her biography, if not necessarily something that she speaks extensively about in public.

Reporter Mary Carole McCauley quotes writer Adam Lankford as saying terrorist attacks are motivated not by politics or religion but by despair ("Inside the mind of a suicide bomber," Feb. 10). I am sick and tired of hearing this misleading despair excuse for murderous suicide bombers. The 9/11 suicide bombers responsible for the incineration of the World Trade Center and the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans were not poor, uneducated and despairing individuals. They were from affluent neighborhoods and well-to-do families.

THERE IS no escaping that much of today's political militancy is carried out by Islamist groups in the name of Islam and that these groups are on the ascendance. Why? The answer is hardly mysterious: In the absence of democracy and legitimate means for organizing political opposition, people turn to social organization. The mosque is one of the few vehicles for mass political mobilization. And there are profound reasons, both on foreign and domestic policy, for people to want to oppose the existing order.

The popularity of Silvio Berlusconi, designated to become Italy's prime minister, has been compared with the populist appeal of Ross Perot in the United States and Bernard Tapie in France.It is more serious than that. Qualities of desperation and unreasonable hope were evident in the election that gave Mr. Berlusconi his present position, suggesting that much remains to come in Italy. A Berlusconi-led government is more likely than not end badly. Business success rarely can be duplicated in government.

Words come easily for Dick Cavett, so he had no trouble yesterday capturing the periods of overpowering despair that have kept this funnyman in his bathrobe for weeks while contemplating the relief that might come from suicide.Mr. Cavett, 56, strode into a room full of reporters at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his shirt open at the collar, tie slung over his arm, and quipped, "It's no fun being a specimen."Then, asked to describe clinical depression for those who might not understand, he had this to say: "Everything turns sort of colorless.

With just a coin, people can now turn despair in Baltimore into hope. Of course the hope lasts only a few seconds, but what did you want for a dime? New parking meters, which debut downtown today, are part - albeit a small one - of the city's freshly launched effort to erase homelessness in 10 years. These old-fashioned meters, the type Baltimore began retiring last year, have re-emerged with bright paint and a new mission. They have nothing to do with parking fines and everything to do with getting people off the street.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Jurag Petrlic sounds almost wistful as he recalls his first wartime visit to the battered streets of downtown Sarajevo.He rode there in an armored military vehicle -- "like a voyage inside a coffin," he says with a frown. But when he finally stepped onto the bombed cityscape, he was in wonderland."I thought, I am in a normal city again," he says. "The people who live there, they can walk around. They go to markets, to cafes. I envy them."His description sounds insane, but it is a coldly sober lesson in the relativity of Bosnian horrors.

Baltimore County police released into the custody of her daughter an 83-year-old Rosedale woman who reportedly struck her ailing and despondent husband with a hammer yesterday in an apparent attempt at a mercy killing.Annie Bond returned to her home in the 5700 block of Cynthia Terrace in the company of her daughter while her husband, Harry P. Bond, 83, remained in stable condition at FranklinSquare Hospital Center. Hospital officials said his injuries were not serious.Mrs. Bond will not face prosecution.

I don't often suffer from insomnia, but sleep came slowly after the outcome of the presidential election was announced ("Re-elected," Nov. 7). My good and valued friend of almost a half-century, Nat Asch, often says that "we're going to die at the right time. " Not that he will say it this morning. Though I have not spoken with him yet today, I'm virtually certain he is delighted with the re-elected of President Barack Obama. (He and I approach most, though not all issues, from opposite ends of the political spectrum)

The name "Constellation Energy" will still be around. The energy trading firm will still be doing much the same thing it ever has in a large, new building on Baltimore's waterfront. It will have somewhat fewer employees, but it will, at least for the next several years, maintain its status as one of the region's largest corporate philanthropists. And it's not as if Constellation was universally beloved around town anyway; despite its many contributions to the local economy and charitable scene, the company was often derided, as was its CEO, Mayo A. Shattuck III. So why should we mourn the sale of Baltimore's last Fortune 500 company to Chicago-based Exelon?

LaQuan Williams was deactivated for the first time prior to the Ravens' 24-10 victory over the Cleveland Browns last Sunday, but the rookie wide receiver took the move in stride. Asked if he was surprised to be a healthy scratch, the undrafted free agent from the University of Maryland said, “Kind of, but not really. We needed an extra linebacker, and we were deep at receiver. So that's how it worked out.” Williams has caught four passes for 46 yards thus far and has been targeted 12 times.

The neighborhood newcomer and a neighborhood old-timer - Peggy Smallwood and Ernest Smith, respectively - stood at Lakewood Avenue and McElderry Street, in front of a boarded-up rowhouse, next to a trash bag spilling rotted food onto the sidewalk, steps from where pieces of yellow police tape still clung to a sign post. This was within sight of the spot where two Baltimore police officers were shot and wounded Sunday while making a traffic stop, and where the gunman died in the return fire.

To his neighbors in Columbia, Soo Wan Hong was the man who mowed their lawns, shoveled their driveways, gave their children giant candy bars on Halloween and helped neighborhood kids build forts with the bamboo he grew in his backyard. To others in the Owen Brown community, he was the fellow who sat serenely on a bench near Lake Elkhorn with his beloved Shih Tzus, smiling at passersby, or walked briskly with his dogs around the lake, waving to those he encountered. With his limited English, the Korean immigrant spoke little of his troubles.

President Barack Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren, had this to say at the end of the rough-and-tumble climate talks in Copenhagen this month: "I think we're winning more than we're losing." Really? How? Diplomats had just failed to produce a binding treaty to control global warming in any meaningful way. But maybe Mr. Holdren's right. I attended the climate conference myself, representing Marylanders concerned about sea-level rise and the need for clean energy. And I think - just maybe - we did win more than we lost in Copenhagen.

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan - Sanjab Valiakhunov's family can't find him, no matter how hard they search. "In the last three days, I was everywhere. I was at the morgue, at the hospital. He's not there," his sister, Rakhat Valiakhunov, said yesterday, in despair after clashes in Andijan last week left a death toll of at least 169 by official count. "They didn't let me into the morgue, though," she said. "They just said, `Your brother is not here,' as if they know my brother. Or maybe they just don't have any bodies in the morgue and don't want to admit it. I know that many families have been going around town looking for their loved ones and can't find them."

Pimlico Race Course opens a 20-day fall meet today amid an odd mixture of optimism from track management and despair among some horsemen.Although the excitement of the Preakness is missing during this abbreviated autumn venue, fans will be able to bet on the Maryland Million (Sept. 26) and a new National Pic-6 (Sept. 12, Sept. 26 and Oct. 4).Kent Desormeaux, Maryland's leading jockey for three years, will return from California for a nine-day riding stint starting Sept. 24.Track operator Joe De Francis is enthusiastic that Pimlico will be simulcasting it's entire card and commingling its betting pool with nine tracks nationwide.

Edward William Eldridge Jr. took his own life at the age of 62. He lived alone in a small semidetached, red-brick house on Daywalt Avenue in Northeast Baltimore. He had no wife, no known children, no brothers, no sisters, and his parents died years ago. He listed his only aunt as a beneficiary, but she, too, had passed away. He had no friends, at least none close enough or willing enough to stay with him at the hospital for a few hours so he could undergo the arthroscopic knee surgery he was scheduled to have on the day he died.