Eastern Seaboard

WASHINGTON -- Rallying outside the Capitol, hundreds of Central Americans demanded yesterday that the United States accept refugees from their war-torn homelands the same way it welcomes those who fled from Cuba and Nicaragua.The demonstration renewed a bitter debate about whether those who flee leftist regimes should get preferential treatment over those who escape other forms of oppression or upheaval.Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans streamed in from various parts of the Eastern Seaboard to rally behind legislation that would make tens of thousands of Central Americans permanent legal residents of the United States.

A "construction celebration" today for the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Fells Point - the first project on the harbor dedicated to recognizing the contributions of African-Americans in Baltimore's maritime history - will include a marching band, the thundering cannon of a tall ship, and a keynote address by Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The event, sponsored by the Living Classrooms Foundation, will begin at 9:15 a.m. when the City College marching band heads down Thames Street to the construction site at Chase's Wharf.

It seems that taking the bus has gotten a whole lot easier. Now, for those riders who are fed up with crosswords or who find the scenery less than inspiring, there's another way to while away the miles.Movies. Yep, recent films on the bus. On Peter Pan and Bonanza bus lines, which serve much of the Eastern seaboard, a passenger can get on at New York's Port Authority, head out on the highway and start enjoying "Groundhog Day." Or "Last Action Hero." You get the picture.The way the movie is shown is much the same as the airlines do it. The driver puts a videocassette in a player, which is screened to about six monitors throughout the coach.

State officials have withdrawn regulations that would have increased environmental protections at the state's 15 rubble fills, two weeks before those requirements were to take effect.The regulations, which were to have been completed Friday, would have required all rubble fills to have liners and leachate collection systems by Oct. 16, 1996. Rubble fills are dump sites for construction and demolition debris, some of which contain hazardous pollutants. Maryland is one of the few Eastern Seaboard states that does not require liners, which cost about $100,000 per acre.

The 15th annual Needlework Exhibition will take place Friday through Oct. 23 at Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg, Va. Needlework artists from the Eastern seaboard will participate in the exhibition, which includes adult, junior, amateur and professional categories. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday; 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. The fee is $6 for adults, free for under 12, and includes tours of the mansion and gardens. Oatlands is six miles south of Leesburg on U.S. 15. Call (703)

It has been 50 years this month since the Cuban missile crisis, but I remember the terror of it. We were hours away from six missiles, each with the strength of eighty Hiroshima bombs, being launched against the eastern seaboard before Nikita Khrushchev called them back to Russia. Jack Kennedy was our President, and we will evermore be grateful for his handling of it. If there were ever again a crisis of such magnitude, which of the two presidential candidates would we want to make decisions: Barack Obama, who seems to carefully deliberate in his decision making ("leading from behind")

Shopping on eBay can have its advantages. Has a beautiful dress been moved to the sale rack in your favorite mall store, but they --- and all the others nearby --- are sold out of your size? Check eBay! After a friend tells you she called every location of a particular home decor chain on the Eastern seaboard last year but still failed to find the Christmas ornament she wanted, what do you do? Look on eBay! Feeling a bit nostalgic for that toy you coveted as a child but never got or want to introduce members of the next generation to a game you played nonstop when you were a kid?

'Victory Chimes' turns 100 Sailing strong into the new century, the American tall ship Victory Chimes celebrates its 100th birthday Saturday at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. The centennial celebration includes a rechristening ceremony, music by the Bay Country Barbershop, ship tours and food. The Victory Chimes, which the museum calls the last American-built vessel still sailing from the Golden Age of Sail, carried lumber along the Eastern Seaboard from 1900 through both World Wars.

Daniel J. O'Toole Sr., 69, a retired structural ironworker and business agent for Iron Workers Local 16, died Saturday at Fort Howard Veterans Administration Medical Center after a long illness.A mass of Christian burial will be offered at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church in Edgemere.Born in Jamaica, N.Y., Mr. O'Toole was a 1939 graduate of St. John's Prep in Queens. He served with the merchant marine during World War II.He was a member of the Edgemere Moose Lodge and St. Luke's Church.

B rian Witte, an Associated Press writer, recently revived an old debate that's been going on since Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, when the Army of Northern Virginia stacked its arms, parked its artillery and furled its flags for the last time at Appomattox Court House, Va. The bloody Civil War had at long last come to an end with a handshake in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's house. It was the first time the two opposing generals, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, had met since their days as young Army officers serving in Mexico during the Mexican War. "Though Marylanders live just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, their attitudes and even their accents straddle that border," Witte wrote.