Eating Disorders

Service organization uses quilt raffle to raise $2,115 The Zonta Club of Howard County, the local chapter of Zonta International, a global service organization of business professionals working to advance the status of women and children, recently raised $2,115 by raffling a quilt made by one of its members. The winner was Marilyn Hickson; the quilt was made by member Mercedes Romano. Both women are with the Inter-American Development Bank, said chapter President Deborah Provencher. The chapter, formed in 1998, plans to raise $10,000 this year.

They're not even 12 yet, but many of these Baltimore-area girls worry about being fat. Some have already tried diets. But yesterday, taking in artworks a few centuries old, they considered the idea that thin doesn't always mean beautiful. Their hair in ponytails, their emerald-green Girl Scout vests on, some holding lollipops, the girls quietly stared at an African female figure with large drooping breasts, a sign the woman had born children and fed them. They looked up at a Dutch painting of three nude women with plentiful tummies and hips, a mark of health and wealth.

In Baltimore County Free tax counseling to be offered at center starting tomorrow OVERLEA -- Free tax counseling will be available to residents age 60 and older at Overlea Senior Center, 4314 Fullerton Ave., starting tomorrow. Counseling is by appointment only. Those with complicated, time-consuming returns might be asked to take their returns elsewhere to allow counselors to serve as many people as possible. Information or appointments: 410-887-5220. Center for Eating Disorders to present lecture at Goucher TOWSON -- The Center for Eating Disorders at St. Joseph Medical Center will sponsor a lecture Sunday by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of "The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls" at Goucher College's Merrick Hall.

"UM, SO DO you have an eating disorder?" asked a woman who had known me for five years. "Um, so do you have an eating disorder?" asked a colleague who had known me for 11. "So, um, do you have an eating disorder?" asked my sister who has known me all my life, 41 years and counting. The source of these queries was not my stunningly svelte figure, I regret to say. All three were responding to a piece of fiction I had written. And while they were sophisticated readers who were not quick to read fiction as autobiography, the authenticity of detail I provided about anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating seemed to convince them that I must have gone beyond normal research tools.

"Not everyone who is overweight is a food junkie," advises Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, director of the Johns Hopkins WeightManagement Center, a 2-year-old program at Francis Scott Key Medical Center.If a person weighs 40 percent more than the upper range of ideal body weights, he is considered moderately obese and an increased health risk, Dr. Cheskin says.Not all overeaters binge, but many do. From 25 to 50 percent of overweight people binge, he says. A binge is considered the consumption of a large quantity of high-calorie foods "in a discrete time period."

BOSTON -- First of all, imagine a place women greet each other at the market with open arms, loving smiles and a cheerful exchange of ritual compliments:"You look wonderful! You've put on weight!"Does that sound like dialogue from fat fantasy land? Or a skit from fat-is-a-feminist-issue satire? Well, this Western fantasy was a South Pacific fact of life. In Fiji, before 1995, big was beautiful and bigger was more beautiful -- and people really did flatter each other with exclamations about weight gain.

Jack Toepke lay listlessly in a hospital bed. A priest knelt before him. Toepke was desperately ill. He stood 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed 77 pounds. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes half-closed, his stomach empty. In a haze, he didn't register that he was sick enough for a priest to be reading him last rites. For two weeks, doctors had crowded around Toepke, taking blood samples and ordering brain scans, suspecting he had a tumor. Finally, a psychiatrist had diagnosed him with a disease he had never heard of: anorexia.

In Baltimore City Not-guilty plea is entered in fatal carjacking A Baltimore man charged in the deadly carjacking last summer of a Glen Burnie pharmacist pleaded not guilty to federal carjacking and weapons charges yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Jamal D. Barnes, 24, said little during a brief appearance yesterday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth P. Gesner. He acknowledged that he understood the charges against him in the August killing of Yvette A. Beakes, 26, and that two counts against him could carry the death penalty.

Centennial High School, 4300 Centennial Lane, will present the musical Damn Yankees, based on Douglass Wallop's novel, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, in the school auditorium. Tickets are $8 in advance; $10 at the door. To reserve tickets and pay at the door, e-mail kcarlsen@hcpss.org by 2 p.m. Wednesday. The school's theater department will offer a Ballpark Dinner and Show package on Friday. Dinner will be served from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the cafeteria.

A Lineboro man who pleaded guilty last month to breaking into two residential garages and stealing items that he pawned later to support his drug habit was sentenced yesterday to six years in prison with all but 18 months suspended.Carroll County Circuit Judge Luke K. Burns Jr. ordered Craig W. Hann, 19, of Baughman Mill Road to serve the time at the Carroll County Detention Center and granted him credit for the 165 days he had spent in jail since his arrest June 21.Upon his release, Hann must pay combined restitution of $1,449 to victims in Lineboro and Hampstead, be supervised during the first two years of a five-year probationary period and complete a private drug rehabilitation program in Frederick.