Eight Hours

Between 50 million and 70 million Americans have some sort of sleep disorder, be it apnea, insomnia, narcolepsy. And this time of year - with shopping overload, overbooked calendars and end-of-the-year work demands - can be a sleeper's nightmare. "There just does not seem to be enough time to shop, attend holiday parties, decorate the house, work and sleep," says Mary Battaglia, 42, a co-founder of the sleep-aid company BedtimePlace.Com. "I try hard to get the right sleep because I know how important it is. But that does not always happen."

The next time you're missing fun because you have tons of homework, think about this."In the 1920s, physicians led a movement against homework; they believed it interfered with kids' health," said Etta Kralovec. She's the director of educational studies at Maine's College of the Atlantic. "They said kids needed between six and eight hours a day of fresh air and sunshine."Kids today may simply need a break. Some experts say there are serious reasons for confining schoolwork to school."We don't believe people should work longer than eight hours a day," Kralovec noted.

ANNAPOLIS RESIDENT Ron Bowman recently fulfilled a longtime dream by completing the Ironman triathlon in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.The 48-year-old retired naval officer was one of about 150 people chosen by lot to join the Hawaiian Ironman, which celebrated its 20th anniversary with this year's race.The rest of the competitors won qualifying races to earn a chance to compete.Bowman said competing in the race was a chance to prove something to himself, a chance to do something that most people think only an elite few can do.The Ironman is a 2.4-mile ocean swim followed by a 112-mile bicycle race and a 26.2-mile run.Competitors -- about 1,500 annually -- have 17 hours to finish the course.

Dr. Theodore O. Randolph had a three-part daily philosophy for longevity: eight hours of sleep, eight hours of recreation and eight hours of work.The regime exceeded his expectations.Dr. Randolph, a former city schoolteacher, World War I veteran, volunteer for numerous organizations and longtime Baltimore resident, died Friday of heart failure at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 104."He never did anything halfway or not to his fullest," said his wife, the former Beatrice Nimmons, whom he married in 1963.

Scores of students took part this spring in the Waugh Chapel Elementary School program "I Love to Read."Once a student or staff member read a minimum of four hours they were officially on the reading incentive team. A minimum of six hours of reading earned a white ribbon, eight hours a red ribbon and 10 hours a blue ribbon.Twenty-two staff members and 262 students read a minimum of four hours. White ribbons were awarded to 44 participants, red ribbons to 34 and blue ribbons to 206.Top readers in each grade were given T-shirts from the Center for the Book, which is housed at the Library of Congress: Brittany Bevins, Early Childhood Intervention, 16 hours; Bryan Ward, kindergarten, 24 hours; Mary Catherine Nowottnick, David Nowottnick and Michael Nowottnick, first grade, 24 hours each; Matthew Ward, second grade, 53 hours; Brian Stiffler, third grade, 36 hours; Nichole Waters, fourth grade, 48 hours; Kathleen Ferner, fifth grade, 71 hours.

The volunteer: Mr. Allison has been an avid supporter of First Night for five years, but he couldn't tell you a thing about any of the New Year's Eve performances.The Davidsonville resident spends the hours leading up to the New Year as a field general, coordinating the moving and building of stages and props.Mr. Allison is a salesman with American Securities United Van Lines in Annapolis. Born and reared in Bladensburg, he served in the Navy for five years and is married with three children.

The mandarins of education and politics drone the mantra: To compete with the Japanese and the Europeans, our children should spend more time in school.Recently, the National Education Commission on Time and Learning released "Prisoners of Time," a reportasserting that students in the United States get less than half the daily instruction in core academic subjects that Japanese, French and German students receive.The commission found that U.S. children spend 5.6 hours a day in the classroom, but average only three hours a day of academic instruction.

When the temperature started dropping faster inside her Columbia house than outside, Eileen Dibler knew she had a problem yesterday morning.The electricity went out at 9:40 a.m. The temperature dropped 15 degrees in an hour. She breathed a sigh of relief, however, when the temperature stabilized at 54 degrees.The Diblers were among more than 300 East Columbia residents who were without power for about eight hours yesterday.The problems yesterday were "multiple," said John Metzger, a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. spokesman.

Let's see: We don't have an attorney general. We don't hav a deputy attorney general. We don't have a solicitor general.So if you were planning on breaking a federal law, this might be a good time to do it.Just kidding. There are people acting in those roles plus a 91,000-person bureaucracy at the Justice Department just waiting to pounce on you if you even dream about it.It's just a little void at the top we have at the moment. And thetop is the place in any organization that can almost always use a void.

WHEN IT CAME to managing time, few could match Douglas Southall Freeman, the legendary newspaper editor and Pulitzer-Prize winning historian.In the commemorative magazine issued by the Richmond News Leader on the day it ceased publication after 95 years, two pages, and then some, were devoted to "the Doc."Here is Charles Henry Hamilton's description of Dr. Freeman, who obtained his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins at the age of 22, and then served as editor of the News Leader for a whopping 34 years while simultaneously establishing a reputation as a respected historian of the American South:"He devised a daily working schedule that stretched over 17 hours.

BEIJING - In a nation of 1.3 billion people, she was one of the best in a sport held in higher regard than all others. Trouble was, fourth best was good enough only to get Wang Chen bounced from China's Olympic table tennis team. Not once but twice. She is now one of 39 foreign-born athletes occupying a place on a U.S. Olympic team, and she's fulfilling a dream by competing in her hometown, even though she is doing it in a uniform not of red, but of red, white and blue. For Chen, this was far from her plan.

With only two minutes remaining on the game clock, UMBC and New Hampshire were tied at 54. For New Hampshire, it would be a huge upset on the road, a couple of hours in the making. For the Retrievers, with a conference title possibly just two minutes away, we were watching school history, several years in the making. For me, though, tired and dazed, with that eau de locker room smell emanating from my pores, it had been a long day of basketball - eight hours in the making, in fact. The stars had lined up perfectly yesterday, and in Baltimore, we had five area schools hosting games.

Between 50 million and 70 million Americans have some sort of sleep disorder, be it apnea, insomnia, narcolepsy. And this time of year - with shopping overload, overbooked calendars and end-of-the-year work demands - can be a sleeper's nightmare. "There just does not seem to be enough time to shop, attend holiday parties, decorate the house, work and sleep," says Mary Battaglia, 42, a co-founder of the sleep-aid company BedtimePlace.Com. "I try hard to get the right sleep because I know how important it is. But that does not always happen."

A recent study found that men sleep just fine with someone next to them but women don't. So next time you're staring at the ceiling in the dark while your partner snores, think about this: A brown bat needs 20 hours of rest a day; a giraffe, just two hours. But an adult human needs eight hours, and a lack of blissful slumber is associated with everything from poor cognitive function to 100,000 auto accidents and 1,500 deaths a year. Don't let that keep you up. - Time

FEELING A LITTLE GROGGY this morning and blaming the switch to daylight-saving time? Maybe you ought to look at the person on the other side of the bed instead. Americans aren't sleeping well. About 70 million of us have problems sleeping, according to the National Institutes of Health. In spite of our dual-control beds covered in high thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, Breathe Right nasal strips to eliminate snoring and, of course, the magic Lunesta butterfly and other potent sleeping aids, we still aren't getting our recommended z's. What's even worse, our bed partners are often to blame.

HOUSTON -- It's a question asked by thousands of desperate airline passengers every year who end up trapped onboard grounded planes for hours on end, waiting for a takeoff that sometimes never comes: Why can't the plane just return to an airport gate so passengers can at least stretch their legs? Now some leaders in Congress are asking as well, after two recent weather ordeals involving dozens of planes that sat on tarmacs for more than eight hours before finally returning to gates to release their captive passengers.

I heard on the news that the less sleep you get the more likely you are to be overweight. Is it true? Some scientists say it's true. We've all fallen victim to the occasional midnight snack, but now there is evidence to back up the connection between sleeping less and eating more. A University of Chicago study recently released in the Annals of Internal Medicine has linked sleep deprivation to increased levels of ghrelin, a hunger hormone, and decreased levels of leptin, a hormone that makes you feel full.

A tractor-trailer carrying 2,500 gallons of paint ran off the road early yesterday, spilling white paint across Route 97 in Union Mills and closing the highway for more than eight hours, authorities said. State highway workers cleaned the road, restriped it and reopened it in time for the evening rush hour, police said. The accident occurred about 7 a.m. when William M. Burton, 43, of Joppa was driving north from Baltimore to Gettysburg, Pa., and lost control of his truck along an incline and struck a utility pole, cutting it in half, police said.

An investigation of payroll records for the private concessionaire at the Baltimore Convention Center has turned up hundreds of violations of Baltimore's living-wage statute, and nearly 300 workers have received checks to make up for underpayments. Jerry Gonce, director of the Baltimore Wage Commission, said that Aramark Sports & Entertainment Services acknowledged the violations after dual investigations by his agency and Aramark confirmed the underpayments. Gonce said the investigation showed Aramark did not always pay workers overtime when they worked more than eight hours in a single day, a requirement under the city living-wage statute.

Nine days ago, Battsetseg Tsagaan was sitting in a cafe studying for her last exam. It was easy compared to the cramming she still faced for today's Pan American collegiate chess championship in Miami. Her jobs as a mom, student, teacher and wife leave little time for her talent as one of the top college chess players in the United States. Once, she had the luxury of preparing for a tournament for a month. Now she's happy to have had at least these last few days to get back into the swing of things.