Face To Face

The next time you snag that job interview, you may be asked to do it via video. Videoconference job interviewing is becoming an increasingly popular option for companies crunched for time, looking to save costs and quickly get "face time" with far-away candidates, according to recruiters. "It's not surprising because employers do videoconferencing with colleagues and clients around the globe," says Clay Parcells, a Baltimore-area regional managing principal at Right Management, a consulting and outplacement firm.

A visit by Mayor William Donald Schaefer to the General Assembly was hard to forget. It was an orchestrated military maneuver — you knew he was coming to your committee because the TV tripods were already set up. His arrival looked a lot like a rugby scrum, an odd combination of cameras, reporters, a brace of staff carrying easels and flip charts, and of course, himself in the middle, snarling at reporters and barking at staff to the astonishment of...

AMHERST, N.Y. -- Foes in the abortion battle stand face to face, jammed between the barricades with nowhere to run, close enough to feel the gusts of each other's breath.Through the morning and into the afternoon Friday, they are stuck with each other on a muddy path outside an abortion clinic."If you had an open mind, you would read this," says anti-abortion activist Gary Jelich of New York City, trying to hand a pamphlet to a young bespectacled woman who supports abortion rights.They exchange a few more words, about children, about life, family.

State university leaders, in what they call a quest to expand college access to students around Maryland, are working to reverse an October decision by the Maryland Higher Education Commission that quashed an online doctoral program because it duplicated a face-to-face program at Morgan State. The higher-education panel barred University of Maryland University College from offering the program for community college administrators to in-state students, instead giving Morgan two years to add an online component to its program.

Seven Baltimore countians and one Towson rabbit waited in the pre-dawn drizzle today for new county executive Roger B. Hayden's first, 12-hour session of constituent visits to reach it's 7 a.m. start time.The rabbit, perched outside the county office building under the big "Face to Face" sign advertising the chance to speak personally with the executive, scampered away as a visitor approached. The seven early birds perched inside the former county council hearing room were more patient, and far less frightened.

Boisterous students rushed into the Westminster High School library yesterday, expecting to take a quick look at the AIDS memorial quilt and dash off an assignment.But faced with this sad piece of Americana, they fell silent before pictures and relics of the dead."It goes from a rumble to a silence every time," said Margaret Cush, health and physical education teacher at the Carroll County school."Kids don't know what to expect; they are usually just happy to get out of class," said Pam Shurkin, a member of the Maryland Association of Student Councils who organized the first statewide high school quilt tour.

It is 7:15 on a Tuesday evening, and mayoral candidate Clarence H. "Du" Burns is standing on a porch on Gwynns Falls Parkway, asking yet another potential voter to return him to City Hall. But the young woman is hardly listening, and her dog is at the living room window, barking furiously in Mr. Burns' ear.Five minutes go by, then 10, then 15, and the dog is still barking. And Mr. Burns is still talking. Talking crime. Talking trash. Talking vacant housing. Talking about the things he hopes will persuade enough voters to oust Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and elect Du Burns.

Jeff Blake's past will come back to haunt his present on Sunday. Or perhaps it will be the other way around. With injured Chris Redman aiming to return to full workouts next week, Blake is looking to solidify himself as the Ravens' starting quarterback against the Cincinnati Bengals, a franchise that tried to bench the strong-armed veteran at every opportunity. In a lengthy interview about him and his former team, Blake insisted yesterday that all emotional ties have been severed, and he steered away from reliving his painful six years in Cincinnati.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- With a hesitant handshake and words of peace, negotiators from the two warring sides in Zaire opened their first face-to-face negotiations here yesterday.Mediators hope the two sides will agree to a cease-fire and set a formula for the future governance of the chaotic Central African republic, steps that could involve direct talks between Zaire's ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko and rebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila.Kabila's rebel forces have seized control of a quarter of the country in six months and are now heading toward Lubumbashi, Zaire's second-largest city.

Reggie Wells has made up the faces of Oprah, Aretha and Iman. His work has landed on 65 Essence covers. And he's won an Emmy for his mastery with the makeup brush.But he still thinks about the face that got away: Jada PinkettSmith.So far, scheduling conflicts have kept him from working with the actress and wife of Will Smith."She's from Baltimore and she's beautiful," says Wells, 50, who also happens to be from Baltimore. "She's one person I have left."But in his new book, "Face Painting," he doesn't mourn missed opportunities.

State university leaders, in what they call a quest to expand college access to students around Maryland, are working to reverse an October decision by the Maryland Higher Education Commission that quashed an online doctoral program because it duplicated a face-to-face program at Morgan State. The higher-education panel barred University of Maryland University College from offering the program for community college administrators to in-state students, instead giving Morgan two years to add an online component to its program.

I am seeing a new guy, and the stubble on his face has left a large chapped area on my face that almost feels burned. It's an unpleasant aftermath of an enjoyable kissing session. I'm putting Vaseline on it. Is there anything else that might help more? We checked with cosmetics expert Dr. Stanley B. Levy of Chapel Hill Dermatology in North Carolina. He said you can use 1 percent hydrocortisone cream for a few days. It is available over the counter. To prevent or soothe irritation, Aquaphor (made by Beiersdorf)

When it's time to choose a bank, most customers look to their nearest street corner -- a move that keeps inspiring financial companies to pump millions into building more branches. Bank construction, which can cost upward of $2 million a branch, is picking up speed even as online banking keeps growing. The number of Maryland bank branches is at a decade high with financial companies fighting to recruit and retain customers, both online and in person. While some analysts have raised concerns about a saturated market, construction crews across the region are erecting more branches to bolster several banks and their brands.

BOSTON -- At least no one accused the Rutgers women of being too sensitive or too thin-skinned to take a bit of verbal roughing. At least the corporate honchos at CBS and MSNBC didn't defend their star's rap rhetoric as a rich artistic expression of the raw reality of urban street life. This time, the pampered star didn't rant against the PC Police. Don Imus apologized with something akin to authenticity. And this time there is a price being paid, in public humiliation and unemployment.

The next time you snag that job interview, you may be asked to do it via video. Videoconference job interviewing is becoming an increasingly popular option for companies crunched for time, looking to save costs and quickly get "face time" with far-away candidates, according to recruiters. "It's not surprising because employers do videoconferencing with colleagues and clients around the globe," says Clay Parcells, a Baltimore-area regional managing principal at Right Management, a consulting and outplacement firm.

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MASS. -- You're next, says the guy in the powder blue BMW pulling out of the driveway at the house with the plump yellow mailbox and performing wind chimes -- Grand Central Buchwald these days. "Some guy and his mother. Nice guy," says Art Buchwald. The before-afterlife can be hectic for a famous living columnist. Ambassadors, politicians, newspapermen, anchormen and former AOL guys in BMWs have all checked in with Buchwald. Great women, too. "Carly, this is Art," says Buchwald on the phone to his island friend Carly Simon.

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. - On the one hand, there's the hope of justice long-delayed. And on the other, there's a nagging knot of fear. Vickie Kilpatrick, like many others here, twisted and wrung both of those hands last week. Philadelphia has never lived down the infamy of being the town where three young civil rights activists were hunted down and killed - allegedly by Ku Klux Klan members - in 1964, and where state murder charges were so long coming. After the man long rumored to be the instigator was arrested last week, 40 years after the crime, raw emotions surfaced anew.

In the fall of 1994, Lisa Bowes, now a graduate student at the University of Maryland, decided to give up her computer.As an undergraduate in California, she'd spent so much time chatting with strangers on the Internet that she made close friends in places as far away as Sweden and Germany. And a man from Pennsylvania she met on-line came to visit her, with romantic intentions she did not reciprocate.Nearly all of her free time -- up to seven hours a day -- was spent with the computer.Enough was enough.

Panda, shmanda. So we don't have a Tai Shan, the heart-meltingly adorable 6-month-old panda that is drawing unprecedented crowds to the National Zoo. Who needs cute, anyway? This is Baltimore, where cute has never held much sway. Cute is fleeting. Cute is shallow. And cute, it bears repeating, is sold out at least through January. Avoid the "panda-monium," Baltimore, and take solace, if not pride, in the fact that, while Washington may have cornered the market on cute, our town - even with its zoo closed in January and February - boasts some of the strangest, quirkiest, dare we say ugliest, creatures on the planet.