Free Time

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

Michael Vincent Manieri, a Baltimore City firefighter and medic, died of heart disease Wednesday at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 40 and lived in Towson. Born in Baltimore and raised on Parklawn Avenue, he attended Shrine of the Little Flower School and Archbishop Curley High School. He later took emergency medical training courses at the Community College of Baltimore County at Essex. "It was his dream to become a firefighter from the time he was 9 years old," said his father, Frank Manieri of Towson.

People don't go on vacation as much these days. Instead they "travel."Many women, when asked what they do with their leisure time, will say without a blink that they clean, do laundry, run errands.If someone stops to smell the roses during the day, you can bet it was scheduled last week and noted in an appointment book along with the meeting that follows it."Traditionally, we call the part of the day that isn't work time or sleep time, 'free time' or 'leisure time.' But the 'shoulds' -- 'I should do this, I should do that' -- are creeping into our leisure.

Play is all but absent in our children's over-programmed lives, as Marco della Cava notes in his story, "Calendar Is Blank on May 22. " Free time needs to come back into our kids' lives, and it needs to happen now. There is a nationwide scarcity of play, and we are beginning to see a stark difference between children who play and children who don't. Kids who play are healthier. Kids who play are less likely to be obese and develop obesity-related health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

WASHINGTON -- Like horses brought to water who can't be made to drink, voters can't be forced to exercise the franchise if they don't want to. In last year's presidential election, more didn't vote than did -- only 49 percent of those eligible.The figure, according to Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, resumed a 36-year decline in voter turnout, broken only in 1992.The regression after the 55.2 percent voter participation in the Clinton-Bush race in 1992 came in spite of a new experiment in the communication of candidate views: free television time on five networks: NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox and PBS.The campaign for free time was spearheaded by a former Washington Post political reporter, Paul Taylor, and the retired CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.

The adage "The show must go on" has seldom reflected more tenacity, discipline, determination and passion than it does this season, with the unbroken 100-year history of theatrical productions at the Naval Academy. The Masqueraders will mark the troupe's centennial next month with two weekend presentations of Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, despite new academy regulations that cut into Mids' free time for extracurricular activities. The changes instituted by Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler require midshipmen to study nightly for three hours, which would have reduced the Masqueraders' rehearsal time by as much as half.

Some things never change. As you walk around the hospitality and pit areas at an IZOD IndyCar race you can still find Mario Andretti signing autographs more than five decades since he drove his first racecar in competitive open wheel racing. Andretti, the most versatile American racecar driver in history, is at age 71, theoretically, long retired. But that's hard to prove. Over four decades beginning in the 1960s he won four Indy Car championships and became the only driver in motorsports history to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969)

Good morning -- David Wells -- We can only imagine what you'll do with all this free time.

TIME. IT FLIES. Tempus fugit. We try to make it, save it, take it. It waits for no one. It heals all wounds, and wounds all heels.If we feel generous, we volunteer it. After all, time is money.Consumers spend millions of dollars a year on devices to measure it. On-line services and 900 numbers charge for it. So do professionals, like lawyers. Judges hand it down and convicts do it, or it does them.Prison wardens do not care how inmates spend their time as long as no one tries to escape or hurt someone.

'Missed' timeA survey by the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center reports that 40 percent of 3,000 area residents questioned say they have less free time than a year ago. And a Hilton Time Values Survey of 1,010 adults shows Americans are losing their race against the clock -- by an average of seven hours a week.The Hilton study found that the average American has 19 hours of free time each week to spend on leisure activities, but wants 26 hours. The 27 percent shortfall is called "missed" time.

So, I gather from the Twitterature that what I missed by skipping the Oscars last night was a crappy sound system and Angelina Jolie showing some leg. Still think your time was well spent on it? If your preoccupation with the Oscars over the weekend caused you to miss a little fun I had with the Frederick County commissioners over their ordinance making English the official language of the county, you can catch up here . Really, the wealth of asinine legislation in the United States beggars the resources of satire.

Some things never change. As you walk around the hospitality and pit areas at an IZOD IndyCar race you can still find Mario Andretti signing autographs more than five decades since he drove his first racecar in competitive open wheel racing. Andretti, the most versatile American racecar driver in history, is at age 71, theoretically, long retired. But that's hard to prove. Over four decades beginning in the 1960s he won four Indy Car championships and became the only driver in motorsports history to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969)

Nicholas Benedict, a resident of Oak Crest retirement community in Parkville, earned a 60-year membership pin for his service with the Freemasons fraternal organization. The pin and certificate were presented to Benedict by Ed Foreman, master of Tuscan Masonic Lodge 202, in Towson, and Jack Grieve, grand inspector for the Grand Lodge. Benedict joined the Mount Vernon Masonic Lodge in New York in 1961, serving in numerous leadership roles. One of his main priorities was education, as the lodge consistently raised scholarship funds for local students.

Michael Thron of Olney asks: It has been a long time since I have hunted or even shot my 12-gauge shotgun (any free time outdoors lately has been devoted to piscatorial activities and endeavors). I would like to take it out sometime to shoot it, sight it in etc. What is the closest place to me or to someone in the Washington suburbs to do this legally and, hopefully, without a fee? Outdoors Girl responds: A list of ranges and clubs and contact information is on the Department of Natural Resources website on the Wildlife and Heritage page under the heading, "Quick Links.

Bessie Turner bought her house in a quiet Brooklyn Park neighborhood six years ago with a plan: She wanted to give her two sons a better place to live. She'd stay until January 2010, then pull out some of her equity and move to Myrtle Beach, S.C. Her sons would continue living there, paying less than if they were to rent a similar place, and she'd be there often. But that all changed two years ago Thursday. Her elder son, Rudolph Turner Jr., 25, was fatally shot in his bedroom.

Hilary Rosensteel, better known as Rosie the Rioter to fans of the Charm City Roller Girls, offers sage advice to those who think this might be the life for them. •"No. 1, you have to like to sweat. It is a sport. Roller derby definitely draws a lot of people for different reasons, a lot of creative types. But there's also people who have never played sports before. I think people leave sometimes because they don't like sweating. " •"You really have to like skating.

If you're like many Americans, you feel pushed for time.A growing parade of best-selling books tells you how time is passing by, no matter how hard you try to get your life into overdrive: Juliet Schor's "Overworked American" says over the past two decades we've added a month a year to our work lives. Arlie Hochsield's "Second Shift" describes the working woman's plight: she still has a second, unpaid full-time job managing her home. "Busybodies" by Lee Burns says we are squeezing more activities into less time.

When I'm driving and discover I'm lost, I have a tendency to drive faster and faster. This curious response could serve as an analogy for Americans' use and perceptions of time. American life goes faster and faster, perhaps because we're less and less sure where we're going.Time, for millions of Americans, has become the ultimate scarcity. A recent survey by Pennsylvania State University researchers found that 47 percent of Americans think they have less free time than they did five years ago, and more than one-third of the respondents in the national sample said they "always" feel rushed.

I f you wake up in the morning with the blues because people treat you mean, you could sing a song about it, or you could shop around for an enormous conspiracy that has denied you your constitutional right to liberty and happiness - and how about Central Standard Time? What gives the feds the right to set your clock for you? It's tyranny. So you join the Free Time movement. You go to meetings. You tune in "The Bob Glenn Show" every day on Fox for your marching orders and set your clock as you darn well please and feel liberated from lockstep uniformity.