Gateway

A Clarksville couple with deep connections in the development community is negotiating to buy the former Gateway School building on Route 108 and redevelop the lot. George and Holly Stone were chosen from among six finalists to redevelop the site, where a county-owned 7.8 acre complex of former school buildings just across the road from the River Hill Village Center is now being demolished. Holly Stone is a vice president of Percontee Inc., a Silver Spring building materials and quarry firm owned by the family of the late Homer Gudelsky, a prominent Washington developer who was her father.

Too bad the city was just breaking ground on a new homeless shelter and not opening it on Monday - with temperatures climbing into the dangerous range for the first time this summer, it was a reminder of how important it is to make sure all of the city's residents have proper shelter. Just two years ago, when Mayor Sheila Dixon first announced her ambitious, 10-year initiative to end homelessness in Baltimore, the goal seemed hopelessly out of reach. Neighborhood groups were dead set against the idea of having homeless people sheltered even temporarily in their communities, and the economic downturn made paying for the project seem dicey at best.

When Thomas Jefferson left the U.S. presidency 200 years ago this spring, no one needed to build a library or memorial to commemorate him. Jefferson already had a memorial in the form of Monticello, the mountaintop estate he created near Charlottesville, Va., long before he became the nation's third president in 1801. Jefferson felt so completely at home at Monticello that he almost never left the grounds from the spring of 1809 to the day he died in 1826. "I am as happy nowhere else and in no other society," he wrote in 1787, "and all my wishes end where I hope my days will end, at Monticello."

We have built no national temple but the Capitol," U.S. Rep. Rufus Choate of Massachusetts said in 1833. "We consult no common oracle but the Constitution."

Gov. Martin O'Malley's chief lobbyist broke the news to public health advocates and anti-teen drinking crusaders Wednesday afternoon: The governor would sign a bill the next day ensuring that "alcopops" would continue to be taxed and distributed the same way as beer. The advocates, who had spent the past three months arguing that the bill would make it easier for teens to get fruity drinks such as Mike's Hard Lemonade, sprang into action. Within hours, the national leader of Mothers Against Drunk Driving was on a plane from Dallas for a meeting with the governor, activists and two Marylanders whose children were killed by drunken drivers.

No TV network or cable channel does documentaries better than HBO. The case could almost be made on the basis of just one extraordinary film: Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, which chronicled the agony and national neglect of New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. On TV The Gates airs at 10 tonight on HBO.

William Wang likes being disruptive, and television shoppers are paying the price - a lower price. In 2002, when plasma TVs were selling for $10,000, the Taiwanese-born entrepreneur set out to sell one for $2,999. He fulfilled his ambition a year later, shipping a 46-inch model with a $2,799 price tag, about half what other brands then charged. Now his Irvine, Calif., company, Vizio Inc., is the No. 1 maker of flat-panel TVs in North America, outselling entrenched Asian competitors in the second quarter.

Marquette Brand's tenacity came in handy when she tried to get computer maker Gateway Inc. to fix her broken laptop under warranty. Almost every other response she got was "No." Where most people would have given up or coughed up any amount of money just to be rid of the problem, Brand demanded fairness. "I just didn't like the way I was treated as a customer," Brand said. "I know I didn't buy a million dollars' worth of computers from them, but that doesn't mean I don't deserve to be treated with respect."

Howard County health officials are offering up to 4,000 free flu inoculations next month at a drive-through clinic designed to reach twice as many people as a similar exercise last year. The shots, which will be given from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 4 at Columbia's Gateway Business Park, are available to anyone, not just county residents, said Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the county's health officer. No Flu-Mist spray will be used, said Beilenson, who announced the program yesterday. The county plans to field 230 employees and volunteers, including police, firefighters and health officials in what will double as an emergency-preparedness exercise.