Gathering

THE Los Angeles riots earlier this year underlined the %J smoldering tensions between blacks and Korean merchants. Suspicion and mistrust on both sides were a warning to communities everywhere that unless black and Korean leaders come together to talk over their problems, the threat of renewed interethnic conflict would continue to hang over troubled inner-city neighborhoods.That is why a recent gathering of some 400 members of Baltimore's black and Korean communities at Douglas Memorial Community Church in Bolton Hill was so heartening.

A small army of minivans lines the street outside Delilah Ray's house. Inside the Dallas home, small clusters of women hug and plaster name tags on themselves, their spouses and their small children. It doesn't matter that they have known one another for more than three years now, having shared intimate details of their pregnancies, their children's births and even tough times, such as when a husband has been laid off from work. They still might not recognize one another. They are virtual friends, brought together in cyberspace when each joined Parent Soup's March 2000 Mommies group on iVillage.

Italy -- the home of good wine, good food and good opera. The same could be said of Annapolis, as all three were also found there at the Annapolis Opera's Italian Wine Tasting Evening. Arias soared in the background as wine expert Griff Hamilton introduced each wine to the gathering at the Naval Academy's Officers Club. Between sips, guests discussed each selection and nibbled on cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto, stuffed eggplant, chicken rotolo and antipasto. Ah, la dolce vita. Among the 67 wine and song lovers: Melanie Teems, event chair; Anna Marie Darlington-Gilmour, Annapolis Opera board president; Victoria Waldner, board vice president; Sylvia Earl and Felix Rosario, board members; John Belcher, ARINC president; Bill Bol-dyga, retired Northrop Grumman engineer; Ardath Cade, Maryland State Arts Council past president; John Brooke Shehan, Legal Aid attorney; Anna Walker, Northeast High School teacher; Bruce Googins, AERA Inc. vice president; Linda Giuliani, Verizon central office technician; Jim Earl, retired University of Maryland professor; Dr. Jan Hegstrom, Anne Arundel Community College adjunct professor; Nancie Kennedy, Peabody Preparatory voice instructor; and Dr. Bill LeFevre, Prince George's County Schools regional executive director.

PENNSBURG, Pa. -- Betty Moylan, 58, sat on the steps of her motor home the other day and recalled how, while working at the national headquarters of an insurance firm in Connecticut, she became a hobo. "I took my first freight-train ride. From Dunsmuir, California, to Roseville, California, roughly 350 miles," she said, recalling a vacation in 1993. She went back to work as senior administrator for accounting operations at the insurance firm. Quit in 1995. Sold her home. Her sister in upstate New York sold hers, too. Together, they bought the motor home.

ST. LOUIS - After 18 months of extraordinary turmoil, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops spent the day behind closed doors yesterday considering convening a national gathering of bishops, priests and lay people to discuss challenges facing the church, including the need to affirm the discipline of priestly celibacy and to re-examine the role of lay people. If the bishops agreed to call a plenary council, it would be the first such gathering in this country in more than a century. "This is an extraordinary moment in the life of the church," said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

EAGAR, Ariz. -- Down a dusty, rocky trail and through a knot of pine trees, past a naked guy chewing leaves, a fully clothed Christian choir and a retired Jewish pie thrower, is the meadow where the Rainbow Family is holding its 27th annual gathering to party and pray for peace.As many as 14,000 members of this family of old hippies and young converts, of blacks and whites, of American Indians and recent immigrants, of babies and grandparents have come from across the country to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, just west of this two-stoplight town near the New Mexico border, for an annual gathering that lasts for about three weeks.

Baltimore County police were making a concentrated effort over the weekend to crack down on teen loiterers in Towson by assigning extra officers on the streets to disband the groups and issue citations if necessary. The get-tough initiative targeted the Towson business district, where teens have been gathering in large numbers for the past three years.Area merchants complain constantly of vandalism, graffiti and trash, especially at York Road and Pennsylvania Avenue and at the war memorial in front of the former Hutzler's department store.

Gov. Martin O'Malley will hold his first "tweetup" -- a gathering of users of the Twitter social media site -- on Jan. 12 at the State House. According to the governor's office, attendees will be selcected at random from people who fill out the online application form for the gathering, which will focus on the agenda for the 90-day legislative session that begins the day before. Takirra Winfield, O'Malley's deputy press secretary, said the exact time and place within the State House are undecided, though the likely location is the second-floor Reception Room.

A two-pronged effort to enlarge the Baltimore County Council by gathering signatures to place a charter amendment on the November ballot has faltered, and may fail.With less than six weeks left before 10,000 valid signatures must be submitted to the county elections board, one group gathering them has virtually given up and the other has only 3,600 names, organizers said.Together, the eastern county group based in Essex and a western county group based in the Liberty Road corridor have collected about 7,000 names, according to Del. E. Farrell Maddox, the Essex Democrat leading the eastern group, and Harold G. Gordon, the west-side group coordinator.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia -- Flying around the world to stem climate change isn't easy to defend. And that was just one of the environmental quandaries facing some 10,000 delegates, policy experts, activists and journalists at climate talks in Bali, which ended Saturday with a framework plan to trim the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. Free bicycles, for instance, were available on loan to delegates who wanted to ride between the meeting's various side events. They got plenty of use. But a share of negotiators and journalists alike, exhausted after days of overnight talks and dripping sweat in Bali's steamy heat, took one guilty look at the bikes and then waved for an air-conditioned taxi instead.