Generation

Some curse seems to have been cast over the public schools of the city of Baltimore. The latest test scores say three-quarters of city students are reading below grade level. They say the more years children remain in city elementary schools, the further they fall behind kids in other systems. They say that, at nearly every grade level, special education students - kids with learning disabilities, with psychological problems - score no worse than kids in regular classrooms.The curse of the schools spreads like a stain.

Casco Bay, Maine -- The afternoon wind sweeps up from the cove in time to clear the uninvited mosquitoes off the ceremonial grounds. Gradually, the people who have come to this island by land or air, and finally by sea, begin to collect on the rough grass beside the white tent.As the mother comes out of the house to join the others, a hummingbird enjoying the unexpected bounty of flowerarrangements whirls away. Suddenly it occurs to her that the cat has taken off for parts unknown.In the shimmering afternoon sun, she finds a place among the parents who share the informal front row. Only now do the lists, the wedding flow charts, the transportation details that rivaled D-Day, drop from her consciousness like anxiety about the weather.

Are you ready for some foosball? The 2012 Maryland Foosball Championships will be held Feb. 17-19 at the Holiday Inn Columbia in Jessup, with 150 enthusiasts of the table soccer game competing for $12,000 in prize money. According to tournament director Chun Lee, the competition that started in Maryland in the late 1980s will return after a year's hiatus. Lee said the event was not held last year because sponsor Tornado Table Soccer could not fit it into its schedule. Lee, who has been playing the popular indoor game for 20 years, said the type of foosball being played now is much faster than it was when he started.

THE GREAT under-reported story of the last week was Bill Clinton's trip to Vietnam. In America, we huddle by our television sets to watch the seemingly endless story of a presidential election. It is two weeks old. But Bill Clinton's journey to Vietnam comes 25 years after the fighting ended, and it is the story of a generation. In many ways, Clinton is the modern heart of the matter. He famously did not go. Not so famously, neither did George W. Bush or Newt Gingrich, or Phil Gramm or Dan Quayle.

HADDONFIELD, N.J. -- Ken Kesey has passed on. Some might say he's left his Magic Bus Further for the last time. Ken belongs to a small group of American authors for whom a generation might be defined. Like Fitzgerald's Jazz Age and Kerouac's Beat Generation, he defined the disaffection and zany humor that became the Hipster Generation of the 1960s. Mr. Kesey created and embellished upon a uniquely American antihero: the pragmatic loner who is cynical of authority yet capable of noble sacrifices for his fellows.

I WAS WONDERING when somebody would finally get around to giving the post-baby boom generation an official label.After all, we've been out of the '80s for over a year now, and the so-called Me Generation seems to have gone down the tubes along with the likes of Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.Well, now the verdict on America's new young people is in and an appropriate group label has been assigned. Christened by none other than Esquire magazine in a recent cover piece, the current crop of Americans under the age of 35 has been named:The Nowhere Generation.

A generation of American youth is disappearing in the shuffle of two-income families, unresponsive child welfare systems and economically depressed neighborhoods, a study released yesterday reported.The National Research Council commissioned a panel of professors and child welfare experts to research the effects of social climates on adolescents.The council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, published the panel's findings in a book, "Losing Generations: Adolescent in High-Risk Settings."

Starting today, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has an opportunity to recharge the city and become the leader of a new generation of public-spirited citizens who have the most to say about what kind of place Baltimore becomes in the next decade. The new mayor turns 40 years old on St. Patrick's Day and represents the young, energetic, educated, BlackBerry-tapping Baltimoreans who are becoming the new movers and shakers here. It's their turn to take responsibility for getting Baltimore to the tipping point, then pushing and kicking and insisting that it become the bigger, healthier, wealthier city that those before them hardly imagined.

Is THERE a Bush generation? Looking over the equally blameless faces of the new crop in Creative Writing 101, it's hard to tell. The same unmapped look of excessive health, touched here and there by pop fashion, beams out of them. The $6 Supercut specials vie with mall-bought tie-dye.I ask them to tell a story, any story, to the class. This way I can tell how they talk, how they tell a story and what they think a story is, all useful gauges on the long and painful road to graphobia or mania.

These are dark days in Trekker Country -- the land where real fans of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" live. After seven years and 16 Emmys, "The Next Generation" makes its final first-run flight this week.Followers of the series are taking it hard -- very hard."It's a spiritual thing to me, and I'm going to be really emotional watching that last episode," says Randy Christy of Hamilton."I'm an addict of the show . . . and I'm angry and upset to see it go off the air," says Sara Conway."Don't ask. I can't even think of watching the final episode.