Globe

THE QUESTION This week actor/director Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film. What are your favorite Eastwood films? Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We will publish the best answers we receive.

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. -- With only the Joshua trees and hovering buzzards out here to bear witness, this isolated expanse of high-desert plain could well be among the quietest places on the planet.By day, the summer heat hammers hard, and the dull whistle of the wind is the only discernible noise. Come nightfall, the eerie silence is often pierced by the woeful bleat of a wandering burro.But wait. There's another sound.Along a line of wooden power poles running to the horizon in both directions, 14 miles from the nearest paved road, a solitary Pacific Bell pay phone beckons with the shrill sound of impatient civilization.

GENEVA -- They have cleared the Alps, crossed Africa and Asia and the great Pacific. They have skirted war zones and bumped through storms. They've been practically becalmed, traveling as slow as 20 mph, using up precious fuel at 8,000 feet. And they have hurtled at speeds up to 115 mph in the jet streams at more than 35,000 feet.They have been chilled and frightened, mesmerized and challenged on an aerial journey for the ages -- the quest to become the first human beings to circumnavigate the globe nonstop in a balloon.

IN JULES VERNE'S fictional account, it took 80 days to circumnavigate the globe. Balloonists Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones completed their 29,054.6-mile trip around the world in 20 days, becoming the first humans to make such a trip. Ironically, in a era when manned space vehicles circling Earth in 90 minutes is routine, the attempt to travel the globe by air currents galvanized the world.People have long been fascinated by wind and the potential to ride the air currents like a bird. As early as the 18th century, French aristocrats and inventors were experimenting with flying in balloons.

Baltimore Children's Theatre. Adult non-equity actors, actresses, crew members needed for touring company. Performances during the day at area elementary schools. Send head shot and resumes to 10322 Globe Drive, Ellicott City 21042. Call 410-203-1757.Chesapeake Music Hall. "Sugar Babies." 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. June 12 and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. June 15 at the dinner theater, 339 Busch's Frontage Road, Annapolis. All parts open, except for the Prima Donna. Ages 17 and older. Be prepared to sing, dance, and read.

Here are excerpts of reactions to the John F. Kennedy Jr. tragedy from some of the nation's newspaper editorial pages and national and local columnists:David Nyhan, Boston Globe -- At one point in the '70s, when I was the editor running the Globe newsroom, I got a call from Dick Goodwin, [President John F. Kennedy's] speech writer and [Jacqueline Kennedy's] counselor. Would it be OK, Goodwin inquired guardedly, if John Jr. came to work for you as a reporter?Sure, it would be OK. But it never happened.

BOSTON -- Ending a tumultuous two-week period during which he was asked to resign from the Boston Globe and then successfully battled to retain his job, columnist Mike Barnicle resigned from the newspaper yesterday after new credibility questions arose.The 25-year columnist, already serving a two-month suspensionfor writing a column that used unattributed jokes by comedian George Carlin, agreed to quit after being unable to verify the facts contained in an Oct. 8, 1995, column about two children being treated for cancer at Children's Hospital, the paper said.

IN THE course of one lunar month, three widows have been elected to positions once held by their late husbands. In California, Lois Capps won a special vote to serve out the remaining term of Democratic representative Walter Capps. Mary Bono was similarly elected to replace Republican Sonny Bono. On the other side of the planet, Sonia Gandhi was voted president of the political party led by her late husband, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.This is an age in which all sorts of social stereotypes -- the good scout, the passive grandmother, the uninvolved father -- have undergone a solid debunking.

BOSTON -- Two days after the Boston Globe asked for Mike Barnicle's resignation, the fate of the popular, 25-year Metro columnist apparently remained unresolved after a meeting he had with top Globe officials yesterday.DTC After an hourlong off-site session with Barnicle, Globe publisher Benjamin B. Taylor and Assistant to the Publisher Alfred S. Larkin Jr. issued a short statement saying, "We consider it a private meeting between the parties, and have no further comment on it at this time."

KENNETH Jernigan, who died this week at 71, was a visionary. Blind at birth, he helped sighted people to see it is wrong and irrational to discriminate against the blind."

Gather 'round children and hear the sad tale of when the Colts forsook Baltimore for Indianapolis. Now, 25 years later, the details are a little hazy. So we turn to the writings of the major news giants of our generation. It was a dark and stormy night, on that everyone agrees. It happened over March 28 and 29 or on "a snowy December night in 1984." (The Boston Globe) Or maybe it was during "a sleet storm." (Sports Illustrated) Out of the darkness and into the training complex in Owings Mills rumbled "a Mayflower moving van" (WBAL)

It's the time of year for giving and, in this economy, for saving. If you have any travelers on your list, thank them now, because finding an affordable gift for globe-trotters is not too hard to do. Here are a few quick ideas, all for items costing $25 or less: * This year, baggage fees became a weighty issue for many fliers. A digital luggage scale from Balanzza is the perfect gift for those pack rats on your list. It's stylish, compact and easy to use. All you do is attach the strap to your luggage, lift the bag by the strap, wait for the beep, put the luggage down and read the weight.

DEC. 19 In a new documentary, The Black Candle, director and Morgan State University professor M.K. Asante Jr. (right) gives audiences an in-depth look at the pan-African celebration of Kwanzaa, from the holiday's cultural beginnings to its impact on the African-American community since its inception in the 1960s. Narrated by Maya Angelou and featuring rap legend and activist Chuck D, the film visits Kwanzaa revelers across the globe, exploring the holiday's effect on their lives. A free screening is set for 6 p.m. at the Druid Heights Community Center, 2140 McCulloh St., 410-523-1350.

GREGORY MCDONALD, 71 "Fletch" author Gregory Mcdonald, whose best-selling Fletch mystery books also were made into films, died Sunday at his antebellum farm in Pulaski, Tenn., about 60 miles southwest of Nashville. He was 71. Mr. Mcdonald had cancer, his manager, David List, said Wednesday. Fletch, published in 1974, was the first in a series of books about an investigative reporter named Irwin M. Fletcher. Actor Chevy Chase portrayed the lead character in the 1985 movie Fletch and the 1989 sequel Fletch Lives.

Sunday's no-gloss Golden Globe Awards proved two things, one particularly thrilling for this year's Oscar watchers, the other potentially devastating. The devastating part should be obvious to anyone who endured even a minute of the regrettably televised announcement: An awards show is nothing without the glamour and trumped-up suspense. The faster cooler heads can put the Hollywood writers' strike behind them, the better. The thrilling thing about this year's Oscars, nominations for which will be announced Tuesday morning, is that no one has a firm grip on which film will emerge as the best picture winner for 2007.

A killing frost in August? It can happen, and it did happen, 25 years ago yesterday. The overnight low in Oakland, in far Western Maryland, was 28 degrees, and garden veggies turned to mush. The day's low at BWI Airport set a record at 49. Three inches of snow drew skiers to Killington, Vt. Record lows were set across the Midwest and Northeast. Scientists blamed stratospheric debris from Mexico's El Chichon volcano. It erupted in April 1982, and its dust circled the globe, dimming sunshine for a year.

Dennis Ferguson lives in Easton, and he's spotted the International Space Station several times, thanks to Weather Page alerts. He asks, "Can the ISS be viewed from all 50 states, or does its orbit restrict its viewing area?" Over time, the ISS's orbit will carry it over every spot on the globe between 51.6 degrees north and south latitudes. That includes every U.S. state except Alaska. But even Alaskans, from Anchorage to the panhandle, can occasionally spot the station if they look low in the southern sky.

Weather satellites now enable anyone to watch as winter storms dump snow from the Cascades to the Texas Panhandle, then rain from Mississippi to the Carolinas. Don Gansauer, of Baltimore, wonders: "Has a storm ever been strong enough and organized enough to [circle] the entire Earth?" Vern Kousky, of the U.S. Climate Prediction Center, says upper-level disturbances may circle the globe. But weather-making surface storms head northeast and die after three to five days.

THE QUESTION This week actor/director Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film. What are your favorite Eastwood films? Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We will publish the best answers we receive.

THE QUESTION Babel, Bobby, The Departed, Little Children and The Queen were nominated for the Golden Globe for best dramatic movie. Do you think these movies will be nominated for an Academy Award? Why? The nominations will be made public Jan. 23. Please send your thoughts in a brief note with your name, city and daytime phone number (and Such a Critic in the memo field) to arts@baltsun.com. We will publish the best answers we receive.