Guest Speaker

Rachel Ritz to speak at Unity by the Bay The Rev. Rachel Ritz will be the guest speaker Sunday at Unity by the Bay Church. Ritz is a former pastor of the church, and the musical guest is Lea Morris. The interfaith church is at 836 Ritchie Highway, Suite 18, Severna Park. Information: 410-544-7990. St. Paul's Lutheran to address aging St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Glen Burnie will hold a "Bless the Years Celebration" on Oct. 15-16, starting with a noon luncheon with a speaker on Saturday.

Tip of the Week: Performance-based rewards The first step is to determine what performance is to be measured, how it will be measured and over what amount of time the measurement will take place. This must be clearly communicated to all participants so that a level of expected performance is understood. The second step is to determine appropriate rewards for achieving the goals. Typically, the management group decides on rewards. Form focus groups of employees and determine what the participants feel are appropriate rewards.

A political career seemed unlikely for Dennis W. Archer, who grew up in a home without indoor plumbing and went to work as a caddy at age 8 to help pay the bills. He graduated from college and was teaching learning-disabled children in Detroit when his future wife insisted he study law. Archer had never met a lawyer, but he enrolled in night law school. He graduated from the Detroit College of Law in 1970, and was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court 15 years later. But he grew restless as he watched Detroit's economy decline and violence surge.

Fidel: The Untold Story, director Estela Bravo's reverent documentary portrait of Castro, branded by enemies as a despot and championed by friends as a man of the people, is this week's offering at Cinema Sundays. Bravo captures Castro swimming with bodyguards, visiting his childhood home and school, joking with Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, meeting Elian Gonzalez and celebrating his birthday with members of the Buena Vista Social Club. Frank Pratka of the Baltimore-Cuba Sister City Project is guest speaker.

Carroll County Health Department is gauging interest in the creation of an AIDS quilt that would memorialize area residents who have lost their lives while suffering from the disease. "We would like to know if there is a need here to remember those who have died from AIDS," said Lynda Niles, a county health educator who frequently lectures on disease prevention. "If there is, then Carroll County could have its own quilt." For many years, families of acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients have contributed to the national AIDS quilt, an artifact so large that it is rarely displayed in its entirety.

The Friends of Joe Cannon Stadium will hold its 11th annual Baseball Scholar-Athletes Banquet Sunday May 19 at La Fontaine Bleu in Glen Burnie with former Baltimore Orioles infielder Bill Ripken as guest speaker. Ripken, who was inducted into the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame this week, is the guest speaker for the second straight year at the affair which runs from 6 to 10 p.m. Each year the Friends honors one senior baseball scholar from each of the county's 16 public and private baseball-playing schools with the overall winner receiving a $3,000 scholarship.

County Councilwoman Pamela G. Beidle will be guest speaker at the Olde Brooklyn Park Improvement Association meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Brooklyn Park Elementary School, Morgan Road and 14th Avenue. Beidle will present an update on economic development in the community. All area residents are welcome to attend. Information: 410-636-3269.

Seven years ago, Sidney Krome, an English professor at Coppin State College, was team-teaching an interdisciplinary honors course called Literature in History, which focused on the Holocaust and slavery in America. One week he brought in a guest speaker -- Baltimorean Leo Bretholz, a Holocaust survivor who saved his life by jumping out of a train bound for Auschwitz. Krome expected the session with Bretholz to last an hour. Instead, it stretched out to four hours. "It was an incredibly intense experience," the professor recalls.

The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will present a video screening of "Sounder" tonight at 7: 30 p.m. Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield star in Martin Ritt's classic 1972 drama about a sharecropper family living in Louisiana during the Depression. The video will be shown at the American Friends Service Committee, 4806 York Road. Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is free, and refreshments will be served. For more information call 410-377-7987.It's `Wonderful' to giveIf it's the holiday season, it must be time for the Senator to dust off a print of "It's a Wonderful Life," Frank Capra's classic Christmas tale starring Jimmy Stewart.

In an effort to foster greater collaboration among county schools and businesses, a local foundation has created an Internet-based clearinghouse intended to make it easier to form partnerships.The centerpiece of the initiative, called Building Bridges, is a Web site intended to meet the needs of educators, students and employers. It could be used for such diverse purposes as finding guest speakers, creating student internships or starting a mentoring program.Sponsored by the 21st Century Education Foundation, a group of area business leaders, the Building Bridges Web site is scheduled to be unveiled today by school officials and local business people.