Habitat

On June 29, the Bush administration quietly approved a keystone of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy: furthering our addiction to oil through the 5-Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. The program governs the sale of all offshore oil and gas leases in federal waters over the next five years and anticipates the drilling of more than 10 billion barrels of oil and more than 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in some of our most pristine and sensitive marine habitats.

Kate Jones passed up the palm trees and sandy beaches of Florida this week for the lesser-known spring break locale of Brooklyn. The 20-year-old took a nearly seven-hour van trip with eight classmates from Providence College in Rhode Island to volunteer at two damaged houses with Anne Arundel Habitat for Humanity. The effort is part of the international organization's Spring Break Collegiate Challenge, which is expected to recruit 11,000 American and Canadian students to build affordable homes for low-income families.

A paintbrush in her hand, Winifred Wilson prepared to add another coat of cream-colored paint to the door before her. As brush met wood, she recalled how her family once turned an apartment building into a single-family home. "I'm one of 10 kids," said Wilson, who today is deputy secretary of programs for the Maryland Department of Human Resources. "My father knocked down the walls and then we painted the whole house," she recalled as she worked on the door, which will be hung in a West Baltimore rowhouse completely renovated by volunteers.

HOLIDAY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY GIVING TREE / / 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday. Through Dec. 31. Towson Town Center, 825 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson. 410-494-8800 or townsontowncenter.com. ....................... As long as you're in the mall and in a gift-giving mood, stop by the Giving Tree, a fund-raiser for Chesapeake Habitat for Humanity, an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, which helps underprivileged families get housing by building affordable houses.

They've been friends since high school. They've watched over each other's children. And they'll soon be next-door neighbors in homes built for them through Habitat for Humanity. Nichole Keys and Lucille Council, both single mothers, will move into their three-bedroom homes along a quiet Aberdeen street next month. Wearing a hard hat and a T-shirt reading "I am too blessed to be stressed," Council celebrated her 42nd birthday last week watching her new kitchen come together. "I finally will have a home to call my own, not just a house," she said.

The struggle to provide affordable housing for limited-income working families focused yesterday on a foggy hillside in tiny Lennox Park off Dorsey Road, as low-flying airplanes approached nearby Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and occasional passenger trains whizzed by on tracks just steps away. Howard County's Habitat for Humanity chapter held a groundbreaking for a new detached home it hopes to build next spring on the L-shaped Elkridge parcel in what was once an isolated hamlet populated mainly by railroad workers.

Suddenly, the little porticos are everywhere in Brooklyn - signs of life at homes that were once vacant, and symbols of hope in a neighborhood where drugs were once sold fearlessly in the daylight. They are the signatures of Arundel Habitat for Humanity, which is concentrating its efforts on five blighted blocks in the South Baltimore community. Reasoning that a home is only as good as the neighborhood it's in, the group is buying and rehabbing homes at a rapid rate to turn around a neighborhood on the brink.

OFF TOLCHESTER BEACH -- The skies were a worrisome gray, and the wind was strong enough to knock over even the most seasoned seaman. Fishermen who had mulled a day on the water seemed to have quickly scrapped their plans - for miles, the Chesapeake Bay seemed almost deserted. But then the Patricia Campbell plowed through the whitecaps. The crew aboard the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's 60-foot research vessel hoisted a crane, loaded several concrete balls filled with holes and dropped them into the water.

The Anne Arundel County chapter of Habitat for Humanity, the national nonprofit organization that helps build affordable homes for people without them, is teaming up with the American Plywood Association, Residential Architect magazine and television's Bob Vila to build a home for a needy family in Lothian.The project -- called a "Blitz Build" -- will take one week, with the work being aired daily from Nov. 8 through Nov. 12 on CBS's "The Early Show with Bryant Gumbel."A team of volunteers will erect the house from the award-winning design submitted by John W. Allegretti for the Homes for Habitat Design Awards competition sponsored by the magazine.

Donnetta LeGrande and her daughter Michelle, 18, are preparing to pack up their Westview apartment and move into a newly refurbished home in Northeast Baltimore's Better Waverly area. But first, they have to help clean the house.LeGrande is the first person in the country to benefit from a new national partnership between Habitat for Humanity and Nehemiah Progressive Housing, two nonprofit groups that provide housing for low-income families.Members of the two organizations joined LeGrande in beginning to gut her future home in the 2900 block of Independence St. yesterday, as Nehemiah's $1 million contribution to the joint program was announced, marking the partnership's national beginning.

OAKLAND - -Successful bear hunts run in Yvonne Taft's family. Last year, her husband and son-in-law each shot a bear. This year, it was Taft's turn, and she made the most of it. Less than an hour into Maryland's sixth black bear hunt Monday morning, the Essex woman and her husband were walking along a trail on Garrett County's Meadow Mountain on the way to their hunting spot when a 232-pound bear ambled out of the woods to their left. It crossed the trail, stopped and looked at them. Her gun was unloaded.

Cherise Jones is so excited to be buying a home - a new home - that she drops by the site two or three times a week just to look. This morning, it's only a foundation, one of nine on a vacant East Baltimore block. Next month, Jones' home will be complete. Tonight, Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake is trucking in modular houses to set on the foundations, a first for the nonprofit and an emerging trend in affordable-housing efforts. Factory-built houses aren't just quick to put up, they're cheaper than homes constructed on-site.

Jeff Brauner of Baltimore was in Atlantic City last month, "and for the first time I can remember I saw some terns on the beach in addition to the usual sea gulls. Does that have any weather significance?" The state Department of Natural Resources' Dave Brinker says no. You just got lucky. Tern populations are in long-term decline because of the loss of low, predator-free island habitat as sea levels rise and land subsides around the Chesapeake.

Twenty years ago, Sonia Street stuck her head out of her public housing complex window and was surprised to see two men who looked out of place wandering through her Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. It was obvious they weren't from the streets she knew all too well, so Street figured they were police officers looking to bust a narcotics dealer and went about her business, expecting never to see them again. But over the next couple of weeks, she kept seeing them. "Don't they know they could get hurt out here?"

On June 23, 2009, Deane F. The family will receive friends Saturday 1:00 to 2:00 P.M. at Myers-Durboraw Funeral Home, 91 Willis Street, Westminster where a service of memorial will take place at 2:00 P.M. Inurnment will follow at Meadow Branch Cemetery, Westminster with military honors. Memorial contributions to Chesapeake Habitat for Hunanity, 3326 Keswick Road, Baltimore, MD 21211 or online at www.chesapeakehfh.org. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.myersdurborawfh.com.

With a tool belt slung on her hips, Dana Gaither crouched on a deck on a recent Wednesday, squinting at the bottom edge of a piece of composite siding. Palms on the piece, she lapped it over the top of a big plank of siding. She aligned the lower edge with a red line on the plank. "I think that's it," she shouted over a symphony from a nearby generator, hammers, saws and drills. Volunteer Carol Suzdak pounded in one nail. Next, Gaither hammered in the other. Then, each holding an end of a level, they made sure the siding was on straight.

Wind power threatens to silence songbirds Frank D. Roylance's excellent article "Tracking the songbirds" (Feb. 13) was a fascinating account of how far scientists have come in their ability to trace the thousands of miles of migration by birds wearing tiny "geo-locators" attached to their backs. But the part of his article that should serve as a wake-up call for those rushing to place wind turbines on the unfragmented forests all along the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains is the paragraph pointing out that "scientists have known that destruction and fragmentation of forests in North America are among the factors that have contributed to population declines here."

On January 10, 2009 RAYMOND ALAN WELLER beloved husband of Rosalie L. (nee Fiorenza); loving father of Lucas Weller, Alana Weller and Jennifer Sharff and her husband Christopher; cherished grandfather of Emily, William and Kaiya; dear son of the late Henry and Mary Weller; dear brother of Irene Wilson, Tom Weller, Frank Morel and Mary Jean Poole. Also survived by other loving relatives and friends. A Christian Wake Service will be held at the family owned Duda-Ruck Funeral Home of Dundalk, Inc., 7922 Wise Avenue on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Friends may call Monday 6-9 p.m. and Tuesday 3-5 and 7-9 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Rita Catholic Church on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Interment Oak Lawn Cemetery.

John Graham had a game-high 25 points to power No. 3 Calvert Hall past host and No. 10 Towson Catholic, 59-54, yesterday in Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference basketball. The Cardinals (12-2) led most of the game, but the Owls (6-6) started the fourth quarter on a 6-0 run to tie the score at 41 with seven minutes left. Calvert Hall regained the lead, and Towson Catholic came within three points with a minute to play before Sean Holmes went 2-for-4 from the foul line to secure the win. Levi Noel led the Owls with 16 points, and Devin Spencer had 12. No. 11 EDMONDSON 56, PARK 38: : Karl Nelson scored 18 points, tied for the game high, in a losing effort for the Bruins (5-3)

SHA completes project to restore wetlands The State Highway Administration recently completed a $764,000 environmental project to restore more than six acres of forested wetlands at the Magness Farm in northern Harford County to help improve water quality from highway runoff as well as provide a vital habitat for native wildlife. The project was part of Gov. Martin O'Malley's "Maryland: Smart, Green & Growing" environmental initiative. "The planting of more than 1,600 trees and restoration of wetlands will help provide a natural filter to reduce the impact of contaminated water due to highway runoff," O'Malley said.