Happening

In Ms. Fussell's sixth grade math class at Hampstead Hill Middle School, in East Baltimore, a thing is happening last week that has nothing to do with addition, or fractions, or computing the distance from Baltimore to New York in kilometers, whatever they are.The day has been turned over to the violence in children's lives, to changing this condition which stays with us like a stain. And the thing happening in this classroom is at once heartfelt and frightening."It's not just happening in your neighborhood," says Ms. Fussell, "but what?"

His was the Voice of Summer. Across five decades of Baltimore Orioles baseball, those familiar tones arrived in bedrooms and barrooms, in kitchens and in cars strung out along dark lonesome roads. The athletes came and went with the years, as athletes do, but Chuck Thompson held things together. He brought us the ballgames of summer, and these helped turn us into a community. He was there every autumn, too, in a now-vanished ballpark on 33rd Street where he led the Sunday worship services for a religion called the Baltimore Colts.

AFTER YESTERDAY'S arrests in the sniper case, everyone could exhale again, a little. The police believe they have their men. For three weeks, the people of Maryland, Washington and Virginia were living with a very particular kind of terror, and now the region has turned some sort of corner. But toward what? The sniper -- and let's continue to refer to him in the singular until it is much clearer what was actually happening -- has taught some pretty painful lessons. With one rifle, not only were 10 people killed, but the lives of millions were disrupted and changed.

HOW enormous is Maryland's $1 billion surplus? It would take Albert Belle, the Orioles' $13-million-a-year baseball slugger, 77 seasons to exhaust that reservoir of cash. He'd be 110 years old in his final game. If the surplus were awarded to a lucky Marylander through a special lottery, the winner would receive a $1 million check every day for the next three years! It's a staggering total -- some $1 billion in surplus funds, not counting proceeds from the state's settlement with tobacco companies or even more surplus funds expected when new revenue projections are made in March.

Baltimore's school system needs a renaissance of the spirit as much as it needs additional resources, says Superintendent Walter G. Amprey.Money alone will not close the gaps, he says. What's needed is commitment, innovative leadership at the school level, teamwork within the system and support from people outside it.Improved schools provide an antidote to social decay, Dr. Amprey says, and a strengthening of public education in Baltimore will benefit the entire region.Conversely, he says, a failure to act now will endanger thousands of children and cause a hemorrhage of costly social problems.

MEMO TO THE O Man: We didn't vote for a city manager yesterday. We voted for a mayor. The subject is leadership. That's what we want from you, Martin O'Malley -- that thing called leadership. And energy. And enthusiasm. And confidence (not arrogance). And courage. All those grandiose-sounding things they write about in those dare-to-be-great self-help books. We don't need a policy wonk. We don't need a tinkerer. We need a big-picture guy with the common touch.We need someone with passion, for a change.

Washington -- Now that President Bush has visited Raytheon Corp. to thank the people there for developing the Patriot missile, I hope he will also find the time to visit the nation's newest defense contractors, the news business. We all work for the government now.I have enjoyed a certain vogue these past couple of weeks on television and radio because I suggested that correspondents in Saudi Arabia should come home because there is nothing for them to do out there. They are prisoners of war, or of the Defense Department.

A YEAR AGO, I wrote a piece in this space arguing that people who live in the city and suburbs are more alike than they're typically portrayed. It was headlined, ''the C-People and the S-People.'' Three more S's last week reconfirmed for me why we should stop defining city and suburb as oil and water.The first S, of course, was the great snow. It was a grand communal happening -- Ripken ''Streak Week'' without the scalpers (unless you count the hustlers asking $50 to shovel driveways), or a papal visit without the parade.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos has weathered his share of criticism for the three-year decline of his baseball team, but he clearly was caught by surprise by a scathing six-page critique of his management style in the Feb. 12 issue of Sports Illustrated. The off-season has been relatively quiet in Baltimore, but the SI article lambasted Angelos for his alleged intervention in negotiations with free-agent reliever Tom Gordon in November and recounted a series of negative anecdotes from the eight-year tenure of the feisty majority owner.

Harbor East is moving farther east with baker-cum-developer John Paterakis Sr.'s announcement Friday that he will break ground this summer on a new, mega-Whole Foods and later on a new residential/retail building across Central Avenue from the glittering mini-city he has almost single handedly built during the last 15 years. Things are bustling in that corner of the city, what with the planned construction of a new headquarters office tower for Exelon Corp. and a variety of other smaller scale residential, retail, office and hotel developments nearby.