Hard Times

Former Baltimore Ravens player Jermaine Lewis has apparently fallen on hard times. Remembered for returning a kickoff 84 yards for a touchdown in the 2001 Super Bowl, he now makes the headlines more for his arrests than his exploits on the field. His most recent brush with the law on Thursday in Baltimore County gives hints that the former star has fallen. According to a police report, after Lewis was pulled over after an officer saw an unrestrained child in the car, the former player said was driving on a suspended license because "he needed to get food for his son and something to heat his home.

Something really important to me for the wedding is to make sure my mom is honored in a special way. As a little bit of background, my mom was a single mom most of my life and raised three kids (eventually four but the littlest came much later), while going to school and working full time. Somehow she managed to raise us all to be strong individuals who can succeed at anything we put our mind to. I think having to deal with hard times made her a better mom, and I wouldn't change a thing about how she raised me if I could.

In New Jersey, it's the liberal Democratic congressman who won the governorship by a landslide and then ramrodded through $2.8 billion in new taxes. He had his political head handed to him last fall as Republicans rebounded to veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature. At last count, Gov. James Florio's voter approval rating stood at 26 percent -- a recovery of a few points since last year when it was at 17 percent.L But are big taxers the only governors in the political soup?

I know we have become a nation of such short attention spans and long-term addiction to instant gratification that asking viewers to spend even an hour with a documentary that could change the way they see the world is probably a fool's errand. But this fool is asking -- no begging -- you to see "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," an HBO documentary premiering at 9 Monday night and repeating throughout the month on HBO and HBO2. I have not seen anything on-air, online or in print that so deftly nails one of the most important and least reported stories of our economic and political lives in this presidential election year.

President Bush may not concede there is an economic recession, but WJZ-Channel 13 is offering this weekend an unusual on-the-air campaign "to help Maryland families survive recession," in cooperation with local radio station WWIN-AM/FM (1400/95.9).Anchor Al Sanders is hosting "Hope In Hard Times," an hour-long special spawned by layoffs and budget cutbacks. It airs at 8 p.m. tomorrow and will be simulcast on the radio stations. (A repeat airing is also scheduled on Channel 13 at 10 a.m. Monday.

WELCOME TO HARD TIMES. By E.L. Doctorow. Vintage International. 212 pages. $10.Over the last three decades, E.L. Doctorow has gained fame as the author of such novels as "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate." But "Welcome to Hard Times" was his first book, which came in 1960.Because the story takes place in the Old West, it looks like a Western, acts like a Western and was even made into a Western movie. Yet it isn't really a Western. The setting merely provides a backdrop for Mr. Doctorow's story of cowardice and hate.

A gurgling fountain surrounded by palm trees adorns th atrium in front of the new Nordstrom department store in Towson Town Center mall.Cafe-style tables are grouped about the fountain and the palms, and a waiter in formal attire moves quietly from table to table, taking orders, tidying up.Patrons sip espresso, nibble at pastry.From a distant skylight, sunlight splashes the area.Ivory-colored columns line the walls.All told, I beheld a scene of genteel splendor."Hmm," I said as I approached the store with a friend.

James Smith sat outside the Maryland National Bank building on Calvert Street, holding a plastic cup and a sign that detailed his plight: burned out of his home, injured in the fire, two grandchildren killed.Every word of it was true. But it happened in 1975 -- a fact that Smith readily shared after two quarters dropped into his cup.After all, 50 cents is a sizable donation in this economy, one of the largest Smith may have seen all day. And Smith -- with his hand-lettered tale of woe -- was having a better day than most panhandlers can count on in these hard times.

Friends and colleagues may have thought Ernie Swanson had lost his mind a few months back.Amid a recession that has many car dealers tightening their belts and scrambling to reduce inventory, Mr. Swanson, owner of Lee Oldsmobile, a medium-size dealership in Glen Burnie, did the unthinkable.He ordered nearly 200 more cars from the factory and started a high-spirited promotion blitz that raised his advertising budget by 40 percent.It was a "tremendous gamble," Anthony P. Filice, Oldsmobile's local zone manager, said.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush fought for his political life last night using the same battle cry against his new foe -- the deeply ailing economy -- that he took up last year against Iraq: "This will not stand."In a State of the Union address that has been called critical to his re-election, Mr. Bush outlined what he wants to do to end "hard times" and attempted to re-ignite the patriotic spirit that made the president last year's hero after the Persian Gulf war."We are going to lift this nation out of hard times inch by inch and day by day, and those who would stop us had best step aside," the president said, openly taunting the Democratic lawmakers assembled before him in a joint session of Congress.

Growing up in Dundalk, Kent Mosmiller knew about Sparrows Point Country Club. He spent summers on little boats along Bear Creek where he could check out the 40-foot cabin cruisers at the club marina and, beyond that, the green expanse of the golf course. It wasn't for him or his family. The club was an enclave for what he called "white hats" at Bethlehem Steel, which established the club as a benefit for supervisors in the 1920s. Neither Mosmiller nor his parents ever worked for the company.

Former Baltimore Ravens player Jermaine Lewis has apparently fallen on hard times. Remembered for returning a kickoff 84 yards for a touchdown in the 2001 Super Bowl, he now makes the headlines more for his arrests than his exploits on the field. His most recent brush with the law on Thursday in Baltimore County gives hints that the former star has fallen. According to a police report, after Lewis was pulled over after an officer saw an unrestrained child in the car, the former player said was driving on a suspended license because "he needed to get food for his son and something to heat his home.

I sat with Kate Schulz and Stephanie Halcott, social workers with headsets, as they answered pleas for help at the United Way of Central Maryland's fifth-floor 211 call center overlooking Lombard Street. People who've lost their jobs and who've contemplated suicide, people who've lost their homes and had to move into a relative's abode, people who've run out of food and money - they all call this place. More so, of course, since the Great Recession and its long, grinding aftermath.

Something seemed not quite right the other evening while I stood at a Charles Street bus stop. There were just too many people purposefully moving about on the street at 7:30. Some carried grocery bags. Others were making runs to the wine shop. Some were on bicycles. Flip-flops were the footwear of choice. Charles Street had a steady stream of people — what I've heard called a critical mass, a buzz, a bustle. It was a good experience, but it nevertheless caught me off guard.

Why is the House of Representatives' vote to require a balanced budget such an empty gesture? ("Cut, cap and empty gesture," July 20.) This is what millions of American families do when hard times knock on their door. They cut their spending, they cap their future budgets, and they attempt to work within their means. This is what The Sun says is an empty gesture? The Sun's grasp on reality is, at best, questionable. John M. Kerney, Towson

The U.S. government teeters on the brink of an unprecedented, self-inflicted debt default, and the House of Representatives can't seem to keep its eye on the ball. After the House debated the fate of incandescent lightbulbs last week, it approved on Tuesday a bill called, "The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011. " Among other things, it would tie an increase in the debt limit to approval, by both houses, of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget. It is imperative that the federal government reduces unsustainable budget deficits.

Maybe it was the clanging of the golden bell rising above the usual background din of recorded Christmas carols and impatient traffic outside the Cross Street Market. Or perhaps it was that inner voice, that thing people used to call, in times of greater moral clarity, "your conscience."Something made them stop, backtrack a bit, juggle packages or children and remove their gloves in freezing temperatures to dig through a pocket or purse and send coins rattling or bills rustling into my red kettle.

It's no secret that the character of Ed Easton in "Pink Slips and Parting Gifts" is based on Columbia founder James Rouse. And the white stucco architectural oddity that overlooks a man-made lake is clearly the undisguised former digs of the Rouse Co. First-time author Deb Hosey White, an ex-Rouse employee, further acknowledges that her general-fiction book was inspired by the General Growth Properties' purchase of the Rouse Co. in 2004. "Fact and fiction blend and flow together throughout the book," she said of the novel, published in August.

MLB will closely follow the NFL's attempt to get players to agree to blood testing for HGH. It's going to be hard for the Players Association to reject those tests if other sports are using them. … At some point after Opening Day we'll find out if the Red Sox and Adrian Gonzalez really did agree to a seven-year, $154 million extension at the time he was acquired from the Padres. Both parties have denied it, but a lot of executives on other teams believe the Red Sox were trying to avoid a hit on their 2011 luxury tax. … Brian Wilson's strained left oblique is a significant concern for the Giants.

Homeownership became an achievable American dream thanks to government-insured 30-year mortgages, part of the federal government's bold intervention in the housing market since the Great Depression. The ideology of the dream had germinated for decades, though. Political Progressives, a bipartisan reform movement between the 1890s and the 1930s, saw homeownership as good for America. Lawrence Veiller, of the influential Russell Sage Foundation, wrote in 1910: "Where a man has a home of his own he has every incentive to be economical and thrifty, to take his part in the duties of citizenship, to be real sharer in government.