Human Touch

When Stephen Pitcairn cried for help that night, Reggie Higgins answered. Higgins, who had just returned home to Charles Village from a trip, ran into the street and, seeing Pitcairn on the ground and bleeding from his chest, started screaming for help himself. He called for his neighbors by name — "Jacques!" "Regina!" — and ran back inside briefly to call 911. In the end, though, only Higgins would be there for Pitcairn, two strangers on St. Paul Street as cars drove by and nearby residents slept behind the aural wall of their air conditioners.

When Stephen Pitcairn cried for help that night, Reggie Higgins answered. Higgins, who had just returned home to Charles Village from a trip, ran into the street and, seeing Pitcairn on the ground and bleeding from his chest, started screaming for help himself. He called for his neighbors by name — "Jacques!" "Regina!" — and ran back inside briefly to call 911. In the end, though, only Higgins would be there for Pitcairn, two strangers on St. Paul Street as cars drove by and nearby residents slept behind the aural wall of their air conditioners.

Music, poetry, art and politics -- all for $5."It'll be a one-room Lollapalooza," promises Greg Schmoke, referring to the traveling alternative rock festival of the past two summers.Mr. Schmoke -- yes, the son of Mayor Kurt L. -- is one of the organizers of a benefit for HERO, the Baltimore-based AIDS resource organization, at The Bank tonight. The benefit will hTC feature several local bands, poetry readings, an art exhibit and informational booths.Among the performers will be Mr. Schmoke's own 1-year-old band, Legion Lost, which plays a hybrid of psychedelic rock, jazz and reggae.

The animals are toast. Humans rule. If 41 years of Super Bowl history can be used as a gauge, the Patriots, Packers, Cowboys or Giants will beat the Colts, Seahawks or Jaguars in the season's ultimate game Feb. 3. Unless, of course, the Chargers upset all carbon-based life forms, not to mention Las Vegas oddsmakers. Since the first Super Bowl in January 1967, teams with manly names have triumphed 31 times while teams named after animals have won nine. The Green Bay Packers kicked off human dominance with back-to-back wins, beating two other virile teams, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders.

During the last few days of 1993, I received several calls in response to my column on year-end charitable gifts. Most of the callers buzzed with joy about unexpected year-end gifts, some in the six and seven figures and nearly all involving appreciated property.Those gifts were in apparent response to the Clinton administration's recent tax-code changes that favor charitable gifts of such property for people affected by the Alternative Minimum Tax.One of my favorite calls came from Helen London, executive director of Central Scholarship Bureau (CSB)

Cambodian sculpture seems to have sprung fully developed into the world, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, and its vitality continued for a thousand years. It was rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism, and people unfamiliar with those faiths inevitably will fail to fully comprehend its religious nature. Even so, to see these works is to recognize them as one of the supreme artistic achievements of mankind.The exhibit, "Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia" at Washington's National Gallery of Art, opened yesterday, bringing together 100 works, almost all from the world's two premier collections: the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh and the Musee Guimet in Paris.

If two new Bruce Springsteen albums at the end of March strikes fans as a feast, the new Springsteen single arriving in record stores today must be an appetizer. The cassette-only release culls one song from each of the albums: "Human Touch" from "Human Touch" and "Better Days" from "Lucky Town."Both began receiving radio airplay yesterday. WBSB-FM (Variety 104.3) plans to play "Human Touch" every few hours, adding tTC "Better Days" soon. "People want to hear it," said program director Todd Fisher.

Bruce Springsteen is expecting in April, and it's going to be twins.Twin albums, that is.After months of rumor and speculation, it was announced yesterday that two new Springsteen albums -- "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" -- will be released simultaneously this spring. Although an exact delivery date could not be confirmed, the albums are expected to arrive in record stores in early April, according to a statement issued by Springsteen's publicist and Columbia Records."I'm excited about being finished," Springsteen is quoted as saying in the statement, but he's probably no where near as excited as his fans.

Bruce Springsteen is expecting in April, and it's going to be twins.Twin albums, that is.After months of rumor and speculation, it was announced yesterday that two new Springsteen albums -- "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town" -- will be released simultaneously this spring. Although an exact delivery date could not be confirmed, the albums are expected to arrive in record stores in early April, according to a statement issued by Springsteen's publicist and Columbia Records."I'm excited about being finished," Springsteen is quoted as saying in the statement, but he's probably no where near as excited as his fans.

"Human Touch," the long-awaited new single from Bruce Springsteen, finally shipped to record stores yesterday. But much to the dismay of Baltimore retailers, that shipment never arrived locally."We've had a lot of requests," said Tammy, a part-time clerk at Record & Tape Traders in Towson, who declined to give her last name, "but we haven't had it in our store yet. We're hoping it will be here [today]."Nor were there any Springsteen singles to be found at the Rotunda outlet of Recordmasters.

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe Michael Frayn Metropolitan Books / 506 pages / $32.50 Michael Frayn is known as a playwright (Noises Off, Copenhagen) and novelist (Headlong, Spies). But this prolific British author is also a philosopher, having studied philosophy at Cambridge in the 1950s. The Human Touch is a profound, personal account of his work on a range of topics, beginning (and ending) with the philosophy of consciousness and passing through the nature of physical law, the problem of free will, the relationship of language and thought to reality and the origin of the universe.

Tahira S. Thomas, Anne Arundel County's animal control administrator, points to the euthanasia room in the county's new animal control shelter. She envisions clouds painted on yellow walls and the table and chair where people will say goodbye to their pets. "This," she said, "is my most important room." The new shelter in Millersville opens tomorrow. Yesterday, about 40 dogs, 30 cats and one python, one pheasant and one iguana were moved there from the old shelter in Glen Burnie. The animals were put in cages, transported a few miles in animal control vans and carefully placed in new, roomier cages at the shelter.

ACCOUNTABILITY IN education can be like the weather: Wait 20 minutes and it changes. Now comes a change agent. Howard County's new superintendent, John R. O'Rourke, proffers an approach that breaks through the buzzwords, an idea other educators should consider. He wants to put names on the test results -- not for publication, of course, but to focus on the objective: helping young people learn. Too often, school systems allow themselves to be fixated on their standing in relation to a goal or to other systems.

Morris High School opened in 1902 as a neo-Gothic cathedral of learning. But when Carmen V. Russo arrived for her first day as principal, she found a run-down fortress, a school surrounded by blight whose students were considered too poor, too South Bronx to perform Shakespeare. Graffiti marred the streets in the school's neighborhood, where the Latin Kings, the Zulus and the Dominican Power gangs guarded their turf. Garbage was strewn behind Morris. Broken bottles littered its playground.

When Bruce Springsteen and the E St. Band roll into Washington's MCI Arena on Tuesday for the first of three sold-out shows, I'm sure that fans will be expecting an electrifying evening. I'm equally sure that Springsteen and com-pany will meet those expectations, delivering the sort of energetic, uplifting, joyful performance that has made this tour the season's hottest ticket. And I'm sure everyone in attendance will feel they got their money's worth and then some.I'm just not sure how much any of that means.

Walk into a model home of a new upscale development and a potential buyer will feel as if they have walked into something out of the pages of Architectural Digest.An immaculate kitchen. Perfectly made beds. Wallpaper beautifully hung and blended with the proper paint tones. Ralph Lauren furniture. Perhaps, Laura Ashley fabrics.You get the feeling that you're not looking at just a model house you feel as if you are home.Builders and developers have been furnishing model homes for more than 20 years, but over time it has evolved from merely filling empty rooms to showcasing a lifestyle and it's now a science and an art unto itself.

"Human Touch," the long-awaited new single from Bruce Springsteen, finally was shipped to record stores yesterday. But much to the dismay of Baltimore retailers, that shipment never arrived locally."We've had a lot of requests," said Tammy, a part-time clerk at Record & Tape Traders in Towson, who declined to give her last name, "but we haven't had it in our store yet. We're hoping it will be here [today]."Nor were there any Springsteen singles to be found at the hTC Rotunda outlet of Recordmasters.

No matter how you look at it, Bruce Springsteen has gone through a lot in the last four and a half years.First his marriage, which seemed the centerpiece of his last album, "Tunnel of Love," shattered like a fumbled 45 whenSpringsteen left actress-model Julianne Phillips for bandmate Patti Scialfa, who not only became the new Mrs. S. but also the mother of his son (Evan James) and daughter (Jessica Rae).Then, as if the upheavals in his personal life weren't trauma enough, Springsteen up and fired the E St. Band.

For more than a half-century, Marylanders have piled heaps of concrete, metal and stone along Maryland's shoreline in a bid to stop erosion, a trend that led residents to name the banks of one waterway "Fortress Severn."Now, backed by new state guidelines, many residents are shunning such expensive barriers for a more environmentally sound approach: placing rocks, adding sand and building a marsh."We're trying to give Mother Nature a hand up," said John Flood, a former bulkhead builder in Anne Arundel County who consults on dozens of marsh projects.

Cambodian sculpture seems to have sprung fully developed into the world, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, and its vitality continued for a thousand years. It was rooted in Hinduism and Buddhism, and people unfamiliar with those faiths inevitably will fail to fully comprehend its religious nature. Even so, to see these works is to recognize them as one of the supreme artistic achievements of mankind.The exhibit, "Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia" at Washington's National Gallery of Art, opened yesterday, bringing together 100 works, almost all from the world's two premier collections: the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh and the Musee Guimet in Paris.