Idealism

Amanda Rodrigues-Smith's summer of idealism came to an end late Tuesday night, when Kweisi Mfume lost his bid to be the next U.S. senator from Maryland. Rodrigues-Smith worked as a volunteer for Mfume's campaign. From her dorm room at the University of North Carolina, where she's a junior political science and journalism major, she expressed disappointment that the candidate of her choice didn't win. So disappointed, she said, that she just might cast her ballot for Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in the general election.

Calipari or Smart David Teel Daily Press Three Final Fours but no banner in 10 years like Ben Howland? Not good enough at UCLA. Befitting the Hollywood aura, the ideal candidate is an A-list personality with an oversized ego, designer wardrobe and unassailable recruiting chops. Translation: He's John Calipari, who's taken Massachusetts, Memphis and Kentucky to the Final Four, the latter to last season's national championship. But Calipari wouldn't bail on the bluegrass for LA's bright lights.

How important timing is. "The War Room," a documentary on the inner workings of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign that opens today at the Charles, feels almost like a post-World War II unit tribute, celebrating some regimental combat team or airborne division's charge to glory across occupied Europe. But it has the bad fortune to arrive too late, when the celebrating has stopped and the complexity of the post-war environment has become evident and people are beginning to ask: What did we win?

Be still, my somewhat jaded American Catholic heart: A Jesuit? A Jesuit from Argentina who, as archbishop then cardinal, eschewed the chauffeur-driven limousine for the public buses of Buenos Aires? A Jesuit devoted to social justice and to helping the poor? And, he took the name of Francis, one of the coolest saints. Excuse me while I have a somewhat positive reaction to the smoke signals from Rome. Here we were - that is, me and a lot of my friends among the heretical faithful - thinking the whole process of electing a new pope was an exercise in identifying the safest old European conservative in red shoes.

Jennifer Henning sells children's books to small bookstores for Random House. Her favorite character is Lucille, a piglet who struggles victoriously to get into a snowsuit. "She has a great spirit," Henning said of the character, "that young, ready-for-anything kind of spirit." She might as well be describing herself. Henning, 31, of Sykesville, just graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Baltimore. She is due to have her first child in September and is beginning a job search she hopes will land her in public accounting.

It's 8 a.m. on the first day of the new Baltimore Freedom Academy. The school's 105 pioneering ninth-graders will be arriving in minutes. The atmosphere is frenetic. "We're having a baby today! One hundred of them!" Tisha Edwards, the head of school, gushes to a parent volunteer in the cramped office of the academy, which for now is meeting at Baltimore City Community College downtown. For the next four years, Edwards, a woman with no background in education, will be momma to those babies.

Much has been made of the idealism upon which Howard County's Columbia was founded. A promise of social and economic diversity undergirded the planned city when it was born a quarter-century ago. Now, however, that core philosophy seems under siege in Columbia, as it is on the national political scene.For those looking from the outside in, Columbia is often held up as a suburban utopia, unique in its willingness to accept people from all walks of life. But for those who know Columbia best -- the people who live within its borders -- a more realistic view is emerging.

"I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO GET A LOT of hate mail, but quite the opposite," says Brown University senior Jeff Shesol, creator of "Politically Correct Person," one of the characters in the popular Brown Daily Herald comic strip "Thatch."The favorable response to the introduction of P.C. Person -- fitted out like a superhero in cape, trunks and iron-clad idealism -- suggests "that the P.C. are a real minority," Mr. Shesol believes. But despite their small numbers, he says, "they make a lot of noise and shut down the discussion, which goes against the idea of what the university is all about.

It's hard to believe it has only been two years since a Bush administration official was mocking "the reality-based community" to the writer Ron Suskind. Since then, there has been a lot of reality - most of it in Iraq, and none of it pretty - and this week it finally caught up with Washington. In comes Robert M. Gates, the president's nominee as defense secretary, to put the stamp of the Republican Party's realist wing on U.S. policy in Iraq. It's a big retreat from idealism, or at least the idealism that marked the Bush administration's hopes to remake the Middle East.

I'll certainly forgive the Lindhs for still loving their child. And I'll excuse Susan Reimer for feeling sorry for them. I feel sorry for them, too. But I cannot take the comparisons Ms. Reimer draws in her column "Lindh rage gives way to sadness" (July 23) without comment. Ms. Reimer paints the Lindh case as another case of youthful idealism gone awry. And she compares his parents' experience to that of the parents of the kids killed at Kent State or while working in the voter registration drives in the South, or those beaten and harassed protesting the Vietnam War. Ms. Reimer writes, "All of these families learned a lesson the Lindh family now understands.

Five-year-old Teresa Bartlinski was lying unconscious shortly after 3 a.m. Friday at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia when the doctor told her parents they had called off the heart transplant she was prepped to receive. The girl - whose Catonsville family enlisted their church, community and global supporters to join them in praying for a miracle healing - remains a top candidate for a heart donation, but this midnight drive from Maryland had been a disappointment. Dr. Joseph Rossano, medical director for heart transplantation at the Pennsylvania hospital, told Teresa's parents, Ed and Ann Bartlinski, that the heart, which came from a child who had died, appeared in an ultrasound to be healthy enough.

Third of three articles on state ballot issues Dee Powell's belief in the ideal of marriage survived the reality of her divorce, and now she is working to preserve the institution as solely the union of a man and a woman. "Marriage is perfect," Powell says. "People are not. " But for Judy Gaver, what would make marriage perfect is to extend it to gay couples, such as the lesbians whose commitment ceremony she attended this summer. "It was beautiful, with the flowers and the music and the families," Gaver said.

Almost everything you read or hear about electric vehicles (EVs) is wrong - either written by deep-pocket oil company cronies, narrow-minded media, others with an interest in maintaining our total reliance on an oil society, or writers stuck in the century-old legacy thinking of the gas tank fill-once-a-week car model. The electric car is not a general replacement for the long-ranging gas car. But it is an ideal improvement for the majority of regular commuters and local travelers who would never have to go to a gas station again.

I fail to see the logic in the proposal for putting a Whole Foods store in that beautiful building right on the lake. No. 1, it is basically a one-side location, rather than being able to cater to customers from all sides of the store. No. 2, parking there is already very difficult. And No. 3, it seems that there is very little residential base there for potential customers. A far better location for this food store would be in the Wilde Lake Village Center (although I would actually prefer a Trader Joe's, which would fit very nicely into the space of the previous Giant store location)

Some Baltimore activists are fighting against a charter amendment that, if approved by voters in November, would align Baltimore's elections with the presidential election cycle - and in the process give the mayor and most of the city's other elected officials an extra year in office. The advocates are absolutely right that the proposal is not the ideal solution to the city's problems of unnecessary election expenses and low turnout. But given a recent state law change that controls the timing of Baltimore's primary election, voters should approve the charter amendment.

It's not hard, after visiting National Harbor, to see what the fuss is all about. The sprawling, gleaming development along the Potomac River in Prince George's County boasts expensive stores, a half-dozen hotels, highway access and convention traffic — a combination that has sold many on the idea that it could become Maryland's most lucrative casino location. "On the East Coast, this would be the best site," said County Executive Rushern Baker, who adds that he is otherwise no fan of casino gambling.

How does a community as successful as Columbia take a hard look at itself and map a course for the future -- without seeming to whine? We pose the question this way because the paradox of Columbia is that by most measures it works well and yet it struggles for something better. How easy it would be to dismiss that desire as the wants of a spoiled child.Indeed, Columbia has become an attractive home for the affluent. But it is also a community of diverse backgrounds -- racially, ethnically and economically.

It was going to happen anyway, but Mitt Romney's wealth and history as a healer of troubled corporations doubly assures that this year's presidential campaign will see a return in spades to good old "class warfare. " David Axelrod, President Obama's chief strategist, put it this way to reporters the other day: "This is a candidate (Mr. Obama) who has a mission ... and that is to rebuild an economy in which the middle class is thriving, in which people can get ahead, in which everybody from Main Street to Wall Street plays by the same rules and gets a fair shake.

A scaled-down tennis center at Troy Park is still possible and feasible. The Maryland Stadium Authority (MSA) study confirmed the positive economic impact and demand for tennis courts. The center would attract USTA tournaments, alleviate the shortage of courts for Howard County residents and provide a venue for the U.S. Tennis Association's largest youth initiative in its history, 10-and-under tennis. The MSA study also suggested that the county may want to consider "a smaller, first-class outdoor competitive court with relative limited spectator seating that could accommodate tournament activity as well as other uses.