Identity Crisis

High school may not be an experience everyone cares to relive, but Rob Nash leaps boldly back in time to re-create the horrors, embarrassments, heartbreaks and occasional heartwarming moments of those formative years in his two-part, one-man show, "Freshman Year Sucks" and "Sophomore Slump" at the Theatre Project.And, like many an adolescent who struggles through an identity crisis in high school, Nash's uneven show, which is still very much a work in progress, suffers from an identity crisis of its own.The two one-acts that make up the evening are the first installments of an intended tetralogy, each set in a different year in high school and each in a different decade.

Despite months of searching, the Ravens have not landed a mega-sponsor to put its name on the new downtown stadium, and a top team official says the facility may open without one."It's done when the right deal is done, and I don't think there are any time constraints at all," said David Modell, Ravens executive vice president. "It's not a factor."The time to get lettering made for the outside of the building may already have passed and, in internal planning for the stadium opening, team officials are calling it the NFL Stadium at Camden Yards.

Theirs is a name synonymous with success, one that is able to generate consumer excitement and boost mall property values in a glutted retail marketplace. Indeed, the name Nordstrom has for years translated into retail gold.How prized a merchant are they? Just ask Rouse Co., which last week succeeded in luring the Seattle-based chain to the Mall in Columbia after seven years of trying.But when Nordstrom Inc. debuts a two-level store there in three years, customers may find a much different retail emporium than they are accustomed to in Towson or Annapolis, where Nordstrom has outlets.

SIGNITHIA FORDHAM felt betrayed when she started observing "Capital High School" in inner-city Washington."How could you not value what our foreparents sacrificed so much for?" she wanted to cry out to the students at Capital, a virtually all-black school where Fordham, who is black, would observe student life from 1981 to 1984.What the Georgia-raised cultural anthropologist found -- and what drove her to shed "buckets of tears" in the early months of her study -- was a culture that placed greater value on group solidarity than on academic success.

WASHINGTON -- For months, Republican Party National Chairman Haley Barbour has kept his head down, staying in the shadows while the presidential contenders fought it out for the nomination.But late last week he decided to abandon his low-profile stance. With the GOP picture scrambled by Patrick J. Buchanan's victory in the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Barbour went public with a major address "about what our party stands for, and why."That the national chairman felt compelled to give such a speech is itself a sign of what the presidential race has wrought: an identity crisis within the Republican Party.

I'M GLAD I'M NOT Hollywood, that crazy City of Dreams out there on the West Coast. What a life!First rocketed to Fame and Fortune and Glamour by Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and Doug Fairbanks, then allowed to muck about with the wrong pharmaceuticals, the wrong guys and the wrong words by Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe and Lenny Bruce, and now pummeled by the sharks of the religious right, the political right and the cinematic right -- and not well...

CLEVELAND -- Dick Ambrose played linebacker for the Cleveland Browns from 1975 to 1983. After his National Football League career ended, he remained here to practice law.He remembers what pro football meant to Cleveland then, and what the Browns mean to the city now."The loss of the Browns would be a big loss to Cleveland's identity," Mr. Ambrose said yesterday. "It's really a dark day for Cleveland."I'm still in kind of a state of disbelief," he said. "It's like being on a space walk, and somebody closes the door on the capsule and you're still out there.

Somewhere out there, someone is buying me a Christmas present, and it is probably clothes.They will probably fit. I have been the same size my whole life. But will these clothes be me?You know what I mean. Will they be my colors? Will they make a statement? Will they say something about me? Will they define me, my age, my lifestyle, my generation? Will they show my personal flair, my imagination, my good taste?Did the gift-giver see them on the department store rack and say, "My god, this is Susan.

Before a preseason game, several members of the New York Knicks sat in front of a television set watching tapes of the Washington Bullets."Who are these guys?" one of the Knicks said in all sincerity.It's a different story now, with the trade last week for Chris Webber and the signing of first-round pick Juwan Howard. In one day, the Bullets went from a team of slow overachievers (they started the season 4-1) to one of the more promising teams of the future and a probable playoff team this season.

Erik H. Erikson, the psychoanalyst who profoundly reshaped views of human development, died yesterday at the Rosewood Manor Nursing Home in Harwich, Mass. He was 91.He had a brief illness, said his daughter, Sue Erikson Bloland of Manhattan.A friend and disciple of Sigmund Freud, Dr. Erikson was a thinker whose ideas had effects far beyond psychoanalysis, shaping the emerging fields of child development and life-span studies and reaching into the humanities.He was best known for the theory that each stage of life, from infancy and early childhood on, is associated with a specific psychological struggle that contributes to a major aspect of personality.