Imagine

If a place can suffer from an identity crisis, then central Towson has been such a place. For much of this century, Towson was the sleepy seat of Baltimore County government. But in the past three decades, private office towers, modern government buildings and big commercial projects such as the new Towson Commons and the revamped Towson Town Center have elbowed their way in among the strip shopping malls and neighborhoods near York Road, the area's "Main Street."The question, then, often arises: What is downtown Towson?

I was happy to see that Bond Mill Elementary has advanced to the state finals of DestinationImagination, according to Sarah Toth's article in your edition of March 21.  Bond Mill was a worthy competitor when our kids were in Odyssey of the Mind (OM), a similar program, and I see that that school is still at it. Our family was heavily involved in OM for a dozen years in the '80s and '90s.  For months each year our house was littered with art materials, tools and balsa wood.  Our teams were fortunate to get to the World Competition three times, representing Glenarden Woods Elementary, Kenmoore Middle and Eleanor Roosevelt High.

You may say John Lennon was a dreamer. But he was not the only one.Among those moved by "Imagine," the songwriter's paean to "a brotherhood of man," were Terry and Linda Bosley of Ocean City. With the tidy sum that Mr. Bosley had earned as a record-breaking real estate salesman, they bought a 41-foot sailing yacht, named it Imagine, and set out with their three preteen children in search of freedom, adventure, new lands, pure waters and "above us only sky."Twenty years after the song caught their fancy and their boat got its name, the Bosleys are back home in Maryland.

Let's say the CEO of your company is retiring, but he's going to keep an office at headquarters and the services of the same secretary as the new guy. Awkward! Or how about working at a company where the boss just decided you can no longer work from home, a godsend once you had kids, even as she brings her baby to the nursery she built for him next to her office. Meow! This past week was a veritable schadenfreude-fest for those of us who love nothing more than complaining about our work — unless it's discovering how delightfully awful someone else's office must be. So, the Vatican: On top of the usual workplace issues that must plague the Roman Catholic Church's corporate offices — there's that impenetrable glass ceiling for any women employees, for one thing — this past week brought word of a leadership transition from, um, hell.

Imagine this. In the summer of the year 2000, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival opens its seventh season with ''King Lear.'' The critics rave. All 21 performances sell out. So do all the performances of the festival's three other productions: ''Much Ado About Nothing,'' ''Richard III'' and ''Measure for Measure.''Imagine brilliantly acted and beautifully staged Shakespearean dramas. Before each one there's a backstage tour and a lecture by someone such as the director, the set designer or the #F dramaturge.

One of the many delights of Richard Curtis' Love Actually was how it crammed eight romantic-comedy plotlines into its 135 minutes. At roughly 17 minutes apiece, each story thread got its due, and not a one wore out its welcome (all right, the one about the randy Brit moving to Milwaukee came close). Imagine Me & You is the perfect movie for those who wish Curtis had devoted his entire film to one story. Imagine Me & You (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Starring Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode.

An exhibit of 70 works by the late John Lennon -- including copper etchings, lithographs, silk screens and pen and ink drawings -- go on display today through Sunday at the HarborView Marina and Yacht Club on Key Highway near Federal Hill."

THE body of Kennedy family literature has become so glutted with trash -- from the adoring to the tittering to the scurrilous -- that it is difficult to imagine there is a Kennedy book, screenplay or docudrama left that could be worth a more serious literary debate than is normally provoked by the publication of a new Dell comic.But written one Joe McGinniss has. And surely someone in the publishing industry must now, in gratitude, endow a prize for the most imaginative sales-generating stunt by an author writing on a subject on which he has little original to say. After all, anybody who can invent dialogue can throw together another blockbuster on Princess Diana.

Network television's midseason of new series starts tonight with NBC's Imagine That, a sitcom about the marriage and fantasy life of a comedy writer. Let's hope what follows is better than this - lots better. Imagine That, which stars Hank Azaria (Tuesdays With Morrie) as a Walter Mitty wannabe, is such a dull, derivative, predictable and lifeless sitcom that it made me wonder if the entire genre is exhausted. The really stupid thing about Imagine That is that it borrows shamelessly from a very bad sitcom.

KERMIT THE FROG was right. It's not easy being green, and here's why: Environmentalism is the curmudgeonly brake, grinding to restrain that heady, high-revving, wondrous engine, the economy. Befitting brakemen, the language of us greenies is laced with words like limits, avoid, minimize, reduce, minimize, sacrifice, regulate. Right now, it has to be that way. For all our talk of "win-win" solutions, the faster our modern industrial economy runs, the worse nature usually fares. It's a hell of a thing that a homebuilding recession is among our more reliable protectors of open space; that a drought, cutting runoff from farms and streets, is the only way we clear up Chesapeake waters.

When Pope Benedict XVI shockingly announced his impending retirement this week, it was a sign that the contemporary world's relentless reinvention of leadership has reached into even our oldest institutions. The Catholic Church's official list of popes, the Annuario Pontificio, names 265 popes (excluding some Antipopes), stretching back two millennia to St. Peter himself. In all that time, just four have resigned. And Benedict is the first to do so in six centuries. Why him, and why now?

News flash: President Romney and congressional leaders met today to review the terms of the recently concluded fiscal cliff deal wherein the Bush tax cuts were extended by four years, the corporate income tax rate was reduced from 35 percent to 25 percent, and the capital gains tax rate for middle class taxpayers was lowered to 10 percent. The leaders returned to Washington to encouraging news from Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 800 points since the fiscal deal was announced.

Baltimore's Fifth Regiment Armory is a good place to start for some perspective on the recent presidential election. Within its gray stone walls, the tumultuous 1912 Democratic National Convention played a major scene in the political drama that resulted in an incumbent president not only being defeated, but finishing third in the national election. The dynamics that led to such an extraordinary result are lessons that apply to any analysis of an election involving a sitting president.

One of the striking aspects of the third presidential debate was the frequent mention of Israel (34 times). Western Europe and the challenges facing the European Union or Latin America hardly registered. It is as if the Israel issue is a burning one in American politics, or that the American public is dying to see which candidate supports Israel more. Neither is close to the truth. Even aside from the fact that Americans are not much focused on foreign policy in any case in determining their electoral choices, the Israel issue is often misunderstood.

Beyond the verdant crops flourishing in this summer's 100-degree heat and regular rainstorms, a guesthouse from long ago sits near the northeastern edge of the 236-acre property that is home to the Shrine of St. Anthony in western Ellicott City. Carriages once traversed this portion of the scenic land - now bisected by L-shaped Folly Quarter Road and leased out as farmland to the University of Maryland by the Conventual Franciscan Friars - to deliver guests to lively summertime parties at the estate known as Folly Quarter.

Baltimore County school Superintendent Dallas Dance is recommending the county's only charter school be given two more years to improve its sagging performance. The school board will take a vote on whether to give Imagine Discovery a two-year extension of its charter on Aug. 21. The board has approved a one-year extension, but Dance said another year is needed in order to see if the school can collaborate with the school system and make improvements. Imagine Discovery Public Charter School, started in 2008, underperforms schools in its area of the county and the school district as a whole.

IMAGINE AMERICA in 1991 with the South still rigidly segregated and blacks playing no meaningful part in Southern political life. Imagine small numbers of rural voters controlling most of our state legislatures. Imagine America under a deadening repression of free speech and ideas.That is the country we might have had except for one thing: the service of Earl Warren as chief justice of the United States.Warren was born 100 years ago last month. The centennial has just been celebrated by his law school, Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, and by the University of California at San Diego.

NEW YORK - Imagine an employer who subsidizes up to 40 percent of your rent - as much as $13,000 in annual housing costs. Then imagine the boss gives you more than $17,000 a year to pay for your child's private education - for 20 years. Among other fringes, you receive a "children's allowance" - $1,936 per child annually - for up to six offspring. But, alas, it's still expensive to live in New York City. So the company awards you a 41 percent cost-of-living adjustment on top of your six-figure base salary.

Don't ask for a drink menu at the Waterfront Hotel in Fells Point; the popular hangout doesn't have one. The bartender will merely point to the assortment of canned beers on the wall, a ho-hum selection of been-there, done-that domestics and imports. It doesn't matter. The only list that counts at the Waterfront (which, by the way, isn't actually a hotel) is written in chalk on the bar's wall: It's a rundown of the artists scheduled to perform on the bar's typically crowded downstairs floor.

Parents of the only charter school in Baltimore County are criticizing the system for not having a process for the school to renew its contract, which is set to expire in two months. However, Imagine Discovery Public Charter School, near Woodlawn, has been offered a one-year extension, according to Charles Herndon, a Baltimore County school system spokesman. "We have agreed to extend the charter contract one year. During that time, there would be an evaluation done as to whether we would extend that to four years," he said.