Kettle

Threatened by competition, bad weather and thieves, the Salvation Army's red kettle - long a symbol of holiday alms for the poor - might be on its way out of the cold and into a computer. One of the nation's most successful fund-raisers for human services, the Salvation Army has relied for more than a century on bell-ringing workers who stand outside stores collecting change to help the needy eat, buy toys and pay electric bills during the winter. But restrictions from some retailers and a tough economy are leading the organization to expect a lean year and to try fund-raising techniques unheard-of when the first kettle was hung in 1891.

The Salvation Army of Annapolis has set a goal of $125,000 for its 1996 Christmas Kettle Campaign and has added five kettle locations to the usual 15.The goal is nearly double the $63,000 volunteers collected last year.To help achieve the goal, the Salvation Army is pursuing local service organizations to adopt kettle locations and have volunteers at the kettles six days a week from Nov. 22 through early Christmas Eve.Several local groups, including Kiwanis of the Severn, Annapolis Civitan Club, Annapolis Rotary Club, Kiwanis of Crofton and Kiwanis of Mayo, have agreed to become "Kettle Keepers."

WASHINGTON - His kettle is 44 inches wide and can hold about a barrel of water. Every morning at 8, Mansur Makhmudov begins chopping up mounds of Uzbekistan's bright yellow carrots along with onion and mutton. Then he pours a couple of quarts of sunflower oil in his wok-like kettle - called a kazan - and fires it up. Onions, carrots, meat and 25 pounds or more of rice go in. By 11:30 a.m., Makhmudov, who is 51, is ready to serve his plov to a hundred people at his cafe in Samarkand, once one of the great Silk Road cities.

A former investigative reporter for WMAR-TV was arrested Tuesday night and charged with domestic aggravated assault, accused of throwing a kettle of hot water at his wife during an argument in their West Baltimore home, authorities said. Darryn M. Moore, 41, a reporter for WTTG-TV in Washington, was released on his own recognizance shortly after he appeared before a District Court commissioner, authorities said. According to the police report, shortly before 9 p.m., a Western District officer responded to a domestic violence call in the 1500 block of N. Bentalou St. and was told by Moore's wife, Nicole, 38, that during an argument her husband picked up a kettle of hot water from the stove and threw it at her. The kettle missed hitting her, but splashed hot water on her legs when it hit the floor, the report said.

These specialists wear sterilized gloves and dart about in white coats. The floor is frequently flushed with clean water. The overhead bright lights glance off the stainless steel carts.Is this a medical lab? Not at all. The scrapplers are at work.Once a week on the Falls Road in Hampden, two or three workers transform the lowliest scraps of a butchered pig into 500 pounds of solid rectangles of scrapple, the cooked meat pudding so loved -- and often berated -- in parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

You might feel as if you're walking into your grandmother's house as you enter the one-story, white clapboard building. There is a casual, country feel to the Country Kettle Cafe in Poplar Springs, but the food is anything but ordinary. Owners and chefs Jim and Amy Crooks opened their cozy western Howard County restaurant a little more than a year ago after spending years looking for the right location. They have years of cooking experience at restaurants in Montgomery County, where they grew up. The couple had dreamed of owning a restaurant for some time.

On July 22, 2005, THOMAS RUSSELL HOLMES, SR., of Bel Air, MD; beloved husband of the late Marian Wagner Holmes; devoted father of William J. Holmes and his wife Vickie, Patricia H. Kettle and her husband Patrick, Rebecca V. Holmes and her partner Helene Scharf, and the late Thomas R. Holmes, III. Also survived by three grandchildren, Michael Holmes, Stephen Holmes and Andrew Kettle. A Service will be in the family owned Mc Comas Funeral Home, P.A., Bel Air, MD, on Tuesday, July 26, 2005, at 12 P.M. Interment will be in Bel Air Memorial Gardens, Bel Air, MD. Friends may call at the funeral home in Bel Air, on Tuesday prior to service from 10 to 12 noon.

America's obesity problem is our lifeblood here." - TAAVI McMAHON, president of a biofuels cooperative in Madison, Wis., on the source of most of the waste vegetable oil - 3,000 gallons a week - for his recycling and filling station: a Kettle Foods potato chip plant; while clean-burning vegetable oil is widely used as a fuel in Germany, it has only recently begun to catch on in the United States

A 39-year-old Pasadena woman was robbed of her purse Monday night while coming out of a Sears department store in Glen Burnie, police said.The woman told police she had just left the store about 8:10 p.m. when a man pushed her, took her purse and got away in an early model white Chevrolet. The woman's purse contained $100.The suspect is described as a white male, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, with long black wavy hair.TEENS TRY TO ROB SALVATION ARMYAgroup of teen-agers tried to rob a Salvation Army volunteer of donations Monday afternoon in the median strip of Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie.

Donations to the Glen Burnie Salvation Army are down this year, partly because there aren't enough volunteers to ring bells at the organization's kettles, said Capt. Diane Shingleton.Money taken in during the North County kettle drive accounts for a large part of the group's funds, she said. The group collected $65,000 last year and had hoped to garner donations of $75,000 this year."We're going to have to really do a lot of praying to get volunteers and reach that goal," said Captain Shingleton.