Lessons

We had never heard of Perry Hall High School guidance counselor Jesse Wasmer before this week. But if there is some sense to be made of the entirely senseless events of the first day of school at Baltimore County's largest high school, it is this: Mr. Wasmer is a hero. Students say it was Mr. Wasmer who subdued Robert Wayne Gladden Jr., the 15-year-old from Kingsville who allegedly took a disassembled shotgun and 21 rounds of ammunition to Perry Hall High on Monday. Police say the student's first shot, apparently fired randomly at lunchtime in the school cafeteria after he reassembled the weapon in a nearby school bathroom and hid it under his T-shirt, struck fellow student Daniel Borowy, 17, in the back, seriously injuring him. The second hit the ceiling harmlessly as Mr. Wasmer and others kept him under wraps until police arrived.

Now, after you've finished a margarita and an enchilada at Azul 17 in Columbia, you can strap on your dancing shoes and stay for salsa lessons. On Thursday and Saturday nights, the dining room at this sophisticated restaurant-lounge is transformed into a dance studio. Last year salsa lessons at Azul 17 were offered the first Saturday each month. But this year the frequency has been upped to twice a week. “People love it and enjoy it,” says general manager Carlos Oseguera. Beginner, intermediate and advanced lessons are offered for $5 each on Thursday nights at 8, 9 and 10, respectively; however, complimentary lessons for all levels are offered Saturday nights at 10. “The Saturday class is more casual.

Sons learn from their fathers. Whether it's how to throw a ball, ride a bike, shave or tie a tie, the lessons fathers teach can last a lifetime. But how do those lessons change when a son joins his father in business? Howard Magazine talked with local father-son teams about how their relationships moved from the family circle to the daily grind, as well as what works - and what doesn't - when it comes to working together. The Hillmuth family At Hillmuth Certified Automotive, customers say staff members treat them like family.

Baltimore's school children call her "The Sex Lady," and during the four decades Deborah Roffman has taught them about their bodies, the only thing that hasn't changed is the discomfort of their parents when they try to talk about sex. Even the sex has changed, becoming casual and transactional, invasive and pervasive. Marketing and advertising have driven the mercury higher. Technology has put sex only a touch or a keystroke away. "The boundaries that used to separate children's lives from adults' lives have in many respects vanished," said Ms. Roffman, who has taught at Park School for 38 years and often teaches at other independent schools locally and nationwide.

If one line emerged from Randy Edsall's opening media conference this week, it was this one: “Make sure that you stick to your guns in terms of what you believe in regardless of what people are saying on the outside.” The Maryland football coach's comment was prompted by a media question about what important lesson he may have learned in his first season in College Park. There is a certain defiance in that comment, right? I suspect Edsall is not going to talk much about what unfolded during last season's 2-10 mark.

A year ago today, my husband left for Afghanistan -- or at least the first leg of his long journey there to begin his deployment with the Marine Corps. He's been home for five months now, and I'm feeling reflective about what the past 12 months have taught me. I was thinking this would end up being a list of the lessons learned from that time in our lives, and the time since. But it all kept coming back around to this: Take nothing for granted. We are the lucky ones, to all be home and healthy and happy.

With each passing day, we live in a more and more disposable society. Be it food, jobs, relationships, or even sadly, horrific tragedies which deflate our national spirit. If we want to be honest in this disposable society we now all inhabit, then we will admit that the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., and the unimaginable and unbearable grief it produced for the victims and families is already fading from our collective conscious. Both because that is how our short-attention-span minds have been programmed to operate and because for much of the media, it's yesterday's news.

This is the third article in an occasional series about Maryland area athletes away from the game. Tommy Hunter still hears it a lot in the Orioles clubhouse. "Judo champ coming!" someone will sing out. "Here comes Judo Boy!" another player will say. "It definitely gets old," the veteran right-hander says with a weary smile. "I've heard it since I've been playing baseball. . . I roll with it. " Sure, as a two-time Junior Olympics gold medalist in judo, the 6-foot-3, 260-pound Hunter could get one of his wise-guy teammates in a wicked armbar or chokehold and end the needling in a heartbeat.

Leaders of Maryland's seven most populous jurisdictions say utilities couldn't immediately pinpoint the addresses of power outages during the cleanup from the deadly June 29 derecho storm, hindering their efforts to send out emergency crews. In a letter Tuesday to the Public Service Commission, the leaders asked the state's utility regulator to explore improving disclosure of outage locations, burying power lines and evaluating power companies' staffing. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the executives of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford, Howard, Montgomery and Prince George's counties signed the letter.

Jack and Betty Scrivener of Stoneleigh lost power last August thanks to Hurricane Irene. They lost it again when storms pummeled the region June 30 — and after one very long, very hot week, the elderly couple still hadn't gotten it back. They don't know if they can take another extended outage. "It'll probably drive us into a retirement home, because I'm 85," Jack Scrivener said Friday afternoon as a generator provided just enough juice for three outlets at their Ridgeleigh Road home.