Lulu

Some situations are so tragic they need no embellishment. Such is the case of Lulu Moore -- 82, blind and in danger of losing the only home she has known for 43 years.The owners of the Scheidt family farm on which Ms. Moore's house sits have gone to Howard County Circuit Court to evict the elderly woman. The owners -- a pediatrician and his two sisters -- want to subdivide the property into 28 one-acre lots. They plan to sell them for an estimated total of $5.6 million. Many factors favor the Scheidts, not the least being the fact that their parents willed the land to them and apparently left no written provision regarding the "tenant house" in which Ms. Moore lives.

Lulu Hardesty, who died recently at the age of 91, was one of the quiet civil rights warriors.She was not a militant, nor was she especially political. Yet simply by her example, this well-loved Annapolis school teacher did a great deal more to improve relations between blacks and whites in Anne Arundel County than all but a handful of other activists.Mrs. Hardesty's life was a virtual road map of civil rights history. She got her first job teaching at a dilapidated one-room, all-black elementary school in South County.

Lulu Hardesty, who died recently at the age of 91, was one of the quiet civil rights warriors. She was not a militant, nor was she very political. Yet simply by her example, this Annapolis school teacher did more to improve relations between blacks and whites in Anne Arundel County than all but a handful of other activists.Mrs. Hardesty's life was a virtual road map of civil rights history. She got her first job teaching at a dilapidated one-room, all-black elementary in South County. Then, in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, she became the first black to teach in a white school.

Atlanta--Contentious, unyielding, litigious, uncompromising, bull-headed -- there are many unpleasant adjectives a foreigner might use watching how Americans come to loggerheads on issues from waste dumps to homeless shelters to low-income housing sites.We even have two new words in our language -- NIMBY for ''not in my backyard'' and LULU for ''locally unwanted land uses.''City councils argue such issues for years. Cases get ensnarled in endless litigation. Arbitrary court judgments sometimes frustrate all the parties.

WHEN WELCOMING a New Year, that time when we remember and reflect on old friends and acquaintances, each one is special. For pets this year, no memory would fill a heart with more joy than that of the little mix-breed Danny Boy.Featured in Pausing With Pets about three years ago, Danny Boy's story began about 12 years ago when he was a puppy roaming in a neighborhood around North Avenue dragging a large rope that was around his neck. Someone took the puppy home but within a few weeks he was again spotted in that area with another rope around his neck.