Madeleine

A Southeast Baltimore boy developed a severe leg infection from an untreated allergic reaction to a bite. A Hampden man threw out his possessions and fled his apartment with only a bag of clothes and a handful of papers. A Mount Vernon woman who struggled for months to rid her home of the pests finally sought therapy to deal with the trauma. Bedbugs were once a distantly remembered nuisance, the stuff of children's rhymes and Depression-era tales of woe. But increasingly, the tiny pests have become nightmarish bedfellows for homeowners, apartment dwellers and travelers in the Baltimore area and across the country.

With a timbre suggestive of Billie Holiday and an intimate style of phrasing that needs only the subtlest twist of a syllable to hook a listener, Madeleine Peyroux has cleared a distinctive path in today's jazz world. That path does not include a lot of self-promotion. The Georgia-born singer, songwriter and guitarist has a reputation for being on the reclusive side. There have been periods when she simply dropped out of sight (during one such period about a decade ago, she did some busking in Paris)

"What is our purpose?'' Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole asked of the latest U.S. commitment of troops to Somalia. ''What is the cost? How long will they stay?''U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali addresses these questions in his most recent report to the Security Council on Somalia. But his answers would not please Mr. Dole or a growing number of senators and representatives concerned about the increasing U.S. commitment to the U.N. operation in Somalia.Mr. Boutros-Ghali explains that what began as an effort to prevent mass starvation has become a campaign ''to reconstruct [Somalia's]

Edith Piaf was singing in the background, the fire was crackling, and through the open hearth, I spied a little girl with a long braid down her back.She looked as if she had stepped out of the pages of the children's classic "Madeline." But she was an American schoolgirl dining with her family at La Madeleine.Even though we were in the heart of mega-mall Columbia, it felt like the French countryside, with the exposed wooden beams, French crockery and throw pillows done up in Provencal fabrics.

In 1997, Madeleine Albright couldn't have been more certain that she knew everything important about herself and was in possession of every relevant fact about her life. And then, at age 59, just days after being confirmed as U.S. secretary of state, Albright became aware that her parents had kept a big secret from her, her sister, Kathy, and their brother, John. "I had no idea that my family heritage was Jewish," said Albright, a native of Czechoslovakia. "I had no idea that more than two dozen of my relatives died in the Holocaust.

What John T. Golle couldn't get the public schools to do for his own sons, he thinks he can do for thousands of schoolchildren across the country.Mr. Golle was prosperous. His sons went to good schools in a well-to-do Minneapolis suburb. Yet he still couldn't find a way to get the public schools to provide the individual attention he felt his sons needed."I have a learning-disabled son, one of those kids who fell between the cracks and today appears on someone's chart as a statistic," Mr. Golle said in a telephone interview from the Minneapolis headquarters of Education Alternatives Inc., the firm that plans to run nine of Baltimore's public schools.

Madeleine Greene trained as a home economics teacher in a fit of teen-age rebellion. That's why, 45 years later, she spends her days answering questions about everything imaginable - from Medicare coverage to cooking 180-pound pigs. She could have been an elementary school teacher - that was her mother's suggestion - but Greene doesn't regret her youthful defiance. Her scope as a "family and consumer sciences" educator in the Maryland Cooperative Extension's Howard County office is wide: from fraud and environmental protection to sewing and food safety.

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - Ed and Madeleine Landry's sprawling, soaring, mountainside-hugging house is steeled against the elements. Built around a steel frame, it will withstand earthquakes, wildfires and just about anything else nature can dish out. The 11,000-square-foot house includes a 1,600-square-foot guest house. "What we ended up with is probably a house that is as earthquake-resistant as possible," Ed Landry said of the airy steel palace on the family's 130-acre mountain site with sweeping views of Simi Valley.

Across a wide plain of Oriental carpet, a child in pink corduroy pants and candy cane turtleneck plays the violin. She plays the sort of music that leaves people momentarily helpless, that makes them remember things they once swore never to forget.Her 84-year-old teacher bends toward her, the lining of his camel hair jacket dangling, his hand trembling slightly."Hold that beat longer, darling, enjoy it," he says in a voice flavored by the warm, sheltering accents of Russian. Later: "Could you make bigger crescendo if I gave you a quarter?"

Waffles aren't just for breakfast. At least that's the position taken by Thomas Reboullet, Long Reach High School senior, varsity ice hockey player and co-founder of Thomas Waffles, a food truck business he started with his father, pastry chef Thierry; and sister, Julie, an eighth-grader at Mayfield Woods Middle School. The family sells waffles out of a truck parked in front of Kendall Hardware in Clarksville every Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Reboullet, 17, came up with the idea earlier this year, when he decided he wanted to start a project that could raise some money for college.