Manna House

THE controversy over the proposed relocation of Our Daily Bread soup kitchen misses the point. Instead, we should be focusing on the fact that so many people in Baltimore are dependent on soup kitchens.The numbers of people who are being cared for by nonprofit agencies have grown steadily in recent years. For instance, when Our Daily Bread was founded in 1981, 125 people were fed there each day; today, 900 people eat there daily.In 1989, when the soup kitchen I supervise opened at its present location, we were providing meals to 80 men daily; we rarely saw a woman in the crowd.

Harriet Jane Leidig, 76, longtime teacherHarriet Jane Leidig, a retired teacher, died Monday of heart failure at Heron Point Retirement Community in Chestertown. She was 76.The former Severna Park resident taught business courses at Southern High School in Baltimore for 31 years and retired in the late 1980s. She moved to Chestertown in 1991.The former Harriet J. Donelson, who was born in Camp Hill, Pa., earned a bachelor's degree from Findley College in Ohio in 1943. That year, she married G. Dale Leidig, who died in 1973.

A last-minute outpouring of food and donations saved the day yesterday for Bea Gaddy's free Thanksgiving feast, the largest of several such meals served by volunteer groups around Baltimore.Yesterday morning, Ms. Gaddy said an army of 3,500 volunteers was ready to dish up dinner for as many as 30,000 people.By 3 p.m. yesterday, organizers said about 20,000 people had been served at East Baltimore's Dunbar High School, and several thousand additional meals had been delivered to shut-ins or served at three other sites.

Right now, chances are somebody in Baltimore is eating a free meal.An almost invisible network of four dozen soup kitchens is in almost constant operation in the city's poorest neighborhoods.Wednesday last week was typical. On a bitterly cold day, almost 7,000 meals were served at 29 city soup kitchens. Ironically, the number of diners would have been even higher if the weather had been warmer.It began at 6:15 a.m., as David Green and Carlton Hicks huddled in an unheated vestibule, waiting 45 minutes for the doors to open at New Metropolitan Baptist Church in West Baltimore.

POP MUSIC Roll with Winwood When Steve Winwood reached his pop peak in the 1980s with such monster smashes as "Higher Love," featuring Chaka Khan, and "Roll with It," the British singer-musician had been making music for more than 20 years. His earlier fusions of rock, blues and soul gave way to a decidedly more streamlined pop approach. But his music over the years has managed to retain some grit, as heard on his latest album, the solid Nine Lives. Winwood performs at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Tickets are $36.50-$75.

City officials moved the homeless out of the shantytown behind the Sun building, under the Jones Falls Expressway along Guilford Avenue. For several months, the number of tents and makeshift huts gradually increased there, and you could see signs of the homeless at campsites along the Fallsway, too. They've been in the park by St. Vincent de Paul Church for a long time now, even after the repaving of Fayette Street, from President Street to Broadway, gave...

The constellations on the painted ceiling are falling in, the plaster on the walls is cracked and falling, but the spirit of the small band of congregants at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church is resilient. Lovely Lane in Charles Village is the mother church of American Methodism, a stunning architectural gem, built in 1884 by the architect Stanford White as the Centennial Monument to the Christmas Conference that started the Methodist church in this country. And a monument is exactly what the worshipers at Lovely Lane do not want, but what the church is in danger of becoming.

Burgess Meredith was an extravagantly gifted actor with a distinguished career in theater and film, so when I had the pleasure of conversation with him a few years ago, I didn't dare bring up the Penguin. He'd performed works of Shakespeare with Orson Welles. He'd acted opposite Ingrid Bergman. He'd worked with Jean Renoir, Charles Laughton, John Huston and Otto Preminger. Did I dare bring up his monocled comic villain from a campy TV show of the 1960s?Had to.I was a Batman kid. Ten years before Meredith's spunky trainer, Mickey, showed up ringside to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky, there was Penguin.

Social calendarOct. 8: Second annual "Taste of Hampden" benefits the Hampden Family Center. 1104 W. 36th St. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. $25 a person. Features food from neighborhood eateries. Call 410-467-8710.Oct. 8: Sixth annual crab feast for the benefit of Manna House, which offers a soup kitchen, transitional housing and other programs for the poor. At Jimmy's Famous Seafood, 6526 Holabird Ave. 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tickets $45. Call 410-889-3001.Oct. 9: 29th annual Grand Opera Ball celebrates "A Magnificent Italian Circus!"

Larry Evans nods in agreement when he hears that many of his fellow Marylanders are struggling to put food on the table. Evans, out of work since July, says he isn't surprised the numbers have increased - and that he's not the only one to sometimes face an empty plate. "Food-wise, it's been tough," Evans said. "My sister has been a big help, but after a while, you can only go so far with that." Evans, 52, was eating lunch at Bel Air United Methodist Church courtesy of Manna House, which has provided a free meal and a bag of groceries to patrons each Wednesday for the past 20 years.