Melting Pot

Advocates of school reform in New York City were dealt a setback recently when the Board of Education voted not to renew the contract of schools chief Joseph Fernandez over disagreements about where he was leading the system. New York now joins Los Angeles and Chicago in search of new schools chiefs.Part of New York City's woes stem from budget problems that have hit urban schools especially hard. As large urban cities become poorer, public schools have fewer resources to address the greater needs of the disadvantaged children they serve.

This is in response to the letter "Main Street Festival attracted 'microcosm' of American society" ( Leader, May 19). The "microcosm" you speak of is the melting pot. Laurel is an all-inclusive town and at least for my 44 years, Laurel has represented itself that way. The different events hosted by the town attract many of the townies. I don't always go to the Main Street Festival, but I have been on hand several times. The aimless, shiftless group have always been there and will probably continue.

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, by Jimmy Breslin. Crown Publishers. 198 pages. $22. Jimmy Breslin's new book, The Short Sweet Life of Eduardo Gutierrez, reminds us that the journey to America is more than a Kodak moment at the Statue of Liberty. It begins in desperation and continues with each generation of new arrivals settling for the grubbiest of jobs, the shabbiest of living conditions, and the most precarious daily existence. This is the extended entrance test America gives to all who would reach for her promise.

In celebration of "National Cheese Fondue Day", the Melting Pot is giving away free cheese fondue. Just click here to get your reservation code, then call your nearest Melting Pot and make a reservation between 4/11 - 4/14. Lastly, show up and eat some free cheese fondue. It doesn't say that any purchase is necessary but do yourself a favor and get some chocolate fondue for dessert.

"Home Family God Country Flag: An American Puppet Epic" -- the title of the Ninth Street Theater's production at the Theatre Project -- sounds ponderous and pretentious. And although the show does redeem itself, at first it is just that.In the opening scene, shadow puppets interact with projections of old family photographs on a screen while artistic director Joanne Schultz delivers this vague but serious-sounding intonation: "All of us are Americans, but we are not all Americans, we are some Americans.

When he was growing up around West Baltimore's Robert and Division streets, anxious and angry and out of control, Kweisi Mfume always knew about an organization called the NAACP, whose national leadership he is about to assume.The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was the great godsend to black people searching for white America's conscience. It was Clarence Mitchell and Lillie Mae Jackson, whose faces humanized the civil rights struggle throughout Mfume's neighborhood.

OVER LUNCH AT the restaurant El Salvador, Deva "Angel" Dwarka bites into a Latino concoction vaguely unpronounceable to a clumsy Bawlamer tongue but delicious in any language. This is one little corner of America, in case anyone cares to notice: a second-floor dining room above Upper Fells Point's Broadway, with a big-screen television broadcasting a Spanish soap opera, and paintings of Central American farm country lovingly etched into a wall, and laughter and music, and lush aromas and conversational Spanish filling the whole place.

He's been called "the godfather" of American cuisine for his championship of local and regional ingredients; he's a European-trained chef credited with inventing the "new" American cuisine; he's the man who coined the term "free range" to describe poultry raised out of confinement; and he's coming to here next week to cook.Award-winning chef and New York restaurateur Larry Forgione will team up with Linwood Dame of Linwood's/Due in Ownings Mills at a benefit dinner next Wednesday for the Child Abuse Prevention Center of Maryland.

The first thing an outsider notices about Queenstown is its diversity.Sprawling brick ranchers coexist with run-down, wood-frame cottages. An elegant Colonial looks out onto an aging bungalow. Meticulously manicured lawns stand next to overgrown lots filled with junked cars and other discards.In Queenstown, a tiny community in Severn that measures 1.9 milesfrom end to end, one can find houses of every imaginable style, sizeand building material, built on lots ranging from a fraction of an acre to more than 10 acres.

Great Fortune Buffet is a hybrid of two great American traditions: the Chinese restaurant and the all-you-can-eat corral. The result is a melting pot of choices: from raw oysters to dim sum, from sushi to chunks of Jell-O. Some offerings, in and of themselves, reflect ingenious cultural collisions. The cheese won tons are one example. On a very chilly January night, Great Fortune Buffet Chinese Restaurant was quiet and the steam tables were full and well-tended. By family request, I decided to order mostly from the menu, which resembles the general idea of Chinese-American food more than the idiosyncratic buffet.

The Dream Act debate that has recently arrived in Maryland has provoked such discriminatory xenophobia that you would think the commentary was from indigenous Americans, not from citizens of the nation known as the "melting pot of the world" whose very ancestors were immigrants themselves. "Well, they were legal immigrants," you say. That's because the U.S. had little to no immigration restrictions in those times and our ancestors were lucky enough to get in by the proverbial skin of their teeth.

Hugo Lam sees his story in Barack Obama's. Certainly, there are differences. Lam was raised in Nicaragua by hardworking parents who inspired him to seek a better life in the United States. Obama is a native son of Hawaii and spent time in Indonesia; he was born to a black goat-herding father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas. But Obama's meteoric rise from humble beginnings to the nation's highest office resonates, Lam said, as the ultimate American success story - proof that while the streets might not be paved with gold, they still can lead to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. "I think for every Latino I speak with, his story is our story," said Lam, 39. "He comes from a poor family, a mixed family, and struggled as a teenager and found his way. He made himself succeed, and that is the American dream.

Carey wins a 'Best in Maryland' award Duane Carey of IMPACT Marketing and Public Relations has received a "Best in Maryland" award from the Public Relations Society of America. IMPACT won in the "Advertorial" category for Carey's work on behalf of the Melting Pot restaurant in Annapolis. The winning advertorial was titled, "Four Reasons the Melting Pot is a Bride's Best Friend." The ghost-written piece, which ran in the wedding guide of February's issue of Taste of the Bay magazine, produced a large return on investment.

The president says: "The homeowners deserve our help." But why "deserve"? The principles of "compassionate conservatism" are opaque, but they might involve liberalism's premise that Americans are so easily victimized they must be regarded as wards of government. Perhaps Washington's intervention in the subprime problem reveals the tiny tip of an enormous new entitlement: People who voluntarily run a risk, betting that they will escape unscathed, are entitled to government-organized amelioration when they lose their bets.

With no microphones for a sound check, Hari Prabhakar let his singers down to a basement corridor to rehearse. Four bobbed their index fingers to the music, altos and sopranos harmonizing "hai, hai, hai, hai" -- a Hindi version of "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." The members of Kranti practiced the new Bollywood song, "Salaam-E-Ishq" (A Tribute to Love). Then they tackled "Desi Back," a South Asian spoof on Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" that the female singers penned. With a demo CD of Hindi pop and folk songs now recorded and a watershed concert staged this spring, the Indian vocal group at the Johns Hopkins University has joined the next wave in collegiate a cappella.

KATMANDU, NEPAL // The all-seeing eyes of Buddha stare blankly over Katmandu's Palace Square from a huge wooden portal. The door is shut tight. But standing here on the very day in November when Maoist rebels signed a peace accord ending 10 years of turmoil and isolation in Nepal, I could almost hear the giant door crack open, bidding visitors back. A Hindu adage says guests are like gods. But travelers have largely stayed away since 1996 when Maoist insurgents began a terror campaign.

Like millions of her fellow Americans, Rosy Lawrence is planning a cookout for the Fourth of July. As she has for the past 29 years, the soft-spoken Edgewood resident will join a group of close friends and family to relax, celebrate America's independence and eat good food. It's part of how she expresses her patriotism for her country. "We do practically the same menu as everyone else," the diminutive, dark-haired woman says cheerfully. "Macaroni and potato salads, and watermelon and barbecued chicken."

Fuss-free fondue is an appealing idea for all of us whose kitchen cabinets contain one or more fondue pots that go unused for various reasons. To serve fondue at home, there's the need for lots of Sterno to keep the cooking medium hot, and hunting for such a seldom-purchased item slows down the weekly race through the grocery store. Then there's the melt-but-don't-burn pot of cheeses that have to be watched and timed precisely to be served at the same time as the just-right pot of hot oil for searing meat.

African cuisine - the warmth of its spices, the powerful heat of its peppers and the comfort of its stews - has a history that reaches back in time to the explorers and spice traders and around the world from India to the Caribbean. The sheer size of the continent and the diversity of its regions and its people mean that Africa is the true melting pot. And it is the spices of Africa, familiar but in unfamiliar combinations, that give this melting pot a flavor that is tantalizing America's cooks.