Messenger

The Howard County Council has ordered Donald B. Messenger to resign from his position as a member of the Board of Appeals.A source close to the board confirmed that a letter was sent from the council to Messenger. He has served on the board, which reviews special exceptions and variances from the zoning code and appeals of administrative decisions by county agencies, since January 1996.The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was unclear when Messenger, whose five-year term doesn't end until January 2001, would resign.

After a monthlong controversy, Donald B. Messenger has resigned from the county Board of Appeals, effective June 1, unless a replacement can be chosen more quickly."

For now, Howard County Board of Appeals member Donald B. Messenger is resisting the County Council's order that he resign from the board."I've requested a meeting for next week," Messenger, an attorney from North Laurel, said Friday. "They may succeed, but there's a day to sit back and a day to fight. It's distasteful to me."County Council Chairman C. Vernon Gray, an east Columbia Democrat, declined to say if a date had been scheduled or if he was interested in such a meeting."It's not something I want to talk about," Gray said.

During the next 10 years, some Maryland scientists will be sending a spacecraft to the broiling planet Mercury, while others blast a comet with an 1,100-pound bullet.NASA gave the green light this week to Messenger, a $286 million proposal to send a robotic spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury in 2009.The orbiter would be built and managed by the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel.The space agency has also approved Deep Impact, a $240 million project to study the composition of Comet P/Tempel 1.University of Maryland scientists will send a spacecraft toward a July 4, 2005, encounter with the comet, then blast it with a high-speed copper projectile.

If you haven't tried instant messaging on the Internet, it's great fun and not hard to do. The software is available free to download.The main problem is that with a few exceptions, users of one type of program can't chat directly with users of another. You can run two or three different IM programs, but that's confusing.Find out what most of your friends and family use and pick that one to start.AOL Instant Messenger: Although this was originally developed for use within America Online, AOL expanded it to allow users all over the Internet to chat with one another.

In an oddly harmonic convergence, filmgoers this weekend are presented with not just one but two movies that tackle religion and, more to the point, Roman Catholic bureaucracy, with results that careen from the sublime to the ridiculous."

The president of the Savage Community Association has been nominated by the Howard County Council to serve on the Board of Appeals.William Waff, 58, was selected to serve out the term of Donald Messenger, a Republican who resigned from the board last month.He was chosen from among four applicants."I have always wanted to be on this board," Waff said, noting that he applied some time ago but was not selected. "I think I can do the job. I'm pretty level-headed and fair."Pub Date: 5/21/99

For his final run, Tom Penkilo will tuck a stack of folders under his arm and head for the marble halls of Baltimore County's government -- as usual, a man on a mission.Whether he's toting memorandums to the Plumbing Board or a document to the county attorney for a signature, the 62-year-old messenger reveals the dependability and flair that have made him an institution among the county's 7,000 employees."Last Halloween, Tom made his deliveries wearing a turban," Dianne Saunders of the county Law Office said of Penkilo, who retires this week after 10 years with the county.

AN INVITATION from the Public Broadcasting Service is tearing Mary Jo Messenger away from River Hill High School.Messenger, who teaches math and is the instructional leader of River Hill's mathematics department, will spend the next 18 months as project leader for the high school segment of "PBS Mathline," an online learning community for teachers.The goal of the project is to help teachers develop teaching and mathematics skills so that they can better help their students reach national math standards.

Bill Messenger, teacher, pianist and fan of American music, hunches over a keyboard and plays a few bars from a Schumann march, plays it straight, the way the Schumanns, Robert and Clara, would have liked it. Then he adds the syncopation of a cakewalk. He smiles. That's how jazz was born."Have you ever noticed the difference between a good white [marching] band and a good black band?" he asks, reinforcing his point. "It's the difference between playing what's written and playing with the rhythm."

A little more than half of scientists' planned observations during the Messenger spacecraft's flyby of the planet Mercury were lost Tuesday when the probe sensed a problem, shut down its scientific instruments and went into "safe mode." The $426 million mission remains on track to enter orbit around Mercury in 2011, scientists said Wednesday. But much of what they had hoped to learn during the last of three scheduled flybys will have to wait for that orbital phase. "It isn't the outcome everyone expected or wanted," said Eric Finnegan, systems manager for the mission.

Meteors that smashed into the planet Mercury 3.9 billion years ago are giving scientists a glimpse deep into the tiny planet's interior and providing clues to how it has evolved in the eons since. The 430-mile-wide Rembrandt impact basin, first seen by NASA's Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft during two flybys last year, preserves cracks created during ancient upheavals from beneath the basin, as well as ridges formed like wrinkles as the planet cooled and shrank. "This is really exciting, because this pattern of tectonic land forms is different than anything we see anywhere in the solar system," said Thomas Watters, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who is part of the Messenger team.

LAUREL - Like Columbus' crew reconnoitering the coast of the New World with spyglasses, scientists with NASA's Messenger mission gathered in an unremarkable office park yesterday to take in mankind's first glimpse of broad swaths of the planet Mercury. Hunched over computer monitors, they pointed out bright young craters and marveled at the energy of a meteor impact that threw debris halfway around the planet. With fingers, they traced fault lines for hundreds of miles and speculated about the forces that cracked and wrinkled the planet's crust.

Scientists and engineers in Maryland are preparing for their second close look at the planet Mercury as NASA's Messenger spacecraft soars toward its second flyby. If all goes well, Messenger will fly within 125 miles of Mercury's surface at 4:41 a.m. Monday. A day later, it will send back 1,200 pictures and a wealth of other data on the planet nearest the sun. Planetary scientists say they're hoping to photograph another 30 percent of the planet that has never been seen. Mission managers said yesterday that the Maryland-built spacecraft is on course after becoming the first to use the subtle pressure of solar radiation for precision steering toward its target.

Instruments aboard a Maryland-built spacecraft that soared past the planet Mercury in January have provided a real surprise: traces of water molecules in the hot little world's extremely thin atmosphere, scientists reported yesterday. It's not clear where they came from yet, but astronomers suspect that the water molecules are being blasted from the planet's surface by the solar wind, along with ions of sodium, calcium and magnesium - all clues to the chemical composition of surface material.

Scientists poring over the first closeup pictures of Mercury in almost 33 years say they're rediscovering a "dynamic" planet brimming with features they've seen nowhere else in the solar system. The new images were captured Jan. 14 by NASA's Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft, which is being managed by scientists and engineers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel. One of the most puzzling images is that of a 25-mile-wide crater in the middle of Mercury's broad Caloris impact basin.

Planetary experts say they're "jazzed up" for a potential scientific bonanza today as a spacecraft from Earth flies within 125 miles of the planet Mercury. The Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft, launched by NASA in 2004, will buzz the planet nearest the sun about 2 p.m. today, providing mankind's first close-up look in 33 years. Today's visit is only a prologue. In 2011, Messenger is to begin a year in orbit around Mercury. But researchers say they hope the craft will start today to answer some of the vexing questions that arose after Mariner 10 flew past the bizarre little world in 1974 and 1975.

Despite the seeming ubiquity of Luc Besson, it has been nearly eight years since a Besson-directed live-action film opened in the U.S. Busying himself with producing and/or writing a slew of high-octane (and highly profitable) action films such as the Taxi and Transporter series, he's never been far from the cinematic limelight after the extravagance of 1999's medieval epic The Messenger - The Story of Joan of Arc. For his 10th directorial feature (Besson also recently directed the animated Arthur and the Invisibles)

On March 13, 2007, HOWARD B. SKINNER of Carney; beloved husband of the late Louise C. Skinner; loving father of Dorothy J. Messenger, and the late Howard J. Skinner; dear grandfather of Scott Messenger and his wife Michele, and great grandfather of Aiden and Sophie Messenger. Howard was a retire of Lockheed Martin and was a member of Linden Heights Methodist Church. He also was a member of the Masonic order and the Mt. Moriah Lodge. Family and friends will honor Howard's life at the family owned Evans Funeral Chapel and Cremation Services - Parkville, 8800 Harford Rd. on Thursday 3-5 & 7-9 PM. A Masonic service will be held at 7:30 PM. The funeral service will begin at 8:30 PM. Interment will be at Moreland Memorial Park on Friday.

Mary Jo Messenger retired from the Howard County school system after 26 years of service, but that has not stopped her from lending her expertise to math teachers from across the region. For the past two weeks, Messenger, who most recently was head of the mathematics department at River Hill High School, has taught 20 teachers some of the tricks of the trade through the Maryland Governor's Academy for Algebra, a program sponsored by the Maryland Department of Education. The program helps teachers strengthen their knowledge of algebra and data analysis, while furnishing them with skills to help their students pass high school assessment tests.