Miracle

Although Vivian McDonnell has commemorated more than 30 Mother's Days, today may generate the most significant memories of all. Today she will celebrate what her husband Sean calls "the miracle" of her motherhood. It is her first holiday as the mother of Sean, Cole and Harper McDonnell."Nor did I have the man that I wanted to raise them with."Managing day to dayIn the family room of the McDonnells' comfortable Bel Air home, thoughts of high-tech biology and ethics committees quickly fade.

It's a sunny morning in Westminster, and the pulleys are squeaking, the weights clinking as a half-dozen members of a small gym give the equipment a workout. Bouncy music comes though a stereo's speakers. A trainer encourages a client on a treadmill. A large banner on the wall reads, "Believe In Miracles!" Gina Gilligan-Della said she has seen more than her share of those. Gilligan-Della, 48, is the founding president of TheraFit Gym, a fitness center designed to serve individuals with severe physical disabilities from spinal-cord injury to the after-effects of stroke.

Shoppers who lined up at Sears on Thanksgiving and braved Walmart before dawn on Black Friday might want a change of pace, city officials are hoping. With the Miracle on Main Streets campaign, the city hopes to encourage holiday shopping in Baltimore's historic neighborhoods, at small shops lining the business districts. The campaign's motto: "Do it all without the mall. " Participating neighborhoods, all part of the city's Main Streets program, include Belair-Edison, Brooklyn, East Monument Street, Federal Hill, Fell's Point, Hamilton-Lauraville, Highlandtown, Pennsylvania Avenue, Pigtown and Waverly.

Laurel Park Dynamic Strike rallies in Miracle Wood Dynamic Strike came from behind to win the $80,000 Miracle Wood Stakes on Saturday at Laurel Park. Ridden by Forrest Boyce and trained by Richard Small , the lightly raced son of Smart Strike stalked the pace before closing five-wide down the stretch, just inside of Where's Dominic, and battled that horse to the 1/16th pole before edging away to win by a length. Lunar Rock rallied up the rail to take third. Post-time favorite Vegas No Show saved ground early but could finish no better than fifth.

If you can't get enough of Kris Kringle and "Miracle on 34th Street" during the holiday season, you are in luck because the show opens Saturday, Dec. 3 at 8 p.m. at Laurel Mill Playhouse, 508 Main St. Performances run weekends, Dec. 3 through 18, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. amd Sunday matinees at 2 p.m., and a special Saturday matinee Dec. 17 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $13 general admission, students (age 18 and under), active duty military and seniors (age 65 and over) are $10. For reservations, call 301-617-9906 and press 2. http://www.laurelmillplayhouse.org .

Shop till you drop, but not at the mall. That's the idea behind the sixth annual Miracle on Main Streets, a Baltimore-wide initiative that begins Tuesday and encourages residents to shop at local retailers and explore the city's neighborhoods. Managed by the Baltimore Development Corp. as part of its Baltimore Main Streets program, the Miracle campaign promotes shopping districts in 10 city neighborhoods: Belair-Edison, Brooklyn, East Monument Street, Federal Hill, Fell's Point, Hamilton-Lauraville, Highlandtown, Pennsylvania Avenue, Pigtown and Waverly.

I want to ask Jacoby Jones what we should call that one. I want to know if he's thought of a name for the play, the one that still has all of Baltimore buzzing today and all of Denver practically catatonic. You can't call it "The Catch" or the "Immaculate Reception" because it wasn't a great catch and it sure wasn't flawless and without blemish. This play was more like Jones thinking: Dear God, please don't let me drop this, because I'll never live it down and will be forced to live in an ashram with Ricky Williams for the rest of my life to escape the eternal shame.

From: Nancy McCarthyElkridgeI would like to thank you for the lovely article about Milton Leein Sunday's Howard Sun of June 9 ("Injured student recovers just in time for graduation," by Donna Boller).As a parent of one of the members of the lacrosse team, a dream came true at graduation.When the news spread on Saturday, April 27, and Sunday, April 28, about Milton's accident, everyone's concern was for his life to be saved.Once he was stabilized, I, for one, prayed that somehow he could get to graduation.

Reggae music filled the air at Bohager's in Fells Point. Folks in Hawaiian shirts milled around the club's thatched-roof bar, or lined up for autographs and photos with several Baltimore Ravens players at Mac's Reggae Sunsplash 2001. Ravens player Michael McCrary played host at the party for his nonprofit organization, Mac's Miracle Fund. And who knew purple was such a tropical color? Folks sported plenty of Ravens paraphernalia -- and then some. Fans Vicki Williams and Colleen Martin had even painted their toenails purple.

Leave it to Maryland's state legislators to seize on the slightest pretext to play demagogue. They did it last week in the State House when they called a private Colorado company on the carpet for failing to work wonders at the troubled Hickey School for juveniles. How much time did these legislators give the company to perform this miracle? A mere 70 days.Since a constant parade of state officials have failed miserably for decades to improve matters at the Hickey School, it isn't surprising that a private company hired only on Sept.

Laurel Park Vegas No Show favored in Miracle Wood Stakes Saturday's $125,000 Miracle Wood Stakes at Laurel Park has attracted eight 3-year-olds, including three stakes winners. Vegas No Show has been made the 7-5 morning line favorite in the one-mile test. The son of Hard Spun has tested stakes company in his last five outings, with a win in the Dover Stakes at Delaware Park and a runner-up finish in the Nashua Stakes (Grade 2) at Aqueduct. Trained by Kelly Breen, Vegas No Show posted a bullet workout at Belmont Park at the end of January and will carry Jeremy Rose for the first time.

As a caregiver, Richard DeCaro knows that a little kindness goes a long way. And now he has a local nonprofit organization to thank for making his life a little easier. The Dorsey's Search resident began taking care of his wife, Ellen, in 2008 after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer at age 50. She had been teaching consumer science at Dunloggin Middle School in Ellicott City, the happy result of a late-in-life career switch, when she awoke from a nap one day and didn't know who she was, he says.

I want to ask Jacoby Jones what we should call that one. I want to know if he's thought of a name for the play, the one that still has all of Baltimore buzzing today and all of Denver practically catatonic. You can't call it "The Catch" or the "Immaculate Reception" because it wasn't a great catch and it sure wasn't flawless and without blemish. This play was more like Jones thinking: Dear God, please don't let me drop this, because I'll never live it down and will be forced to live in an ashram with Ricky Williams for the rest of my life to escape the eternal shame.

Christmas is a holiday of peace and joy, and most of all a time of wonder and innocence for children. It is a time of belief in magic and goodness, a day when small wishes come true. This year, in particular, we need reminding of that fact. It has been less than two weeks since a town in Connecticut was rent by unspeakable horror, an event so terrible that it spread sadness in the hearts of men, women, boys and girls across the globe. In the face of such profound grief, it feels difficult, even unseemly, to remember that miracles occur at Christmas.

"No more drones" is the right policy, as writer Agnes Merrick said in a recent op-ed ("The real Petraeus problem," Dec. 8). Bravo to The Sun for printing it. Our acceptance of this kind of warfare, along with the planet's largest military budget, doesn't exactly have our nation speaking "peace on earth" to the rest of the world. Let everyone who read this citizen's plea pass it on. Create "a miracle on the Internet" this holiday season. Mary Louise Ellenberger Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

When the 2012 baseball season started, the consensus about the Baltimore Orioles, as expressed by one blogger, was that they would "finish fifth in the American League East. Only because they can't finish sixth. " The Orioles were coming off 14 consecutive losing seasons, and they played in the toughest division in baseball, behind the big-money teams in New York and Boston and the "moneyball" players in Tampa Bay. Even the Toronto Blue Jays seemed to be looking up. But not the Orioles, a team that appeared to have given up on the idea of bringing in the kind of big-name talent that wins pennants.

More bad news about school construction in Harford County: The prime contractor building two schools set to open this fall ran short of cash and its bonding company has taken over financial management of the work.One school, Church Creek Elementary in growing Riverside, is already a year delayed, after resolving concerns about a possible toxic waste dump on that site and then changing contractors in midstream because of poor performance.The school administration insisted last month that the second school, Emmorton Elementary in another burgeoning community, Abingdon, would open on time -- missing only library, gym, cafeteria, kitchen and so forth.

Brazilian voters have had enough excitement for one decade. They just elected Fernando Henrique Cardoso president on the strength of the currency reform he drafted while finance minister, which since July 1 has stopped lunatic inflation dead.Monday's was the second election in a row in which Brazilians chose a free market economic reformer over the siren songs of a charismatic socialist named Lula. The first president, chosen in 1989, proved a fraud and a thief. But Mr. Cardoso, a 63-year-old professor of sociology who was exiled as a dangerous leftist by the military dictatorship of the 1960s, looks like the real thing.

It's wonderful that in our age of instant communication, digital reality and unmanned aerial warfare, there are still those who believe in miracles. And yes, miracles are very real, though infrequent. I'm one who's also hoping for the complete recovery of Teresa Bartlinski ("Call for a miracle," Nov. 29). However, it is important to credit the "miracle" of modern science that has made this adopted girl's survival possible. I also consider it a "miracle" that the Bartlinski family can pay for all the medical care and upcoming operation out of pocket and were able to go into enormous debt doing so. It's refreshing and humbling the Bartilinski's have not relied on any help from the government or taxpayer funded programs.

Nobody believed Liu Fang, born with half a heart and abandoned in a village west of Beijing, would survive long after being adopted by a Baltimore County family. Even the Bartlinskis, deeply religious Catholics, expected the girl's lungs would fail even if her heart could be repaired. Two years later, as the 5-year-old girl awaits a cardiac transplant, her parents, a Catonsville school and the family's parish are literally praying for a miracle. She is awaiting the procedure at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.