Newsletter

Money manager Charles Allmon says the Dow Jones industrial average closing above 10,000 is a meaningless milestone."It doesn't mean a thing to me," said Allmon, a Bethesda-based longtime bear who publishes the Growth Stock Outlook newsletter."

When Baltimore County's 17,000 second- and third-graders received a newsletter called Reading Together this winter, it represented more than just an attempt to promote family literacy.It also marked what county public library and school officials hope will be the beginning of a new level of cooperation between the two large county organizations."We want to be more collaborative because we both have the same goal about encouraging children to read," said Jim Fish, director of Baltimore County's public libraries.

Citing the need for dedication to social and racial justice issues, the political action committee for Howard County's largest African-American network released its endorsements for candidates in the Nov. 5 election yesterday.The committee -- African Americans in Howard County -- is an outgrowth of the African-American Coalition, which represents more than 20 county groups, said Rev. Robert A. F. Turner, the president.In all but the nonpartisan judicial and school board races, the committee endorsed Democrats:For president and vice president, President Clinton and Al Gore.

LOS ANGELES -- Lee is sobbing.Five years ago, she explains, she left her husband at the urging of her minister. The experience left her so depressed that she had to be hospitalized and, as a result, she lost primary custody of her two young children.She's better now, but she'd like some guidance about how to deal with the feelings of guilt and distress that still grip her periodically."Do you have a sense of when you choose to bring this out and beat yourself with it?" Laura Schlessinger, talk radio's fastest-rising star, asks her caller.

THE OLD ADAGE "success has one thousand fathers and failure is an orphan" aptly describes John G. Gary's recent newsletter about education.With Anne Arundel schools performing well and parents generally pleased with the school system, everyone wants to take credit, including the county executive.Instead of taking offense at Mr. Gary's boasting, education activists should be overjoyed that he is acting like the rooster who thought his crowing caused the sun to rise. By linking himself to the schools' success, Mr. Gary has even more of a vested interest in continuing the policies that produced such praiseworthy results.

THE CRITICS SAY he's washed up as a stock market prognosticator, but Charles Allmon, expert stock picker, money manager, financial newsletter publisher and one of the nation's most ardent bears, is confident that he'll have his day again."

"Anne is underground writing on her latest novel,'The Servant of the Bones.' She will not be taking calls at this time. If you'd like to get on the mailing list for her newsletter, send a postcard. Newsletters are sporadically written when Anne can find the time. If you'd like information on the Vampire Lestat Fan Club, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Yearly dues are $13, outside of the U.S., dues are $18. The Memnoch Ball will be given Saturday Oct. 28, further details will be given in the newsletter.

Mark Hulbert may have shaved off his beard, styled his hair and traded in flannel work shirts for designer suits.But he's still the relentless investment letter tracker he was 15 years ago when he started the Hulbert Financial Digest.I first met Hulbert shortly after that publication was launched. He preached his philosophy of keeping pundits honest by constructing and following a mythical $10,000 portfolio based on each editor's recommendations. As a recent graduate of Oxford University, he was intent on quantifying advice.

There have been a lot of food newsletters, but few with as clear a focus as Pasta Press, "the newsletter for connoisseurs of flavored pasta -- with a healthy twist."It was started by the Gluck family, who make fresh pasta incorporating flavorings like red pepper, lemon thyme or roasted garlic in the dough and sell it at farmers markets up and down California. The newsletter came about, they say, because customers would eagerly buy pasta then ask what to do with it.To their credit, the Glucks give away some of their dough recipes in this newsletter, and they provide recipes for using flavored pastas.

The scene could have been out of an old newspaper movie: anxious reporters scribbling out stories on letterhead. But it was Allison Thomas' fourth-grade class at Central Elementary School Edgewater.The pupils began putting out the Thomas Times, their own three-page newsletter, a month ago. And Friday, they were working on their second issue. The newsletter was the idea of Mrs. Thomas, a first-year teacher who was features editor of the Arundel High School Spectrum six years ago.She said she hopes the newsletter will improve her pupils' writing and reading skills and teach them to enjoy writing.

Newsletters for parents, child care providers The Anne Arundel County Department of Health's Learn to Live program offers free copies of its latest newsletter, "Building Blocks," for child care providers and parents. The newsletter includes tips for physical activities and calcium-rich snacks for children. Community health resources are listed. The newsletter also has an insert that can be copied and distributed. http://aahealth.org/ltl_healthykids.asp. The Learn to Live program works to help residents reduce their risk of developing serious illnesses by making healthy choices.

Flipping through a fund company's quarterly newsletter, my eyes came to a screeching halt when I read this savings tips for young investors: "Strive to save at least 10 percent to 15 percent of your income for retirement, with any additional savings earmarked for short-term goals such as a car, vacation or house." The newsletter elaborated, saying you should "save at least 15 percent of your salary each year for retirement as soon as you start working" and stay at that level throughout your career to ensure a comfortable retirement.

When music companies began howling about the illicit pleasure of file-swapping networks like Napster Inc., Kazaa, and Gnutella.com, many in the newsletter industry yawned. The publishers of the short, tightly edited missives with need-to-know information for niche markets had been living with the threat of copyright infringement since the invention of the photocopier and the fax machine. But these yawns turned into gapes last October when a Baltimore jury sided with the small, 70-year-old Florida publisher of Lowry's Reports, fining Legg Mason Inc. $19.7 million for copyright infringement.

FORT WORTH, Texas - Brandon Biggs offered something rare to the woman convicted of killing his father: forgiveness. Now, death row inmates are doing something that would seem equally unusual: thanking Biggs for daring to be kind to a murderer. A $10,000 scholarship generated through Compassion, a newsletter written and edited by death row inmates, is being awarded to Biggs to help him continue to study for the ministry. "His overwhelming desire to forgive this woman, it's not something that you generally hear from the public," Dennis Skillicorn, a Missouri inmate who is the newsletter's editor, said during a telephone interview from prison.

Baltimore-based Legg Mason Inc. has been ordered by a federal jury to pay almost $20 million to a financial newsletter publisher in a case that could make it easier to punish those who illegally distribute copyrighted works via e-mail or the Internet. Lowry's Reports Inc., a small but well-known publisher of stock market analysis, alleged in a lawsuit that Legg Mason made unauthorized copies of its newsletter and distributed the information to its 1,300 brokers through an internal Web site and other means.

They were the generation of women who broke down the barriers to traditionally male professions. They were told they could have it all and, in some cases, they did. Now these 40 million female baby boomers are hitting middle age, and many are facing confusion about everything from their relationships to their careers. "This definitely is not our mothers' midlife," says Amy Lynch, editor and publisher of the recently launched OurSelves: The Newsletter for Women at the Center of Life. "We've all read The Silent Passage, Gail Sheehy's book about menopause, and most of us assumed we had this life stage figured out," Lynch says.

From "Point Pointers" in the Fells Point Citizens on Patrol Newsletter of December 2002: "Don't leave items out on the street that can be used as weapons, for example a 2-by-4 or loose bricks. Drunk and angry people love to improvise." A New Year's resolution.

Rudys' to hold annual masters' dinner Sept. 9 Rudys' 2900 restaurant in Finksburg will sponsor the annual Dinner with the Masters at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 9. Certified Master Chef Rudy Speckamp will lead eight chefs from all over the country in preparing a seven-course dinner, including a champagne reception with hors d'oeuvres. The event is a celebration of the restaurant's 19th anniversary and of the continued partnership of Speckamp and maitre d' Rudi Paul. The menu will include appetizers, game birds, a seafood entree, sorbet, a meat entree, salad/cheese, desserts and friandise (chocolate confections)

SHARON SPICHER realized last month that writing the Savage Community Association newsletter was taking too large a toll on her family life, so she regretfully resigned her post. And, as with so many things in Savage, someone just stepped in to take over. Darlene Thims is the new author of this community missive. Thims and her family moved to Savage two years ago and have found a niche in the community: Her husband, Paul, is vice president of the community association. And this, too, was serendipitous.

Calling the city state's attorney's attack on him "silly" and her understanding of her own budget "incomplete," Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley said yesterday that he would rather Patricia C. Jessamy concentrate on fighting crime. O'Malley was responding to reporters' questions about a recent "community newsletter" Jessamy's office produced that included a long, critical commentary of the mayor signed by her. About 28,000 copies of the newsletter were distributed as an insert in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, and mailed to groups, churches, hospitals and elsewhere.