Open Window

Some weeks ago, I reviewed Windows software that I felt would help non-profit organizations -- columns that generated a good number of comments from readers. Now, three new developments in the Windows environment are worthy of a quick update."What's the big deal with Windows software?," one reader asked me. "They claim it's so easy to use and it saves time. Oh yeah? So how come you can literally watch your hair grow while you wait for it to print?"Good point, I had to admit.One of the more frustrating things about Windows 3.0 is the wait time for printing documents, especially ones that incorporate tables or other graphic elements.

RECENTLY I danced with a door. I was swinging and swaying with a hunk of wood, attempting to hang a door in my younger son's bedroom.The hinges of the door had become separated from the jamb or door frame. There were several reasons for the separation. The primary one was dunking. A small plastic basketball hoop, the kind that accepts small, soft basketballs, had been attached to the door.That meant that some not-so-small boys, my sons, 16 and 11, and their buddies, had been dunking, slamming the ball through the hoop.

The Cuban all-star team that arrives in Baltimore this weekend is scheduled to hold a workout on Sunday evening at Camden Yards, but local fans probably will not get the opportunity to sneak an advance peek at the opposition before Monday's game against the Orioles.Cuban sports officials have asked that access to the stadium be tightly controlled during the workout, presumably to reduce the likelihood of outside contact with the players that might prompt one or more of them to try and defect to the United States.

WASHINGTON - One display case holds the remains of a 15-year-old Anne Arundel County boy, a servant who apparently was murdered and stuffed into a hole scooped out of a dirt cellar. Farther along are the bones of a strapping lad of 12 or 13, with evidence of a raging infection in his lower jaw. He was found in a hastily dug grave in Jamestown, Va., an Indian arrow in his thigh. Even more telling is a baby, born into the wealth and power of Maryland's first family and interred in a costly lead coffin in St. Mary's City.

VERY LITTLE has been written in a humorous vein about urban education. Perhaps that's because few authors can see anything funny amid all the pathos.So take two wonderfully humorous education novels with you when you go "down the ocean" next month. You're likely to be rereading one, a 1960s best seller. You haven't heard of the other.In 1964, Bel Kaufman was an obscure high school English teacher "struggling with poverty and loneliness," as she put it. She turned a 3 1/2 -page short story she'd written about the madness of a mythical metropolitan high school into one of the best-selling novels this side of midcentury.

SEATTLE -- Steve Albertson has dedicated his nest egg, and time, to the environment. Tina Podlodowski put her considerable resources into gay issues and the city council. Trish Millines spent more than $100,000 of her own money to teach technology to minority children.All three consider themselves retirees. All three are philanthropists. And all three were under 40 when they left Microsoft, graduates of an employee shareholder plan that has made them winners of the biggest lottery in the digital age.The financial success of the software giant, whose stock has increased nearly 5,000 percent in a decade, has heralded a new era in philanthropy in Washington state, fueled by geographically concentrated group of young donors with few precedents in U.S. history.

During the past several weeks of wiltingly hot weather, Daniel Gibbs hasn't once turned on the air conditioner.He doesn't have one.It's not that he can't afford it: The 27-year-old Johns Hopkins University administrative assistant makes $26,000 a year and owns a three-story rowhouse.But unlike the 73,758,000 U.S. residences that have some form of air conditioning -- 75 percent of all American households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau -- Gibbs' St. Paul Street abode is cooled only by fans, cross ventilation and light-colored curtains.

Such is the power of Microsoft Corp. that it can make New Year's Day come in August.At the CompUSA store in Glen Burnie, night owls, nerds and otherwise normal people counted down the seconds until Windows 95, Microsoft's long-awaited new computer operating system, made its debut in the market early this morning."

DANDONG, China -- The gash on Ma Guanzheng's forehead is a small sign of the vast hunger gripping North Korea these days.A teen-ager struck Ma with a rock earlier this month as he was transporting flour across the border into North Korea. Ma said a crowd of teen-age boys leapt on his truck, cut through inch-thick ropes that held the flour on top and made off with 30 bags."If you stop, it's even worse," said Ma, 49, smoking a cigarette as he waited to cross the border again last week. "They will steal more."

The bamboo floor in the lobby will be striking. The electricity bill will be impressively low. The rainwater cisterns out front are already eye-catching, looming like old wooden silos from a farm museum. And those aren't the only marvels you'll find at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's new waterfront headquarters in Bay Ridge, just outside Annapolis. But ask the foundation's facilities director Chuck Foster what feature of the two-story building is likely to make the most lasting impression and he'll direct you to the no-flush toilets, where discharge pipes drop 20 feet to a basement compost heap.