Opening Ceremonies

The Glenwood Middle School LEO Club recently held a bike drive to benefit Bikes for the World. The day was a great success, thanks to the many LEOs who participated, along with their advisers, Principal Dave Brown , the Glenwood Lions Club and the surrounding community. The day started out with Lions Pete Adams and Harrison Morson delivering 41 bikes (in two trips). Most of the bikes had been collected by LL Bean in Columbia during a promotional sale, and a few had been collected privately prior to the bike drive event.

Sunday, May 29 Concert The U.S. Naval Academy Band presents its final concert in this season's recital series with an oboe recital by Musician 1st Class Emily Madsen at 3 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road in Columbia. The performance will feature works by Ralph Vaughn Williams, Eugene Bozza, Stephen Gorbos and Edward Rosenberg. The public concert is free. Information: 410-293-0263 or usna.edu/usnaband. Monday, May 30 Passport services The Passport Acceptance Facility at Howard County Library's east Columbia branch, 6600 Cradlerock Way, offers passport applications and photos from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.

BEIJING - The rumble began slowly, softly, as the 2,008 drummers in silvery robes each worked their hands on the bronze surface of a Fou, the oldest Chinese percussion instrument. And then the noise increased, rattling the Olympic Stadium, waves of sound soon punctuated by fireworks as the lights on the surfaces of the drums and the rhythmic movements of the percussionists turned the countdown to yesterday's start of the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony into a blend of technology and tradition.

For now, Katie Hoff is content to be the other swimmer from Baltimore, the one not named Phelps, the one without the massive public relations machine and Olympic gold. What she's less satisfied with is the image from four years ago in Athens of a skinny little girl of 15, the youngest member of the U.S. team, who faltered under the suffocating pressure and hype of the Summer Games. Since 2004, Hoff has vacuumed up world records and titles and endorsement deals that have allowed her to drive a luxury car and buy her first home, but what Hoff really wants is to prove once and for all that she is the world's most versatile and dominant woman swimmer.

BEIJING - Just when it seemed that nothing good could pierce the gloomy, gray haze that stifles this city, just when the U.S. Olympic Committee set the bar of foolishness and political expediency higher than any gold medalist will ever jump, a story comes along to remind the world that the Olympics still have great redemptive power. The captains of the U.S. teams participating in the Beijing Games yesterday chose 1,500-meter runner Lopez Lomong, a Sudanese refugee who was abducted from his church at age 6 and targeted for a life as a child soldier, to carry the American flag into the opening ceremony tomorrow.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's president, dogged by rape allegations and calls for his resignation, sat out the opening of the parliament's winter session yesterday after police recommended he be indicted. Some members of the Knesset had threatened to boycott the ceremony or to stay in their seats if President Moshe Katsav took part in it. It is customary for lawmakers to rise as the president, whose post is largely ceremonial, takes his place in the gallery seats reserved for dignitaries. Katsav, who has denied the accusations, decided to skip the session after police recommended Sunday that prosecutors indict him on rape and other sexual misconduct charges involving former female employees.

TURIN, Italy -- Passion, pageantry and Pavarotti. All three were present in grand scale last night as the XX Winter Olympics began with a sometimes majestic, sometimes whimsical opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium. It even featured an upset. Amid a 2 1/2 -hour show highlighted by in-line skaters wearing futuristic helmets that shot flames 6 feet into the air, fake cows on rollers, dancing trees, costumes by Giorgio Armani, dancers from Milan's La Scala opera house and the incomparable Luciano Pavarotti, Stefania Belmondo, a surprise choice, was the final torchbearer.

TURIN, Italy -- Chris Witty will carry the United States flag into the stadium during the opening ceremony of the Olympics tonight, an honor symbolic of a greater struggle than chasing gold medals throughout the world. She can talk about it now. An abusive predator who stole her innocence, disguised in the kindly embrace of a neighbor. He crawled into her life when she was 4 and growing up in West Allis, Wis. The memory lingers. "I remember his smell," Witty said dispassionately, reflecting years of work with a therapist.

AH, THE IN-SCHOOL assembly. It's as much a part of the school tradition as the smelly locker, the mushy peas at lunch and learning the "Hora" dance during gym class. Katie Hoff has been there for those assemblies, but always on the other side, the kid looking longingly at the person giving the talk. That is, until Friday, when the 15-year-old swimmer was the person on the rostrum, imparting the wisdom. It was, to be sure, an odd feeling. "Yeah, I remember going to these things. They'd have a speaker, and I thought, I really want to be like them," Hoff said after speaking to a group of kindergarteners, first- and second-graders at Boys' Latin.

ATHENS - Seven years since they were awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics, but only four years since they began to seriously prepare for them, Greek organizers were finally able to say yesterday that they will be ready for the Games. Their assurances came not a moment too soon. The opening ceremony is scheduled for tonight at the Olympic Stadium. "We rejoice rightfully today for the completion of the preparations," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said after organizers presented their final report.