Pantry

Happy wanderers -- The Freestate Happy Wanderers walking club will hold noncompetitive walks on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day at Owen Brown Community Center in Columbia. Two 10K trails and one 5K trail are available; walkers can start any time between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. and finish by 4 p.m. Home-cooked food and a place to sit and chat with other walkers will be available. There is a fee. Take a can of nonperishable food for a local food pantry. 410-437-2164 or 301-317-0639, before 9 p.m. Or www.ava.

CHUCK CASSETTA understands how people behave at work, and he has developed an intricate and very accurate method of profiling worker talents and abilities. For the fourth time in five years, Cassetta was invited to speak at the International Winner's Conference of Target Training International, a career counseling company in Scottsdale, Ariz. Target Training International markets his publications and computer programs. And for the fourth time, the Hampstead resident was selected from a field of more than 3,000 information distributors to receive the International President's Award, the top award offered by the company.

United Black Clergy of Anne Arundel County Inc. has met its goal of raising $10,000 to help refurbish Rapture Church in Lothian, which was desecrated with racial slurs and had its food pantry and equipment looted last month. At a "restoration rally" scheduled for Saturday in Glen Burnie, United Black Clergy officials will present the donated money to church leaders to help pay expenses not covered by insurance. Church officials estimated the vandals did more than $20,000 worth of damage.

Harford Community Action Agency honored volunteers, supporting organizations and individuals and employees at it annual awards dinner at the Bayou Restaurant in Havre de Grace Oct. 13. AMES United Methodist Church in Bel Air was honored with a Partnership Award for its support of the Community Action Agency food bank and food pantries through the annual Race for the Hungry. Donna Lewis, one of the organizers of the AMES effort, said the event at Edgeley Grove Park in Fallston raised more than $11,000 for the food pantry.

Have you ever seen the show "Hoarders"? I'm fairly certain that if my grandfather were alive, he would have been featured on the reality TV series. He had good intentions and meant to sell his many collections of rare, interesting and unusual items, but he was a pack rat nonetheless. His collecting always outpaced his selling. And while the main living areas of his house were fairly uncluttered, the basement and garage were unnavigable. He also had several outbuildings, sheds and mobile homes on his property loaded with stuff.

If you dream about the perfect home, what do you see? A big front porch, tall windows, high ceilings?If your thoughts run to practical matters, you may see a kitchen with room for all the pots and pans you need to cook everything from soup to nuts; one pantry with shelves full of your homemade jams, jellies and pickles and another containing your silver and crystal; and a closet for all your fine linen.If this is your vision of the perfect home, you may have been frustrated trying to realize it. The cook's pantry for the foods, the butler's pantry for the silver and crystal, the linen closet for the napery, all went the way of the walk-in attic in most American homes built after 1940.

If you dream about the perfect home, what do you see? A big front porch, tall windows, high ceilings?If your thoughts run to practical matters, you may see a kitchen with room for all the pots and pans you need to cook everything from soup to nuts; one pantry with shelves full of your homemade jams, jellies and pickles and another containing your silver and crystal; and a closet for all your fine linen.If this is your vision of the perfect home, you may have been frustrated trying to realize it. The cook's pantry for the foods, the butler's pantry for the silver and crystal, the linen closet for the napery, all went the way of the walk-in attic in most American homes built after 1940.

With only a short time to go before Christmas, the Rev. Joseph C. Rowe was trying to find a tractor-trailer.The pastor of the Odenton Church of God was trying to help another West County church organize a trip to the county in West Virginia where he grew up and where, for the past several years, he has sent tons of clothing to needy families.He had to finalize plans that day because he would be tied up the rest of the week with a clothing drive for a local women's shelter, finding enough food to stock a food pantry run by 12 West County churches and getting toys to needy children at the Annapolis YWCA.

A MEMORY grove of trees will be planted at 3 p.m. Sunday at Pine Valley Park in Manchester. The 19 trees were donated in honor of persons or occasions.Families are welcome to help plant the trees after a ribbon-cutting ceremony and program.Volunteers from Manchester Parks Foundation Inc., which oversees Pine Valley Park, will aid in the planting and watering. Water will be carried from a nearby stream and pond.The root holes for the trees were calculated by the fifth-grade math class of teacher Betty Smith of Manchester Elementary and dug by town workers.

IN THE PAST 10 months, Cindy Burkert of Millersville has experienced some major life changes, the most recent becoming director of the Severna Park Assistance Network.First, she got married. Then she and her new husband, Jack Burkert, moved to Shipley's Choice with her teen-age children, Drew and Ellen Thiemann.In February, when the daily three-hour commute to her job at the Department of Interior in Washington proved to be too much, she resigned. Two months later, she was hired by SPAN."Barbara Birkenheuer was able to stay for three weeks after I was hired, so I had excellent training," Burkert said of SPAN's first director.