Paper Towels

NEW ORLEANS - When their homes began to sink in Katrina's floodwaters, elders in the quarter here known as Uptown gathered their neighbors to seek refuge at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, the local toughs included. But when the thugs started vandalizing the place - wielding guns and breaking into vending machines - Vance Anthion put them out, literally tossing them into the fetid waters. Anthion stayed awake at night after that, protecting the inhabitants of the school from looters or worse.

NOTHING could be more predictable in Maryland than watermen complaining about limits on their harvests. Here's the reaction of the president of the Maryland Watermen's Association to a blue-ribbon committee's suggestion that Maryland and Virginia cut their harvests of blue crabs, whose numbers are declining: "These scientists are too ... arrogant to talk to the right people. The fishermen ought to make the rules." Yeah, right. If the fishermen made the rules, there'd be nothing in the Chesapeake but carp.

You hold in your hands a valuable commodity -- and that's not pulp fiction.Because of a worldwide surge in the demand for wood pulp, the price for paper products of almost all kinds -- including the newsprint on which this newspaper is printed -- is soaring.Executives of companies that use or sell paper say they've never seen anything like it.The price increases have been so steep, National Public Radio reported last weekend, that thieves in New York have taken to swiping bundles of used paper before the city's recycling trucks can pick them up.The effects are being felt in a multitude of ways -- some visible to consumers, some hidden but all very real.

As we come to the close of another challenging year on the economic front for many, local nonprofit groups throughout the area are struggling to make ends meet and address growing needs in the community. These groups and the people they serve need our help more than ever. Below is a listing of local helping organizations seeking donations of either money or items, or both. In this season of giving and Thanksgiving, please share your blessings, by giving to those less fortunate.

A little booklet called ''You're A Young Lady Now'' got me into trouble in the fourth grade. My mother had told me that I wasn't to share it with other girls, that this was something for their mothers to deal with.It was the most vague and euphemistic booklet, with drawings of happy looking pony-tailed teen-age girls doing active things, and it had some little drawings of Fallopian tubes flowering and flowing gracefully somewhere in the human body. The drawings did not connect those tubes with any other essential parts; that might have led to the ''What goes where?

Ordinary shoppers take grocery lists and coupons to the supermarket. In Columbia, they take talking points. In a community where local boards decide who can have a basketball hoop or lawn ornament, grocers get cartloads of unsolicited advice from customers and local officials, who believe the stores define their village - and their property values. Oakland Mills village officials prepared a two-page list of "Talking Points" for a meeting last year with Metro Food Market managers. "Crackers," the points note, "are still not on the [store directory]

Bottom of the Bay, the venerable (since 1972) crab joint-cum-seafood restaurant on Route 1 in Laurel, is not easy to describe. It's a one-story, two-room structure that defines what Maine lobster purveyors up "nawth" call "eating in the ruff. " That is, shoes and shirts are required (we think), but that's about it. Boasting about 60 seats, according to manager John Knapp, the main dining room and the bar are roughly equal in size. If you're seeking intimacy, forget it. Individual tables are set up on two sides, against the walls.

LAST WEEK, I came home with a pair of pantyhose given to me by another woman, and my wife didn't hit me with a frying pan. It happened the day the Vidalia Onion Lady came to town. Mary Louise Lever is that lady. A resident of Rome, Ga., she travels to various cities passing out pantyhose, recipes and wisdom about Vidalia onions. Vidalia onions are like Southern belles -- they are exceptionally sweet but bruise easily. The crop, which by law can be labeled Vidalia only if it was grown in one of 20 southeast Georgia counties, should begin arriving in Baltimore-area markets by next week, Lever said.

Unless you have the family on a no-carb diet – and we know how that fad has died out – you probably spend some meal-planning energy on carb-y side dishes to go with protein sources and vegetables. Potatoes, pasta, rice, grains are among the choices. And among the grain-y options we tend to forget are grits. That's right. Grits. The South's answer to Italian polenta. Since we do, in essence, live in the South, you've probably tried had grits for breakfast, but few of us consider fixing them for supper.

At the request of her husband, Bill, Judy Heinekamp of Baltimore wrote in requesting the recipe for the classic Baltimore coddie, or codfish cake. Barbra Rosenberg, also of Baltimore, sent in her "tried and true" recipe. She says that it brings back childhood memories of trips to the neighborhood drugstore for "coddies and a chocolate Coke." Her recipe calls for salt cod, but she says that if that is not readily available, fresh or frozen (and defrosted) cod may be substituted. I tested the recipe as written, using the salt cod. It's a bit time-consuming, but I decided it was probably the best way to get an authentic coddie.