Read

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

America was built on the ideas that one could work hard, sacrifice and save, to have a better life. I worked hard for years and years in school, I sacrificed and saved, and now I wake up early every weekday and many weekends to go to work, where I provide services to the public at a very high price to myself, and often to the recipients of my services. As our lawmakers embark upon the first day of this special session, I wish to call to their minds the very purpose of their being there: to formulate laws.

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

Two city water meter readers turned in phony numbers in at least two neighborhoods in recent months, the Department of Public Works acknowledged Tuesday, leading to more inaccurate billing by an agency that has been troubled by aging infrastructure and high error rates. As the Bureau of Water and Wastewater tries to correct the mistakes, residents who were undercharged are seeing a spike in their water charges - and officials say they must pay. The latest twist in the city's water billing problems, which have affected at least one in 10 local homeowners, did not go over well in the North Baltimore neighborhood of Homeland, where residents were already angry about the unusually high charges.

Thank God for Joan and Don. Without their lunchtime escape from the office, replete with witty, sexy banter, this episode, the worst of the season, would have been pointless. Nothing else quite worked here, in what clearly was a transitional throwaway leading up to the final few episodes this season. I, for one, do not care about Lane's financial issues (though, surely him forging Don's signature on a check to pay debts will come back to bite him). Anything involving Harry is sort of blah, even though his subplot this week brought back and old friend, Paul Kinsey, who has, ahem, gone through some changes.

Lots of folks are probably suffering symptoms of Colbert-withdrawal due to the sudden -- and unexplained suspension of the Colbert Report's taping. The Washington Post noted : Comedy Central's “The Colbert Report” suddenly canceled taping Wednesday night, telling ticket holders that episodes of the show for the rest of the week had been scrapped due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Meanwhile, here are some suggestions of comic dystopia to keep you busy: -- "I Am America (And So Can You!

All of us have let that message with an error in it get away from us. All of us have submitted texts bearing typos or the wrong homonym. All of who edit have overlooked gross blunders or, worse, inserted them in someone else's text. All of us are fallible mortals deserving of sympathy, even forgiveness. And yet, some blunders are too delicious to ignore. Such a one flew over the transom today in a news release from the office of Baltimore City Councilman Robert W. Curran proclaiming:  Attached please find a copy of a press release and accompanying resolution declaring domestic violence to be a fundamental human right.

Our bookshelf is looking a bit sad lately. So we enlisted some of the young staff at Enoch Pratt Free Library branches to give us their picks for books they're loving right now.

As a person who as a teenager marched alongside people like Rep. John Lewis and Diane Nash to successfully integrate lunch-counters in Nashville, Tenn., the issue of whether Read's drugstore in downtown Baltimore's West Side, which was the site of historic civil rights sit-ins, should be preserved is a poignant one for me. ( "Seeking guidance on west-side project," Jan. 25). I view the current controversy from several perspectives. During the more than one-third of a century that I have lived in Maryland, I have been given multiple gubernatorial appointments to serve on this state's Commission of African-American History and Culture and am a past chairman of the Commission to Coordinate the Study, Commemoration and Impact of Slavery's History and Legacy in Maryland.

Robbery Incident (4800 Blk Roland Park) Baltimore, MD / February 1, 2012 - The Baltimore Police Department is investigating a robbery that occurred last night within the Roland Park Community of Northern Baltimore. Just before 8:00 p.m. within the rear of the 4800 Blk of Roland Avenue, as two women entered their vehicle they were approached by the suspect who demanded the victim's purses. Threatening to shoot if they did not comply, the suspect reached in the vehicle and removed a purse.

It's hot - but not too hot - and humid - but not too humid - here as 150,000 people make their way toward Churchill Downs, where the 138 th running of the Kentucky Derby will take place at about 6:30 tonight. Hard rain fell overnight, leaving the track sloppy in the morning and preventing any of the Derby's 20 contestants from going to the track (it has since been upgraded all the way up to fast). Graham Motion, the Fair Hill trainer who won the Derby last year with Animal Kingdom, had told me he hoped to take Went the Day Well out there.

Baltimore Reads hopes to collect 75,000 titles at its 17th annual Books for Kids Day from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday on the parking lot of Poly-Western High School, Falls Road and Cold Spring Lane. The nonprofit organization, dedicated to fostering literacy, will accept new or gently used books and redistribute them through its Book Bank. It collects books for Baltimore-area schools, teachers, Head Start centers, social services agencies, community organizations and needy families.

Had you heard that the Kenyan Keynesian socialist Muslim sleeper agent in the White House is trying to kill off the nation's sparrows? At HeadsUp , FEV examines a Washington Free Beacon article that makes such a claim, which turns out (you did see this coming, didn't you?) to be entirely bogus. How do we know that it is bogus, apart from the surface improbability of the mere assertion? FEV took the trouble to read the links in the story itself and discovered that they completely undermine the assertion: "The most fun of all, though, is the chutzpah -- the charge-for-the-guns testiculosity involved in flat-out cold lying, then linking to the documents that show beyond doubt that you're making it up as you go along.

Harriett Ann Colder, a reading specialist who established a remedial education company that helped students with English, math and reading, died Tuesdayof multiple organ failure at Howard County General Hospital. The longtime Ellicott City resident was 74. The former Harriett Ann Orth, who went by Ann, was born in Baltimore and raised in Towson. After graduating from Towson High School in 1955, she earned her bachelor's degree from what is now Towson University in 1959. In the early 1960s, she earned a master's degree in remedial reading and diagnosis of learning disabilities from Loyola College of Maryland.

Want to do a good deed -- and clean out those books lying around the house? Head to the parking lot of Poly-Western High School next Saturday, May 5, as Baltimore Reads holds its annual Books for Kids Day. At the event, which runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., you can donate new or gently used books that will be redistributed through the organization's Book Bank. The goal: to collect 75,000 books over the coming year. The Baltimore Sun gives hundreds of books to the Book Bank each year -- stack and stacks of review copies that I don't have the time to read.

In December, I called the hiring of Chelsea Clinton as a special correspondent for the newsmagazine "Rock Center" a "journalistically bankrupt decision by NBC News. " In February, after seeing Clinton's second report for the show, I wrote that Clinton "failed Journalism 101 -- again. " On CNN's  "Reliable Sources," I called the quote from NBC News President Steve Capus that it seemed to him as if Chelsea Clinton "had been preparing her whole life" for this job in journalism one of the most outrageous and disconnected-from-reality statements I have ever heard from the mouth of a news president in 30 years of reporting on the networks.

Today's story selection, "The Girl, the Fish and the Crown" helps children understand the importance of making predictions and thinking critically when they read or listen. The episodes in this story are easy to identify. Before you read the story, explain to your child that good listeners and readers think a lot about the story before they begin to read. This helps them understand the story better and anticipate what might happen. In this way, they are really listening to what the author has to say to us. First, read the Editor's Note at the top of the page, and then ask:* What do you think is going to happen?

On Friday, April 21, 2006, at Carroll Hospital Center, JANE COWPERTHWAIT READ. She was the loving wife of the late Chaplain (Colonel) Charles E. Read, US Army (Ret). Born October 14, 1919 in Waterbury, CT, she was the daughter of the late George Ely, Jr. and Aileen Fernand Cowperthwait. Mrs. Read at one time held the highest Girl Scout rank, Golden Eagle. She attended Western Maryland College where she met and married her husband and later would encourage all her children to attend. As a military wife, she and the family resided in Okinawa, Germany and many bases here in the United States.

With books in hand, hundreds of prominent black male city leaders and community members will descend on classrooms around the city Monday to read to students, part of an initiative to promote literacy and positive male influences in the lives of city youth. The effort called the "Michael Penny Carter Men Reading in Baltimore City Schools Initiative," was introduced in the city by Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the local the National Action Network, last fall. The program was inspired by a similar one in Chicago, and has drawn the support of local political, education, and religious leaders across the city.

About a fifth of American adults have read an ebook in the past year, a figure likely helped along by the recent holiday surge in the sale of tablet and e-reader devices, according to a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Before the holidays last year, 17 percent of adults had read an ebook in the previous year. That number jumped to 21 percent after the holiday. E-book readers are more voracious than non-e-book readers, the study found. E-book readers read an average of 24 books over the previous year, whereas those who read paper-based books averaged 15 books.