Return Home

Have you ever noticed that no matter how late you call home or return home, when you have left the children in the care of their father, they are still not in bed?Have you ever felt that you might stay out all night, return home at dawn and find the kids still awake?So, as you might guess, I was not surprised to call home from work one night at 10:30 and hear the sweet voices of my children in the background."What are the kids doing still awake?" I asked."We're playing strip poker," was my husband's response.

Their five-game road trip to Kansas City and Washington completed, the Orioles come home for a three-game set against the Boston Red Sox to complete a stretch of 20 games in 20 days. The Orioles' off day Thursday will be welcome in many ways. It will also be the first of three off days over the next nine games. Orioles manager Buck Showalter said he's considering adjusting the starting rotation to give left-hander Wei-Yin Chen or right-hander Jason Hammel extra days rest.

The 200-year-old mummified remains of a small child are making their way back to the University of Maryland School of Medicine after an absence in which they were posted for sale on eBay and languished for almost five years in a Michigan police evidence room. The effort to identify the mummy's home and return it was aided by a Port Huron, Mich., police lieutenant, a couple of astute Michigan anthropologists and the curator of a mummy collection originally assembled by a convicted 19th-century Scottish grave robber.

Baltimore County will begin giving priority to veterans when making local government hiring decisions, officials announced Tuesday, a policy focused particularly on those returning from conflicts overseas. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz announced the decision at the National Guard's Gen. Harry C. Ruhl Armory in Towson, surrounded by uniformed soldiers and yellow ribbons. "We want to make the return home for these men and women who have fought so valiantly as easy and successful as possible," Kamenetz said.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia -- The most critical -- and probably least feasible -- part of the new Bosnian peace agreement is the right it gives refugees to return home.Few diplomats, human rights experts or refugee officials believe that the provision will work. Its failure would leave a festering sore that many predict will erupt into war again in a matter of months or years.A handful of "confidence-building" refugee-return projects have failed miserably in the past several weeks, with dozens of families blocked from going home.

A Baltimore County man who surprised two burglars at his home yesterday was shot in the abdomen, county police said.Police said the robbers entered a house in the first block of Benoni Circle in the Tidewater Village community by pointing a gun at two men who lived there after one of them answered the door.The robbers ransacked the house. When the third resident came home at 3:45 p.m., one of the robbers shot him in the abdomen as he came in, police said.Henry Curtis Simmons, 49, was in serious condition last night at Franklin Square Hospital.

Parbadee Ann Bisnath is finally going home. For 24 days - since a judge ruled that her ex-husband had threatened to kill her with a knife in front of their children but declined to order the man to leave the house they share - the Owings Mills woman, her son, two daughters and their Jack Russell terrier have been living with her attorney. They left their own home in late September after Baltimore County District Judge Bruce S. Lamdin refused to order Gordan Bisnath to stay away from his ex-wife and their house, even though the judge found that the man had previously abused Ann Bisnath and vowed on Sept.

Graduating from college marks a significant step into adulthood. So it may seem paradoxical that for many grads, moving back home immediately follows. About half of college graduates plan to return home at the end of school this year, according to a 2007 survey from MonsterTrak, a job search engine for students. The stampede home is not a new trend; an equal proportion of students said they planned to move home last year. And plenty of studies show that grads face steep hurdles to becoming financially independent, from student loan balances that average about $20,000 to rising rents for apartments.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- To the cheers of supporters who set off celebratory firecrackers and flung pink flower petals, the party of exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto announced yesterday that she would return to her homeland Oct. 18. It is not known whether Bhutto, who has been in exile in London and Dubai for nearly nine years, would return as nominal ally or nettlesome rival of President Pervez Musharraf. Also not known is whether she might be imprisoned on active charges of corruption.

Jose Camacho's goal seemed simple enough: Leave Guanajuato, Mexico, for Baltimore, work hard enough to earn $10,000 and return home after a few months. But once he reached $10,000, he yearned to make $15,000 or more. Before long, a few months became five years. Today, Camacho, 50, lives here with his wife and three children, and he earns more money laying cable than he could back home. The most important attraction for people such as Camacho, who enter the United States illegally, remains economic opportunity.

This holiday season, thousands of families are welcoming home children, siblings, spouses and parents from the Middle East. For family members and service members alike, this return marks a long-anticipated and joyful reunion. But for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines whose return marks the end of their military service, it may also usher in a period of great uncertainty. After the reunions, the "welcome homes" and the "thank yous" that our returning veterans receive, the national dialogue they hear turns largely to scant job opportunities, post-traumatic stress, school dropout rates and suicide.

The 200-year-old mummified remains of a small child are making their way back to the University of Maryland School of Medicine after an absence in which they were posted for sale on eBay and languished for almost five years in a Michigan police evidence room. The effort to identify the mummy's home and return it was aided by a Port Huron, Mich., police lieutenant, a couple of astute Michigan anthropologists and the curator of a mummy collection originally assembled by a convicted 19th-century Scottish grave robber.

The Baltimore man who traveled to Libya in February at the start of a political uprising there said he was never in the country as a journalist but as a supporter of the revolutionaries. "I was supporting the revolution when I got captured. My mother didn't know, my girlfriend didn't know [the real reason for going]," Matthew VanDyke said Saturday night on his return to Baltimore. "I wasn't going to sit back and let this happen to people I care about. " Dressed in fatigues, VanDyke, 32, arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport around 9 p.m. He was greeted by his mother, Sharon VanDyke, a retired principal of Federal Hill Preparatory School who lives in South Baltimore, as well as members of his church and friends.

Last Sunday, we all focused on a day of remembrance. Many of us were lucky to have our loved ones return home on that fateful Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. Others were not so lucky. Each of us will forever remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard about the planes striking the World Trade Center's towers, in New York, and then hitting much closer to home as one struck the Pentagon. Our family in particular received a wake-up call that day. Both my husband, John; and my brother, Eric; worked in the Pentagon.

For years, Dr. Martina Callum has traveled the country and the world as a locum tenens physician, providing temporary health care in communities where few doctors exist. But after months on the road, she'd return home to an apartment in White Marsh that could barely hold the furniture, art and other items that she had accumulated over a lifetime. "I was flying back and forth to places like Alaska and paying a lot of rent here," says Callum, who was raised in East Baltimore.

Baltimore's Sudanese community is shrinking week by week, as scores of people have begun making plans to return to their African homeland. Their hurry is understandable — they have fewer than four months to build a new nation. Michael Lupai, president of the Southern Sudanese Community of Washington, a refugee support group, said that at its height, the local community of Sudanese immigrants numbered about 300. In the past few months, he said, that number has shrunk to 185 and is dwindling rapidly.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The Ethiopian Consulate was filled this week with young women, almost all of them maids and nannies trying to get back home. And at the Iraqi Embassy, yet another bus pulled up with poor laborers seeking passage back to Baghdad, hoping to return home even though it means returning to another war zone. Throughout the Lebanese capital, embassies and consulates are attempting to extricate fellow citizens from the fighting that began July 12. For Western nations such as the United States, the effort has involved the costly use of ships or helicopters.

Baltimore County police are asking for the public's help in finding a 14-year-old girl who did not return home from school on Tuesday. Solothia Andrea Thomas, a student at Overlea High School, may be in the Baltimore area, according police. They said they were "concerned for her safety and well-being. " She was described as black, 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing 110 pounds. She has brown eyes and brown hair and was last seen wearing a brown coat, blue jeans and gray boots.

Baltimore County police are asking for the public's help in finding a 14-year-old girl who did not return home from school on Tuesday. Solothia Andrea Thomas, a student at Overlea High School, may be in the Baltimore area, according police. They said they were "concerned for her safety and well-being. " She was described as black, 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing 110 pounds. She has brown eyes and brown hair and was last seen wearing a brown coat, blue jeans and gray boots.

The request by the younger of two teens found responsible for the death of a Crofton youth in 2009 that he be released from a Michigan juvenile facility and continue rehabilitation at home was denied Tuesday. Anne Arundel Circuit Judge J. Michael Wachs said that while the youth, now 16, had made progress during 13 months of therapy, he was not ready to continue treatment under less restrictive supervision at home. "Today is just not the day. [He] is not quite ready," Wachs said after a two-hour hearing, the first the youth has had since he was sent to Turning Point, in St. Johns, Mich.