Samaritan

I AM SITTING on the deck of a gorgeous beach home in Bethany Beach, Del. It is morning, cool, breezy and quiet.Off to the west, high clouds are drifting southward. Behind me to the east, the early morning sun is resting briefly on the glittering ocean before pushing up into the sky for its daily round.All of this is especially pleasant because my wife and I are staying in this lovely place free of charge. My brother, Steve, who is also here with his wife, is not paying either. Indeed, he is the reason for this free pass to beach heaven.

On Oct. 23, a purse was the ticket to a good time at Power of the Purse, an event hosted in Towson by the Baltimore County Commission for Women 's and the nonprofit Samaritan Women. The night's goal was to raise awareness — and ultimately money through the resale of donated purses — to fight human trafficking, an issue that commission members say has shown increasing concern in Baltimore County, and Maryland overall. Outside 7 West Bistro Grille, people were asked to drop off new or gently used purses.

There was once a Samaritan traveling the road from Jerusalem to Jericho who found someone lying by the highway, badly beaten and left for dead.Samaritans were good neighbors and noted for social responsibility, unlike priests and Levites and others who minded their own business and avoided getting involved. So when the Samaritan came across this victim of violent crime lying by the roadside he knew exactly what to do: He starting wringing his hands.''Do I have a strong personal interest in helping this stranger?

On Tuesday night, Oct. 23, a purse is the ticket to a good time - and for fighting a good cause - at Power of the Purse, an event being hosted in Towson by the Baltimore County Commission for Women and the Samaritan Women organization The night's goal is to raise awareness, and ultimately money through the resale of the donated purses, all to fight human trafficking, an issue that Commission for Women members say has seen increasing concern in...

Samaritan, by Richard Price. Knopf. 400 pages. $25. Samaritan is good. Very good. Pick it up, and you won't be putting it down. This book reinforces my bias that novelists had better be good writers. Richard Price is and he had me hooked to the end. Set in post-World-Trade-Center-New Jersey, Samaritan is about "good deeds" done by the well intentioned and how, too often, they go astray. Ray Mitchell, a ghetto escapee who also overcame a go-round with drugs, returns to his old neighborhood with a fat bank account and a mission to do some good in his part of this rotten, messed-up world.

Outraged by the Mike Donlan story -- good Samaritan beaten unconscious by thugs -- a well-known Baltimore businessman has set up an account to help Donlan pay medical bills and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his assailants. The businessman, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent a check to Metro Crime Stoppers (276-8888) yesterday."Here's a guy [Donlan] who tried to help somebody and he gets his head beat in," the donor said by phone from his Pikesville office.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its opening, Good Samaritan Hospital announced plans to improve health care for the needy in its Northeast Baltimore area and donated $1.5 million to the Johns Hopkins medical school to endow a chair in physical medicine and rehabilitation.The money for both comes from Good Samaritan's endowment created 74 years ago with a bequest from department store owner Thomas O'Neill to build a hospital reserving 20 free private beds for "people of moderate circumstances."

A 25-year-old man was shot and killed yesterday in a Northeast Baltimore apartment, shattering the quiet of a normally placid neighborhood.The man, whose name was not released because relatives had not yet been notified, was shot several times in an apartment in the 5600 block of Loch Raven Boulevard at 12:45 p.m., said city homicide Detective Jim Hagen.Police would not release many details of the shooting because of the continuing investigation. But a man who lives in an apartment near the one where the shooting occurred said it was preceded by a domestic dispute.

Good Samaritan Hospital's laboratory regularly failed to follow up on labeling problems that put patients at risk of errors such as receiving the wrong blood type, while Union Memorial Hospital's blood bank director didn't properly ensure the safety of transfusion recipients, state inspectors recently found. Both laboratories are at risk of getting kicked out of the Medicare program and losing their state licenses if these and other problems that inspectors found aren't corrected. But both also have submitted plans of correction to the state, and Carol Benner, director of the Maryland Office of Health Care Quality, said, "We're confident at this point that they're getting the problems fixed."

Mary G. Lochary, A memorial mass will be held at St. Michael's Overlea on Saturday, February 14 at 11:00A.M. Donations may be made to Good Samaritan Hospital Office of Development Cancer Fund.

MedStar Good Samaritan Hospital has opened an expanded center to treat chronic wounds with a procedure where patients are placed in oxygen chambers. The Wound Healing Center at the hospital has four hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers that expose patients to 100 percent pure oxygen - nearly five times that found in air - and pressure that is two to three times atmospheric pressure. The process accelerates tissue formation that helps wounds heal more quickly. More than 8 million people in the United States suffer from chronic wounds that don't heal well because of conditions such as diabetes, obesity, aging and the late effects of radiation therapy.

George T. Myrick, a retired hospital director of personnel and model railroad fan, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown. He was 85. The son of a Bendix Radio Corp. worker and a homemaker, George Thompson Myrick was born in Philadelphia and moved to Homeland when his father went to work at Bendix. He attended St. Paul's School for two years and graduated in 1945 from Friends School. After leaving Friends, he enlisted in the Navy and served until 1946.

Good Samaritan Hospital agreed to pay $793,548 to settle allegations that it submitted false claims to federal health benefit programs for four years ending in December 2008, federal Department of Justice officials reported Wednesday. The hospital denied any wrongdoing, but federal officials say the MedStar Health System hospital listed some patients admitted to the hospital as suffering from malnutrition when they were not diagnosed or treated for that condition. It was marked as a secondary condition in each case.

Every woman will experience menopause, some in the normal course of aging and some before. It can bring on a host of symptoms in addition to hot flashes. But there are things that women can do, from improving their diet and exercising to finding the right treatment, explains Dr. Rakhi Gupta, a gynecologist at the Center for Women's Health at Good Samaritan Hospital. She answers some common questions about this life change. What is menopause? Menopause is a normal life change that occurs as women age, usually between their late 40s and 50s. Menopause is defined as the discontinuation of menstruation for one year or more.

A long-neglected mansion on the city's west side has been restored to its 19th-century grandeur so that it can provide a home and hope for homeless women. Dozens of volunteers have adopted rooms in the 8,000-square-foot Victorian, built in 1893 by the owner of a Baltimore tugboat company. They swept away years of abandonment, sanded floors, painted walls, restored stained-glass windows, repaired fireplaces and polished the fixtures. They have rebuilt the kitchen, added new bathrooms and donated linens, handmade quilts and every stick of furniture — save for the few pieces that came with the house.

Twenty-five years ago the pastor of a Bolton Hill church tapped Sharon Krieger on the shoulder and said, "You need to be doing something." What she did was create a personalized social service organization known as the Samaritan Community where the upheavals of Baltimore living get a warm, sympathetic and knowledgeable ear. As a counselor, she is self-taught. Her philosophy is simple: "I want everyone we work with to know that they are loved." In the early 1980s, the Rev. Lyman "Barney" Farnham, her pastor, offered her an outreach ministry role.

Joseph Cohen, 79, the high priest of the Samaritan sect that broke away from mainstream Judaism three millenniums ago, died Friday. The Samaritans have two communities, one in the Israeli town of Holon and one on Mount Gerizim overlooking the Palestinian-run West Bank town of Nablus.Zina Gladys Pitsor, 93, who was actor James Dean's dance instructor when he was a boy, died Friday in Marion, Ind., after a long illness.Pub Date: 2/13/98

On September 2, 2004, FANNIE KREMEN (nee Hiberman); widow of Benjamin D. Kremen; mother of Jeffrey E. Kremen, M.D. and Richard M. Kremen; mother-in-law of Judith S. Kremen and Gladys R. Kremen; sister of Ida Zuckerman and Ceil Israel, and the late Milton and Abe Hiberman; grandmother of Sarah Kremen, M.D., and husband Jonathan Aurnou, Amy, Alexis, Michael, and Peggy Kremen. Contributions may be made to the Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation of Baltimore and to Beth Tfiloh Congregation.

Appendicitis refers to an acute inflammatory process involving the appendix, which is a small, worm-like appendage of the first part of the colon, writes Dr. Jason Roland, co-director of minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital. Anyone with an appendix is at risk for developing it. Here's how to spot and treat the condition: Appendicitis occurs when the single orifice leading into the appendix becomes clogged, either with stool (known as a fecalith)

Mary G. Lochary, A memorial mass will be held at St. Michael's Overlea on Saturday, February 14 at 11:00A.M. Donations may be made to Good Samaritan Hospital Office of Development Cancer Fund.