Sense Of Community

William Donald Schaefer is our Grand Provocateur. He's the man who comes to dinner and criticizes the food. He's your mother telling you to clean up your room. He's the burr under the saddle of City Hall, who calls Kurt L. Schmoke ``that nice young man'' in the most patronizing way, and thus provokes mayoral responses that couldn't be printed in a family newspaper.He's been state comptroller barely a week, and he's already got people choosing sides. He's our public conscience, some say. He's our perennial annoyance, say others.

Long before the developers of Columbia dreamed up their village neighborhoods, there was the subdivision of Hammond Village. Started in the early 1960s, this subdivision of brick ramblers and split-level homes forms the core of the Hammond community."

City is without basics for a young familyFour years ago, my family and I moved from downtown Baltimore to a suburban neighborhood just over the city-county line. We put that off as long as we could, and what finally forced us out was the poor quality of schooling offered in even the best neighborhoods.But just as important, maybe even more so, to our decision to abandon the city was our growing frustration with the lack of basic resources offered to a family with three young children.Given the city's single-mindedness on developing tourism rather than residential areas, it was apparent that these problems would not be addressed anytime soon.

The business district around Baltimore-Washington International Airport is coming of age.Entertainment -- beginning with a giant movie theater opening in Airport Square this weekend -- is bringing night life to a 30-year-old business corridor that bustles during the day thanks to thousands of employees, customers and airline passengers, not to mention a sizable local population.Hoyts West Nursery Cinema 14 expects to draw moviegoers from around the region but especially from business travelers in the five hotels within a mile of it.Also hoping to tap that market are developers of a 10-acre airport theme restaurant park proposed next to the movie house.

Robert Wagner remembers when Mount Airy had a high school. Like other residents, he remembers neighbors mingling at the school fair and crowding the gym to see a local drama club's productions.He also remembers when the school closed -- and students were bused to a new, larger school 13 miles away."They cut out the heart of this community when they took our school away, and we never have regained the cohesiveness we had," said Wagner, a longtime resident who was on the front lines of the battle to save the school.

A ceremony tomorrow dedicating Warfields Farm Community Park will do more than celebrate the community's 18-year effort behind the park -- it will also remember the life of a boy whose death spurred legislation requiring the use of bicycle helmets.The program will include the unveiling of a plaque honoring Christopher Kelley, who died in 1990 at the age of 13 after he was struck by a car while riding his bicycle along the pond at what would become this Glenelg park. Christopher, who was not wearing a helmet, died in a neighbor's yard.

The 4,242 residents of Lauraville now reside at one address: www.lauravillemd.com.Anyone interested in learning about this northeast Baltimore neighborhood can hop on the Information Highway, stop at the community's World Wide Web site and discover the advantages that this community, rooted in the early 20th century, offers."

A STUDENT, a career-changer who appears to be in her 40s, raises her hand. From the distraught, twisted look on her face, I can tell she has a disturbing question to raise. When called on, she stammers, "What are we going to do about class next Thursday? It's the last 'Seinfeld' episode."The woman in my class lives a fragmented life, as do most Americans. She holds down a part-time job, attends school part-time, has kids whom she sees only on a part-time basis, and a husband who probably falls at the bottom rung of the part-time ladder.

THE SOUND of chain saws in Frostburg and surrounding hamlets in the Maryland mountains since Tuesday evening's tornadoes is the sound of hope, of rebuilding, of refusal to give in, of helping neighbors. Too bad we need a natural disaster to bring out the best in people and the sense of community, but somehow the challenge helps.Tornadoes are meant to be in Kansas, out there on the endless plain, the little angry funnel seen miles across the wheat fields. Maryland has had a few funnels, even in Baltimore, but they are rare and out of place.

Her job is to improve Taneytown's sense of community, and to that end Michelle Schaffer meets with city and business officials to plan events and -- in some cases, such as an Easter egg hunt -- offer hands-on help.Schaffer, working with two Taneytown Girl Scout troops, helped fill 2,000 plastic eggs with candy this week for an Easter egg hunt to be held Saturday. The egg hunt is one of many activities being planned to bolster a sense of community in the growing town of 4,500 residents.Schaffer's role stems, in part, from growing concerns about problems among teen-agers -- including alcohol and drug use and delinquency -- in Taneytown, which is in one of the poorest regions of the county.

Soon after Harford County Councilwoman Veronica L. "Roni" Chenowith was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006, she waged a vigorous campaign for re-election and won a fourth term. "You need continuity," she said in explaining her rationale for wanting to remain on the council. "You need experience and knowledge to make good decisions." In the past few months, when she relied on portable oxygen and a walker, she insisted on attending weekly council meetings. Joe Chenowith Sr., her husband of 48 years, drove her to the sessions.

For 50 years, Greeks have made their way to Kentrikon, a shop on Eastern Avenue where they come to buy Greek music and trinkets, wreaths for weddings and christening ribbons after babies are born. Only now there is a new draw, and new customers. "Musica Latina de Venta Aqui," reads a sign visible from outside Kentrikon - "Latin music sales here." "The majority of people coming into the area are Hispanic," says owner Nitsa Morekas, 67, explaining her decision to branch out. "It's like Greektown international now."

These days, Maple Lawn is more than the turkey farm in southern Howard County owned by the Iager family for more than a century. The mixed-use planned community of homes, offices, businesses and stores is about 20 percent finished and is expected to be completed over the next decade or so. The community of about 700 acres lies in Fulton, a rural area about midway between Baltimore and Washington. The design, with residences close to the street and sidewalks everywhere, is geared toward fostering over-the-fence neighborliness and pedestrian traffic.

The percentage of Baltimore-area residents who volunteered their time dropped slightly last year, mirroring a national trend as educated baby boomers grow impatient with unskilled volunteer tasks, according to a federal report being released today. Across the Baltimore metropolitan area, 27.1 percent of the population volunteered at least once in 2006, according to the report by the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency. That's a 2.2 percentage point drop from 2005.

BOSTON - This is the phrase repeated again and again when Katrina broke through the levees of denial: "I can't believe this is America." The mantra of disbelief echoed from a veteran of the war in Afghanistan to the president of Jefferson Parish, to mothers and fathers in the Superdome to families around their television sets: "This doesn't happen here." For days, we watched a toxic gumbo of natural and man-made disasters cooking along the Gulf Coast. "The city that care forgot" felt forgotten.

OCEAN CITY -- The end is coming for the last RV campground here in Maryland's beach resort, and Lee and Catherine Roberts are mourning already. It was 37 years ago that the couple from Laurel parked a trailer for the summer and began building friendships that now span three generations. But with $800,000 condos literally looming over their modest vacation spot, they weren't surprised to learn that the owners of the Ocean City Campground have gotten an offer they can't refuse. Land is at a premium on this 10-mile sliver in the Atlantic, and more wrecking balls and construction cranes seem to turn up every day. "This is going to be a real emotional separation," says Catherine Roberts, 66, a retired administrative assistant.

There is a historic display at Bryant Woods Elementary this week. A line of yellow paper - marked with the years 1968 through 2004 - stretches along the hall. Under almost every number are signatures. The paper is both a timeline and a guest book for the school's 35th anniversary. On Sunday, former students, parents and staffers came to celebrate that anniversary at a school that has changed physically but - many at the event said - maintains its welcoming, community philosophy. "I was very pleased to see that after all these years a lot of [people]

For most youngsters, Saturdays are a break from busy daily routines. But last weekend, dozens of children gathered in Worthington Elementary School's media center for an extra morning of school. For these children, the six-week-long Saturday school is not perceived as punishment. The small classes, run by Helping Hands Enrichment and Leadership Foundation and taught by Howard County teachers, have no homework and no tests. The pressure to perform is off. The foundation was established in 1987, aiming to provide academic enrichment to county schoolchildren.

LONG BEFORE humanity invented gunpowder, humans crouched in terror at the furies of nature. For all the advances in climate control and shelter, nature remains untamed and able to remind us of it. Tornadoes have visited Maryland occasionally, never in profusion and rarely with great damage. Marylanders think of them as something in distant Kansas wheat fields. While Maryland and the nation sought spiritual recovery Monday from the human terrorism Sept. 11 in New York and Washington, the storm including an F3 tornado moved like a shot from Stafford, Va., to Laurel, Md. The havoc at the University of Maryland, College Park was a reminder that no law of man or nature restricts a tornado to rural areas away from crowded cities or vital facilities.

When Rochelle Michaux-Conway and her husband, David, moved to an idyllic corner lot on serenely beige Daring Prince Way in the Columbia Village of River Hill, they knew they had found the right spot for their future children to play safely, grow up peacefully and be educated in some of the best schools Maryland had to offer. What they didn't know was that several years later their 5-year-old firstborn would cry in kindergarten class because there were no little children there who looked like her. "She felt alone," Michaux-Conway said.