Straw

WASHINGTON -- When 8-year-old Erica Gorochow of Potomac built a straw designed to cool scalding liquids, she never imagined it would be an idea hot enough to win her a national title in a 1992 inventors competition called Invent America!Erica's cooling straw won out over a gadget that keeps fizz in soda, a device that helps blind people shop and two other student inventions to seize the championship in the category for second-graders.Nine champions -- one from each of nine grades -- were honored at an award ceremony Thursday at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

On the face of it, I and most other gun owners agree with the recent letter from Liz Kato and Joanne Locke ("Stop 'straw buyers' from purchasing guns," April 15). No responsible gun owner is OK with straw purchases. Any bill specifically aimed at straw purchases is a good idea. However, it never stops there. The proposed legislation always goes further and winds up punishing legal gun owners. That is the reason gun owners don't want these bills to become law. Limit the bill to straw purchases, with no extraneous amendments attached, and I'm sure we will all be OK with it. Clay Seeley, Owings Mills Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

On March 3, 2005, CLARE C. STRAW, of Columbia, MD, beloved husband of Eileen B. (Nicholson), loving father of Laura, Jeffrey, Scott and the late Lawrence Straw, cherished grandfather of seven and brother of Susan Campbell and George White. Mr. Straw is also survived by his mother-in-law, Lucille Nicholson and his stepmother, Emily Straw. Friends may call at the family owned Slack Funeral Home, P.A., 3871 Old Columbia Pike, Ellicott City, on Saturday, 7 to 9 P.M. and Sunday, 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral Services Monday, 11 A.M. at Gary Memorial United Methodist Church, Daniels Road, Ellicott City, MD 21043.

The letter regarding straw buyers ("Stop 'straw buyers' from purchasing guns," April 15) contains a major factual error: a straw purchase is already punishable, under federal law, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Federal firearms licensees can also be held accountable for knowingly abetting a straw purchase. It is highly disingenuous to suggest that one can legally buy any number of firearms with the purpose of transferring them to a prohibited person, as doing so has been illegal since the passage of the Gun Control Act in 1968.

Editor's note: Bitten by an ink-drinking vampire, Odilon has become an ink drinker himself and uses a straw to devour books. But he has no one to share his secret with. Ever since my encounter with Draculink, the ink-drinking vampire, I've been drinking books like crazy. How, you ask? With a straw, of course! Chapter after chapter I suck in the stories. They're absolutely delicious! As soon as the ink from the books makes its way into my mouth, I feel a tickle on the tip of my tongue.

Flowermart, the official start of spring in Baltimore, is as much about food as it is about flowers. So it makes sense that among the women wearing hats covered in blooms there would be a guy dressed as a slice of pizza. Antoine Hays of Baltimore — he was a slice of pepperoni — was at Mount Vernon on Friday to promote an online food delivery service, as another edition of the century-old city tradition got under way. Even the plants eat at Flowermart. Carnivorous Plant Nursery, located inf Derwood in Montgomery County, was featuring a hanging basket of tropical pitcher plants that are guaranteed to attract, trap and eat your stink bugs.

PARIS -- Paris is off on a hayride. Left behind at the spring couture shows are the usual luxurious trimmings of satin ribbons and lace. Instead, the braids, edgings, fringes and accessories are mostly of straw or raffia. In the sensitive fingers of couture artisans, these materials have been transformed into gilded objects. The prevailing whim is to dip the straw into gold paint.Every designer seems to have at least one pair of gauntlets with straw cuffs. And at Christian Lacroix's presentation, the big-brimmed farmer-style hats glistened with their lacquer finish.

At the age of 60 I made what I feel was my most embarrassing fashion faux pas. The members of our local bridge club decided to dress up and wear hats for a club outing at a fine restaurant.Hats have never suited me, so I went into the local department store and bought the first festive one I saw -- a bright red straw covered with matching flowers. At the luncheon I stood by as my friends exchanged compliments with each other, but they just glanced at me and said nothing.While we were waiting to be seated, I took a good look at myself in the mirror and realized I looked ridiculous.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Avoiding a potential pitfall on the road to the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Bob Dole finished first in a nonbinding straw vote yesterday in Florida.In the first GOP test of strength since Colin L. Powell decided not to enter the presidential race, Mr. Dole came away with one-third of the ballots cast. Texas Sen. Phil Gramm was second, and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander was third.Dole campaign aides were quick to claim the result as further evidence that their man "is still the overwhelming front-runner," as deputy campaign manager Bill Lacy declared.

OUGHTERARD, Ireland - The house where Denis Geoghegn was born still stands, right next to his own, and the ceiling still looks like it's smeared with black mud and grass, which it is. There are two reminders of Geoghegn's family craft in his tiny village, and one of them is that ceiling - evidence that the house used to have a thatched roof. The other is Geoghegn himself - the last thatcher left in this rugged corner of western Ireland. Thatch, the roofing material of choice for centuries in this country's poor, rural outskirts, is now mostly a postcard novelty.

We've heard that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. But how about keeping guns out of the hands of the bad guys in the first place? Right now, there is no federal law that punishes people who buy guns for criminals who are banned from purchasing firearms themselves. In a recent TV interview, Rep. Elijah Cummings spoke about a guy in Georgia whose girlfriend bought him 64 guns in less than three months. Some of those guns ended up at crime scenes in Maryland, a state in which it is much harder to buy guns.

Just as they did when Thomas E. Perez was nominated to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Republicans are seeking to hold up his confirmation to head the U.S. Department of Labor, using any excuse they can think up, no matter how flimsy. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama criticized Mr. Perez, a former Montgomery County councilman and Maryland labor secretary, for his one-time service on the board of CASA de Maryland. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa complained that the president had nominated Mr. Perez for a cabinet post despite a congressional investigation into the Civil Rights Division and questions about whether he engineered a quid pro quo with the city of St. Paul, Minn.

A common refrain of those who object to new gun control laws is that authorities could do much to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and reduce violence by simply enforcing the laws that are already on the books. In the case of gun trafficking, this line of reasoning is a bit like asking why authorities don't tackle the problem of traffic safety by busting jaywalkers. Under current law, the burden of proof is too high and the penalties are too low to make it worth prosecutors' time, and so few resources are put into going after those who buy guns on behalf of people who cannot legally do so on their own. Rep. Elijah Cummings and a group of representatives from both parties are seeking to change that.

Responding to gun control loopholes that have proved vexing for police in Maryland and elsewhere, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings will introduce bipartisan legislation Tuesday to impose tougher penalties for people who traffic guns across state borders or buy them for someone else. The legislation, which has support from at least two Republican lawmakers, would make firearms trafficking a federal crime and would stiffen penalties for so-called straw purchases, in which people buy weapons - sometimes in large volume - for another person who would not clear a federal background check.

Author Michael Kun may be a bit of an acquired taste. But once readers sample Kun's hilariously off-kilter world view, they're frequently hooked for life. And it doesn't hurt that chief among Kun's passions is the city of Baltimore, where he attended college at the Johns Hopkins University and where he spent eight years practicing law. Though he has since relocated to Los Angeles, Kun returns to his adopted hometown whenever he can - including this weekend, when he will read from his newest book, "Everybody Says Hello.

Imagine, with a few finger flicks on a smartphone app, you can learn whether you'll be getting zucchini or tomatoes, strawberries or potatoes, from a Maryland farm each week, then browse for home-spun recipes and connect with other like-minded consumers. One Straw Farm, one of Maryland's largest independent agricultural operations, wants to build that app — and bring a new level of tech savvy to community-supported agriculture. Joan and Drew Norman, the owners of the farm, believe they can craft mobile apps to make their work more efficient and better connect with their customers.

Laugh all you want, but Agnes Muhl has no doubts about what she, her husband and her mother saw in the front yard of their Thurmont vacation home eight years ago."It was a cougar," insists the 57-year-old Catonsville woman. "It was sitting there looking at the smoke coming out of our chimney."Mrs. Muhl isn't alone. Over the past 25 years, dozens of Maryland residents have reported cougar encounters, even though wildlife officials insist that mountain lions haven't roamed the state for at least a century.

On April 11, 2005 VERA; beloved wife of Alex Bidniuk; dear mother of Nicolas Bidniuk and Ana Straw; mother-in-law of Barbara Bidniuk and David Straw; grandmother of Brian and Ashley Bidniuk, Matthew, Philip and Paul Straw; great grandmother of Cameron and Daniel Bidniuk. Visiting hours at Kaczorowski Funeral Home, P.A., 1201 Dundalk Avenue on Friday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Funeral services will be held at the funeral home on Saturday at 10 A.M., with interment to follow at St. Stanislaus Cemetery.

Julian Bauer's May 31 letter raises some important questions. He says marriage benefits society, and therefore not everyone should be allowed to marry. He says "homosexuality ... [has] an effect on society," but the only effect he names is a supposed decline in birth rates. He doesn't explain how banning same-sex marriage would increase birth rates. Bauer says the comparison to interracial marriage is a "straw man. " He should read the arguments in Loving v. Virginia about miscegenation and God's will.

Maryland Young Republicans have put Harford County Executive David Craig on top in the organization's first straw poll for the 2014 gubernatorial election. The poll was taken at the MDYR annual convention in Annapolis Saturday, according to a news release from chairman Brian Griffiths. Craig finished first with 25 percent of the vote. Former lieutenant governor and RNC chairman Michael Steele finished second with 21 percent, followed by former Maryland secretary of state Larry Hogan with 13 percent.