Takoma Park

Mary Clayton Hall, a homemaker and a longtime College Park resident, died of pneumonia Sunday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. She was 88. She was born and raised Mary Clayton Williams in Powhatan, Va. She earned a degree in business administration in 1939 from what is now the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., and during World War II worked for the Army in Richmond, Va. She was married in 1945 to Thomas W. Hall, a French professor at...

Takoma Park -- Dana Beyer is a novice candidate, but she's having no trouble schmoozing. A cadre of political players turned out for a Takoma Park fundraiser in honor of a local candidate so Beyer showed up to pay respects and stump on the side for her own campaign. A retired eye surgeon from Chevy Chase, Beyer is running as a Democrat for the open House of Delegates seat in District 18 in Montgomery County. Beyer only joined the race a few weeks ago, so she doesn't have campaign paraphernalia, but she's making do, shaking hands, greeting acquaintances and gabbing proudly about her sons between sips of sparkling water.

There's growing understanding that a basic democratic principle is not being honored in Maryland. Earlier this month, incumbent Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer won another term with 46 percent of the vote while the other candidates split the remainder between them, with Gilbert Renaut at 36 percent and George Kelly at 18 percent. Donnell is communications director for FairVote - The Center for Voting and Democracy, based in Takoma Park. His e-mail is ryan@fairvote.org.

COLLEGE PARK -- Team rules were violated during an altercation involving Maryland football players at a College Park bar early Tuesday morning, coach Ralph Friedgen said yesterday, but Prince George's County police said no charges or arrests have been made. A bar fight occurred just after 1 a.m. at the Cornerstone Grill and Loft in the 7300 block of Baltimore Avenue, after a woman complained of being grabbed inside the bar, according to police. "We have some team rules that have been violated," Friedgen said on yesterday's Atlantic Coast Conference teleconference.

TAKOMA PARK - Technology and ingenuity have revived straw bale building - a resourceful and sustainable way to create living spaces, and one Maryland architect is proving its benefits by using straw to build an addition to his Takoma Park home. On a sunny day last month, volunteers and friends helped Bill Hutchins layer and stack straw bales on top of each other, pinning them together with bamboo. The group labored for free while Hutchins taught them how to build with renewable resources.

TAKOMA PARK - Larry Hodes had the do-it-yourself concept, the steel pipe and all the time an early retirement allows, yet something was missing. He went looking for it on a recent Saturday at the local tool lending library. Where else to spend such a sublime spring day but inside a trailer the size of a large Dumpster, fenced in chain link and barbed wire? The sun didn't shine on these many saws and hammers, nor on the workbench where Hodes spent hours pursuing visions of a dolly to wheel his canoe from place to place.

A parade of more than 50 hybrid vehicles wove through the narrow streets of Annapolis and circled the State House yesterday, creating a brief mini-traffic jam in the name of cleaner air. The event was designed to show support for the Clean Cars Act, a bill that would require Maryland to adopt tougher emission standards by the 2009 model year. Car owners came from as far away as Frederick, Allegany County and Takoma Park to express their support, with placards taped to their cars that read "I'd rather be driving a clean car," "Stop climate change" and "Maryland Clean Cars Now."

TAKOMA PARK -- The first time Linda Schade saw an electronic voting machine was on Election Day two years ago, when her name was on the ballot as a candidate for a seat in the Maryland legislature. She knew nothing about the touch-screen system being tested in Montgomery County that day, nothing about the questions that would come up even as it was being expanded into nearly every precinct in the state. She quietly cast her ballot and went on her way. She isn't being quiet anymore. Although Schade lost her race for delegate, she has found herself in what she sees as a bigger role.

Residents of Takoma Park tend to bristle when their town is condescendingly labeled a "nuclear-free zone." Yes, they are nuke-free, oppose the war in Iraq and even let non-citizens vote in municipal elections. But they don't see themselves as radical or weird; they are, they say, simply a town with a conscience. So the recent brouhaha over Susan Lindauer, the Takoma Park "peace activist" arrested on suspicion of trying to help Iraqi agents in the United States, has left the locals feeling particularly prickly.

TAKOMA PARK - Her neighbors describe Susan P. Lindauer as a kind, quiet woman who could be seen most mornings walking her two dachshunds along leafy Manor Circle here. "I don't know what a spy is, but I would never have pegged her as one," Kathleen Moore, who lives a few doors away, said yesterday afternoon. "She talked about wanting to teach and have children." While Lindauer, 40, was in federal court yesterday facing Iraq-related charges, reporters and news vans trickled into this liberal Washington suburb, where her modest bungalow was silent except for her dogs, which could be heard barking inside.