Three Women

SO I WAS AT THIS party and I wound up at a table where three attractive single women were complaining about -- surprise! -- men. Specifically, they were complaining about the pickup lines that had been used on them in a bar a few nights earlier.One woman said: "This guy comes up to me and says, 'Are you a teacher?' I mean, is that supposed to be romantic?"All three women rolled all six of their eyes.Another one of them said: "This guy says to me, 'I've been looking at you all night!' So I go, 'Hel-lo, we just got here.

Blacklight Theatre. "The Other Passion." Original work produced by new company. 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Feb. 2 and noon to 6 p.m. Feb. 6. Call for appointment and location, 410-625-9526.Colonial Players of Annapolis. "Angel Street." 2 p.m. Feb. 14 and 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at the annex, 2132 Renard Court, Annapolis. Needed are three women, ages 18-70, and two men, ages 35 and older. Call 410-626-0977 or 410-956-0232.Community Chorus. Essex Campus of Community College of Baltimore County looking for men and women of all ages interested in vocal performance.

A weekend at a bed and breakfast is the common denominator daydream of all kinds of couples, from new lovers to weary parents or touristy retirees. It is an intimate retreat, a place of discovery or rediscovery, a jumping-off point for sightseeing.The same is true even if you're not a couple at all, but three women: forever friends from way-back-when who play an unspoken game of "Can You Top This?" when selecting the setting for a reunion.In that case, a bed and breakfast must be more than "delightful" or "charming."

In the first of six City Council candidates' debates this month, three women incumbents faced six male challengers in a forum that centered on arresting flight from the city and improving 5th District neighborhoods across Northwest Baltimore.The forum Wednesday night at the Forest Park Senior Citizen Center attracted about 60 people to listen to nine candidates exchange views on schools, crime, city revenue, billboards and blight.Running for the three seats are seven Democrats and two Republicans.

Imagine your mom on the radio for two hours. Then multiply by three, add commercials and what do you get?No, you're not crazy.Rising above the static of Rush and Ollie and all-this and all-that formats are the distinct voices of three women who are raising children and the consciousness of Central Maryland listeners.Their program, "Mom's Talk. No, You're Not Crazy," lights up the phones and fax machine at Frederick's WFMD, 930 AM with questions and opinions on everything from weekly allowances to home schooling, diapers to dating.

A Baltimore rowhouse fire that killed a mother and two children early Tuesday was caused by unattended candles or a kerosene lamp, a Fire Department spokesman said yesterday.The blaze at 315 N. Arlington Ave. brought the number of fire fatalities in the city this year to 29, compared with 24 in all of 1997, said Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres, the department spokesman.The three people killed -- Rainey Jefferson, 35, Rannie Kellam, 15, and Brandon Jefferson, 11 -- had been without electricity since July 14, when their service was cut off for nonpayment.

Just by walking into the courtroom yesterday, the three judges made a statement: Women on the state's intermediate appellate court have achieved critical mass.The opening of the fall term of the Court of Special Appeals marked the first time one of its three-judge panels was all-women."We all wore pearls to mark the occasion," Judge Ellen L. Hollander quipped during a short break from hearing arguments in a half-dozen cases. "It was either this or white gloves."But each one's pearls were different.

RICHMOND, Va. - Three women from Senegal sat with women tenants from public housing recently and shared the ancient secret of their financial success: tontines, or money lenders.It is a concept of women supporting women by banding together to save money collectively and invest in each other.Through tontines, Madame Marame Gueye Ba invested in export goods from Morocco. Me Ramatoulaye Ndiaye Samb and the Hon. Madame Fadiop Gueye Sall, a former member of the Senegalese Parliament, each opened sewing and embroidery shops in Dakar, the capital city.

Kimberley Lynne's "Socks" takes place in the uncharted territory where Shakespeare meets the late Erma Bombeck. One of four short plays by the Women's Project, "Socks" sets up a situation as simple as it is silly: During a performance of "Macbeth," scads of stray socks suddenly come flying on stage.When a hysterically laughing on-stage theatergoer (Melissa Sharlat) asks if the socks are part of the play, the enraged actor playing Macbeth (Tony Reda) shouts at her: "What in the name of God could hundreds of single socks signify?"

THREE Mount Airy stay-at-home mothers have taken to the airwaves in a big way.A few years ago, the three friends began spending afternoons sitting on Kathleen Warholic's deck watching their children play and offering each other support and advice on child-rearing. Now the trio is producing a talk show on a Frederick radio station.Warholic, with Barbie Burdine and Lynne Galletti, are the hosts of "Mom's Talk, No You're Not Crazy," on WFMD-930 AM.After two successful shows this summer, the women have been offered a six-month contract to be hosts from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. every Thursday starting next week.

I arrived carrying my reporter's notebook, but I immediately felt like I was attending the reunion of every kid carpool of which I'd ever been a member. Arundel Habitat for Humanity was announcing plans to construct a home in Annapolis that would be financed and built by women, and I was there to write about it when I realized I knew just about every woman in the room. I recognized my fellow swim team moms and dance camp moms and art class moms and Montessori moms and, of course, soccer moms.

Toby Devens knows firsthand that being over 50 doesn't make a woman over the hill. The Clarksville resident is a successful author, a widow twice over, and mother to an adult daughter. The characters in Devens' first novel, My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet), could be her own circle of friends. They are three women juggling love lives, aging parents, relationships with grown children, and their own careers. Devens said an "ability to find humor, except in the most difficult circumstances, is probably what buoys up most women."

Three women have sued a former Anne Arundel County police officer who they claim asked them to bare their breasts during traffic stops -- and snapped a photograph of himself fondling one of them. The lawsuits also target the county government and Police Department, saying they should never have hired, then failed to supervise, the rookie officer, Joseph F. Mosmiller. Mosmiller, 23, was convicted of misconduct in office last year and stripped of his badge amid allegations that he had threatened to take the women to jail unless they agreed to lift their tops.

Harford County Sheriff's Office investigators are seeking three women in the assault on an 18-year-old woman Sunday. The Abingdon resident was stabbed in the left calf and right leg about 10:05 a.m., as she walked to a friend's house in the 1900 block of Edgewater Drive in Edgewood. The victim told deputies that three women believed to be in their late 20s approached her in a black car. They got out and hit her before one of the women stabbed her twice. The injuries were not considered life threatening, deputies said.

At times, the man who walked through an open French door and into a house in Guilford to rob the occupants acted like a gentleman. He politely asked the women for a Gatorade, even as he pointed a gun at them. He complimented their demeanor. He insisted that his hostages wear their sandals and take umbrellas when he marched them outside in the pouring rain. But, two of the four women said in interviews yesterday, the gunman also threatened to kill them Tuesday night. He ransacked their home on Southway looking for money.

Charges were pending against three women after a fight involving a female student at Woodlawn High School triggered two other fistfights yesterday in the school cafeteria, Baltimore County police said. A 40-year-old woman apparently went to the school with her daughter and niece, both 18, to settle a dispute with a student there, said Bill Toohey, a county police spokesman. They found the student and a fight ensued, he said. An officer assigned to the school was able to break up the fight quickly, Toohey said.

They are mostly old coots now, gone gray, gone bald, in some cases simply gone. They're a few steps slower than they were in the 1960s, when newspapers were more playful places to be; not as prone to imbibe; and far less likely to engage in the kind of mischief that saw them pull off, if not the literary hoax of the century, at least a darn good prank. But 38 years ago -- before they went on to far more distinguished journalistic achievements, before any had retired or, as six have, died -- they all had the same thing on their minds: Sex. Steamy, sordid, outrageous, page-turning sex. For one week in the summer of 1966, 24 members of the staff of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, accepted the challenge of a colleague to write, as poorly as possible, a chapter of prose so engorged, so oozing, so tantalizingly brimming with sex that any other concerns -- plot, character development, redeeming social value -- were essentially moot.

IN IRAQ, women account for nearly 50 percent of the country's 24 million people. Among Iraqis ages 15-64, they number about the same, or 6.5 million. So it stands to reason that the United States would want women involved in the reconstruction of postwar Iraq and named to positions of authority. Three women have been named to the interim Governing Council established by the U.S. authority and others sit on local city councils. But for coalition forces, elevating the status of women in this male-dominated, Muslim society is a goal as problematic as it is admirable.

"Women in Theatre," an evening featuring a panel discussion and performance excerpts, will be held at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University Boulevard and Stadium Drive, College Park. The excerpted works include Chopping by Magde-lena Gomez, in which a Latina-American uses a wardrobe of eccentric clothing to tell the stories of three women who influenced her life; City Water Tunnel #3 by Marty Pottenger, based on interviews with 250 New Yorkers about a new tunnel that will convey water to city residents; and Alva, written by Alva Rogers and Lisa Jones and consisting of songs and monologues on the themes of race and gender, performed by Rogers.

A STUFFED station wagon drifted down the Guilford Avenue back alley the morning of the last Saturday in June. By 1 o'clock, we were past the Bay Bridge; a traveling lunch of fried chicken, date-and nut bread and cream cheese was history. Until the day's shadows started lengthening again in late August, we lived at Rehoboth Beach, Del., and never gave Baltimore one second's thought. My grandmother Lily Rose had an absolute aversion to Baltimore in July. She hated it and decreed never to spend the seventh month of the year in the city where she was born.