Time Capsule

A group of students from Francis Scott Key High School will open a time capsule at Runnymede Elementary School between 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. today. The students will gather to dig up the time capsule they buried nine years ago as third-graders at Runnymede, 3000 Langdon Drive, outside Taneytown. About 25 students were in the class.

Tucked behind a ruined grain elevator at a pier along an industrial stretch of Baltimore's waterfront lies a still-gleaming white vessel that was once one of the nation's proudest maritime achievements — the only nuclear cargo and passenger ship ever built in the United States. She's the N.S. Savannah, a floating time capsule from the mid-20th century that has made Baltimore her retirement home. For a few brief years during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations she was a nautical superstar, touring the world as an ambassador for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and playing host to royalty.

YAK CRAFTThe turning of 1999 to 2000 is a great time for you to make your own historic time capsule.First, gather items to put in it. Collect things that reflect your personality and the time you're living in. Here are some ideas:* Your favorite CD. (You can just put in the box and liner notes.)* A favorite fashion.* School papers -- your journal or any sample of your best work.* Pictures of you, your family and friends.* Ribbons or trophies.* Fad toys or trinkets (like a Beanie Baby or butterfly hair clips)

In a tight economy, you rely on all your available resources to get things done. Jeff Burton, can you help repave the Daytona International Speedway? Burton will be at the Speedway on Wednesday as part of a ceremonial time capsule event. He will climb aboard a piece of Caterpillar equipment to repave a portion of the Speedway and then assist Daytona International Speedway President Joie Chitwood by burying a time capsule at the start/finish line. It's an interesting smorgasbord of items, including a piece of the pothole from the 2010 Daytona 500, a newspaper clipping proclaiming Barack Obama as the new president, and a miniature die cast of Kevin Harvick's winning car in the 2010 Coke Zero 400. The repaving is going along, um, smoothly, even without Burton's help.

Milton Berle's mother, catching her son making faces in a mirror, warned, "He's going to turn out to be an idiot."Julia Child's father made wine in the bathtub.Dr. C. Everett Koop played "kill the Kaiser" war games, and once had to duck bullets in a mob shootout.Dick Clark bitterly blames politicians for the wartime death of his brother.And Baltimore's Cab Calloway used to deliver booze to illicit clubs during Prohibition.Where's the thread in these recollections? It is provided by the thoroughly fascinating "Class of the 20th Century," a 12-part series premiering on cable this weekend.

Seventh-grade students at East Middle School will create a time capsule tomorrow.The student-designed capsule will include items that reflect current culture, a dictionary of youth slang and an essay on the future. The activity is designed to help students better understand their own history.The creation of the time capsule coincides with East Middle's Grandparents Day, and school officials hope the two generations will share their perceptions of American culture.Information: 848-0191.POLICE* Westminster: An official of the Forget Me Not shop on East Main Street told police someone presented an altered money order Wednesday.

To most elementary students, preparing for the future means having their lunch box at arm's length before the noon bell rings. But students at Linthicum Elementary are planning for the year 2040, when the school's time capsule will be opened.The colorful "1990 to 2040" banner hanging in the middle of the media center is a reminder to students that their school days will not go unnoticed. A certain excitement fills the air as school media specialist Alex Johnson reviews the collection of items that will be locked away in December for posterity.

His mother's stroke caused Michael Fragnito to fly to her side, but it was something he found in her attic that brought them together.What Fragnito uncovered was the diary his mother had written before he was born. In its pages, he discovered a woman filled with the dreams and uncertainties of youth, a person Fragnito had never known about.The diary transformed their relationship. As his mother recovered at her home in Daytona Beach, Fla., Fragnito quizzed her about her early married life in post-war Brooklyn, about his late father, about her thoughts and fears at the time.

Former Baltimore Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro III watched over the opening of the Memorial Stadium time capsule yesterday - just as his father presided in 1954, when the small lead box was tucked in the cornerstone for posterity, brimming with baseball souvenirs, business cards and the hope, as a note suggested, that the new structure on 33rd Street would stand forever. The opening of the box yesterday was a clear sign that it would not. Demolition of the last remnant of the stadium - the 10-story memorial wall - is expected to begin late next week.

When Michael E. Busch was a lad of 7 in the spring of 1954, his class marched from a small white schoolhouse with a wood stove in Northeast Baltimore up to the construction site of a grand new school. There he was chosen to help lay a time capsule in the cornerstone of Leith Walk Elementary School. Busch, now speaker of the House of Delegates, recounted the events yesterday to an assembly of a thousand Leith Walk pupils. "My claim to fame is that I was the boy holding the trowel," said Busch, holding a black-and-white picture showing the scene.

For months in the spring and summer of 1814, Commodore Joshua Barney and his ragtag flotilla of gunboats had harassed the mighty British navy on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. But outnumbered and outgunned, Barney and his miniature fleet were bottled up in the Patuxent River with no escape and enemy forces approaching. So following orders from Washington, Barney's men scuttled the estimated 17 vessels — including his flagship, the USS Scorpion — near a place known as Pig Point.

There isn't one way to establish a legacy. You have win-and-run nomads like Larry Brown, who can't sit still in a chair for 10 minutes. Yet, Brown has won titles in the NCAA and the NBA. You have guys like Don Nelson, who have never won it all but have made enough horrible teams competitive to compile more coach-of-the-year trophies than Phil Jackson. Or you can be Jackson, align yourself with four or five of the all-time greatest players and Zen your way to 10 championships.

Knowing offers mumbo jumbo on an apocalyptic scale. It's a thick, lumpy stew of devices from the sci-fi/fantasy mainstream and the lunatic fringe. The movie starts in 1959, with the packing and sealing of a grade-school time capsule, and jumps ahead to 2009, when the capsule is opened. As it recklessly mixes tropes from Chariots of the Gods, disaster movies and Steven Spielberg's space fantasies, it makes you feel as if you're witnessing That '70s Movie: The Doomsday Edition. The director, Alex Proyas (I, Robot)

Presenting the last set of sports media notes from the year 5768: * If Ron Jaworski were the Ravens' offensive coordinator, he would be doing just what Cam Cameron is doing. Jaworski, speaking yesterday from the bowels of NFL Films in New Jersey - OK, to be accurate, I don't know for sure it was the bowels; he could have been closer to the lungs - said he has been impressed with the Ravens, particularly on offense. "John Harbaugh has a very organized football team," said Jaworski, who will be X-and-O-ing during Monday night's Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers game on ESPN.

Highlands School to discuss ADHD The Highlands School will hold a parent workshop, "An Overview of ADHD," from 10:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday at 708 Highland Road in Street. Martha Schumacher, a Parent-to-Parent volunteer with CHADD, will be the guest speaker. Parents of all children who have been diagnosed with any type of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are encouraged to attend. The workshop is open to the public, but reservations are required. Information: 410-836-1415. Donations sought for time capsule Harford Community College Alumni and Friends Association and the Student Government Association are seeking donations for a time capsule for the college's 50th anniversary.

TULSA, Okla. -- A good crowd gathered in front of the county courthouse that summer day to witness the burial of an exceptionally large time capsule: a new gold-and-white Plymouth Belvedere, containing a flag, a city directory, a case of beer, an unpaid parking ticket and the contents of a woman's purse, among other things. City dignitaries explained that exactly 50 years in the future, on June 15, 2007, this fin-tailed hardtop would be unearthed to show the world who we were and how we lived in Tulsa in 1957.

PHILADELPHIA -- They have captured hope, history, uncertainty or just what they like to eat. The Franklin Institute's millennium time capsule rejected traditional choices such as books or machines and looked instead to the world of its youngest visitors: children. The institute asked Philadelphia pupils, kindergarten through eighth grade, to snap and send in a photograph of what they felt represented Philadelphia at the turn of the century. Children took to the streets with disposable cameras or their teachers' Nikons, aiming them at their pets, hot-dog carts, graffiti or the Liberty Bell.

TULSA, Okla. -- A good crowd gathered in front of the county courthouse that summer day to witness the burial of an exceptionally large time capsule: a new gold-and-white Plymouth Belvedere, containing a flag, a city directory, a case of beer, an unpaid parking ticket and the contents of a woman's purse, among other things. City dignitaries explained that exactly 50 years in the future, on June 15, 2007, this fin-tailed hardtop would be unearthed to show the world who we were and how we lived in Tulsa in 1957.

BOBBY -- The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment / $28.95 Writer-director Emilio Estevez's Bobby focuses not on the life of Bobby Kennedy, or on his legacy, but on his example. In an era when the idea of celebrity has become meaningless and role models are a dime a dozen, that alone makes it one of the most important pictures of 2006. Set at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, the day of the California primary, Bobby focuses on a handful of guests and workers. Martin Sheen and Helen Hunt portray a well-to-do couple celebrating their 10th anniversary, while Lindsay Lohan and Elijah Wood depict newlyweds, married solely to keep the husband from being drafted and sent overseas to Vietnam.

A group of students from Francis Scott Key High School will open a time capsule at Runnymede Elementary School between 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. today. The students will gather to dig up the time capsule they buried nine years ago as third-graders at Runnymede, 3000 Langdon Drive, outside Taneytown. About 25 students were in the class.