Treatment Of Animals

March is hard to dress for. It rains, it snows, it's warm, it's cold. It's a month of mud and puddles, a season for wet feet and March hair, frizzled or flattened by the damp.Fanciful chapeaux like those by Sally Di Marco are one possible palliative, lifting the spirits and protecting the 'do. Di Marco uses interesting fabrics -- tapestries, velvets, vintage brocades, cotton and linen -- and she likes to combine different patterns and textures in the same hat. Some, like the one shown here on Crystal Harrison, a student of Di Marco, are trimmed with fabric rosettes.

Michael Portnoy's 15 minutes of fame lasted maybe 30 seconds.In a night marked by Girl Power, sore throats and Aretha's aria, the 40th annual Grammy Awards will also be remembered for Portnoy's unscheduled performance as the "Soy Bomb" Boy. Hired as a show extra, he crashed the stage in New York City as Grammy-winner Bob Dylan was singing "Love Sick."What the TV world saw was this string-bean of a guy dancing next to an unflappable Dylan. Monica Lewinsky could have dived onto the stage and the folk legend wouldn't have flinched.

THOUGHTS for the day:"Inequality exists. So do discrimination and sexism. A true power feminism would urge women to stand their ground and fight against the individuals who commit these offenses. A truly new feminism would recognize an old truth: the man who does not take his female co-worker seriously because of her sex is a jerk, not a part of systematic oppression of women by the 'opposition.' "-- Karina Rollins in The Public Interest, Summer 1994.* * *FILM and TV superstar Mary Tyler Moore is so disgusted by fur that she shipped her sable coat and hat to PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals]

Don't forgive Haitian rulers for abusesThe critical issue for Haiti is how to break the cycle of vengeance and brutality-with-impunity.Democratic institutions have no roots there, democracy is not systemic and 80 percent of the impoverished population is illiterate.And yet there is hope for both the U.S. and this tiny island nation 500 miles off our shores.Reconciliation and respect for political minorities are essential. To achieve them, and to forestall violent revenge, there must be justice.

Paul McCartney, the activist?The former Beatle pauses, as if trying the once unlikely image on for size during an interview moments before the start of his first U.S. concert tour since 1990.For years, the late John Lennon was the former Beatle most associated with social activism.Paul was always the cute Beatle, the romantic Beatle, the conciliatory Beatle -- and the image stuck as he evolved in the '70s from rock-and-roller to family man.Rather quietly and dramatically, however, Mr. McCartney and his wife, Linda, have become outspoken advocates in recent years for environmental issues.

Good MedicineAn article concerning the medical practice of Dr. A. Shamim of Laurel appeared in the Dec. 19 edition of The Sun.The content is antagonistic and biased, as the Maryland Board ** of Physician Quality Assurance has sought repeatedly to suspend his doctor's license.In reality, Dr. Shamim is a credit to the practice of alternative or holistic health care. He has been a respected surgeon who came to the conviction that there may be a better alternative than radical surgery and/or destroying a person's natural immune system with repeated doses of antibiotics.

You know how they say it's a jungle out there? Well, its worse than you think. Zoo-chosis is an epidemic.What is zoochosis? As a certified PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) Zoochecker, I feel that I am qualified to inform you. Zoochosis, apparently derived from psychosis, is mental illness in caged animals.My first field experience as a Zoo-checker occurred in August. I was in Washington, and decided to go check out the National Zoo. Naturally, I went to see the giant panda.

Students who don't want to cut up animals for class shouldn' have to, say animal-rights advocates at the University of Maryland at College Park.Animal-rights advocates will ask the College Park Campus Senate today to change its policy and have instructors offer alternatives to students who object to working with animals."

Rockville-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in an attempt to force the agency to release records of tests conducted on animals in a head-injury study.PETA, in the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, is requesting copies of documents from the study, being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania with a $523,185 grant from NIH.PETA says the documents will provide more information on the methods used to inflict the injuries.

Frank Perdue got a pie in the face yesterday from a woman in a chicken suit at the University of Maryland Board of Regents meeting.University officials were not amused. Nor was Mr. Perdue."Idiots are idiots, and that's all," the 71-year-old Eastern Shore poultry magnate said of the animal-rights activists who staged yesterday's guerrilla theater and wound up in jail."I did it in protest for the millions of chickens Frank Perdue killed," said the pie-wielding chicken, Jennifer Woods of Gaithersburg, in handcuffs after leading police officers on a 10-minute chase around the University of Baltimore campus.

This might be hard for you to remember with everything that's going on these days, but there was a time when the Preakness was just a famous horse race that drew thousands of revelers to Pimlico and set one Saturday aside each year for Baltimore to be the center of the sporting universe. It was a day for sun dresses and pretty hats and ice-cold black-eyed Susans ... and the only day of the year when a Roland Park swell in $300 shoes might seek out some ragged-looking soul in a faded fedora and ask, "Whaddaya think?"

An off-duty state trooper who ran into a burning barn in Bel Air last week to help a farmer save his cattle has been recognized by an animal-rights organization. Cpl. James Joseph Kozlowski III was driving past Broom's Bloom Dairy on Dec. 19 when he noticed the barn was on fire and pulled over to help. Nearly 50 cows were saved, but Kozlowski was struck by falling debris and knocked unconscious. He was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center for treatment and has since been released. He has yet to return to duty, a state police spokesman said.

Richard John De Angelis, an actor who played police Col. Raymond Foerster in The Wire, HBO's gritty crime drama set in Baltimore, died Wednesday at his Silver Spring home of congestive heart failure and complications from prostate cancer. He was 73. During a 35-year career begun at age 38 after working as an accountant for 14 years, Mr. De Angelis appeared in more than 55 plays, 200 TV and radio commercials and 19 television programs and movies. His appearances included roles in Homicide: The Movie and in the John Waters film A Dirty Shame.

The cows are organized, and they're coming for us. This was bound to happen. These gentle, docile creatures have provided us with milk and beef for so long, never asking anything in return. Those days are over. The cow uprising is near. Like any group of aggrieved workers, they now have a Web site, BovineUnite.com, advertised on billboards that have cropped up across Maryland. The site features an alarming video of cows pumping iron and a manifesto worthy of Patrick Henry. "Every day, the humans chase us with horses, rope us and milk us for all we're worth," the site declares.

Of all the reasons to visit New Zealand, killing a red stag wasn't on my list. But that's what got me to the Southern Hemisphere. My brother Kevin has been an outdoorsman for most of his 47 years and wanted to bag a trophy deer with Shane Quinn's Alpine Hunting Adventures on the North Island. All I needed was an excuse to see that part of the world, so I asked him if I could tag along as a nonhunting guest. "But you don't like dead animals," Kevin said over the phone from his home in Colorado.

Kweisi Mfume, president and chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has signed a letter in support of an animal rights group's campaign against Kentucky Fried Chicken. Norfolk, Va.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a low-budget group that often seeks high-profile supporters to spread its message, posted the letter on its Web site this week to add weight to its three-year battle. The one-page letter, dated Sept. 10 and written on NAACP letterhead stationery, is addressed to David Novak, chairman and chief executive officer of Yum!

A Johns Hopkins University affiliate will provide $100,000 for research into a rarely studied issue: how to measure and alleviate pain and distress suffered by mice and rats used in biomedical experiments. "We're not going to be able to eliminate all animal research," said Alan M. Goldberg, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. "We want to do as much as possible to minimize pain and distress." Some of the new research will result in pain and death for the mice being studied.

It takes 3,000 cows to supply the National Football League with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. Source: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

March is hard to dress for. It rains, it snows, it's warm, it's cold. It's a month of mud and puddles, a season for wet feet and March hair, frizzled or flattened by the damp.Fanciful chapeaux like those by Sally Di Marco are one possible palliative, lifting the spirits and protecting the 'do. Di Marco uses interesting fabrics -- tapestries, velvets, vintage brocades, cotton and linen -- and she likes to combine different patterns and textures in the same hat. Some, like the one shown here on Crystal Harrison, a student of Di Marco, are trimmed with fabric rosettes.

Michael Portnoy's 15 minutes of fame lasted maybe 30 seconds.In a night marked by Girl Power, sore throats and Aretha's aria, the 40th annual Grammy Awards will also be remembered for Portnoy's unscheduled performance as the "Soy Bomb" Boy. Hired as a show extra, he crashed the stage in New York City as Grammy-winner Bob Dylan was singing "Love Sick."What the TV world saw was this string-bean of a guy dancing next to an unflappable Dylan. Monica Lewinsky could have dived onto the stage and the folk legend wouldn't have flinched.