Vantage Point

The 37th Longfellow Friends of the Traditional 4th parade and ballgame will be celebrated beginning at 10 a.m. Wednesday, starting and ending at Longfellow Elementary School on Hesperus Drive. Participants will line up at 9:15 a.m. The parade route is about 1.8 miles, and the parade will take about an hour. The traditional softball game between the Hesperus Wrecks and the Eliots Oak Nuts will be played about noon on the field behind Harper's Choice Village Center. Information: Bob Russell, 410-730-4024.

Can a formerly revered, then ridiculed, sportscaster's career be salvaged? We're about to find out soon as Marv Albert returns to the airwaves.Albert, who resigned last September from New York's Madison Square Garden Network after pleading guilty to a charge of misdemeanor sexual assault, will rejoin MSG as the radio voice of the New York Knicks on half their games as well as anchor of a cable sports news show.Albert, who also was fired as the voice of the NBA on NBC, returns to work Sept.

HAPPY NEW Year to everyone.May 1997 be your truly special year.The new year offers many new interests for everyone who wants to learn, develop new skills and be involved in the life of our community.Here are just a few of 1997's interesting events.Melvin Goodman, former CIA analyst and professor of international affairs at the National War College, will discuss "Should We Abolish the CIA?" at 7 p.m. Jan. 13 at the East Columbia branch library, 6000 Cradlerock Way in Owen Brown village.Discussion of CIA cover-ups, double agents and the Aldrich Ames scandal will be part of the program.

Two teen-agers from Baltimore were arrested and charged Friday in connection with two car thefts and three car theft attempts in Columbia's Town Center, police said.Ronnie Linwood Harris, 19, of the 1400 block of W. Lafayette St. in Baltimore, was charged with auto theft, theft, destruction of property and unauthorized use of a vehicle in the thefts and tampering with cars in the 5500 block of Sterrett Place and the 5500 block of Vantage Point Road between 4: 15 p.m. and 4: 45 p.m. Friday.

When Johns Hopkins quarterback Dan Redziniak last saw Fairleigh Dickinson-Madison, it was from a low vantage point -- the turf on Homewood Field.He was sacked 13 times and the Blue Jays lost by 10 points. In last night's rematch, the opener for both, Redziniak took another beating.So did the Blue Jays. FDU's Jason Herrick made a 36-yard field goal on the game's final play as the visiting Jersey Devils rallied for a 20-17 win.Redziniak (10-for-12, 92 yards) left the game late in the second quarter, three plays after being yanked by the face mask, causing numbness in his right hand and an interception in the end zone.

One fall, late in his storied career with the New York Yankees, Mickey Mantle drove with a friend to Fort Worth to watch a football game between the University of Texas and TCU.After the game, the friend suggested they stop by the Texas locker room and say hello to Darrell Royal. When the Texas coach shook his hand and said how pleased he was to meet him, Mantle grinned and ducked his head and said, "Darrell, we've met before."The embarrassed Royal said: "We have? When was that?""I was a senior in high school," came the reply, "and Bud Wilkinson tried to recruit me as a halfback to play football for Oklahoma.

A Baltimore man has been charged with having sex with a 14-year-old Columbia girl in the same culvert where police later discovered the body of 15-year-old Tara Allison Gladden.Curtis Aden Jamison, 28, who police say is a suspect in the Gladden girl's death, has been charged with 23 new counts of sex abuse for his alleged involvement with the dead girl's friend.Mr. Jamison has been held at the Howard County Detention Center for three months on various charges relating to the 14-year-old and a Baltimore girl.

Since 1979, the 27th floor observation lounge of the World Trade Center has been the best vantage point to consider Baltimore.Beyond the glittering Inner Harbor are the smokestacks of Sparrows Point, once a leading steel mill in the world. Switch your angle and you can view the city's growth northward. There are no clearly visible demarcation lines, but those in the know can visually approximate North Avenue, the northernmost border the city until 1816, and then try to spot neighborhoods from Forest Park and Mount Washington to Roland Park and Govans, which were annexed before the current boundaries were reached in 1918.

About 40 friends and relatives of Tara Gladden spent Saturday soliciting donations from drivers along Little Patuxent Parkway, hoping the lure of a sizable reward will help police find the teen-age girl's killer.From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., the group approached vehicles stopped at traffic lights along a four-block stretch. As vans, trucks, Corvettes and family station wagons drove by, the volunteers would run through traffic with their pails and ask for money. At times, they were lured by horn-blowing motorists with handfuls of dollars or coins.

POLICE LOG* Dorsey's Search: 10400 block of Columbia Road: A TV and stereo were stolen from a bin at Storage USA between Sept. 6 and Tuesday. Police said there were no signs of forced entry.* Harper's Choice: 5600 block of Gulf Stream Row: A 1987 Ford Country Squire station wagon with Maryland tags VFE495 was stolen Tuesday or Wednesday, police said.* Town Center: 11000 block of Little Patuxent Parkway: Someone stole a $300 stereo and several cassette tapes from a black Toyota MR2 Monday.

The emotion and size of the crowd at Tuesday's presidential inaugural in Washington inspired and awed several prominent Howard County Democrats who attended. But getting there and back home presented more practical concerns. MARC commuter trains, Metro subway cars, private autos and a county car and police driver were the different modes used by four leaders to get to Washington's Union Station on Tuesday, the start of their individual and often very personal strolls to the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president.

The Hickory Ridge Community Association will hold a Holiday Craft Shop from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. today at Hawthorn Center, 6175 Sunny Spring. Admission is free. Information: 410-730-7327. Traffic study Marty Wells of Wells and Associates will discuss the traffic study of General Growth Properties' General Plan for downtown Columbia at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10 at the Town Center Community Association's village board meeting. Meetings, which are open to the public, are held at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road, Columbia.

The Wilde Lake Village Board is seeking applicants to fill a vacancy on the 2008-2009 board. The appointee will hold the office through the remainder of the term. Applications are available at Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village Center. The applications deadline is Jan. 15. Information: 410-730-3987. Town Center The Town Center Community Association will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road. (The November edition of the community's newsletter, the Center Fold, listed the date incorrectly.

The Town Center Community Association will present a chamber music concert by musicians from the U.S. Army Field Band at 7 p.m. Oct. 5 in the ballroom at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road. The event is being held in honor of Town Center's 35th anniversary. Admission is free, but reservations are required. Light refreshments will be served. Information: 410-730-4744. Fall yard sale is Saturday Town Center Community Association will hold its fall yard sale from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at Vantage Point Park on Vantage Point Road.

The e-mail was short and to the point: Several members of my 1952-1954 class at Garrison Junior High in Northwest Baltimore - Class 215 - were organizing a reunion. The e-mail asked if I would be willing to come from California, where I live. The inducement was that our much-admired homeroom and English teacher, Milton "Manny" Velder, now 80, would be the honored guest. I had no doubt it would be wonderful to spend time with Mr. Velder again, as well as all these classmates, most of whom I hadn't seen in more than 50 years.

Historic Oakland will offer three free presentations as part of its Master Gardener Series. "Basics of Landscape Design" by Melanie McKibbin at 7 p.m. March 18. "Gardening in Small Spaces" by Dana Rogers and team at 7 p.m. March 25. "Posies in a Pot" by Pat Greenwald at 7 p.m. April 1. All events will be held at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road. Information and registration: 410-730-4744. Event features tea, jewelry show Town Center Community Association offers Sunday afternoon tea from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. March 16 at the ballroom of Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road, Columbia.

Town Center Community Association offers Sunday afternoon tea from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. March 16 at the ballroom of Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road, Columbia. Tea, scones, sandwiches and desserts will be served. Twins Silver Dream will present a jewelry show of sterling silver and gemstone jewelry. A sampling of their jewelry can be viewed at www.twinssilverdream.com. The cost is $20 per person, and reservations are required two business days in advance. Information and reservations: 410-730-4801 or 800-730-4802.

Witnessing the same event from different points of view is at least as old as Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Rashomon. But it's a concept that gets beaten into the ground in Vantage Point, an overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome. Think of it as Rashomon for the video age, as audiences get to watch the same political assassination from what seems like a hundred different vantage points (the actual number is closer to a half-dozen) around the Spanish piazza where the shooting takes place.

The villages of Columbia, the Columbia Association, the African Art Museum of Maryland and the Howard County Center of African-American Culture will sponsor "Roots of Howard County: In Celebration of African-American History" from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 10 at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road. The Ambassadors of Jazz, an accomplished youth jazz group, will perform. "Images of Freedom" poster contest entries will be on display, and light refreshments will be served. Those who attend can visit the African Art Museum of Maryland and enjoy a display presented by the Howard County Center of African-American Culture.

One would imagine it is something of a bittersweet triumph for an actor to endure long enough to revisit a glory moment from his youth, albeit from the vantage point of an older character. Unlike many of his classically schooled contemporaries in England, it was never in the cards for Michael Caine to ascend from playing King Lear's Edgar, say, to Lear himself. But then how many veterans of the Royal Shakespeare Company can lay claim to having done two film versions of the super-hit stage thriller Sleuth?