Viva

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMINSTS Safety net misses one If it weren't for bad luck, Howard Fry wouldn't have any at all. This crime victim and quadruple amputee has slipped through the social safety net. Maryland baltimoresun.com/rodricks Orioles attract coach New Orioles pitching coach Rick Kranitz was in demand elsewhere and yet chose to come to Baltimore. Sports baltimoresun.com/schmuck OTHER VOICES Sam Sessa on comedy night. -- Live Karen Nitkin on Desert Cafe.

DILI, East Timor -- Ending a failed 24-year occupation that culminated in a rampage of destruction, the last 900 Indonesian soldiers remaining on this island territory pulled down their red-and-white flag yesterday and began heading home.Their officers were seen off at the airport by the people who took their place: the United Nations representative; the Australian general who heads an international peacekeeping force; and Jose Alexandre Gusmao, the guerrilla chief who led a separatist war against them.

Some 150 guests were in a whirl at a tea dance to benefit Viva House. They gathered in the Charles Room at the Belvedere to dance to the tunes of the Helmut Licht band, and to raise about $3,000 for the Southwest Baltimore soup kitchen.Viva House founders Brendan Walsh and Willa Bickham, and their daughter and son-in-law, Kate and Dave Walsh-Little, were honored by supporters including Fred Davis, retired U.S. Weather Service meteorologist; Bonnie Rosenblatt, assistant principal of Park Lower School; John Kenny, partner at White, Miller, Kenny & Vettori; and Carole Weinberg and Buddy Hash, Le Triolet ballroom dance teachers.

In yesterday's LIVE section, the calendar item on the play about Dorothy Day called "Haunted by God" was incorrect. The show will take place at 7: 30 p.m. Wednesday at Fell's Point Corner Theatre, 251 S. Ann St. A suggested donation of $7 to $10 benefits Viva House, Baltimore's Catholic Worker House of Hospitality. For information, call 410-233-0488. Reservations are suggested.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 2/27/98

Workers from West Baltimore's Viva House soup kitchen marched downtown yesterday to protest the proposed move of its counterpart, Our Daily Bread, from its site next to the Basilica of the Assumption.In the first of three 20-minute vigils yesterday intended to help the kitchen stay put, Viva House leader Brendan Walsh walked with about a half-dozen supporters outside Our Daily Bread with banners that read: "Don't Move Our Daily Bread" and "Stop the War On The Poor."The protest was followed by similar ones at the archdiocesan building at the corner of Cathedral and Mulberry streets and at the Downtown Partnership offices in the 200 block of N. Charles St., which represents the business community pursuing the move.

Super salad worth savoringHere's a low-calorie winter salad with plenty of pizazz:1 bag fresh spinach, washed2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese1/4 red onion, sliced3 ripe pears, sliced3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar1 tablespoon olive oilsalt and pepper to tastePut first 4 ingredients in bowl. Heat vinegar and oil till steaming. Pour on salad, toss, season to taste and serve at once.Washing with soapThere's no evidence to suggest that washing with plain old soap and water is any less effective in preventing disease than using one of the new anti-bacterial soaps.

No need for marshmallowsThis year's crop of Hayman white-fleshed sweet potatoes is almost sold out, according to Virginia's Eastern Shore producers. This is the small heirloom tuber known for its luscious sweet taste and smooth texture. One food writer described a Hayman potato "as if nature already had blanketed it in a layer of marshmallows."Fresh Fields carries Haymans when it can get them.Absorbing look at towelsCheaper isn't always cheaper. Paper towels are rated in the February issue of Consumer Reports, and premium brands Kleenex Viva and Quilted Bounty actually cost less to use than some lower-priced towels.

"Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five ..."Brendan Walsh's head count at the doorway into the Viva House soup kitchen numbers the poor in this Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.Fifty-three is a guy on crutches Walsh recognizes."Hey, you're getting around pretty good, huh? Beats that wheelchair, doesn't it?"The poor may be with us always, as the Scriptures say, or maybe not, but the line at Viva House certainly seems endless. They come on foot, on crutches, in wheelchairs, old and young, alone and in couples and, more often over these last years, in family groups large and small.

It's a birthday party!Where: Lake KittamaqundiWhen: Friday-SundayFor: Columbia, MarylandColumbia? That's right, Columbia is turning 30 years old, and the Columbia Festival of the Arts wants everyone to celebrate at LakeFest '97, a tradition in Columbia for nearly two decades.The party begins tomorrow from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. with music by Iapetus, June Rich and Love Riot.On Saturday, Columbia's official birthday, help create a 30th anniversary scrapbook. From noon to 6 p.m., bring your family stories or photographs of life in Columbia, tell of your life in what people call a "garden for growing people."

This guy with the elegant barbed-wire bracelet tattooed around his right wrist talks as if he had just wandered into Viva House from an Elmore Leonard novel."

Bon Secours is key to the area's health At Viva House, we have been proud neighbors of Bon Secours Hospital for 40 years ("Bon Secours seeks a lifeline," April 9). This hospital has always been the rock of the neighborhood. Indeed, at our soup kitchen it is common to hear people say, "You can always go to Bon Secours; they won't turn you away." Over the last four decades, many have fled the neighborhood. The library at Calhoun Street and the one at Payson Street have left. The firehouse on Casey Street is gone.

Spring is a time when we are one nation. In a few weeks, the South will head toward its air-conditioned caves and a cold summer chill will fall on San Francisco, but in spring and fall we are one people, more unum than pluribus, stepping gracefully to the music of photosynthesis, and not even a sour economy can change that, so viva sweet spring. Here in Minnesota, spring doesn't arrive for good until Mother's Day and the opening of walleye season, when men and their mothers go fishing and sit around the campfire afterward and pass the whiskey bottle, and she talks about her years traveling with the tent show before she met their father, all the wonderful men she knew, ducktailed men with big tattoos on their chests who drove fast cars and carried rolls of fifties and weren't afraid to spend, which is a shock, to hear about Mother's wild roving years, but everyone did have them, so get over it. And the urge to rove wildly does strike people at this time of year.

FILM Best date movie:: 'Slumdog Millionaire: ': This riveting drama about an Indian orphan's unlikely rise on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a rare coup. Yes, it's a great flick, but because it's playing at the "arthouse" theater, you get to look smart and cultured without the French subtitles. Now in theaters and look for it to be among this year's Oscar nominees. TV Most improved show:: Season 4 of 'Lost' : Who knew leaving mystery island would give this ailing castaway adventure its groove back?

He pointed the gun in my face a few minutes before 5 a.m. . The gun was similar to the ones carried by the police. He was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and he mumbled, "This is for real," or something similar. I had just started my daily two-mile exercise walk around Union Square Park on a recent Tuesday. When you walk at 5 a.m., you escape the heat and the dangerous rays of the sun. When the young man stopped me, I was directly across the street from the front door of Steuart Hill Academic Academy, the school where Mayor Sheila Dixon once taught.

In 1968, Brendan Walsh and his wife, Willa Bickham, founded Viva House, Baltimore Catholic Worker. Over the 40 years it has served primarily as a soup kitchen, food pantry and hospitality house. Also in 1968, he worked to support the Catonsville Nine, a group of nonviolent activists who took 1-A draft records from the Selective Service Office in Catonsville and burned them with homemade napalm to protest the Vietnam War. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of that action, he will join a group traveling to Andrews Air Force Base Saturday to protest the Iraq war. Later that night, Viva House will hold a memorial service for Tom Lewis, one of the Catonsville Nine, who died last month.

INSIDE TODAY WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMINSTS Safety net misses one If it weren't for bad luck, Howard Fry wouldn't have any at all. This crime victim and quadruple amputee has slipped through the social safety net. Maryland baltimoresun.com/rodricks Orioles attract coach New Orioles pitching coach Rick Kranitz was in demand elsewhere and yet chose to come to Baltimore. Sports baltimoresun.com/schmuck OTHER VOICES Sam Sessa on comedy night. -- Live Karen Nitkin on Desert Cafe.

On September 23, 2007, JAMES WILLIAM CURRIE, age 85, passed away at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care, from complications associated with Alzheimer's disease. Born in Roopville, Georgia on January 6, 1922, he was the son of the late James Hardy and Viva (Cockrell) Currie of Anniston, Alabama. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a degree in engineering in 1945. During his 40-year career with Westinghouse Corporation, he was Director of the Center for Advanced Studies and Analysis in Falls Church, Virginia; Manager of the Operations and Support Division of Tethered Communications (TCOM)

Twenty-four years ago, the Baseball Hall of Fame welcomed an Oriole known simply by his first name - a balding infielder who defined his position and bled orange all his life. Next week, Cooperstown, N.Y., will do this again. And like Brooks Robinson before him, Cal Ripken Jr.'s induction is expected to smash attendance records when a throng of Marylanders heads north to cheer his entry into the museum's hallowed halls. Brooks. Cal. Who needs surnames? Their monikers conjure up images of baseball's storied past: Robinson, the deft third baseman, sprawled in the dirt, glove arm raised to show an impossible catch.

Asemiregular cast of characters drifts into Viva House in West Baltimore, quietly taking seats on folding chairs at long metal tables. They've come for the free lunch: hot dogs, salad and beans, plus a bonus sandwich to go. "I haven't been here for a month," says one of their servers, a tall, loose-limbed woman with femme-fatale blond hair. "I feel awful." If you go Laura Lippman will sign copies of her book, What the Dead Know, at 7 tonight at Borders Books & Music, 170 W. Ridgely Road, Timonium.

A '60s sound The lowdown -- Even in this day and age, quirky pop and soul melodies of 1960s records still exist -- through bands like the Dansettes. Check out this trio of female vocalists and backing band, named after a coveted brand of phonographs from the same era, at the Ottobar on Saturday. The Swingin' Swamis and DJ Matt Walter open. If you go -- The show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $8. The venue is at 2549 N. Howard St. Call 410-662-0069 or go to the ottobar.com. Funny man The lowdown -- Paul Mecurio has already proven that he can write for the best in comedy, such as Jay Leno and Jon Stewart.