Water Buffalo

Did you know ... Within a week or so of being bitten by a tick carrying Lyme disease, 80 percent of people develop a red, slowly expanding bull's-eye rash. The rash can be accompanied by fatigue, fever, headache, stiff neck, muscle aches and joint pain. - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention In Brief Parkinson's drugs and compulsive gambling A handful of drugs commonly prescribed for Parkinson's disease can turn a small proportion of patients into compulsive gamblers in as little as a month, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Archives of Neurology.

Last month I had the honor of addressing a group of visitors from Eastern Europe, all of whom were struggling to establish nonprofit organizations in their respective countries. The visitors were here as part of a training program coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.After decades of Communist rule, the nonprofit sector was nonexistent in Eastern Europe. With the revolutionary changes to democratic reform came the awareness that, if these fledgling democracies are to work, there needs to be a vibrant nonprofit sector.

HANCOCK -- For the better part of five months, Bill Barrol has lived on five square miles of paradise along the Potomac River in Washington County as caretaker of the Woodmont rod and Gun Club, which for 125 years served the hunting lifestyles of the rich and famous."

THE ANNOUNCEMENT in the church newsletter celebrated a new purchase by the congregation. A caravan.Not a motor vehicle, but a procession of creatures great and small. Water buffalo, sheep, goats and llamas. Heifers and chicks, rabbits and hives of honey bees.There's no problem of where to put them. They'll be headed for welcome homes all over the world -- Africa, Asia, South America and even the United States. Providing food and clothing for needy families, beginning a new cycle of independence and of sharing.

FIRST incident: I am walking on K Street in Washington when a black man (I am white) soliciting for an AIDS charity approaches me. When I shake my head and hurry past, he yells: "What does that mean, shaking your head? What does that mean? You're a [expletive] educated redneck!"Question: Has this man, with his apparently racist slur, violated my human rights?Second incident: I am in a convenience store near the University of Virginia. I catch the eye of a campus jock. I hear him say, in my general direction, "[expletive]

NEUBRANDENBURG, Germany -- In Europe's biggest tank workshop, the new German army has found an unlikely symbol: a 45-ton armored firetruck.Built on the chassis of a Soviet T-55 tank, the "water buffalo" is a mixture of East and West, built in the East German workshop but now integrated into united Germany's Western-equipped army.And with proposals calling for the tank to be sent to catastrophes around the world, it also exemplifies the army's plans to be active overseas.This and other signs of the East and West German armies' smooth integration have confounded many critics who expected the 41-year archenemies to mix like water and oil.In fact, the West German Bundeswehr has managed to absorb the East German National People's Army more easily than the two countries themselves are integrating.

So what do you give this holiday to the person who has everything — or simply doesn't need more things? Consider the gift of philanthropy. Charities are making it easier than ever. Many offer gift cards that recipients can use to make online donations to specific projects in their own backyard or across the globe. Donations can be small, with some groups accepting as little as $1 or $10. "Not everyone is a Bill Gates who can influence society on such a massive scale," says Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer with the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, part of the Better Business Bureau.

John Stork looks like hell today. More specifically, he looks like someone who just had the tar beat out of him in some honky-tonk. It appears a few of the boys were swinging pool cues, too, because the left side of Stork's face is hideously swollen and his cheek is a huge knot and his eye is something you'd see on a fish after the hook is pulled out.But Stork, 42, a route salesman for Ace Uniform Co., in Glen Burnie, didn't get this way by mouthing off...

Universities should be "havens for free speech and free thought," Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Commencement Day audience at the University of Pennsylvania last Monday. The platitudes ignored Penn's history of limiting free speech if it might offend "politically correct" groups.The university has vigorously pursued a charge of racial harassment against a white student for allegedly offensive remarks, while it languidly investigates whether anybody's freedom of expression was violated when a group of black students trashed an entire issue of the campus newspaper to protest an allegedly offensive column.

We've all been hearing Muzak carols for weeks now, but because the "official" start of the Christmas shopping season has arrived with Santa at the end of all those parades on Thanksgiving Day, I feel now is the right time for my nearly annual offering of gift suggestions for travelers.I should admit right up front that my review of what's out there on the market leads me to but one conclusion: As far as new items are concerned, the pickings are a bit slim.That is not to say, however, that there isn't some dandy stuff in the stores and catalogs that any serious traveler would love to find under the tree.