NEWS
By Janet Gilbert | November 8, 2009
A lot of people didn't trust ATMs when they were first introduced, preferring to make their transactions with a live teller. While I did enjoy chatting with my teller from week to week, I must acknowledge that I did not relish waiting in line behind the person who was making the regional Girl Scout cookie sales deposit with a stack of singles and a shoe box filled with loose change. So in the interest of time, I forayed boldly into the new ATM technology more than three decades ago. And I discovered that I could, from the comfort of my vehicle, wait just as long or longer for banking service.
NEWS
By C. Fraser Smith | November 27, 2008
"... The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt Americans were scared, but they got it. In the midst of the Great Depression, struggling to feed their families, they kept hope alive with the help of FDR. Words well-delivered can be a tonic for despairing souls, something to remember at Thanksgiving. As we have seen again recently, words can stir us to rise above economic calamity or reinvigorate our democracy. And it's not simply about winning elections.
NEWS
By LEONARD PITTS JR. | September 1, 2008
You can't blame Karen Fletcher for deciding not to fight. Had she lost, she faced the possibility of five years in prison. Under the plea agreement she accepted in early August, she got six months of house arrest, five years on probation and a $1,000 fine. But if the agreement allows Ms. Fletcher, of Donora, Pa., to avoid the more onerous punishment, it also allows us to avoid a violent collision between morality and the Constitution. Karen Fletcher is a pornographer. And not just any old pornographer: The 56-year-old woman specializes in the rape, torture and murder of children.
NEWS
By Jill Rosen | February 19, 2008
For being "just words," they're sure stirring up some controversy. Critics of Sen. Barack Obama are pointing to the similarity between one of the Democratic presidential hopeful's signature speeches and an address that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick gave in 2006. Although Patrick, who is close with Obama and shares his heavyweight political adviser, says he gave his friend permission to borrow his lines, that isn't stopping accusations of plagiarism. Last weekend in Wisconsin, responding to statements from rival Sen. Hillary Clinton that she offers solutions while Obama merely "makes speeches," Obama told a stirred-up crowd, "Don't tell me words don't matter."
NEWS
By Ira Rifkin | October 8, 2007
Bitch is an appropriate word when referring to a female dog. Yet how many of us would use the term when chatting about a pet's gender with a stranger in the park? Few, I'd venture to say - because of our sensitivity to the word's negative connotations. Then there's the word love. Two strangers meet at a singles bar and one asks the other to return home with him to "make love." That's love as a euphemism for sex. How different the meaning is when a couple of a quarter-century's duration stay home on a Saturday night to talk, snuggle and make love.
NEWS
September 26, 2007
Good morning -- Milton Bradley -- Words can never hurt you? Apparently not.
NEWS
By C. Fraser Smith | July 22, 2007
In the eyes of the Constitution's framers, black people had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The words are from the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, written in 1857 by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a Marylander. Taney did not say he shared this view. But there is evidence in personal letters and legal writing that he did. He was, moreover, a leading member of the American Colonization Society, an organization committed to shipping free blacks back to Africa.
NEWS
By LAKAIIA WILLIAMS | December 14, 2006
What's the point? -- One word, that's all you have to play with here. Not to mention you only have 60 seconds to write about it. The point is to remove all of the strain and complications that come with deep thought and analysis. Just release all of your inhibitions and write the first thoughts that cross your mind when you see the day's inspiration. What to look for --Have fun with your thoughts and words, that's all. And when you finish writing, compare your short composition with the those of other people who have shared their short-form writing.
NEWS
By LAURA VOZZELLA | August 18, 2006
We were promised political drama and dirty tricks when Joe "Prince of Darkness" Steffen swooped into Harford County. But so far, the only devious zip he's added to the County Council president's race is a lousy cartoon bubble. Mind you, it's a cartoon bubble rising from the lips of Gov. Robert Ehrlich, on a palm card for Aaron Kazi. "Vote KAZI for Council President," it reads, above a photo of the GOP hopeful and his wife. "He's Conservative, Principled, and Self Made." Why is that even vaguely naughty?
NEWS
By JOHN WOESTENDIEK | August 7, 2006
Kathleen Farrell has left a mark - thousands of them, in fact - on beaches she has never set foot on. Farrell, who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., wasn't at the beach, but vacationing in the mountains of North Carolina in 1996 when inspiration struck: a newfangled way to spread not just "The Word," but three of them. Farrell, a clinical psychologist, sliced up an old inner tube, cut the pieces into letters, glued them backward on the soles of an old pair of sandals and then walked from wet grass onto wooden deck, leaving a trail of words behind her. The word "Jesus" was left by the right foot; the words "Loves You" by the left.