World Peace

After the warmth of a stirring Christmas Eve service, Bill Brandt stepped outside into the cold, huddling with family and hundreds of fellow worshippers as they grasped light sticks and prayed for world peace. "We all have to stand up for peace, any little sign we can do to show we stand for peace," Brandt said. "I think the majority of the world wants a peaceful life," said Brandt, who was visiting from Tyler, Texas, with his wife, Tandy, and son Scott. They attended the service with daughter Dr. Kerry Dunbar and son-in-law Travis Dunbar, who live in Columbia.

Archbishop William E. Lori's article on the Second Vatican Council ("Not a break but a continuum," Aug. 18) fails to mention Pope John XXIII who convened the council. Instead Mr. Lori refers to Pope Paul II. According to Archbishop Lori, Pope Paul II reports the council as "historically a thing of the past, but spiritually still in being. " In fact the church has been trying to put the "spirit" of that gathering behind them ever since the death of John XXIII. The Second Vatican Council was not just a meeting of bishops, as reported in the article, but included laity and women of the church.

People Local author: Linthicum resident Don Sakers has published his fifth book, Dance for the Ivory Madonna, a thriller that depicts the world in 2042, when world peace is maintained by a clandestine organization known as the Nexus. The book was published by Baltimore-based Speed-of-C Productions.

All morning long, on every sports and news show on TV, they've been showing the clip. You know the one . The one that shows Los Angeles Lakers forward Metta World Peace viciously throwing the elbow that floored Oklahoma City Thunder guard James Hardenin the Lakers' 114-10 double overtime win Sunday. I've seen it at least 30 times. It's an absolutely brutal blow. And a classic cheap shot. It wasn't in the same league as the infamous haymaker Kermit Washington delivered to the face of Rudy Tomjanovich 35 years ago, but it was gutless and sneaky, behavior we've come to expect to expect from the hilariously-named World Peace.

The Love Bug has turned into the peace turtle.The latest edition of celebrity Volkswagen Beetles visited Maryland earlier this week on a mission that organizers hope will end with 1 million world peace messages delivered to the United Nations.Inspired by the award-winning children's book "The Old Turtle" (Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers), a custom-painted VW is on the road for eight months gathering messages of peace written by children across the country. At each of the 134 stops -- including one in Bel Air and another in Ellicott City -- children gather to sing folk songs, read their visions of world peace and listen to the teachings of "The Old Turtle," written by Douglas Wood and illustrated by Cheng Khee Chee.

There are many threats to world peace and stability today, among them problems in the Soviet Union and in the Middle East. We'd like you to tell us which you feel is the greater long-term threat to world peace: strife in the Middle East or instability in the Soviet Union. Please share your opinion with us by calling SUNDIAL, the Baltimore Sun's telephone information service.The call is free and must be made from a tone phone. The SUNDIAL number is 783-1800 or, in Anne Arundel County, 268-7736.

The House Republican budget will produce a Democratic Congress next time. Whitewater will get us a Republican president to work with it.For safety, send your kids out on the street, to protect them from daytime talk broadcasting that pollutes the home.Don't worry about the heart of Boris Yeltsin. He is not indispensable to an orderly Russia and world peace. We hope.Giving to panhandlers only encourages them. Just like museums, colleges, environmental advocacy groups, public broadcasting, etc., etc.

The way to world peace through the United Nations is to lock up the world's tyrants before they escape to New York. In G. Bush's latest proposal, he is to debate Adam Clymer while Gore squares off against Lieberman. Don't worry about your SUV tires. The price of gasoline is going to keep everyone home and make the roads much safer. There are some jobs government cannot do by itself. Like cleaning up Baltimore.

The Severna Park YWCA recently sponsored a Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Essay Contest. The essays were responses to the question, "What can you do to contribute to (King's) goal of world peace?"The essays were written by students in grades 3-6, with a limit of 25-50 wordsfor grades 3-4 and 50-100 words for grades 5-6.The first-place winner in each grade category received a trophy, and the runners-up were awarded ribbons.Entries were judged on individual ideas, originality, continuity and concise thoughts.

Theodore Marburg, who lived most of his life in his townhouse at 14 W. Mount Vernon Place, had been an outspoken proponent of world peace and had lived to see the founding of the United Nations rising out of the failure of the League of Nations.Marburg was an internationally renowned exponent of world peace and former U.S. ambassador to Belgium, author, art collector, proponent of city parks and founder of the Municipal Art Society.Most afternoons, this quiet, slender and elegant man who favored brown suits and soft brown hats, could be seen casually strolling Charles Street, with cane in hand.

A summer Sunday in an old Midwestern river town, walking down the avenue under the elms past yards burgeoning with vinous and hedgy things and multicolored flowerage, the industry of each homeowner shown in the beauty offered to the passerby. The children of these homeowners may be telling their therapists harrowing tales of emotional deprivation suffered in this very home, and yet back in April and May, weekends were devoted to making this front yard splendid, and that is worth something.

Children today want clean air, world peace and help for the poor and homeless. That's what they wrote to President Barack Obama. Some also wish for lower taxes and a little more security in shopping malls. And, oh, by the way, Mr. President, "You should stop smoking!" Those were a fraction of the thoughts that were written by children from Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore to Obama as part of part of a national handwriting project called Mail to the Chief. About 34,000 letters from all over the United States were delivered yesterday to the Washington office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who plans to forward them to Obama.

No telling if Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert can make peace, but he can make predictions. Consider the one he tossed out in January 2005, the last time he broke bread with Martin O'Malley. O'Malley, then mayor of Baltimore, was visiting Israel as part of a delegation of city officials and community leaders. At the time, Olmert, a cabinet minister who'd previously served as Jerusalem mayor, joined the group for dinner. At some point, Olmert stood up and made some remarks to the group.

Seemingly transported across the ages, more than 600 blocks of limestone from Jerusalem rise in a simple yet breathtaking wall above the sanctuary of the Har Sinai Congregation synagogue in Owings Mills. Over 45 days, they were lifted, one at a time, by two masons on scaffolding using muscle and pulley, then placed and mortared with the deft touch of craftsmen. In commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the synagogue's tribute to Jerusalem's Western Wall will be dedicated tomorrow to the memory of those lost in the attacks and their families -- and to future world peace.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - In a new drive to heal America's rift with France and Germany over Iraq, President Bush will endorse today the concept of a united Europe and declare that a rejuvenated trans-Atlantic alliance is "essential to peace and prosperity" around the world, the White House said yesterday. Bush's strongest support to date for the 25-member European Union - a growing political and economic powerhouse - seems designed in part to quash suspicions in some European quarters that Washington would gladly countenance a divided Europe in order to perpetuate U.S. dominance in global affairs.

WASHINGTON - When a group of clergy members held a news conference this week to defend the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church, some of the most supportive words came from an unlikely source: black preachers. The Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, who served for two decades as District of Columbia's delegate to Congress, praised Moon as a spiritual fellow-traveler for his efforts to strengthen families and work for peace around the globe. "That's my man!" said Fauntroy, a civil rights activist and pastor of Washington's New Bethel Baptist Church who first met Moon in 1971.

Children today want clean air, world peace and help for the poor and homeless. That's what they wrote to President Barack Obama. Some also wish for lower taxes and a little more security in shopping malls. And, oh, by the way, Mr. President, "You should stop smoking!" Those were a fraction of the thoughts that were written by children from Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Baltimore to Obama as part of part of a national handwriting project called Mail to the Chief. About 34,000 letters from all over the United States were delivered yesterday to the Washington office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who plans to forward them to Obama.

Ruthena Warren Tudbury, a longtime activist in Howard County who worked for world peace and women's rights, died Sunday of pneumonia at St. Agnes Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Ellicott City. She was 87.The Boston-area native graduated from Newton High School and Mount Holyoke College, where she studied art and history.Shortly after graduation, Mrs. Tudbury began a career as a volunteer activist that would span seven decades in Detroit; Lakewood, Ohio; White Plains, N.Y.; and Howard County, where her work was curtailed in 1991 by arthritis.

A Japanese girl's courageous struggle against leukemia and her campaign for world peace a half-century ago inspired a project by eighth-graders this spring at Ellicott City's Folly Quarter Middle School. Pupils studied Japanese history and culture, wrote poems and folded 1,000 paper cranes - tiny models of long-necked, long-legged birds - that they displayed at a recent assembly and plan to send to Japan this week. The project sprung from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr, which tells the true story of Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia 10 years after the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.

Reza K. Baluchi was growing impatient and wanted to be on his way. So he awoke at 1:30 am yesterday at a new friend's apartment in College Park and ran to Baltimore along U.S. 1. It would have been an insane act for most souls. But Baluchi, 30, is an Iranian peace activist who has run an average of 30 miles a day -- more than a marathon -- for 102 consecutive days. Having left Los Angeles on May 11, Baluchi will end his run for peace and freedom at Ground Zero in New York on the second anniversary of the terrorist acts that occurred there.