Writer

Editor: Harford County was a wonderful place to have grown-up, riding ponies, attending Harford Horse Show Association Shows, and moreover, enjoying country living. The country living which I experienced was one of cooperation, where I never heard a chorus of extremist political views.  However, and sadly,  Harford County has come to be known by State Stakeholders as having political representation which holds beliefs which are far to the right on the political spectrum. The Harford County Delegation in general in known to hold these extreme, right-wing beliefs.

Last week, when I posted about training oneself to be an editor , someone commented on Facebook: " I'm curious, does any part of editor training involve breaking it to people gently? I would be surprised if it did, but I think that would be the hard part of editing, handing/sending back the document without making the writer want to quit writing. " Writer and editor experience an odd intimacy. Much as professionals school themselves to think that the text is an artifact, a product rather than an extension of the self, that text is still a personal expression.

When I was putting together my story on Earl Weaver after his death Friday night I knew I wanted to talk to Jim Henneman, the former Sun baseball beat writer and current Orioles official scorer who is our unofficial beat historian. All of us Sun writers look up to Henny and love hearing the stories of the Orioles' glory days. Henneman first met Weaver back in 1959 in Georgia at the Orioles' minor league camp. He covered Weaver throughout the Hall of Famer's big league managerial career.

Editor: Harford County once had connections to the Kennedy Camelot. The Shrivers of Olney Farms, at Wilmer, were relatives of President Kennedy. President Kennedy also had friends at the Oakington Estate in Havre de Grace. Each of us can live in our own Camelot, not the magic Camelot with the round table and beautiful women and knights with swords and horses, but we can live in our Camelot of today. Electronic gimmicks and gadgets dominate our world today. Everyone, from the wise to the not so wise, is able to express their opinion about any and all events, and yet we are isolated from each other.

Martha Sarah McClintock, a longtime Lyric Opera volunteer and a former model and author, died Sunday from complications after hip surgery at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Mount Washington resident was 67. The daughter of a career Air Force officer and a well-known fabric artist, the former Martha Sarah Bean — she never used her first name — was born in Fresno, Calif. Because of her father's military career, she had a "peripatetic childhood, living in houses from Dayton, Ohio, to Cape Cod and Germany," said her husband of 28 years, John M. McClintock, a former Baltimore Sun foreign correspondent who was a copy editor at the time of his 2008 retirement.

When it was announced that no candidate had received the 75 percent inclusion on ballots needed to be inducted into this year's Baseball Hall of Fame class , I can't say I was surprised. I honestly thought Houston's Craig Biggio might get in - he led all candidates with 68.2 percent of the vote - but wasn't shocked that he fell short. This was an exceptionally difficult year for voting, and there was a whole lot of sentiment toward making a statement. The Baseball Writers' Association of America surely did that.

Every day, they sit alone in their offices, writing about love, passion, romance. They bring to life muscled heroes, dangerous vixens, strong heroines — lovers all — then put enormous obstacles in the way of the would-be lovers so they must struggle for that happily-ever-after. The members of the Maryland Romance Writers meet once a month at the Arbutus Library to discuss the craft and business of writing the most popular genre of fiction in America. Their books are among the more than $1.3 billion worth of romance novels sold in a year.

Every now and then we'll offer a lunch-time gathering of news and links related to sports business: Let's start first with what is easily the most important sports business story you'll read this year. Patrick Hruby -- a rare writer equally adept at humor and narrative and analysis -- turned his attention to our government's penchant for giving handouts to sports owners for Sports on Earth . His point being that reducing these costs would go some of the way toward edging the country away from the fiscal cliff you may have heard about.

In her historical novels, Annapolis author Erika Robuck invents everyday men and women whose lives intersect with those of acclaimed American authors. She figures that fiction is sometimes the best way of learning something true. "I'm interested in famous writers and how they used the people in their lives," Robuck says. "They take things, and they don't always ask permission. It's such a betrayal. " Robuck's current novel, "Hemingway's Girl," tells the story of Mariella Bennet, a young, half-Cuban housemaid who must negotiate the marital minefield created by Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

Editor: In The Aegis of Nov. 28, the editor took a cheap shot at Dion Guthrie. I agree the TIF is a bad deal for taxpayers. The results of the TIF that was approved for Beech Tree is proof that TIFs do not benefit taxpayers. Boniface, Lisanti, Slutzky and Guthrie voted for the James Run TIF. Why didn't the editor criticize all four of the council members instead of singling out Guthrie? Why didn't the editor tell all four to take a jump? Boniface and Lisanti were the motivating force that got the James Run Project zoning changed to allow this project to be included in the development envelope?