Young Men

MOSCOW -- In this land of suffering, a special misery is visited on the Russian mother. As young men reach adulthood here, they come under threat from a sometimes predatory but always indifferent government. The mothers fight back, ferociously, in a way other citizens seldom dare.Natalya Zhukova, once an ordinary woman from the city of Nizhny Novgorod, discovered extraordinary courage when her son was caught up by one of the institutions that most commonly destroys young men: the army.During the first war with Chechnya, Zhukova roamed the treacherous battlefield six times, negotiating with the enemy, tracking down her son and finally rescuing him.Transformed, she decided to fight on, for others.

LATE ONE night two months ago, while my daughter was waiting for the brush of the tooth fairy's wings, two young men, Shayne Worcester of Maine and his friend, a neighbor of mine here in San Francisco, were ambling uphill across our street.They were walking home from dinner through a neighborhood so popular and lively and friendly that all of us who live here walk. All the time.We go on errands to Walgreens or to the movie store at midnight, to the family-owned cafes and restaurants and bars any evening.

ALL Americans should salute President Clinton's recent journey into the poorest areas of this country. As a nation, we share a responsibility to take care of all our citizens. The president's commitment to increasing job training, education and economic empowerment is welcome news.Mr. Clinton went to deliver a message to folks in need and to listen and learn from those who reside in our most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.During his visits to our urban denizens, however, there was a large population in need of hearing his message -- and in need of being heard -- that was noticeably absent.

INDIANAPOLIS -- For the seven young black men sitting in a classroom here one crystalline afternoon last week, the subject on the table was fatherhood. They were there to talk about strengthening their relationships with their children. But the long shadow in the room was the absence of their own fathers from their lives."I knew how I felt when you had father-and-son things at school and I couldn't just call my dad and say, `Let's roll up,' " said Isreal Burgess, a voluble 20-year-old who spent most of the day with his head buried in a thick directory of career options.

Handy W. Coulbourn, a master carpenter, general contractor and mentor to scores of young men, died of heart failure New Year's Eve at his West Forest Park home. He was 78.Born in Mardela Springs in Wicomico County, the ninth of 13 children, Mr. Coulbourn left home at 14 and began acquiring the carpentry skills that eventually earned him a reputation for quickly detecting problems and arriving at solutions.With each repair job came what clients called "the lesson" -- a lengthy and painstaking explanation of what he was doing or a lecture on the origin of tools.

AS the state Senate gathers to vote on the expulsion of the embattled Larry Young today, I'm gripped by how this unfortunate situation is made worse by the self-deception of some African-American community leaders who are attempting to attribute Mr. Young's troubles to a white conspiracy to destroy black leaders.What makes Mr. Young a martyr in the eyes of his vociferous defenders, led by radio mogul Cathy Hughes and others who have been almost hysterical in his defense?What great and noble cause?

They don't look so tough now. Not here, shepherded into a middle school auditorium, surrounded by police, parole agents and judges.Twenty young men ages 16 to 24 -- young but street-tough, on probation or parole for serious crimes -- were back at school in South Baltimore's Cherry Hill last night, this time for a lesson in deterrence. The visual aids were mug shots of the neighborhood's alleged Veronica Avenue Boys, until recently a drug-trafficking gang presumably more violent, more terrifying than anyone in the auditorium.

FIVE FRIENDS from Columbia took off for New Smyrna Beach, Fla., near Daytona, to enjoy spring break. It didn't matter that they were no longer in school and in need of this annual respite from the rigors of academia. The Florida beaches are where the action is this time of year. They went in search of springtime fun.Unfortunately, what they found was the worst nightmare for parents of young men: that with all the machismo and bravado that goes with being that age they might take on a challenge that would do more than defeat them.

You wonder after seeing "Diana" if maybe producer Richard Attenborough wasn't confusing the late Princess of Wales with Gandhi, the legendary Indian leader, about whom Attenborough made an Oscar-winning film in 1982.Nah, Gandhi wasn't nearly as sainted or as important a figure in "Gandhi" as Diana is in Attenborough's "Diana," a two-hour "documentary tribute" airing at 8 tonight on NBC.Not only is Diana a saint in this telling, she is a saint who was wronged by the evil Prince Charles. What's a victim without a villain who's an easy target?

EVERY SOCIETY has faced the same problem -- how to repress the aggressive, often violent tendencies of young men while still preserving their ideal of manliness. It is a delicate balance. A country needs manly men to defend it during a national emergency. But if left uncurbed, the restless vanity and strong will of young men would soon spill over into anarchy.In the past, the problem was handled by restricting the terrain on which the aggressive impulses of men were played out. In schools of discipline and brotherhoods, young men received an ideal of manly honor that was compatible with their tremendous pride but also limited the pool of combatants.

"It hurts me so bad, these young men killing each other," Gail Gainer, concerned and vigilant citizen of northwest Baltimore, said in this space a couple of weeks ago, after her son narrowly escaped a late-night street shooting. "What in the world is wrong with these guys? Why do they want to keep killing each other?" Those were expressions of frustration, to be sure, because Ms. Gainer knows the answers to Baltimore's toughest and most enduring questions. She knows why it keeps happening because she's lived within earshot of the violence for years, and she's seen many young men come and go, caught in the cycle of drugs and trouble.

Police in Baltimore County said Thursday that they were investigating two separate shootings, each of which resulted in injuries to two young men. Both incidents took place Wednesday evening. In the first, police were summoned to the 3700 block of White Pine Road in Essex after gunfire was heard in the area. Officers found two men, one of them 22 years old, the other 23, both of whom had been shot, according to Cpl. Michael Hill, a spokesman for the Baltimore County Police Department. The younger man was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center with a wound that Hill said was not life-threatening.

They know him as "Black," a convicted felon and longtime member of the Bloods street gang. He is leaning far back in a chair, under the only working light in a nondescript rowhouse in East Baltimore. He is talking about street life and hustling. And this group of more than 25 gang members and young men recently sprung from prison are hanging on his every word. "Bloods. Crips. BGF. Purple City," he says, rattling off the gang affiliations of the men in the room. He pauses. The room is still.

You won't find the road that Kim Rivers has traveled marked on any Atlas or available on any Global Positioning System. After all, how could you logically map a path that winds from the hustle and bustle of New York to suburban Missouri to Melbourne, Australia? And the funny thing is that the last turn, the one that landed Rivers as boys basketball coach at Randallstown, has been the unlikeliest and the most rewarding. Rivers, perhaps the area's most successful boys basketball coach, says he didn't expect to be at Randallstown this long.

I wanted to use your name on this, but the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice asked me not to. Maybe you'll recognize yourself from the following description. You are 16. You are confined to a juvenile detention center. You were convicted of public disorderly conduct and "assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature." And Stacey Haynes has taken a special interest in you. She's a federal prosecutor who told me about you when I visited Columbia, S.C., last month to give a speech.

The infantile food fight taking place in Congress in recent days over which partisan, nonbinding Iraq resolution would get a vote is nothing short of a national embarrassment. Worse, it is a slap in the face to the troops in harm's way who are desperately looking for adult leadership from those who helped send them there. Be it the House, the Senate or the White House, all too often, the arguments now being framed with regard to Iraq are being offered based on lowest-common-denominator, partisan self-interest.

Minding your health is not a young man's game. Muscles work smoothly in the teen years, joints flex easily in the 20s. It seems like young men can eat what they want, drink what they desire, and the pounds melt away as quickly as they put them on. They can work 16-hour days, party until 3 a.m., and get up the next day and do it again. (Give or take a few bad hangovers, of course.) Life is a river, flowing to them effortlessly and endlessly. Then sometime in the middle decades -- perhaps as men hit their mid-30s and approach 40, or sometimes 50 -- the river changes.

Pointing to the early success of two new series - CBS' Jericho and NBC's Heroes - network and cable executives say they have in their sights what is considered the most elusive TV audience segment: Young adult males. Armed this fall with a technological arsenal that includes On Demand downloads and online video streams, television executives say for the first time they are reaching young men between 18 and 34 years of age, the demographic group considered hardest to reach and most desired by TV advertisers.

When Maryland's Emily Perez died in Iraq, her West Point graduation picture -- with all the brass buttons and the plumage and her triumphant smile -- made the pages of newspapers everywhere. That picture, unlike the ones of soldiers' coffins that we are rarely permitted to see, opened a painful conversation most of us do not want to have. Who should we ask to defend us? Just our sons? Or our daughters, too? Emily Perez was a stellar student at Oxon Hill High School in Prince George's County and she went on to become the first female command sergeant in the history of West Point.

"I hate this. I always get so nervous on the first game." says Eric Tedrow. He stands rigid, gun pointed at the dirt, forehead sweating and knees cocked like a sprinter in the block. To his left and right are seven teammates, from teenage boys to middle-aged men, many in camouflage pants and jackets. All of them stare forward across the field at their opponents. Someone needs to take charge. Tedrow, 18, starts barking orders. "Take right. You take back house. If he goes down, you bump up," he says, gesturing to the people around him before facing forward again.