Young Men

DO OR DIE.Leon Bing.HarperCollins.304 pages. $19.95.DTC There is an ease connected with writing about people engaged in heavy criminal activity. The drama is already in place and the characters involved usually are different enough to appear exotic, perhaps even romantic. Now that the gang scene has raged into our attention, we can expect many books professing to be the "inside" story. Few will get that story right. Leon Bing, a white woman, a former model, has got it right.What makes "Do or Die" a fascinating book, and a frightening chronicle of Los Angeles' gang life, is the way the author slowly strips away social and psychological veneers to reach fundamental truths about some aspects of life in America.

"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.

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.

Jerry Phipps, who has 29 years of experience in coaching and athletic administration, has been appointed interim athletic director at the Victor Cullen Academy in the Frederick County community of Sabillasville.The school, one of several operating nationwide under the banner of Youth Services International Inc., is a residential treatment center for adjudicated young men, most of them ages 14 to 18. Its mission is to change their attitudes and values, helping them become law-abiding citizens.

Many thanks to Lionel Foster for his thoughtful and poignant portrayal of the unique rewards and challenges involved in helping boys and young men learn better and more constructive ways of resolving conflicts with peers than through violent confrontation ("Freeing young men from the trap of aggression," Oct. 19). He writes: "As a boy, one of the last things you want to hear from a peer is 'Quit acting like a girl,' whatever that means. " Sadly, whatever else it might mean, the underlying message of that and like expressions is really quite clear: Girls are inferior, "other," and worthy of rejection, scorn, and second class treatment.

Four teen-age boys were charged with underage possession of alcohol Saturday after officers received a tip alleging that a Severna Park liquor store was selling alcohol to minors, county police said.Police said officers from the Eastern District and tactical units were watching Cork'N Keg Liquors in the 500 block of Ritchie Highway when a young man bought a case of beer without being asked for identification. When officers found the young man, identified as Patrick Michael Lachapelle of the 100 block of Berrywood Drive, was 19, he was charged, police said.

A gym might seem a curious setting for a sermon.But to Gerald Simms, the thumps and grunts of a basketball game at Bates Middle School in Annapolis make a perfect backdrop for God."Jesus went wherever the people were, and that's what we want to do," says Mr. Simms, 27.Mr. Simms' church, Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal, is one of 20 congregations from Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties that have joined the Washington Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Basketball Ministry.

WHEN I LEARNED of the unexpected and tragic death of my colleague, William A. Bassett, I was in California visiting some St. Paul's alumni whose lives had been shaped by Mr. Bassett and other teachers like him. Though now far from Baltimore and involved in careers and families, they remain connected to the school. Despite the differences in the life paths they chose to take, these young men share a commonality: growing up, they'd been blessed by teachers to guide and mentor them, to help them distinguish the hard right from the easy wrong, to influence the choices they made.

More than a decade after "safe sex" messages began to curb an AIDS epidemic that was crippling the gay community, scientists are seeing disturbingly high rates of new infections and risky sexual practices among young homosexual men.Early results gleaned from blood tests and interviews with 1,781 men in Florida, Texas and California show that 7 percent were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.More than a third of those surveyed, all 15 to 22 years old, said they had engaged in unprotected sex within the previous six months.

Curtis Dorsey wasn't exactly a willing volunteer for the Young Fathers Program of Annapolis."I'll tell you the truth," Dorsey says. "They dragged me in, kicking and screaming all the way."Now, two months later, Dorsey appears grateful that recruiters for the program persuaded him to give it a try. "I'm thinking more about my son now," he says, referring to 5-year-old Curtis Jr.Dorsey and more than 20 participants in Young Fathers last night got together at the Stanton Center in Annapolis to celebrate Thanksgiving a little early with a dinner for their children, and the mothers of their children.