Young People

In a former garage with concrete floors and cinder block walls, a couple of dozen teen-agers and twentysomethings armed with hammers and hacksaws are thinking big.Eugene Warren wants to start his own business. Devron Dennis wants to build his own house -- preferably in a field near a stream. Wendell Fowlkes, Tayon Dixon and Carlisa Mitchell envision lucrative trades: as plumber, carpenter, electrician.No matter that many who've come to this construction training program are high school dropouts with 9th- or 10th-grade educations and few prospects for decent-paying jobs.

Like most entrepreneurs, Suzy Frentz has had her ups and downs. She's seen her business grow to gain national attention, struggle with local government bureaucracy and face closing after 11 years. But this grizzled veteran isn't average in one important way - she's just 19 years old. Frentz and her sister Diana operate Snowball City, a stand built with their father's help in their family garage in southern Howard County. A mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, College Park, Suzy Frentz has invested sweat equity in the stand since she was 8. Today, she and her sister are bit players in a national trend.

LITTLETON, W. Va. - In 1906, long before U.S. 250 connected Littleton to the outside world, a fire broke out in one of this bustling oil town's six saloons and burned down the whole town.Littleton rebuilt and continued to boom for decades, as an oil field and two natural gas companies exploited its subterranean bounty. But the town that survived a raging fire at the turn of the century couldn't overcome the loss of jobs 50 years later when the oil and gas fields went bust.Today, only about 200 people live in Littleton.

When the theater gets into your blood as a youngster, it tends to stay there a lifetime. That sums up the creative life of Annapolis' Joe Thompson, the head of video programming for the Anne Arundel Board of Education's cable channel -- who also is one of the area's busiest actors and directors and whose resume boasts appearances at Colonial Players, Chesapeake Music Hall and the Bowie Playhouse. When not acting or directing, Thompson writes plays, skits and songs. Those efforts will be brought to life in Cabaret for Kids, a revue of his funny, highly original material that will be performed at Colonial in Annapolis during the first two weekends in August by a vibrant cast of 14 children and five adults ranging in age from 6 to 75. "I love everything about doing these shows," said Thompson, who put together his first such Cabaret six years ago to help celebrate Colonial Players' 50th anniversary season.

TORONTO -- In a plea to those he calls the hope and future of the church, Pope John Paul II beseeched hundreds of thousands of young Catholic pilgrims encamped yesterday on a former airfield not to lose faith because of "the harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable." In his first remarks on the sexual abuse scandal during this weeklong World Youth Day celebration, the pope said the abuse of minors by priests "fills us all with a deep sense of sadness and shame."

For nearly three decades, Kathy and Ray Wojciechowski have draped the front of their Southeast Baltimore rowhouse with a glimmering Christmas display of lights and Disney characters, and decked their roof with 5-foot-high figurines. Their festive decorations have sustained their home as the talk of Foster Avenue and earned them a merry reputation across the neighborhood. Three doors down, relative newcomer Diana Ringrose, 36, has taken a more subdued approach to holiday house decorating: plain white lights and wreaths.

There are so many violent tragedies every day - I'm thinking specifically about the deaths of young people, and particularly those by gun - it's impossible to process it all, much less give our hearts to it. If we tried, our heads would burst. I remember hearing Joe Ehrmann, the life coach and minister who once played football for the Baltimore Colts, say the nation suffers from an "empathy-deficit disorder. " He believes human beings need more than ever to be trained to be empathetic, perhaps because self-interest is so powerfully innate.

A tough but necessary question: Would school shootings still occur if K-12 education were optional for all students? This answer is, sadly, yes - because some young people carry burdens that few can name. But to require a youth who has imperfect control of his emotions to be in a certain place and to act in a certain way will undoubtedly carry consequences. With the recent tragic school shooting in Ohio, the young suspect may have ultimately turned violent no matter what. But the fact is, police attributed his state of mind, in part, to having to comply with a school requirement he hated.

It's as hard to talk your 20-somethings about money as it is talk to them about sex. Maybe harder. "They are probably having the sex," said Eleanor Blayney, a certified financial planner who often talks to the young adult children of her clients. She was laughing. "But they don't have the money. " Our 20-somethings - perhaps starting out in their first real jobs - don't want to hear us say they are spending too much on the clothes and the car and not saving enough. And they'd rather live on Ramen noodles Monday through Friday than give up going out on weekends with friends.

Peter H. Anderson, a former professor of electrical engineering at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. School of Engineering at Morgan State University, died Sept. 19 from complications after brain surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Bel Air resident was 66. "Professor Anderson is a legend without any fanfare. He was a free spirit and a joy to be around. He did what he needed to do to make things better for himself and others," said Eugene M. Deloatch, dean of the college of engineering.