Young Woman

Returning to her native Afghanistan, says Fahima Vorgetts, is "frustrating, heartbreaking and overwhelming." Yet last weekend, she embarked on another monthlong journey taking her from her blue-shingled house in Arnold in Anne Arundel County to Kabul, the ancient capital city, and the surrounding countryside. In recent years, she has made it her mission to build schools for girls in the scarred land she left as a political exile nearly 30 years ago. Vorgetts' activism is born out of tragedy.

WASHINGTON -- With a newly tinted blond mane, an extra coat of lip gloss and an attitude that said anything but "I'm sorry," Linda R. Tripp burst back on the public scene yesterday in a campaign designed to recast her image into something other than the woman America loves to loathe.Just as America was beginning to forget her, on the very day the Senate was formally closing the scandal she helped deliver, Tripp took her case to the people. The woman whose secret taping of Monica Lewinsky led to 13 months of political upheaval culminating in President Clinton's impeachment trial vowed yesterday that she would do it all over again.

"IJUST WANT to get money. That's all. I don't even know what I want to be, I just want to get money.''The young woman, a student in Diane Young's African-American studies class at Patterson High School, was responding to my request that the students tell me what they want to be doing five years from now.I had hoped to get them to open up and reveal their true aspirations.Instead I mostly got the same responses some of them have, like a reflex, been giving to that question since first grade -- nurse, lawyer, policeman.

A lady friend, who went to Seton High School in the 1960s, remembers a fine arts course where one of the nuns announced on a spring afternoon, "Today we'll be looking at paintings from the Renaissance period. There will be a few paintings where women are not fully clothed. Those of you who feel uncomfortable with this will be allowed to leave the room."We think tenderly of such overprotectiveness now and wish to make our own innocence retroactive. At Notre Dame Prep, we discover a little belatedly, they've been showing their young ladies a porno movie that disguises itself as a documentary.

After a week of agony, Tahaisha Williams now can sleep at night.The 20-year-old South Baltimore resident said yesterday that she was unable to get much sleep while her three-month-old daughter, Tahsine, was missing, abducted by a young woman who befriended Ms. Williams.When mother and daughter were reunited Wednesday night, Ms. Williams said, she held Tahsine closely through the night."I just held her. Even while I was asleep, I kept holding her," she said, sitting in the living room of her Westport home with Tahsine on her lap.Tahsine was abducted Sept.

The New Jersey jury returned guilty verdicts this week against four Glen Ridge High School football stars accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old retarded girl who idolized them. The verdict sent a powerful message that youth, popularity and charm don't excuse behavior that would be vile even if it weren't criminal.The prosecution contended that the four youths lured the young woman, who had an I.Q. of 64, into a basement with the promise of a date, then forced her to perform perverted sex acts.

Chalk up another one for the good old boys. Chalk one up for the all the sleazy, they-just-don't-get-it males who see little more than one basic use in women and who tell each other that a lot of rape victims were just "asking for it anyway."The good old boys must have been cheering last week when Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Bollinger made the outrageous decision to give probation before judgment to a 44-year-old man convicted for the second-degree rape of an unconscious 18-year-old woman.

First-degree rape charges against two Shady Side teen-age partygoers accused of attacking a young woman in a pickup truck were to be dropped today due to insufficient evidence, their attorney said yesterday.Philip Nicalos Brown, 16, and his brother, Daniel Randolph Brown, Jr., 17, were charged as adults with first-degree rape and faced the possibility of life imprisonment. The young woman had been attending a party with them in the 5000 block of Muddy Creek Road in April. The charges will be formally dropped in a hearing in Circuit Court today.

It's tough to decide what was more outrageous about the events last Thursday in the courtroom of Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Bollinger:Was it more appalling that Judge Bollinger gave probation before judgment to a 44-year-old man convicted for the second-degree rape of an unconscious 18-year-old woman? Or that the judge expressed sympathy for the defendant and agreed with the defense attorney that Maryland's rape law "stinks"?As defined in the Annotated Code of Maryland, second-degree rape occurs when a person sexually forces himself or herself on another person who is "mentally defective, mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless."

If life imitates art, then draw your own conclusions abou Lawrence A. Gillette, the 44-year-old former theater manager who received a judicial peck on the cheek after second-degree rape of an 18-year-old woman.The facts of the case are simple: Last August, the young woman and several friends met Gillette at Poor Richard's in Towson. She got drunk and was taken to Gillette's home, where she vomited and was put in his bed, fully clothed, and passed out. Gillette then undressed her and raped her.All of that is part of the court record, as is Baltimore County Judge Tom Bollinger's reaction in court: probation for Gillette, since the judge felt there was no "violence," plus Bollinger's intemperate remark about "the dream of a lot of men" to find an unconscious woman in their bed.Here's where you can draw your own conclusions: Months before the rape, the 18-year-old went to a party at Gillette's house, where he'd had T-shirts made for the occasion.

Every revolution needs a unifying symbol, and members of Iran's opposition movement now have theirs. That was one dumb sniper who took out the young woman millions now know as Neda. Or was he? No one seems to know the identity of the rooftop shooter who pierced Neda's heart with a bullet Saturday. Was he a Basij sniper, as some witnesses have reported? Was it a mistake? Or did the shooter see an opportunity to create a necessary martyr? The thought is inescapable that the beautiful Neda Agha Soltan might have been selected from the crowd not to scare away protesters, but to unite them.

For years, my colleague Dan Rodricks has entertained us with columns entitled "Guilty - but mostly stupid." They're tales of criminals who just don't get it, like the bank robber who scribbles a holdup note on the back of his business card. Today I offer my own tale of criminal stupidity in the digital age - and the power that access to information holds to save us from terrible mistakes. I heard the story from a young woman in her early 20s who was raised in a small community, way-out-West, where people are friendly and direct about who and what they are. This is not necessarily the best preparation for working in the nation's capital.

Last year I met a young woman who had lost her brother in the war in Iraq. Although obviously grieved over her family's loss, she spoke proudly of her brother's service and the ultimate sacrifice he made on our behalf. In relaying the events of his return home, she described her family's deep disappointment that the Army had not presented them with his Purple Heart. They had hoped they would have it in time for his memorial service. They called Congressman Gilchrest's office to see if he could help in this matter.

Brace yourself. I'm going to use a word that offends folks. I'm talking the F-word. Feminist. This woman sent me an e-mail Monday and it got me thinking. See, in describing herself, she assured me she was not a "women's libber" - the late 1960s equivalent of feminist. She also said she was retired from the Navy. There was, it seemed to me, a disconnect there: She doesn't believe in women's liberation, yet she is retired from a position that liberation made possible. Intrigued, I asked my 17-year-old daughter if she considers herself a feminist.

Returning to her native Afghanistan, says Fahima Vorgetts, is "frustrating, heartbreaking and overwhelming." Yet last weekend, she embarked on another monthlong journey taking her from her blue-shingled house in Arnold in Anne Arundel County to Kabul, the ancient capital city, and the surrounding countryside. In recent years, she has made it her mission to build schools for girls in the scarred land she left as a political exile nearly 30 years ago. Vorgetts' activism is born out of tragedy.

There are a number of magical moments in Mum Puppettheatre's Seance at the Theatre Project. A woman gazes into a mirror and, next to her face, sees an image of herself as a little girl. Or, the woman picks up a child's brightly colored ball, and it levitates out of her hand. But the most magical thing about Seance is the spell it weaves. Ethereally performed by five masked actors and a life-sized puppet of the little girl, the hour-long piece is underscored by hauntingly beautiful recorded music by Adam Wernick.

When my daughter was completing her drivers' education course, I asked if the instructors had taught the students to change a tire or recognize trouble under the hood. She said, yes, and I said, good. "Now forget everything you learned because I never want you to use any of that stuff," I said. "If a tire blows or the engine smokes, I want you to get safely to the side of the road, lock your doors, turn on your flashers and call your Daddy, your brother, your Uncle Steve or the police.

Baltimore photographer Joseph Kohl, whose career was cut short last year by his death from leukemia at age 45, left behind a large and varied body of work that is now the subject of an impressive retrospective exhibition at School 33 Art Center through Dec. 2. Among the approximately 80 mostly black-and-white photographs in the show are many examples of Kohl's long-running fascination with people who live on society's margins - striptease dancers, transvestites,...

It sounds like something straight out of a Zadie Smith novel. A young woman -- smart, stunning, ambitious -- is thousands of miles away from home, studying at Harvard, when her mother suddenly falls ill. The girl stops her world and returns to London to be by her mother's side. As the older woman heals, she and her daughter grow closer. Broken bridges are rebuilt, a new relationship gels. It is also during this time that the young woman rekindles her passion for music, eventually abandoning her original plans to become an investment banker.

When a young woman's body was discovered on a road near a cemetery in Woodlawn in 1976, Baltimore County police had hundreds of leads -- people called nearly every day to say that their sister or friend or a dancer they'd seen on the Block resembled the victim, who had been strangled. But it has been a long time since anyone has called about the unsolved killing, and even longer since someone has tried to help detectives identify the woman, who remains known simply as Jane Doe. More than 26 years after her death, Baltimore County police tried again yesterday to generate interest in a case that has led them all over the country in search of information to help them figure out who the woman was, who killed her and why. "There's no particular lead, no new development in the case," said Bill Toohey, a county police spokesman.