Are you a baller? A gamer? If so, Therman Arrington wants to hear from you. Amidst his full-time gig at Southwest Airlines as a ramp agent, Arrington doesn’t mind receiving nearly 30 text messages a day or taking in roughly 50 phone calls. Why? Well, its tourney time. Arrington is a gamer at heart and this Sunday he will be hosting the video game tournament “Friend or Foe, Battle to the End” at Huckas sports bar in Canton.
Arrington is a Baltimore city native and resident of Abingdon; he is founder and owner of the BB&G Club (Baltimore Ballers and Gamers Club). He used to own a small video store on Eastern Avenue where he and some friends began playing video games. Back in the day, they’d participate in the underground tournaments.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Maryland Forestry Board recently announced the winners of the 2007 PLANT – People Loving And Nurturing Trees – Awards. A dozen Harford County entities received PLANT awards this year, including local governments, schools, community organizations and even military installations.
People Loving And Nurturing Trees (PLANT) is a statewide award program to recognize communities for their tree planting and tree care efforts. Communities range from schools, homeowner organizations and parks to metropolitan areas, cities and towns.
There are four PLANT award levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Green. Successive levels require more formalized tree care activities. Although a community may remain at any level for an unlimited number of years, the goal of the program is to encourage a community to grow through the award levels by strengthening their commitment and care for their urban trees.
Memorial Day traditionally kicks off the beginning of swimming pool season, but in Aberdeen young swimmers are having a hard time making a splash. The diving boards that had been part of the swim center for years were inexplicably torn out in recent weeks.
To make matters worse, this was to be the inaugural year for the Aberdeen Penguins Dive Team, who were to practice at the city’s swim club. The team was set to kick off the season with a diving clinic on May 31 and June 1, but those plans are now up in the air – because the diving boards are not.
I bet the state is content with many of Baltimore City’s students having a bleak future.
In 2000, Judge Joseph H. Kaplan ordered that the state issue adequate funding to the city after he deemed that students would need to receive between $200- $260 million in addition to other funds in order to comply with students’ constitutional rights.
As expected, these demands have yet to be met. I think the state doesn’t want to admit that they set our youth up for failure.
May 2004, just a week before the WW II Memorial in Washington D.C. was to be dedicated, I took my Dad down to see it. At 85, he was a little unsure on his feet so I borrowed a wheelchair so I could push him around the Mall. My Dad was excited to be going and was even looking forward to the ride in on the D.C. Metro.
It was one of those perfect May days; bright sun, warm and not a cloud in the sky. On top of the perfect day we had a perfect tour guide with us. My friend Tom knew the Washington D.C. landmarks well, and ever the teacher, would regale us with bits of history and trivia that we weren’t aware of.
A little about my Dad: Born in St Louis, Missouri on November 7, 1918, he was drafted into the ...Continue Reading
Several years ago, after asking a group of school children touring our nation’s Capitol what Memorial Day meant to them and getting the response, “That’s the day the pools open,” a distraught Carmella LaSpada knew she needed to do something. She needed to start a mission.
So LaSpada, founder of No Greater Love, an organization devoted to promoting the true meaning of Memorial Day, contacted Harford County Del. B. Dan Riley for help with her mission. That mission, quite simply, is get people to remember Memorial Day. Here is a description of the organization from the No Greater Love web site:
Founded in 1971, NGL is the only humanitarian, educational, non-profit organization in the United States solely dedicated to providing annual programs of friendship and care for those who lost a loved one in the service to our country or by an act of terrorism.
Bob Pappalardo’s drive to work used to take about 20 minutes, and ran along the quiet, winding North Foothills Highway from Boulder, Colorado to the small town of Lyons and the sandstone buildings of the University of Colorado. It was a fine commute, except when it snowed. Today, Pappalardo, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, monitors the Los Angeles traffic – “quite a sport,” he says – before heading out from his home near Santa Monica for the trek up to Pasadena; there are days, Pappalardo says, when the 25-mile drive lasts an hour and fifteen minutes.
So what got Pappalardo, a planetary geologist, and his girlfriend to leave the rambling serenity of the Eastern Rockies for the bustle of L.A.? It was a no-brainer: the search for life beyond Earth.
As study scientist for NASA’s burgeoning Europa orbiter mission, Pappalardo is working with a group of Jet Propulsion ...Continue Reading
AMELIA – Mayor Leroy Ellington said he doesn’t know who bought a lottery ticket worth up to $196 million last week at Main Street Wine & Spirits, but several residents have asked him whether this Clermont County village could share in the winnings.
The short answer: Maybe.
Residents will air their views on a proposal to implement a 1 percent earnings tax during a 7 p.m. meeting today at the Amelia public library, 58 Maple Ave.
Officials had figured such a tax could raise about $560,000 a year for the village of about 4,000 residents. A 1 percent tax on the lottery jackpot alone could yield a total of more than $1 million for Amelia, Village Administrator Mark Menz said.
He advised Village Council members Monday that the tax would have to be implemented before a claim ...Continue Reading
Rarely do politicians pull back the curtain and let the public see how political appointments are made, but Harford County Councilman Richard Slutzky has done just that by introducing the resolution to open up the selection process for school board members. Designed as a temporary fix until elections are approved by the General Assembly, the resolution establishes a 7-member panel composed of elected officials and representatives from the county executive’s office which will review and endorse candidates for the school board in view of the voting public.
Currently, school board members are appointed by the governor who relies on endorsements from local officials; a process that serves almost no one. Local officials are often flying blind because they have no formal way to recruit or to vet the candidates, candidates are dependent on having the right political connections and the public has no way of knowing who’s in the running or ...Continue Reading
Governor Martin O’Malley and Lt. Governor Anthony Brown have spent more than $172,000 in taxpayer’s funds for trips across the country and around the world. The two executives have spent 84 days out of state since taking office. O’Malley has used his travel time on political events, such as campaigning for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and attending an event for the Democrat Leadership Council in Nashville. The Governor has also traveled to Ireland twice, once to simply witness the presentation of an award to Dr. Robert C. Gallo from the University of Maryland. The Gallo trip came days before the special session of the Maryland General Assembly, convened by O’Malley to create 1.5 billion dollars in new taxes.
Lt. Governor Brown had the most expensive trip, a week long trade mission to China, costing taxpayers more than $96,000 dollars.
