Written by  Patricia Bianca Ah, Halloween. Ever since our ancient European ancestors first lit bonfires and dressed in ghoulish attire to confound the forces of evil, Halloween has captured the hearts, imagination and even the...

Written By Lisa Breslin Thanks to the sleuthing of Joe Camlin, a 16-year-old junior at Winters Mill High School, Charlie Fisher, Jr. had a reunion with his class ring in Westminster this summer. How the ring dropped from...

Written By Sherwood Kohn According to U.S. Census figures from 2004, Carroll County’s Hispanic population constituted less than 2 percent of people living in our area. (See “Working Under the Radar, Page 52) That number has...

Written By Donna Engle Local legend has it that Pleasant Valley’s name was suggested by a visiting Baltimorean, who in the 1850s strolled the hill that overlooks the glen from the south and remarked, “What a pleasant valley this...

Written By Patricia Bianca While other public school districts struggle with low test score averages and rising crime rates, Carroll County’s public school system apparently boasts a proliferation of scholastic superstars....

Written By Anne Blue When Piney Ridge Elementary School opens its doors later this month, six-year-old Harrison Kluge will be arriving in a fire truck. Knowing her son’s passion for firefighters, when Lori Witmer-Kluge heard...

Written By Patricia Rouzer The Friendship School’s fine new exterior walls are ringed with familiar names, among them Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, and John Lennon – all geniuses. And like the 57 students who attend...

Written By Evan Balkan Just across the Rio Grande in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, filmmaker Leo Eaton rides headlong into a storm on a horse that threatens to buck him off. He grips the reins and utters a prayer. Spooked by...

Written By Cari Pierce You may have attended a 4-H Fair at the Carroll County Agricultural Center. Or a rodeo, a monster truck bash, dog show or sportsman’s expo. And you may have thought that taxpayers were footing some of the...

Written By Mary Spiro According to the saying, “Dog is man’s best friend.” But the truism needs qualification: “A trained dog is man’s best friend.” I have shared my life with all sorts of canines, from mutts to pure breeds. I...

Written By Sherwood Kohn If you were Albert Einstein in 1905, when he was working as a patent clerk and living in Berne, Switzerland, developing his theory of relativity, what kind of dreams would you have? That was the premise...

Written By Jill Stone As Sinatra tunes blanketed the dimly lit room, cheers from guests punctuated the sounds of the spinning roulette wheel, the bouncing dice, and the flipping cards. No, it wasn’t Las Vegas. It was Casino...