Cafeteria worker Rosa Lopez lives with her sister, over 900 miles away from their nearest brother in Miami and almost 2,000 miles away from their mother and relatives in Nicaragua. Which is why Lopez was understandably annoyed when, in the midst of switching service providers, she found her telephone — one last link to distant family and friends — disconnected on Feb. 16.
When he lived in Ethiopia, junior Nebiat Mekonnen, then a freshman, simultaneously took classes in chemistry, physics and biology at a small private school. He was learning the principles of thermodynamics at an age when most Blair students are just transitioning into high-school science.
Magnet Coordinator Eileen Steinkraus has announced plans to retire on Jan. 31 after a 14-year term during which she helped elevate the program to international repute and increased schoolwide access to Magnet electives. Magnet computer science teacher Dennis Heidler will succeed her as acting coordinator for the remainder of the school year.
As a play, "Rent," an award-winning musical based on the opera "La Boheme," was simultaneously castigated as blunt and commended as revolutionary. As a movie, it's bound to draw just as much controversy from self-proclaimed "Rent Heads," aficionados of the show who are just as likely to be wowed by the film as they are to be frustrated by the changes made in its adaptation.
Every day, juniors Ngaheteh and Maheteh Ngombi arrive home to a living room rife with culture. On one wall, three elephants stampede out of an enormous copper clock in the shape of Africa. Against another are rows of wood carvings from Sierra Leone, where the Ngombis lived until 2000. Across the room is a bookshelf weighed down by a television, a DVD player and an assortment of silver-and-blue African sculptures: hippos in suits, men thinking, women nursing.
Community organizations troubled by potential cuts in school funding and gang and drug prevention efforts expressed concern over negotiations within the Montgomery County Council over property tax cuts. The Council is expected to take final action on the budget in its meeting today.
For Jane, a junior, faith was simple. A Baptist her whole life, Jane had a pastor for a grandfather and went to church every Sunday.
This year, Blair's Magnet Program boasts four finalists in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search and will be featured in an upcoming issue of The Washington Post Magazine. Last year, the average Magnet SAT score was estimated at almost 400 points above that of the rest of the county by the MCPS Department of Shared Accountability. And for the past 10 years, the Magnet has had more National Merit semifinalists than any other school in the state.
Sixteen-year-old junior Kadiatu Kamara wears a white-gold band on the ring finger of her left hand as a constant reminder - since last year, she has been a married woman.
Sixteen-year-old junior Kadiatu Kamara wears a white-gold band on the ring finger of her left hand as a constant reminder - since last year, she has been a married woman.
Idiosyncratic filmmaker Wes Anderson is constantly devoted to evoking new worlds for his audience to venture into, from the confused mind of a precocious 15-year-old in Rushmore to the off-the-wall dysfunction of The Royal Tenenbaums. In his latest and arguably most ambitious endeavor, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anderson plumbs the depths of imagination to create an entire undersea kingdom.
Had they been in their home country that Sunday morning in 2002, Alba and Hilberto Canales might have been at church. Instead, they were at home in their Silver Spring apartment complex. She was a Salvadoran Pentecostal and he was a Catholic, but while they had found each other, they had yet to find a spiritual community of their own in America.
A Navy poster sits beside a stack of PSAT practice booklets in the Career Center. Against an adjacent wall lie piles of business cards left from the many military recruiters who frequent Blair's hallways. At the front desk is a rack of glossy Army brochures bearing slogans like "the experience of a lifetime” and shining with the faces of confident, clean-cut soldiers far removed from the bloody battlefields many recruits will soon face.
Aerial gymnasts contorting fifty feet above the stage on a set composed of nothing more substantial than ropes and tenuous golden poles. A harlequin dancer spinning across the floor in a languid ballet performed on, of all things, crutches. Spangled, spiky-headed acrobats vaulting through the air from one swinging plank to another. As incongruous as they seem, all fit perfectly under one blue-and-yellow big top tent in Varekai, the latest offering from French-Canadian circus company Cirque du Soleil.
Junior Michael Reives was eight years old when he first realized that he had the potential to make a name for himself running track. He began running when a friend noticed his speed, and soon after, Reives qualified to compete in the Junior Olympics in the 100- and 200-meter events. He started commuting nightly to Washington, D.C., for three-hour practices, and his expectations soared as his running times dropped. Reives set his sights on the 2012 Olympic Games.
Silver City is like the unholy lovechild of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Erin Brokovich, some outlandish, ineffectual combination of thinly veiled satire and underdeveloped champion-of-justice drama that begs the question, did writer/director John Sayles (Sunshine State, Passion Fish) watch his latest endeavor all the way through before unleashing it on us?
A young man arrived at a naval hospital in Bethesda during the Vietnam War, comatose after driving a truck into a brick wall. His prognosis was grim: doctors had little hope of recovery. Enter Anne Wisniewski and her fellow nurses. They walked him up and down his ward everyday, two propelling his legs and a third supporting him from behind. After a year, he could walk and talk independently.