For the big One-Oh, Maggie Strandquist of Arnold said no to presents for herself and yes to presents for the animals at the SPCA of Anne Arundel County.     “I didn’t think I needed anything, so I thought who else needed things,” Maggie reports. “I love animals and really wanted to help them, so I thought of the SPCA.”     Maggie was quick to think of the SPCA because she and a friend had already organized a Girl Scout walkathon at...

To keep up with presidents, you have to share their drive and stamina. Understand that, and you are getting to know Ken Walsh, one of the shrinking corps of reporters whose job is telling the rest of us about the plans, plots and policies of the occupants of the White House.     Walsh has so much drive and stamina that, after a full day writing about presidents for US News & World Report, he comes home to what he calls “my second full-time job,” writing books...

How did you fall in love? That’s a question worth dwelling on. Girls at least — perhaps boys, too, though they’ll never tell — grow up dreaming of how they’ll fall in love. Most of us eventually achieve our own love story, some of us many times over. Common as the love story is, it never grows stale. An aging couple joins me at the table at a bed and breakfast, and, before our coffee cups are drained, she’s reported their love story, with him adding Amens!...

Veterans’ Day holds special meanings for native Marylander Lillian Caplins, of Huntingtown, who was a cadet nurse at McGuire General Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.  Like her husband Alphonse, Lill was born in Baltimore of 100 percent Lithuanian stock. Like Lill, Al served in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in August 2, 1942, and on June 20, 1943, left for China with the Air Force in the India-Burma-China Theater of Operations in support of General Claire Lee...