FOLK SINGING Anything called a hootenanny ought to be shot on sight, but the whole country is having one. A hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz and all over the U.S. there is a great reverberate twang. Guitars and banjos akimbo folk singers inhabit smoky metropolitan crawl space; they sprawl on the floors of college rooms; near the foot of ski trails they keep time to the wheeze and sputter of ...

For Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, it all began with orangutans. Four years ago-inspired by the work of primate researcher Jane Goodall-the two friends from Ann Arbor, Mich., collaborated on a research report on the endangered primates to help qualify for their Girl Scout Bronze award, one of the highest prizes offered by the 3.2 million-member organization. Vorva and Tomtishen have both been scouts since they were five years old, and they take their roles and responsibilities ...

Adolescence, that swampy zone between safety and power, is best patrolled by adults armed with sense and mercy, not guns and a badge. That's one of many reasons the awful story of Phoebe Prince leaves me so uneasy. The tragedy is now a global parable: a cute Irish girl moves to a new town — South Hadley, Mass. — and starts dating a popular football player. Other girls, alpha girls, get jealous. They taunt her, cross out her picture on ...

Kate Middleton seems like a nice girl from a solid middle-class background. She's jolly sensible and keeps her mouth shut, and as far as we can tell, Prince William has found a keeper. That seems to be the consensus, perhaps comforting, certainly less than sensational. So have the media just confected interest in Kate, hoping to sell newspapers and magazines? Or does the endless coverage — speculating on everything from the designer of her dress to what ...

Like cool girls in a middle-school popularity contest, the hippest dolls in the toy store are bickering over clothes, makeup and market share. MGA Entertainment, maker of the trendy Bratz dolls, says its product ideas have been borrowed by its archrival, Mattel, for My Scene Barbies. The company filed a lawsuit this month accusing Mattel of copycatting. The latest round of squabbling comes a year after Barbie's mother ship sued the creator of Bratz for working for MGA while still ...

Ashley Nicole Valdes was a smart, pretty 11-year-old girl who often cared for her younger, mentally disabled sister while their single mother studied to be a paramedic. In January, while crossing the street to get to her home west of Miami, Ashley was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in a pickup truck — and became a heart-wrenching symbol of South Florida's notoriously reckless car culture. "You see all these people getting run over and you ask yourself what's happened to us as people ...

A 9-year-old girl was laid to rest Wednesday as a 15-year-old girl, described as an acquaintance, was in court on charges she carried out the younger girl's murderOn Wednesday, Olten's family looked towards closure as two drastically different scenes unfolded in Missouri. Olten's family and friends watched as two white horses pulled her casket in a glass hearse. Hours earlier, a judge had ordered the 15-year-old suspect to be held while he decides whether she should be tried in adult ...

A Georgia man allegedly slapped a toddler at a Walmart store because she wouldn't stop crying, authorities said. Roger Stephens, 61, was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree cruelty to children. An incident report obtained from police in Gwinnett County indicated Stephens did not know the 2-year-old girl he stands accused of hitting. The confrontation happened shortly before noon at the Walmart in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta. According to the arresting officer, the child's mother said her daughter ...

She's petite, she's middle-aged, she's bookish, and if she gets a chance, she'll knock you on your keister. By day, she's Beth Hollis, a 53-year-old reference librarian in Akron, Ohio. By night, she's MegaBeth, an ageless dynamo on the roller derby rink. "All my life, when I tell people I'm a librarian, they say, 'You don't look like a librarian,' " Hollis said. "And now that I'm a roller derby girl, they say, 'You don't look like a roller derby ...

Call it mother's intuition. Call it a police officer's intuition. But Allison Jacobs knew something was wrong. The University of California, Berkeley, police officer was sitting in on a meeting with a man named Phillip Garrido, who wanted to hold an event on campus, and Lisa Campbell, special events manager for the university police. Garrido brought along two young girls, introducing them as his daughters. Jacobs' and Campbell's intuition, authorities said, led to the arrest of Garrido, a registered sex ...