Reading off the names of all 141 members of the House of Delegates in rapid succession is a daunting task for even the most experienced auctioneer.

With names to pronounce like Afzali, Szeliga and Olszewski, such a task could strike fear in the hearts of otherwise capable individuals.

Not so for House reading clerk Rhoades Whitehill.

When the electronic board that is used to register attendance in the House went down Tuesday, Whitehill rose to the occasion, reading out all the monikers with nary a pause.

Members in the chamber set a beat for the clerk by clapping along and then recognized the achievement and rewarded him with a standing ovation at the completion of the list.

Speaker Mike Busch also quickly pointed out that such a task is why the House of Delegates could only pass “two bills” per session before the advent of technology.

— Sarah Breitenbach

Guard dogs on duty

Something unusual happened Tuesday in Annapolis.

The governor invited media inside the wrought-iron fence that surrounds Government House for a news conference on same-sex marriage.

MOM was quick to remind the ink-stained wretches of the unique privilege they had.

“We don’t often have press availabilities inside the fence here, and we do have two dogs,” he told the assembled gaggle.

— Sarah Breitenbach

Bipartisan unity of a sort

It was an odd confluence of bipartisanship, but two Maryland representatives — one from each major party — invited military veterans to watch President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, brought John Mendez, a North Bethesda resident and an outreach specialist for the Bethesda-based Bethesda Cares Inc. who helps homeless veterans throughout Montgomery County find places to live. Mendez served with the 26th Expeditionary Marine Force in Bosnia and Somalia between 1991 and 1995.

“His service to our nation, both in the United States Marine Corps and as a tireless advocate for homeless veterans, has helped thousands of people in our community,” Van Hollen said.

Meanwhile Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican, said his wife, Ellen, gave up her ticket so he could bring as his guest U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Joseph Beeman of Cascade, a small community in Washington County. Beeman, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, was wounded by a mortar attack in Mosul, Iraq, in 2004.

— C. Benjamin Ford

Blueberry supreme

During his first “tweetup” Monday in which he took questions from citizens who signed up for the event through their Twitter accounts, Gov. Martin O’Malley mentioned that he always has liked to stay on the cutting edge technologically.

O’Malley, a former mayor of Baltimore, related how another former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, the late William Donald Schaefer, used to tease him about his Blackberry.

Schaefer referred to the device as O’Malley’s “blueberry,” the governor said.

“Do you think your blueberry ever filled a pothole?” O’Malley said Schaefer kidded him, referring to the more mundane tasks of governing. “Do you think your blueberry ever took down a dead tree?”

O’Malley quipped that he used to tell Schaefer he didn’t know, but that “I could ask my blueberry.”

— Steve Kelly