Aerial

BEFORE MAYOR Kurt L. Schmoke gets too excited about a $200 million "people mover" for the Inner Harbor, he should spend a few cents calling Florida. Tampa Mayor Dick Greco announced last week he is thinking of scrapping his city's 13-year-old elevated people mover, which was built to ferry expected hordes of tourists between downtown and the Harbour Island shopping and restaurant district."

A day after striking a pedestrian near Lexington Market, the same Baltimore City firetruck collided with a car Saturday afternoon at St. Paul and Baltimore streets downtown, fire officials said yesterday.Different drivers were involved in the accidents, said Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres, fire department spokesman.The truck, Aerial Tower 102 housed at the Steadman Station in the first block of S. Eutaw St., was responding to a call and was eastbound on East Baltimore Street when it struck the passenger side of a red Honda Civic that was traveling south on St. Paul Street, Torres said.

Twelve-foot letters "VLT" will begin appearing around Carroll this week -- signifying not an alien invasion, but an aerial-mapping project to take the county's 911 emergency response system into the future.About 60 of the white vinyl panels will be placed to cover survey control points for the aerial photography, said Buddy Redman, the county's administrator of the Office of Public Safety. The survey control points are used to tie the mapping to the surface of the earth.The project should be completed in about a year, he said, and the result will look like a road map.The aerial photographs will be used to create accurate maps -- improving the county's computer-assisted dispatch system with a display on the computer screen showing the exact location of an emergency call, he said.

A man was in critical condition last night at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center after he stepped between two firetrucks speeding to the scene of a fire and was hit by the second firetruck about 7 p.m. in the 200 of N. Eutaw St. near Lexington Market.Battalion Chief Hector Torres said the man had crossed the southbound lanes of Eutaw when he was hit by an aerial tower truck that was the second of two trucks heading north to a house fire in the 2000 block of Harlem Ave.The ladder truck had its sirens and lights activated when the accident occurred, Torres said.

An aerial photography company is scheduled to photograph sections of Taneytown as soon as snow melts enough to provide clear visibility.Consulting engineers need the photos to pinpoint wetlands and other features that could be affected by Taneytown's plans to improve and expand its sewage treatment plant, City Manager Charles "Chip" Boyles said.The City Council authorized $11,800 for aerial photos of the treatment plant area at its Feb. 10 meeting.Boyles said engineers can use the photos for topographic information, making the aerial survey less expensive than a ground-level survey.

A story in the March 3 Howard County edition of The Sun incorrectly named the founders of Columbia Aerial Photography. The company was co-founded by Patrick R. Carletto and LaVega "Bic" Green. Mr. Carletto since has left the company and has founded Carletto Aerial Photography in Ellicott City.A picture is worth a thousand words -- and up to $100 to LaVega "Bic" Green, owner of Columbia Aerial Photography, who plies the skies with a miniature, camera-equipped, remote-controlled helicopter that he built from a kit.His aerial photograph of snow-covered Columbia Town Center, taken during the January blizzard when larger aircraft were grounded, proves that bigger isn't necessarily better, he says.

The big top will go up in Westminster tomorrow as the Fraternal Order of Police brings the Kelly Miller Circus to town for four shows over the weekend.Flying trapeze artists, exotic animals, clowns and entertainment will be the order of the day. Shows will be at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. tomorrow and at 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Sunday at Carroll County Ag Center on Smith Avenue."We have one big ring, European-style circus," said Ken Hatfield, Kelly Miller's promotions director. "It's like a show in the round -- all the seats are equidistant from the ring.

WASHINGTON -- A Maryland defense contractor has been accused by a member of Congress of seeking to charge the Pentagon $544 for a spark-plug connector that was available from an auto-parts shop for $10.The contractor, PioneerUAV Inc. (PUI) of Hunt Valley, was one of three companies -- two from Maryland -- cited by Rep. Norman Sisisky, the Virginia Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee's investigations subcommittee, as seeking "excessive prices for commonly available spare parts."

LILLEHAMMER, Norway -- From the people who brought you roller derby on ice (short track speed skating) and pothole jumping on snow (mogul skiing) comes another in the growing collection of Winter Olympic trash sports:Anyone ready for diving off mountains?This is the sport of freestyle aerial skiing, the only Olympic discipline that should come with a warning label: Do not attempt any of this at home, dudes."Hey, if the crowd thinks this is crazy, then, I'll just leave it at that," said Trace Worthington, best in America and best in the world.

I've always told him before an anniversary or a birthday, "Please don't give me anything that plugs in," in that I consider perfume or night gowns more sexy and more fitting.No more appliances!So it came as a shockeroo when for our 50th wedding anniversary he gave me a cellular car phone. Mind you, I did not have to install it, thank God.I still can't quite figure out why he gave me a car phone. He does not like to talk on the phone himself.Theories on the extravagant gift:Recently, I had a flat tire on an interstate and I sat for an hour even though I had on my emergency lights and a pair of old white gym shorts attached to the aerial.

Baltimore's first-ever Aerial Festival will take place this weekend somewhere in the visually sumptuous, surreal intersection between a three-ring circus and high art. Picture this: an alley in the Station North district in which the walls are spray-painted from pavement to rooftop in graffiti, each design more elaborate than the next. It's shortly after sunset, and strings of flickering Italian lights throw patches of dark and light on those colorful walls. On the ground, two performers on a spinning teeter-totter form a moving sculpture.

It's a Monday evening at True Balance Studio in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, and a handful of students are hanging out in the loft-style exercise facility. Literally. As in hanging upside down, suspended midair, doing splits and other daring feats. And all while their arms, feet and assorted body parts are intertwined with two long swaths of black, silky fabric, rigged up from the 12- to 15-foot ceiling. A few thin mats are situated underneath. "Pull your abs in, tuck your pelvis," said instructor Mark Harding, encouraging beginning student Lauren Butkiewicz, who's hoisted herself into an aerial seated position, with legs extended and toes pointed.

Kosher with Salsa The lowdown: Kosher with Salsa, by Miryam Madrigal and directed by Jerry Gietka, is a romantic comedy about a Mexican Jewish convert and a Jewish girl from Beverly Hills, Calif. The show is the Baltimore Playwrights Festival's final presentation at the Fell's Point Corner Theatre. If you go : The show opens tonight and runs until Aug. 31 at the theater, 251 S. Ann St. Shows are at 8 p.m Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $17. Call 410-276-7837 or go to fpct.

Dance lecture -- The Anne Arundel Community College Cultural Events Committee will present "Dancing on Air" at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow in Room 112 of the Humanities Building, 101 College Parkway, Arnold. Part-time faculty member Megan Morse Jans will lead the lecture and a DVD demonstration of aerial dance. Free. 410-777-7021.

Robert D. Fleischer, a retired television news photographer and former owner of an aerial photography business, died of lung cancer Friday at Kent General Memorial Hospital in Dover, Del. The former Perry Hall resident was 68. Mr. Fleischer was born and raised in Baltimore and graduated from Polytechnic Institute in 1956. He attended the University of Miami in Florida and served in the Navy as a reconnaissance photographer aboard the carrier USS Independence from 1962 to 1965. Mr. Fleischer was a teenager when he began working with his father, an East Coast racetrack photographer.

THEATER AERIAL SHAKESPEARE There will be spirits in the meadow at Evergreen House when the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival opens its high-flying production of A Midsummer Night's Dream tomorrow. To enhance the magic in Shakespeare's comic account of lovers (mortal and immortal), the festival brought in aerial expert Buffy Hornung, a Towson University alum who is a member of the Los Angeles-based Silk Sisters. Under Hornung's guidance, the actors playing fairies have been trained to perform aerial stunts using a hoop and hammock suspended from Evergreen's trees.

I can see your house from here. Actually, I can see just about everyone's house from where I'm sitting: in front of my computer, looking at the online satellite/aerial photography services Google Earth and Windows Live Local. Just type an address into the search boxes of these free services and you get overhead views that are stunningly clear. As I write this, I can see the exact window in the Times building that is closest to where I'm sitting. It's a bit unsettling, even though the view is not real-time.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Emily Cook's aerial skiing career came full circle Saturday as she stood atop a hill and looked down to the place where her Olympic aspirations crashed in a heap four years ago. The wind gusted and the snow swirled, just as they did four years ago before Cook's horrific accident that left doubts about whether she'd ever walk normally again. But the aerial skier with the pigtails and winning smile pushed off, rocketed into the air and completed a series of twists and somersaults before landing on her own two feet.

In the drafty expanse of a former city substation, Tim Scofield and Mara Neimanis perform an aerial pas de deux that has the playful, fluid feel of a romp on the moon. Harnessed by cables between steel yokes, Scofield, a solidly built sculptor, and Neimanis, a wiry aerialist, use their heft against that of a hinged counterweight shaped like a wedge of pizza. The two leap 15 feet in the air, turn somersaults, crook their legs and make like Peter Pan as they swivel aloft for yards and yards.

For sheer novelty value, this week's all-20th-century Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program was hard to beat. For substance and potent music-making, it stood out, too. Two well-known composers, Rachmaninoff and Bernstein, were on the bill, but represented by lesser-known pieces. And anything by contemporary Austrian composer HK Gruber is well out of the mainstream. It takes nerve, not to mention imagination, for a conductor to lead such a program in his debut with an orchestra. Junichi Hirokami, former principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, seemed thoroughly fearless Thursday night as he led the BSO for the first time.