Baltimore Program

Because of incorrect information supplied to The Sun, it was reported yesterday that Fastnet is a same- and next-day delivery service offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Fastnet does not offer same-day service.The Sun regrets the errors.Calling Baltimore at once "unique" and "middle of the road," QVC Inc. has chosen Charm City for its first venture in local programming.The television shopping network has selected 20 products from more than 400 submitted by local manufacturers, retailers and restaurants for "Hometown Baltimore," a three-hour pilot program be aired Oct. 5 in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will be announcing its 2014-2015 season in a few weeks. As is the case every year, I am hoping for a whole bunch of surprises, a filling in of long-standing gaps in the BSO's repertoire. And, naturally, I am especially hoping to hear more of my favorite stuff (it's all about me, as you know). In the same way the BSO and its audiences should be getting a wider sampling of guest conductors (off hand, I can think of Osmo Vanska, Jaap van Zweden, Manfred Honeck, Benjamin Zander and the apparently indefatigable Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos)

Using music, poetry, dance and art, the Black Male Identity Project has been striving for the past year to overturn negative stereotypes of African-American men. "We know that Baltimore City has a lot of problems, but we wanted to celebrate the role of artists, of storytellers in producing narratives that can help us discover solutions," said Fanon Hill, a musician and co-director of the project. On Sunday, the project concluded at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, but organizers say the program's positive message will carry on here and elsewhere.

Legislative reforms are desperately needed to address issues with Maryland's speed camera programs in school zones, particularly in Baltimore City, where the problems have been so pervasive and so well-documented that the system has been suspended since April. We know that speed camera citations have been issued to deceased motorists and "signed" and authorized by a deceased police officer. Motorists have been cited for speeding in school zones when they were not moving at all - including a AAA Mid-Atlantic roadside assistance truck, which was cited for going 57 miles per hour in a school zone, despite being stopped at a red light.

An East Baltimore program that counsels children who are exposed to violent crime now has a powerful partner, the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.The agency, a division of the Department of Justice, will provide technical assistance to the Child Development Community Policing program, the only one of its kind in Baltimore.The program, which began in April, involves police and therapists at Johns Hopkins Hospital's East Baltimore Mental Health Partnership. It seeks to prevent children who are victims of violence from becoming violent adults.

CENSUS FIGURES confirm what we already knew: With increasing numbers of African Americans joining the decades-old white middle-class flight to the surrounding counties, Baltimore is rapidly becoming a city of even starker contrasts between overwhelming poverty and isolated islands of wealth.I lived in Africa for three years, followed by five in the Soviet Union. Recently, I have been startled to see how rapidly Baltimore is acquiring some lifestyle features of underdeveloped Third World countries.

Thousands of Maryland children who rely on free and reduced-price lunches during the school year cannot get the same meals in the summer because onerous federal requirements keep communities from setting up programs, a national group has charged.Fewer than 20 percent of the 144,000 children in Maryland eligible for the subsidized meals received them in July 1991, the Food Research Action Committee (FRAC) announced today.While that percentage compares favorably with the national average of 15.1 percent, the state figure is skewed by the Baltimore program, which is considered one of the better in the country.

Investigators looking into the possible misuse of millions of dollars at a Baltimore program for poor pregnant women have focused on relationships between former administrators and several companies with whom they did business.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday that a review of the financial records for Healthy Start Inc. indicated that several area companies might have illegally profited through the relationships.City Health Department officials confirmed Wednesday that the Baltimore state's attorney has begun a civil and criminal investigation into the $3.2 million program to help distressed women and children in Sandtown-Winchester and Harlem Park in West Baltimore.

Mentor pairs to get access to city cultural institutions Baltimore residents who mentor a child would have free access to more than 30 city cultural institutions, from the Baltimore Museum of Art to the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards, under a program announced yesterday. About 350 "mentoring pairs" are eligible for the ACCESS Baltimore program - which aims to broaden the number of places mentors can take children - and officials hope the initiative will encourage 150 more people to become mentors this year.

It makes good sense: Give a low-income pregnant woman intensive care and support and make sure she gets proper nutrition - and her baby will be healthier at birth with a lower probability of developmental problems. That's the aim of Healthy Start, a federally funded program with 100 projects across the country, including one in Baltimore. But reauthorization of the program has been languishing in Congress since 2005. Legislation that would give Healthy Start, which saves money and lives, more time and perhaps more money is finally moving and deserves to pass sooner rather than later.

In East Baltimore, the 1200 block of North Broadway was once almost entirely vacant. Now a woman who moved to the city from Parkville has made it her family's home. There were once 25 vacants on this block; only six remain, all of which are under construction. Farther south, a man whose home has been in his family for three generations has seen a transformation on the 200 block of North Madeira Street. Eleven long-vacant properties have been sold or auctioned to developers, the street and sidewalks have been repaved, and a stream of new neighbors is moving in. Around the corner, a longtime resident began renovating homes on Mullikin Street, building on the momentum of Madeira Street's revitalization.

The latest plane being rolled out of the hangar at Dallas Dance Airlines (also known as the Baltimore County Public School headquarters) should be grounded before it has a chance to take off. The recently announced plan to move to an eight-class semester from seven ("8 classes a semester for Balto. County high schools," Oct. 30) - is yet another far-reaching initiative coming at a time when teachers are still trying to cope with a new curriculum and a new teacher evaluation system.

The transformation of a vacant, 12-story eyesore into a gleaming office building has brought workers, shoppers and diners to the northern edge of downtown Towson - thanks in part to a public financing package that waived repayment of millions of dollars in loans to a developer. The county makes so-called conditional loans that do not require repayment if certain conditions, such as job creation, are met. The $3.5 million in conditional loans to Caves Valley Partners for the Towson project would rank as the largest ever forgiven; others have provided $300,000 to demolish vacant Pikesville buildings and $40,000 to renovate a bank branch in Randallstown.

The latest program from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is as safe as it comes - an old-fashioned mix of 19th-century fare. But with one of the BSO's regular guests, German-born conductor Jun Markl, back on the podium, you can count on considerable energy and sensitivity to give the familiar fare a good jolt. Those qualities are also much in evidence from the other guest for this program, German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser, in his BSO debut. On Thursday night at the Music Center at Strathmore, Markl got things started with a genial account of Dvorak's lovely Serenade for Strings.

Nearly 30 years after they first met while living in the same East Baltimore housing project, and 20 years after they left Dunbar to play college basketball, Rodrick Harrison and Rodney Elliott are back in their hometown with a new dream. Harrison, the second-year coach at Mount Zion Prep, and Elliott, one of his assistants, are trying to give players who didn't have the grades or game coming out of high school a chance to do what they did. Harrison, who played at UMBC and was later an assistant coach at Dunbar, and Elliott, who played at Maryland before embarking on a 13-year professional career spent mostly in Europe, teamed last year with the Mount Zion Baptist Christian School in Northeast Baltimore to provide the academic support and basketball guidance for a dozen or so players each year.

In the mid-1980s, a Gilman offensive lineman named Mark Agent enrolled at Maryland to play football. After that, years turned into decades before the Terps managed to take the next step with the Baltimore school. Longtime Gilman coach Biff Poggi said he can't recall another Greyhounds player committing to Maryland until fullback Kenneth Goins selected the Terps , arriving as a freshman last season. Goins was followed by quarterback Shane Cockerille a year later. For Maryland, it's akin to a thaw after a long winter.

The Baltimore region presents some peculiar challenges to civic leadership. Unlike most other cities, Baltimore is an independent entity and not part of a county. Thus, many Baltimore area executives have a foot in two places: they work in the city but may live in a surrounding county.This kind of division of energies and loyalties is taxing. Ask the area's volunteer organizations or cultural institutions, which have to compete for resources from this scarce pool of leaders.The situation would be even more difficult if not for a concept called the Leadership.

Civic Works, the kind of youth service corps being championed by President Clinton as part of his domestic agenda to reshape America, officially kicked off its Baltimore program yesterday.At Civic Works, housed in the historic Clifton Mansion in Northeast Baltimore, 25 males and females, who range in ages from 17 to 25, will learn carpentry, landscaping, construction skills and health care.Civic Works' officials hope that with those skills will come self-esteem and pride in teamwork and the place where they live.

Key lawmakers say that Maryland's speed camera law will get a hard look during the coming General Assembly session and that changes are likely. In the wake of problems exposed in Baltimore's program, a House committee chair also said that city leaders and their initial speed camera contractor, Xerox State and Local Solutions, will be called to give an accounting. City officials "obviously need to be front and center in this," said Del. Maggie McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat who chairs the House Environmental Matters Committee , which would consider any speed camera legislation.

At Linden Market in Reservoir Hill, shelves are heaped high with miniature pies, cupcakes, and candy. Three dozen flavors of salty snacks burst from cardboard boxes. Around the corner at the Whitelock Community Farm, deep green leaves of chard fan from raised beds, cucumber vines wind up trellises and Japanese eggplants resembling glossy purple commas dangle from stalks. Beginning this week, the corner store and the farm, which are just a couple of blocks apart, will forge an unlikely partnership.