Convention

It won't have the glitter of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions, but Baltimore will nevertheless get a piece of the 2012 nomination action as the national Green Party opens a three-day convention here today to pick a presidential candidate. Hundreds of delegates as well as Green Party candidates from across the country are expected to arrive today for the event, which will take place at the University of Baltimore and the Holiday Inn on West Lombard Street. The actual presidential nomination will take place Saturday.

M&T Bank Corp. executive Atwood "Woody" Collins III has succeeded Edwin F. Hale Sr. as chair of the Baltimore Convention and Tourism Board, city officials said Monday. The appointment of Collins, an executive vice president of M&T, became effective Friday, Visit Baltimore announced. Collins has served on the convention and tourism board since 2008 as treasurer and head of the finance committee, advising on budget management and fiscal matters for both Visit Baltimore, the city's tourism and convention bureau, and the Baltimore Convention Center.

A ballot question to convene a convention to revise the state's constitution was supported by 55 percent of those who voted on the referendum, but the measure appears to have failed because too many voters abstained. For a convention to be called, the number of people voting "yes" would need to be more than 50 percent of the total number of Marylanders who voted overall. Although 55 percent, or about 845,021 voters, were in favor of calling a convention, outnumbering the 703,426 who opposed, 191,548 voters did not vote on the question, essentially voting down the measure, according to preliminary figures from the Maryland State Board of Elections on Thursday.

Many parents have read, liked and tweeted Glennon Doyle Melton's popular essay " Don't Carpe Diem " about bucking traditional advice to enjoy every second with her kids. ("This CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life - while I'm raising young kids. Being told, in a million different ways to CARPE DIEM makes me worry that if I'm not in a constant state of intense gratitude and ecstasy, I'm doing something wrong. ") The founder of momastery.com followed up that viral success with a book called "Carry On, Warrior" that describes overcoming her bulemia and drug and alcohol abuse to become the mother she is today -- imperfect, but who isn't?

If you want to win an arms race, minor escalation is not the way to go. Only after President Ronald Reagan started developing a wildly expensive and impractical system to shoot down enemy missiles did the Soviet Union give up the Cold War. The $900 million proposal by Willard Hackerman and the Greater Baltimore Committee to combine a sports and concert arena, luxury hotel and meeting space presents a new level of aggression in the convention-center race,...

Gov. Martin O'Malley will serve as co-chair of the Democratic convention's rules committee this year, a high-profile position that comes amid rampant speculation in party circles about his potential as a presidential candidate in 2016. The assignment, which the Democratic National Committee announced Thursday, will put O'Malley at the head of a committee that oversees not only logistical issues for the party's convention in Charlotte but that would also decide any internal delegation disputes that arise.

The Laurel Volunteer Fire Department and auxiliary are hosting this year's 89th annual Prince George's County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association convention in Laurel this week. To start off the week-long convention, teams of firefighters and auxiliary members challenged one another in field game competitions Saturday, Sept. 17 at McCullough Field. Some of the skill challenges included a bucket brigade, tug of war and a race to dress for a fire alarm. The convention wraps up with a parade Saturday, Sept.

This summer, the Republican and Democratic parties will hold their presidential nominating conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C. In so doing, they will continue a political ritual that began 180 years ago in Baltimore. From their inception in the campaign of 1832 and continuing through the Civil War, Baltimore was the city of choice for conventions, hosting a dozen, compared to only two each for its closest competitors. The last 19th-century convention to be held in Baltimore was in 1872.

Baltimore needs a new publicly funded convention center and arena like my dogs need a therapist. How wonderful that the design on the estimated $930 million redevelopment "is very solid and fits into the urban fabric of the city, and would provide some vitality and vibrancy to a building that right now is kind of drab and quiet," according to one backer. Have we not learned? The same reasoning stoked legislators to make it easier for people who could not qualify for a mortgage to get ridiculously large ones.

Susan Wood of Aberdeen is a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. A graduate student in the School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, she is writing of her experiences.New York was certainly a madhouse yesterday. Clinton jumped ahead in the polls and Perot jumped out.I actually jumped from press conference to press conference in hopes of getting the early scoop. The energy in the entire delegation has been building day by day, but the news of Perot has added the big question of which side can court his vote.

Over at the Other Place, the blog site during the [cough] hiatus [cough], a commenter has just remarked on the formation of plurals : You are wrong. The plural of A is As, not A's. An apostrophe for a plural is ALWAYS wrong. Always this insistence on Right and Wrong,* and not just among the peeververein but sometimes among my fellow copy editors as well. The formation of plurals of letters and numbers is not a rule but a convention. There are no Right and Wrong about the matter, but merely a choice of which of the current conventions to follow.

This will be Flight Test No. 40. In the center of the contraption — a 90-pound, human-powered helicopter made mostly of carbon fiber, balsa wood, foam and string — is University of Maryland doctoral candidate Colin Gore, decked out in orange cycling clothes and safety goggles. Gore will pedal, as he would on a bicycle, until the craft they call the Gamera II XR lifts off the floor. A student stands at each of the four massive propellers as they wait for the cue. "Tension on, take off," comes the order, and Gore's face turns red with effort as he pedals.

Captain Kirk himself will beam into Baltimore this summer to appear at the Shore Leave science fiction convention in Hunt Valley, according to the event's website. The 35th annual convention will offer writing workshops, panel discussions, role playing games and a chance to meet authors and stars. Shatner, who has been known to turn down much bigger gigs, is a major score -- particularly for a convention founded by folks brought together by a love of "Star Trek. " He will appear Aug. 3. If fans want his autograph, or to take a picture with Shatner, they'll have to open their wallets.

Looking for some diversion this afternoon before I must report to the paragraph factory for the impending Super Bowl tsunami of copy,* I turned to Twitter, to find that the only people not obsessing over chicken wings and football were arguing, some passionately, whether Internet should be capitalized. I, as a copy editor, should be the last to suggest that other people should get a life, but, for Fowler's sake, it's just capitalization. It's just spelling. It's just house style.

The Orioles' annual FanFest at the Baltimore Convention Center emits a festival atmosphere, complete with face-painting and bingo corner. Held just weeks before spring training begins, it springs the baseball season into motion. Players come to town to sign autographs and pose for photos. Even in the darkest years, optimism and excitement rules the day. But while Saturday's announced crowd of more than 18,500 marked a single-day FanFest record - the event used to run over two days in the 1990s - the day revolved around remembering Earl Weaver, the Orioles' Hall of Fame manager who died late Friday night at the age of 82. Wearing his custom-made Earl Weaver jersey, lifelong Orioles fan Rick Gaetano made the three-hour drive to Baltimore from his home in Mountain Top, Pa., on Saturday morning to attend FanFest when he received a text message from his wife and learned of Weaver's death.

There's only a month to go until the start of the most anticipated college lacrosse season, well, ever. Why the excitement? There's the return of Cornell attackman Rob Pannell, the 2011 USILA National Player of the Year, who missed most of last season with a broken foot, but really what will make 2013 different is that the game itself will be different -- much different. Sweeping rules changes , including the adoption of a shot clock for the first time, have been crafted to make the "fastest game on two feet" even faster.

CHICAGO -- The organizers of massive coast-to-coast immigrant marches tried to keep their growing national movement headed in the same direction yesterday by devising a strategy for the fall elections. About 400 people from 25 states gathered for a two-day national convention in Hillside, Ill., to debate how best to achieve legalization for the nation's 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants and a moratorium on raids and deportations by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Immigrant leaders created their first formal national structure, taking the place of a loose catch-all of labor unions, immigrant advocacy groups, ministers and students whose informality was once viewed as a strength.

The Greater Baltimore Committee's proposed concept for building a new 18,500-seat arena and a 500-room hotel on Conway Street and connecting the arena to an expanded convention center has generated a deluge of media "buzz. " Reactions to the idea of combining the construction of a $500 million, privately funded new arena and hotel with an adjacent $400 million, publicly funded, expanded convention center have been largely positive. However, we should not be surprised that some naysayers are voicing concern about the need for expanding the convention center and questioning its value as a business generator.

Thundering herds of "My Little Pony" fans will be descending on Baltimore next August for the fifth BronyCon, a bi-annual convention of rabid fans of the cartoon TV series "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. " Thousands of fans are expected to mass at the Baltimore Convention Center for the Aug. 2-4 event. Although targeted at a young, mostly female audience, the animated show has attracted a surprising number of young adult and teen fans - known as "bronies," short for "bro ponies.

College football Navy LB Wetzel chosen as FBS Independent Player of the Week Navy senior linebacker Keegan Wetzel was named Football Bowl Subdivision Independent Player of the Week for games played Nov. 24 to Dec. 8. Wetzel set a career high with 11 tackles Saturday, including 1.5 tackles for loss, helping the Midshipmen to a 17-13 win over Army at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia to clinch the Commander in Chief's Trophy....