Cultural Center

COLLEGE PARK -- University of Maryland officials yesterday dedicated a $4 million African-American cultural center on the flagship campus here.The three-level building, next to Stamp Student Union, is a new home for the Nyumburu Cultural Center, which offers courses and activities aimed at African-American students and others of African descent. However, the programs are open to all students.Pub Date: 9/13/96

SYKESVILLE - Town of Sykesville officials, county elected officials and members of the Warfield Cultural and Commerce Center board cut the ribbon on Oct. 6 for new "gateway" signs along Route 32 at the Warfield complex. The masonry signs were created by Maryland Division of Correction low-security, pre-release inmates who learned masonry skills while incarcerated. Three of the inmate masons were on hand to see their project dedicated. "What we see here," said Gary Maynard, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, "is a truly a meaningful inmate project.

A benefit for the Chesapeake Center for Creative Arts, a cultural center for northern Anne Arundel County, will be held from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. today at 314 Hilltop Road, Linthicum. Tickets are $25 a person.Plans for the center, which is to be housed in the old Brooklyn Park High School building on Hammonds Lane in Brooklyn Park, will be discussed and explained. The center will include a gallery, a theater/performance space and classrooms for art instruction.Programming at the benefit will include exhibitions; performances of music, theater and dance; and classes in the visual, literary and performing arts.

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake keeps an item posted on her refrigerator door that has nothing to do with her day and night job as mayor of Baltimore. It's a 1983 report card from her flute teacher, Bonnie Lake, a now-retired Baltimore Symphony Orchestra member who gave the then-13-year-old student a B-plus. "It reminds me I have a fallback position," Rawlings-Blake said with a laugh. "What it really reminds me is that there are other things in life. " Like the arts. In her short time in office, the mayor has demonstrated a pronounced commitment to the city's cultural community.

Highlandtown leaders will unveil plans today for the Patterson Theater, which they hope will become a cultural and artistic mecca for Southeast Baltimore.The theater, closed since 1997, is part of the Highlandtown Revitalization effort designed to restore vacant and abandoned properties.Block partyPlans for the theater to become the Patterson Cultural Center will be unveiled at 2 p.m. at "The Patterson's Big Block Party" from noon to 4 p.m. at East and Eastern avenues. The free block party will feature musical performances by the Broadway Choir, Mambo Combo and Gumbo Junkyard.

University of Maryland police are investigating a report of a noose in a tree near a cultural center housing several African-American student organizations as a possible hate crime, campus officials said last night. "The possibility that this act appears intended to bring to mind the horrific crime of lynching, which is such a terrible and tragic part of our nation's past, is particularly abhorrent," wrote UM President C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr. in a letter e-mailed to the campus community Saturday and posted on the school's Web site.

WASHINGTON - In the northeast corner of the nation's capital, beyond the monuments and museums on the Mall, lies the newest tourist attraction in the nation's capital. Part think tank, part art gallery, part interactive museum, the John Paul II Cultural Center could be described as Port Discovery meets the Vatican. The center, which will open to the public March 22, is a $65 million attempt by admirers of John Paul II to preserve the legacy of the pope who had a role in the fall of the Soviet Union and presided over the Roman Catholic Church as it entered its third millennium.

EUBIE BLAKE, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb. They and countless other Baltimore jazz greats will be honored at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, which dedicates its new home on Howard St. this weekend. Friday's grand opening and Sunday's family day highlight the new possibilities of the Eubie Blake center, which has been leading a vagabond existence ever since a fire in 1993 forced it out of its previous home. With 21,000 square feet in a building that once was part of the Maryland General Hospital, the Eubie Blake center will finally have room to thrive and grow.

It's the typical Columbia story: Lured by the promise of a multi-cultural community, acres of manicured outdoor space, good schools, less traffic and crime, Francis Johnson and Pamela Blackwell moved to the planned suburban city from Washington in 1978.These days, Columbia offers much more than cul-de-sacs and tot lots: movies with stadium seating, a growing variety of restaurants, large stores in new strip malls, museums and art galleries, big and small bookstores, concert facilities, teen-friendly sports parks, regionally renowned theater companies and other recreational activities.

In the late 1970s, Father Ugo de Censi, an Italian missionary priest of the Salesian Order, arrived in the impoverished Peruvian village of Chacas, nestled in the shadow of the Cordillera Blanca high in the Andes mountains. On inspecting his new parish, de Censi found the town's lovely colonial-era church sadly dilapidated and its beautiful 18th-century altarpiece damaged almost beyond repair. An even more urgent need presented itself in the form of de Censi's parishioners, among the poorest of the poor.

In reading the letter from Debbie DeAngelus where she criticizes state Sen. Andy Harris' opposition to the mosque that she calls a "cultural center" proposed at Ground Zero in Manhattan ("Mosque near Ground Zero is a local issue," Readers Respond, Aug. 20), I wonder if she is aware that there are some 200 mosques on the island of Manhattan, two of which are within two blocks of Ground Zero and nearly eight hundred thousand (yes,800,000) mosques in New York City which could serve the local Muslim population.

In your recent article, you state that state Sen. Andy Harris feels that building a Community Center near the Ground Zero site is "blatantly disrespectful" and the government should step in to stop it ("Harris calls mosque proposal 'blatantly disrespectful,'" Aug. 18). Is he a member of the party that preaches less-intrusive government? Is Mr. Harris aware that this proposed Cultural Center at the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory would contain recreation facilities for youth, a restaurant and culinary school, education programs, a library and child care services, in addition to a prayer room (mosque)

The Maryland Transit Administration will suspend operations on the central section of the light rail line next week for construction along Howard Street. The MTA said it would not operate trains between the Camden Yards and Cultural Center stations from July 5 to July 11 but would provide shuttle buses to make connections. The agency said the buses would operate during regular light rail hours and that every third trip would be extended to Penn Station. The shuttle will make stops at all stations except Pratt Street/Convention Center.

Several Anne Arundel County senior activity centers have announced their trip schedules and are accepting deposits. Trips vary per center and include day trips as well as cruises and extended bus trips. South County Senior Center is planning a trip to the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday. A van will pick up participants at the center at 27 Stepneys Lane in Edgewater and take them to the museum. There will a guided tour, then lunch at the Wild Orchard restaurant in Eastport.

A ritual bath, steeped in symbols of Judaic faith, will remind those who immerse and pray in its waters of a young rabbi and his wife killed in a terrorist attack in India a year ago. On the tiled walls of its mikvah, a deep, warm-water bath that promises spiritual purity to Jewish women, the Lubavitch Center in Pikesville will hang a marble plaque that reads, "May their merit be a blessing for all those who immerse in these waters." At 11 a.m. Sunday, in a public ceremony, the center will rededicate its Mikvah Mei Menachem in homage to Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg.

A Baltimore historian who was killed Sunday when an Upton rowhouse collapsed was renovating the site into a neighborhood cultural center and had the city's permission to do so, officials confirmed yesterday. Alvin Brunson, 49, won approval to take ownership of the home at 562 Wilson St. last year and turn it into an extension of the nonprofit Center for Cultural Education, which he directed, according to Board of Estimates records. Brunson, named "Best Community Historian" by the Baltimore City Paper in 2005, had spent years working on the site as an attraction for young people and tourists to learn the history of the neighborhood, friends said.

It's the typical Columbia story: Lured by the promise of a multi-cultural community, acres of manicured outdoor space, good schools, less traffic and crime, Francis Johnson and Pamela Blackwell moved to the planned suburban city from Washington in 1978. These days, Columbia offers much more than cul-de-sacs and tot lots: movies with stadium seating, a growing variety of restaurants, large stores in new strip malls, museums and art galleries, big and small bookstores, concert facilities, teen-friendly sports parks, regionally renowned theater companies and other recreational activities.

Cynthia and Sitawi Jahi have done what many people deemed impossible -- run a city recreation center as a private business, to the applause of many neighborhood residents.After putting up with the indignities of a leaky roof and no heat their first year at the center, the husband-wife team set about creating one of the most ambitious such programs in the city, encompassing education, culture and sports at the former Rognel Heights Recreation Center in West Baltimore."If running a rec center is just a job, sometimes people don't have the extra motivation to make the sacrifices to make a program succeed," said Sitawi Jahi.

This fall, many of you may have taken part in the annual city-sponsored event that offers the cultural landscape of Baltimore at no charge. Many performances and exhibits were part of Free Fall Baltimore, which lasted all of October. Participating venues included dance studios, museums and theaters. It was almost impossible for anyone to take advantage of every event because Baltimore's cultural scene has a lot to offer. So we're sharing photos of two events that took place. Young hip-hop enthusiasts, dancers and artists showcased their talent at the Village Learning Place.

University of Maryland police are investigating a report of a noose in a tree near a cultural center housing several African-American student organizations as a possible hate crime, campus officials said last night. "The possibility that this act appears intended to bring to mind the horrific crime of lynching, which is such a terrible and tragic part of our nation's past, is particularly abhorrent," wrote UM President C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr. in a letter e-mailed to the campus community Saturday and posted on the school's Web site.