NEWS
By Michael Dresser | May 21, 2009
With gas prices running about $1.50 a gallon less than last year, AAA Mid-Atlantic is projecting a 3.9 percent increase in travel by Marylanders this Memorial Day weekend - welcome news for regional tourist destinations. In a news conference Wednesday on Kent Island, AAA government affairs director Mahlon G. "Lon" Anderson said the organization's survey predicts a robust travel weekend this year - a stark contrast with last year. "Trips by auto are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of Americans' returning wanderlust," Anderson predicted under skies just as sunny as his forecast.
NEWS
By Katherine Dunn | September 5, 2007
Notebook With classes starting before Labor Day at most Maryland public schools, a proposal to be voted on Friday by the state's 24 local superintendents would allow games to be played as early as Labor Day weekend. The proposed amendment would change the start of fall practice from Aug. 15 to a sliding date - the sixth Saturday after the first Sunday in July. Ned Sparks, executive director of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, said 185 of the state's 188 public schools started school in August this fall.
NEWS
By Lynn Anderson | September 4, 2007
Organizers expect attendance for this year's Maryland State Fair to be higher than the turnout last year, when rain fell during the normally busy Labor Day weekend. Labor Day weekend 2007 was different, with temperatures in the 80s and sunshine galore. That meant big crowds at the Timonium fairgrounds and lots of business for vendors. Early estimates put total fair attendance this year at about 410,000, compared with 344,000 last year. "We have had two fabulous days in a row," said Max Mosner, president and general manager of the Maryland State Fair and Agricultural Society Inc., the nonprofit that runs the annual event.
NEWS
By ROB KASPER | May 26, 2007
The weather is warm without being scorching. The breezes are benign. And the weekend has an extra 24 hours. These are ideal conditions for an outbreak of "landscape fever," an affliction that sweeps across the region during Memorial Day weekend. Clad in garden gloves, wearing hats, their skin slicked with sunscreen, the afflicted will be outdoors rearranging the terrain, planting, trimming, laying down decorative stones. Bill and Sandy Fritz, for example, will be pulling up old stones and putting down a new flagstone path at their southern Pennsylvania home.
NEWS
By Annie Linskey and William Wan | July 5, 2005
If the automobile is the unofficial symbol of American independence, then what could be more appropriate than spending the Fourth of July in the car with the family? AAA projected that 40.3 million Americans - more than ever before - would travel this holiday weekend. And the majority would go by car, said AAA spokeswoman Ragina Averella. Many of those who drove all day yesterday had no qualms about spending hours confined to their vehicles. "God, it is great to be an American," said Rodney Whetstone, a New Jersey resident who was making a pit stop at the Maryland House rest stop on Interstate 95 near Aberdeen yesterday.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | May 30, 2005
Dallas may seem a strange place to start a Hollywood revolution. But that's what happened there on March 26, 1975, when Steven Spielberg's Jaws, the story of a 26-foot shark feasting on inhabitants of a New England village, was shown to a preview audience. "Not until that first screening did we know we had something, that we had truly hit a nerve," remembers co-producer Richard D. Zanuck. "Not until that first scream ... " Thirty years later, with a special-edition DVD about to be released and a big birthday bash planned for next weekend in Martha's Vineyard, where the movie was filmed, Jaws' status as a cinema milestone is secure.
NEWS
By Katherine Dunn | March 16, 2005
By moving the NCAA Division I national championships to Memorial Day weekend in 2006, officials hope to ease the burden on participating teams and rev up attendance. Kathy Zerrlaut, chair of the Division I women's lacrosse championship committee and senior associate athletic director at UMBC, said the committee has been talking about making the move for years. The women's final four has been held the weekend before Memorial Day, while the men's tournament culminates over the holiday weekend.
NEWS
By Bill Free | September 12, 2003
Baltimore will find out at the end of next week if its bid to be the host of the NCAA men's lacrosse final four in 2005 and 2006 has been successful, tournament coordinator Marty Schwartz said yesterday. Philadelphia is also competing for a two-year contract, but Baltimore is considered the front-runner because of its unequaled success (109,000 spectators for the three-day Memorial Day weekend) in conducting the 2003 final four at M&T Bank Stadium. Both cities have made presentations to the NCAA Lacrosse Committee.
NEWS
By Andrea K. Walker | August 30, 2003
It was a summer of cancellations for the Pocomoke River Cruises. Too many soggy days kept people away from the scenic boat rides. "If it's thundering and lightning, you really don't want to be on the water," said Rai Coiro, who runs the cruises with her husband in Snow Hill. "You really just can't enjoy the river." So it went this summer, from Maryland's foggy mountain resorts in the west to the rain-soaked beaches in the east. While some restaurants and tourist spots reported solid seasonal bookings, for many it was the summer that wasn't.
NEWS
By Katherine Dunn | May 29, 2003
Rainy weather over the past few weeks has pushed many of the state high school championships past Memorial Day, but next year, some tournaments are likely to run into June by design. The public school spring tournaments will take a four-day break the week before Memorial Day to give student-athletes time to concentrate on the high school assessment tests beginning next year. Because Memorial Day is so late in 2004 -- May 31 -- some state tournament contests may continue into the first week of June, said Ned Sparks, executive director of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association.