Fall Festival

DIANE JACOBS of Ellicott City reported a great day, a great crowd, a great event at the Trinity Fall Festival yesterday at the Trinity School."It's very Trinity," the spokeswoman for the Home and School Association said of the festival. That's because "everybody's involved," she said.The private Catholic school has been run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur since 1933.Small, Tudor-style buildings sit close to a forest of tulip poplar trees, overlooking rolling fields between Landing and Ilchester roads.

By the end of this month, as many as 7,000 schoolchildren will have taken hayrides through the pumpkin patch at Foster's Farm for an elementary lesson in farming.Surrounded by the rolling pastures, grainfields and woods of the Worthington Valley in northern Baltimore County, they can pick a fuzzy soybean pod and peel it open, jump in a pile of straw and choose a pumpkin to take home. Weekends, they can come back with their parents and stuff a scarecrow."I was picking up a piece of corn that was on the ground," said Edward Parham, 12, a seventh-grader at Pikesville Middle School who came with his class last week.

There is just no getting around it. "The Avenue" isn't what it used to be, with its boarded-up storefronts, pawn shops and empty office buildings."The Avenue" in this case is Highlandtown's Eastern Avenue in Southeast Baltimore. It was once the community's bustling Main Street - but like many a city neighborhood, it has deteriorated."It's a combination of all the shopping malls, like the one in White Marsh, and people leaving the city," says Kenneth Strong, the executive director for Southeast Development Inc., explaining the shuttered businesses.

A SILVER anniversary is always something to commemorate, and the town of Sykesville plans to celebrate its 25th annual Fall Festival in a big way on Saturday.Craig Taylor, the festival's chairman, and a committee of dedicated members have put together a daylong event filled with fun for the entire family."The committee members have all done an outstanding job and have been right on top of things," Taylor said. "We're going to have a fantastic festival this year."The festival will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Main Street.

A clash between organizers of separate seasonal festivals was resolved last night by bringing four individual events under the supervision of one central committee.Twelve Mount Airy residents met to begin restoring the community's popular Fall Festival, and to bring three other annual town events -- Spring Fling, Flag Day and Christmas in Old Town -- under a single committee's aegis.Planning for the Fall Festival, a two-day October event that draws large crowds to the community of 5,000 in southwest Carroll County, was interrupted early this month when the eight-member sponsoring committee resigned and returned deposits that vendors had placed to reserve booths.

Four Mount Airy community organizations are working to heal a rift between community festivals that erupted last month when one group accused the other of stealing its vendors.The Spring Fling, a one-day festival in May in its third season, and the Fall Festival, a two-day event in October for 15 years, coexisted peacefully until last month.Then the Fall Festival committee concluded that the town wasn't big enough for both events and sent letters to the Fall Festival's artisans and food vendors.

The Mount Airy Fall Festival committee, which has been feuding with spring festival planners over exhibitors and vendors, has resigned.Mayor Gerald R. Johnson reported at last night's Town Council meeting that he had received a letter of resignation from the committee.The council asked Johnson to work out an arrangement that would allow the Fall Festival to continue. Town resident Clare Morton volunteered to become chairwoman of a fall festival if she receives help.Meanwhile, Spring Fling chairwoman Irene Brown reported that the May 16 event has signed up 90 participants, including a petting zoo, sand art, llamas and a poison- and accident-prevention display.

THOUSANDS of visitors will take to the streets of downtown Mount Airy this weekend to celebrate autumn with the town's annual Fall Festival.The two-day event begins with Mount Airy's Fun Run at 9 a.m. tomorrow. The event again is sponsored by the PTA groups from Mount Airy and Twin Ridge elementary schools. The run begins at the municipal parking lot, between Center Street and Park Avenue, and follows a one-mile route through a residential area. The route will be well marked, and traffic will be controlled by state troopers.

THE NATURE CENTER at Piney Run Park is alive with the spirit of volunteerism.Many of its programs are dependent on volunteers, and two of the center's most active volunteers were recently recognized for their efforts.Norma and Jack Norman of Sykesville have been faithful volunteers the past four years. The retired couple can be found lending a hand at nearly every event at the Nature Center."Jack and Norma are such a terrific couple," said Elaine Sweitzer, a Piney Run naturalist. "They're always ready and willing to do anything that needs to be done.

IT'S OFFICIAL. Fall is here, and with it an abundance of activities. Take your pick from these events.Nonprofit organizations and many hard-working individuals in the neighborhood are putting their talents together to sponsor a day of fun for the family at the Linthicum Community Fair to raise money for the North County Emergency Outreach Network (NCEON).The fair begins at 9 a.m. Saturday with a parade from Lindale-Brooklyn Park Middle School to the fairgrounds across from St. John Lutheran Church, 300 W. Maple Road.