Festival

Laurel Mill Playhouse invites directors and playwrights to submit resumes and one-act plays for the 2011 One-Act Festival, which will be held Sept. 2 through 18 at the playhouse, 508 Main St. Contact Maureen Rogers at maureencrogers@gmail.com or 301-452-2557.

Bring your kids to the 23rd annual Halloween Costume Parade and Contest at the Festival at Bel Air in Harford County on Saturday, Oct. 29, at 11 a.m. It's free. All kids who dress up and march in the parade get candy and trick-or-treat bags. The event features live music, cash prizes for best costumes and a special cash prize randomly drawn from all attendees. WXCY-FM radio personality Dave Hovel will be judging costumes, and kids and parents can sign up to win different free items from merchants at the Festival at Bel Air. Every child is invited to trick-or-treat at participating stores at the shopping center afterward, until 2 p.m. The 23rd annual Festival at Bel Air Halloween Costume Parade is held rain or shine in the parking lot in front of Chuck E Cheese's.

This year's Baltimore Running Festival will take place Oct. 16, one week later than usual, race organizers announced at a news conference Wednesday. The event has been pushed back to avoid a conflict with a national medical convention in the city Oct. 9 and 10. "I hope we have perfect running weather on Oct. 16 - though, after the winter we've had, I'd be happy just for it not to snow," Baltimore Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake said. The festival, which features a marathon, half-marathon, 5K and other races, is expected to draw a record 22,000 runners, organizers said.

Lavender lovers will find themselves in a floral wonderland next weekend at the Pennsylvania Lavender Festival. The three-day celebration of the aromatic, purple flower will bloom at Willow Pond Farm in Fairfield, Pa. Visitors can stroll through the farm's 2.5 acres of lavender; hear discussions on the plant's medicinal aspects; learn about growing, harvesting and cooking with lavender; and hear the lecture "Lavender Lore and Other Herbal Mysteries."...

Success begets traffic jams -- a maxim for modern times.Lines of cars headed to the recent Maryland Wine Festival at the Carroll County Farm Museum were backed up for a mile along both sides of Md. 140. Upon reaching the ample grasslands, people out for an afternoon of fun in the September sun again had their patience taxed by long lines to reach the ticket booths.The two-day festival that celebrates Maryland's viticulture and wineries has become the most popular annual event at the museum, drawing visitors from Canada to California.

Staging a festival is a warm-weather skill that folks in the Baltimore metropolitan area can rightly boast of mastering, along with the fine arts of sitting on the front stoop, concocting the perfect snowball and extracting the last morsel of meat from a pulverized crab shell.The city still reigns as the champion of festivalizing, thanks to its continuing series of colorful ethnic fests. But suburbanites have shown in recent years that the festival is just another of the amenities they have brought with them beyond the city limits.

COLUMBIA may seem an unlikely place to hold an arts festival with an international flavor. Although the Howard County town has a healthy arts community, it's not necessarily on the list of places where international artists long to perform. Yet tomorrow through June 30, the annual Columbia Festival of the Arts will give the town a decidedly global air. The festival will showcase artists from almost everywhere around the world this year in an artistically adventurous program of dance, music, performance and more.

The Baltimore Sun Even in the laziest dog days, Baltimore's outdoor film series have thrived this summer. At the Little Italy Open-Air Film Festival, crowds have turned out as if to honor the late John Pente, who from its start to his death served as the festival's welcoming public face. A dozen years ago, Little Italy Restaurant Association president Mary Anne Cricchio asked neighborhood fixture Pente if the group could use a third-floor bedroom in his house as a projection booth.

A host of new vendors sold goods at this year's Africa festival, but the deluge on Sunday meant few Baltimoreans wandered through the usually packed event. "The people from Baltimore just did not come out," complained Aghieghid Singapore, who traveled from New York City to sell Nigerian shea butter, a balm he said would fade the deepest scars within two weeks. He complimented the festival organizers for attracting regional vendors and even an international entertainer. For the past four years Baltimore has sponsored the event, officially called FestAfrica, as a part of a series of ethnic festivals in the city.

Jevon Patrick gazed at the finish line a long city block away and expressed concern. "It's just a pretty far distance," he said. "I used to be a champion sprinter, but this is different." For one thing, Patrick hadn't sprinted in 10 years. For another, he'd never done so in high heels. Sporting a size-11 pair of black shoes adorned with gold bows, the 37-year-old Patrick joined 15 other participants Saturday afternoon for the High-Heel Race, a goofy contest that launches the annual weekend-long Baltimore Pride festival.