Float

Lawrence J. Thanner Jr. has lost a years-long battle with Baltimore County to have live music at his waterfront restaurant, but he says he'll take the fight to the Chesapeake Bay with a floating bandstand. "I'm preparing to bring a raft over soon," said Thanner, who owns the Dock of the Bay restaurant on Millers Island in the county's southeastern corner, which featured music outdoors this year and has been the subject of nuisance complaints from several neighbors. "I've got materials for it already.

An influential group of Baltimore business and civic leaders coalesced Friday behind a proposal to build a new downtown arena that would be connected to an expanded Convention Center as part of a large redevelopment project on the Inner Harbor parcel that includes the Sheraton Hotel. The Greater Baltimore Committee said its board voted to study the plan. The project would replace the aging 1st Mariner Arena while adding convention space and renewing a dated wing of the Baltimore Convention Center on a site roughly bounded by Pratt, South Charles and Conway streets.

Fantastical tales are just so darn hard to resist. Witness the media's mad dash to follow every second of the oh-so-terrifying-ride of Balloon Boy, to pick a random example. The more implausible or exotic the story, the more we want to believe it, perhaps because most of us tend to stay earthbound (or hidebound), unlikely to be caught up in the wilder sides of life. In 1898, Louis De Rougemont emerged out of the blue in London to stir the public imagination in a big way with his recounting of incredible mishaps, treasure, isolation, fear, bravery and cross-cultural pollination in far off Australasia.

Happy 75th birthday, Social Security. On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act and changed the lives of millions. But will Social Security survive to see another 75 years or more? Its long-term solvency remains in question. And staunch supporters worry that benefit cutbacks might be unavoidable now that President Barack Obama's deficit commission is looking at Social Security. A report is due in December. The program needs shoring up. For the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits this year and next than it takes in through payroll taxes, according to the latest annual report.

Baltimore's Inner Harbor was once ringed by wetlands, but over time they gave way to development until only one was left. Now there are two. Volunteers in kayaks, a small boat and a canoe towed a "floating wetland island" from Fells Point — where it took form — to the waters alongside Baltimore's World Trade Center on Sunday. Tourists stopped to gawk and snap photographs as the environmentally friendly flotilla made its slow way along the harbor, the cargo more eye-catching in its greenery than anything else in the crowded waterway.

The floating promenade that rings the Moorings, a collection of million-dollar Canton townhomes, was intended to be a peaceful spot to stroll, jog or gaze over the water. But for city officials and townhome residents, it's been the source of several years of headaches — and could soon be the subject of a lawsuit. With the promenade in disrepair, the city wants the developer and homeowners to build a brick walkway at the water's edge that would join the seven-mile promenade that wraps around the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill to Canton.

A parade. At night. With a horse theme. The folks at Nana Projects are so ready for tonight's Preakness Parade of Lights. They've got their stilt walkers, along with their glowing lanterns, their pony puppets, their pony hats, all backed by a local Dixieland jazz band, Sac Au Lait. The Inner Harbor, they promise, is going to swing. "We love big parades," says Molly Ross, director and principal artist for the Roland Park-based artists' collective that's the guiding force behind Highlandtown's annual Halloween Lantern Parade.

A new city campaign urges tourists to "Find Your Happy Place in Baltimore." Dozens of butterflies unwittingly drawn into the campaign very nearly found their final resting place instead. The organization Visit Baltimore planned to release 19 dozen butterflies at the tourism campaign's launch today. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals objected. "No animal should be treated like a living decoration," Lisa Wathne, PETA's captive exotic animal specialist told me Wednesday.

Baltimore police Wednesday morning pulled a body out of the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River near South Hanover Street, according to a department spokesman. A passer-by spotted the victim shortly before 10 a.m. floating near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge and Cromwell Street, just off the southern edge of Port Covington. Police were still at the scene at 10:15 a.m., and no further details were immediately available. peter.hermann@baltsun.com

Annapolis intends to test a floating island in a local lagoon that, if successful, could help clean the water in the Chesapeake Bay, according to Mayor Ellen O. Moyer. Moyer also announced an eco-friendly renovation of a city parking lot and the creation of a private-public partnership to offer property owners tax-exempt, low- interest loans to install energy-efficient equipment. The floating island, which would absorb nutrients from the water, will be tested in a lagoon in Back Creek Nature Park.