Fort Mchenry

Cars began lining up before 7 a.m. to get into the parking lots at M&T Bank Stadium for the shuttle bus ride to Fort McHenry and the Blue Angels air show. Yellow school buses stretched from Camden Yards to beyond the football stadium to handle the crowds, which are expected to fill the fort to capacity by 11 a.m. The historic site holds about 25,000, but The Star-Spangled Sailabration is expected to draw 1 million people to Baltimore's Inner Harbor area by Tuesday. Elsewhere, several thousand people are expected to attend Gay Pride Parade activities in Mount Vernon, and the combination could mean congested traffic around downtown Saturday.

Military past and present came together Friday morning on a patch of farmland that played a key role in the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812. Armed with the weapons of landscaping, 55 sailors and Marines in town for the Star-Spangled Sailabration reclaimed the ground around Todd's Inheritance Historic Site from years of neglect. "Does everyone know their assignment?" asked Larry Leone, an officer on the historic site's board. "Destroy bushes," barked Marines.

Runs through Tuesday at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Fort McHenry, Martin State Airport and other locations . Inner Harbor activities Star-Spangled Sailabration Villages will feature live entertainment, traditional festival fare and hands-on fun for kids. Ships, docked throughout the harbor area, will be open for tours. Transportation Officials urge visitors to use public transportation, because parking will be limited. Options include the Water Taxi, MTA's MARC, the light rail and buses, Amtrak and the Charm City Circulator's free Banner Route, which travels from the Baltimore Visitor Center to Fort McHenry every 10 minutes.

Vince Vaise has a vision, and in his vision Orioles and Ravens fans yell, “Huzzah,” when their teams do something worthy. “Huzzah” is what folks shouted on the morning of Sept. 14, 1814, when they saw the American flag waving defiantly over Fort McHenry after British war ships rained down rockets and mortars on the 1,000 defenders inside. And Huzzah is what Vaise, Fort McHenry's chief interpretive ranger, would like all of us to shout at ball games. “We'd call it the Baltimore Huzzah,” he says enthusiastically.

How considerate of the British, to attack Baltimore in 1814 and thus give Baltimoreans, two centuries later, ample excuse to hold a two-year celebration. As you may have heard by now, Baltimore is kicking off its bicentennial celebration of the War of 1812 in style this week, welcoming tall ships from all over the world — as well as the thousands of visitors hoping to get a look at them. But even after the so-called Star-Spangled Sailabration ends next week, Maryland's commemoration of its pivotal role in America's second war of independence continues — and won't really end until 2014, with the 200 t h anniversary celebration of the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the writing of the "Star-Spangled Banner.

Sometimes it's the lyrics and not the music that set a song apart. For the Ellicott City-based ShowTime Singers, one of the most challenging musical numbers they've performed was "America the Beautiful" - when they sang it in Mandarin for a Chinese New Year festival a few years ago. The 47 members of the choral group studied the spoken translation recorded by member Ruihua Tao, who is a native of Beijing and a Columbia resident. Then they put the new words to the patriotic tune in four-part harmony for appreciative immigrants and Chinese-Americans in the audience.

It's a much-battered part of the Baltimore Harbor scenery, bobbing in the water just above the Key Bridge on the way to the Inner Harbor. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of boats - including Tall Ships and Navy warships--will pass by the Francis Scott Key buoy this week on their way to take part in Sailabration, Maryland's Star-Spangled commemoration of the War of 1812 . The buoy sits on the spot where the lawyer and amateur poet Key watched...

ON THE SITE... Ships begin to arrive for Sailabration : A welcoming wind and warm sunshine greeted the first ships arriving at Baltimore's Inner Harbor just after 8 a.m. for the weeklong commemoration of the War of 1812. After fire in Fells Point, residents eye options for gutted space : Crews began clearing the rubble left behind by a five-alarm fire Monday. No cause of the fire or damage estimates have been determined. Baltimore gay rappers are loud and proud :   For several local rappers who are out, there are lingering stigmas and other obstacles to being accepted by some of their peers in a musical genre known for homophobia.

It took 200 years, but the oft-forgotten War of 1812 got some attention Wednesday. A flotilla of more than 40 ships representing a dozen nations glided under the Key Bridge and into Baltimore Harbor to launch the commemoration of the conflict that gave the United States its anthem and expelled the British military from American soil once and for all. With the arrival of tall ships and warships at the Inner Harbor, Fells Point and North Locust...

For folks who want to partake in Sailabration by water this weekend, expect tight quarters. "An unprecedented number of boats are anticipated. We could have thousands of recreational boaters all trying to come to one location," said Coast Guard Cmdr. John Burns, who has been part of the planning team for the War of 1812 commemoration. Here's what the armada will find: Big sections of Baltimore's harbor will be off-limits to pleasure boats, and many others are too shallow and debris-filled, too deep to anchor or too far from the action.