Lighthouse

LIKE MANY homeowners, I break into a sweat when I hear the word "termite." The other day my fear of this wood-eater increased when I visited the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. This lighthouse, which serves as home to the Baltimore Maritime Museum, is perched 15 feet above the ground. It sits on cast-iron pilings. Its outer walls and sub-flooring are made of half-inch thick cast iron. But somehow, termites had made their way up to the lighthouse and had been munching on its wooden parts.

Editor: I write to support the City of Havre de Grace's attempt to purchase the 701 Concord Street (Gamatoria's) property.  As the President of the Friends of the Concord Point Lighthouse and representing its Board of Directors, I ask all Havre de Grace citizens to vote YES on this ballot question. There are many reasons for my support of this effort.  Number one it would be an additional treasure for tourism in our city.  It would greatly enhance the appearance and accessibility of the Concord Point Lighthouse property.  It would certainly be better for the city than anything a commercial developer would provide.

Q: Can you tell me about historic lighthouses that offer overnight accommodations?A: At a lighthouse, you can prepare your own food and live in a dormitory setting or be served two or three meals a day in anelegant atmosphere.Hosteling International-American Youth Hostels runs three lighthouses where dormitory rooms, with two to six beds in a room, predominate. Visitors provide their own food and rent linens at $1 a person per stay. Both sites near San Francisco afford a view of the annual migration of gray whales between November and April.

Laurel Park Lighthouse Bay wins Smart Halo by nose Lighthouse Bay sat off the dueling leaders and then edged a 64-1 shot by a nose to win the $100,000 Smart Halo Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Laurel Park on Saturday. Jockey Kendrick Carmouche was content to sit behind front-runners Baby J and Jax and Jill before gaining the lead in the upper stretch. By midstretch Laurel Park-based Ek Haseena challenged Lighthouse Bay and the two bumped and brushed several times in the final furlong before the winner put a nose in front at the wire.

This is the first installment of a weekly column by staff writer Edward Gunts, who covers architecture. Every Thursday in this section, he will explore noteworthy places and spaces in Maryland.A lighthouse ordinarily warns navigators to keep away from rocky shores.But a new lighthouse in Baltimore has been designed to beckon people to a stretch of Inner Harbor shoreline -- one its owners hope will be anything but rocky.This is not a marker for mariners. It is 100 HarborView Drive, the first tower of the 1,590-unit condominium community taking shape near the base of Federal Hill -- and the tallest residential structure in the city.

Q: I'm interested in lighthouse artwork, models, literature and related items. Are there any lighthouses open to the public in the Chicago area, or any lighthouse exhibitions, books, publications or organizations? Also, are there any lighthouse muralists?A: Lighthouse lovers and collectors will beam upon seeing the "Eyes on the Sea: A Celebration of Lighthouses" exhibit on view through Dec. 31 at the John G. Shedd Aquarium at 1200 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Ill. The exhibit features seven detailed scale models of lighthouses handcrafted by Steven Skinner set against natural-looking surroundings created by Kathryn Field.

Word that Thomas Point Lighthouse - one of the most recognizable symbols of the Chesapeake Bay - would be up for grabs this summer generated interest from nearly a dozen groups, including one as far away as Maine. But just one application for the historic iron-framed lighthouse arrived Monday at the National Park Service building in Washington, hand-delivered by the vice president of the U.S. Lighthouse Society on behalf of that group and its Annapolis partners. "This seems like it will be an absolutely wonderful consortium," said Dan Smith of the park service.

With city council approval now in place, Annapolis will join six other groups pursuing ownership of the Thomas Point Lighthouse, a one-of-a-kind historic symbol of the Chesapeake Bay. Applications for the lighthouse are due Monday, and National Park Service officials overseeing the property transfer from the Coast Guard said Annapolis and its partners stand a good chance of acquiring the 128-year-old property. Jennifer Perunko, a contractor with the park service, said coalitions such as the one Annapolis has built tend to have an advantage in the lighthouse-acquisition process.

For more than 10 years, the replica Chesapeake Bay lighthouse stood 150 feet tall at the Baltimore Marine Center at Lighthouse Point in Canton.The structure -- a converted century-old smokestack -- became a symbol of the center, a 14-acre commercial and residential development in the 2600 and 2700 blocks of Boston St. But the wood foundation became unstable, and the brick tower began to list."

The latest tenants are away, perhaps until next spring, so the historic brick house on the Chesapeake Bay is getting a face lift.The tenants are a family of ospreys, and the "house" is the Sandy Point Lighthouse, which for 112 years has warned mariners away from a treacherous shoal near the western end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge."

Enthusiastic crews from BB&T's Madonna and Upper Crossroads branches worked tirelessly July 25 to plant new gardens at both the Jarrettsville and Fallston libraries as part of their annual Lighthouse Project. BB&T's Lighthouse Project encourages employees to get outside of the office and give back, improving the communities they serve and making them better places to work and live. According to their website, during the first three years of BB&T's Lighthouse Project, employees nationwide have donated more than 150,000 volunteer hours to local charities and touched the lives of more than 5 million people in 25 states.

After a run of the best of the '80s, Lighthouse Tavern's music selection hit its nadir with Eddie Murphy's "Party all the Time. " Most bartenders would have quickly pushed 'skip,' but not mine, who pumped up the volume - and, when asked if the singer was Eddie, said, "[Expletive] yeah!" and did a little jig. Like its music, much of Lighthouse, a bar that opened a month ago, seems caught in a time warp. It looks like a dive in a John Landis movie, its decor as vintage as the music playing on the speakers.

Canton is getting a new "upscale tavern" in about two weeks. Called Lighthouse Tavern, it replaces the old Sports Cafe, which closed earlier this month. Co-owner Patrick McCarthy promises "an alternative to the Canton Square scene. " McCarthy knows that area. He worked as a bartender at Looney's for nearly 15 years and at Coburn's for about three before that bar closed in 2009.  He and his business partner, Christopher Petrie, bought Sports Cafe nearly two weeks ago to re-open as "a place where you don't have to have someone screaming next to you," as is the norm at the Square, he says.

When Maryland's first slots casino opened a year ago, it faced some tough odds. Even with a strategic location just off Interstate 95, motorists who didn't know it was there were unlikely to discover it. Hollywood Casino Perryville, located in the northeastern corner of the state, isn't visible from the tree-lined highway. That might be about to change in a really, really big way. This week, Perryville's commissioners will try to resolve a pesky issue that has split their town of 3,670 residents: whether to allow the casino to erect an illuminated sign on its property so tall that it would be visible from the interstate.

For more than a century, Pooles Island Lighthouse guided mariners to the northern reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. Now the whitewashed granite tower has been relit and co-opted by nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground as a symbol of sweeping changes there. The bay's oldest surviving lighthouse, which has stood on the southern shore of Pooles Island since 1825, has been outfitted with solar lighting and is once again guiding boaters with a new signal: four flashes, a pause and then three flashes.

A number of Maryland authorities are searching the Chesapeake Bay for a boater who was reported missing early Saturday, according to Natural Resources Police. Sgt. Art Windemuth, spokesman for the Maryland Natural Resources Police, said around 1:30 a.m., boater Charles Martin Carlson, III reported that his sole passenger, 40-year-old Mark Allen Harvison, of Pasadena, was missing from his 30-foot, Rampage fishing boat. He went missing between the Severn River and Thomas Point Lighthouse.

Sometimes it's hard to break old habits, or to draw players into a new game.But when the first Chesapeake Lighthouse Challenge race began Friday evening, the breezy start was a breath of fresh air for the hosts and race organizers of Cape St. Claire Yacht Club, as 46 starters in five classes set off down the bay.The Lighthouse Challenge race is the longest-distance event of the season for local racers who don't go offshore for an event like theAnnapolis-to-Newport Race.It...

The federal government has extended the bidding deadline for the Bloody Point Bar Lighthouse, a century-old fixer-upper off the Kent Island coast that was expected to be sold this week. The online auction for the lighthouse was to end at 2 p.m. yesterday, but the General Services Administration, which is selling the cast-iron structure, moved the deadline back a day when a bid came in at 1:56 p.m. Within five minutes, two more bids came in, pushing the cost for the lighthouse up to $75,000.

Harford County and the city of Aberdeen have always appreciated the military at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Ever since 1917, when the U.S. Government purchased the land for the post" it has been embraced as an important and vital member of the community. This year, the annual celebration has been especially memorable! The APG Armed Forces Week began May 16. A golf tournament was planned for that day at Ruggles Golf Course, followed by a veterans luncheon on May 17. May 18 was the big Armed Forces observance ceremony at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

The Maryland Natural Resources Police are searching for a power boat that struck and injured a Virginia man Saturday in the Chesapeake Bay. Police said the 55-year-old man was swimming to get a minnow pot near his anchored sailboat when the power vessel ran over him, striking both his legs. Passengers on the man's boat called 911, and when rescue workers arrived they had to jump into the water to keep the man above the surface. He was transported by helicopter to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center.