National Aquarium

The National Aquarium Institute has tapped a California aquarium industry veteran to be the organization's next CEO. John C. Racanelli, 55, will be expected to increase the ocean conservation and educational messages delivered through the National Aquariums in Baltimore and Washington. Visitors should see some physical improvements in the public exhibit areas, too, according to the board chairwoman, Jennifer Reynolds. The new CEO will also take over the organization's key fundraising role, including the $50 million capital campaign for construction of a new National Aquarium building on the Mall in Washington.

The recent birth of two dolphins at the National Aquarium is certainly an event to be celebrated ("Baby dolphins mean quiet time at National Aquarium," June 2). I hope that this event also prompts reflection upon our society's practice of caging sea mammals. Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures. In the wild, they swim between 40 and 100 miles per day, foraging for food and engaging in social behavior with their pods. In captivity, however, these magnificent creatures are limited to swimming in circles in tanks filled with chemicals.

Shhhhh . With two baby dolphins in the house, not only is Baltimore's National Aquarium asking visitors to keep it down, but the infants have also forced the attraction to reconfigure one of its most popular shows just as tourist season launches. With little ones to consider — to say nothing of their sensitive mothers — the usually boisterous dolphin show, known for splashing and shrieking, has turned into a quiet zone, with hushed music, fewer visitors allowed in at a time and a video documenting dolphin births substituting for most of the noisy acrobatics.

To most visitors, Baltimore's Inner Harbor looks like an appealing mix of shops and waterfront attractions. But to anyone trying to exercise their rights of free speech, it can be a hostile maze governed by a patchwork of rules. If you demonstrate or distribute leaflets at the "wrong" spot, you could be ordered to leave and threatened with jail. That is what happened recently to Bruce Friedrich. He and fellow members of an animal rights group handed out leaflets one recent Sunday on a pedestrian bridge between the power plant and the National Aquarium — what looks to all the world like a public sidewalk on public property — only to be threatened with arrest by a city police officer and ordered to leave the harbor.

I'm writing regarding your Saturday, May 28th front page news article titled "Harbor leafleting flap raises First Amendment questions. " As one who fiercely guards and treasures my First Amendment rights, I want to commend Bruce Friedrich and his six like-minded friends who on Sunday, May 22nd, believing they were exercising their First Amendment protected rights, handed out leaflets near the National Aquarium at the Inner Harbor. That security guards asked them to leave, and a Baltimore police officer threatened to arrest him, was astonishingly reprehensible and came perilously close to unconstitutionality.

First impressions die hard, and my first impression of Baltimore — formed on my very first baseball road trip with the then-California Angels in 1979 — required nearly a decade to morph into something very different. In those days, the Angels stayed at the Village of Cross Keys and the word among the veterans in both the clubhouse and the press box was that there was no reason to leave that complex except to go to Memorial Stadium. Looking back, it's still hard to imagine that about 10 years later, I would eagerly move to the Baltimore area and live happily ever after.

William Donald Schaefer, the dominant political figure of the last half-century of Maryland history, died Monday after a "do-it-now" career that changed the face of Baltimore while bringing a new burst of energy to the city he loved. Mr. Schaefer was 89. In four terms as mayor and two as governor, he was a champion of big projects that transformed Baltimore: Harborplace, Camden Yards, the National Aquarium, the Convention Center and the light rail among them. Yet he was also intensely involved with the mundane details of city neighborhoods.

Unlike some Democratic governors and mayors, at least William Donald Schaefer had a dialogue with Maryland business leaders. If you can call a blistering, hold-the-phone-from-the-ear conversation a dialogue. "When the governor calls me, I know what's on his mind as soon as he says my name," Furlong Baldwin, who was chief of Mercantile Bankshares, told The Baltimore Sun in 1994. "If it's 'H. Furlong Baldwin,' I know he's about to chew me out. If it's 'Hello, Baldy,' I know he needs something from me. " Schaefer did his share of both cajoling and browbeating business folks, as well as everybody else.

Whether it's diving to feed stingrays, creating terrariums, interpreting exhibits or inspiring visitors about conservation, volunteers at the National Aquarium in Baltimore make a measurable impact. The hours they contributed last year equal 53 full-time jobs, a value of $2.4 million. And even with a slumping economy, overall service was up 5 percent in 2010 compared with the past three years. "It was a record year. These are jobs we never have to pay for because volunteers have stepped up," said Nancy Hotchkiss, senior director of visitor experiences at the National Aquarium.