Niagara Falls

A Baltimore circus-arts instructor and her students are at Niagara Falls today, where they'll be helping to prime the live audience for Friday's televised walk across the falls by high-wire artist Nik Wallenda. "It's going to be chaotic," Erica Saben, founder of Charm City Movement Arts, said Friday morning after arriving at Niagara Falls the previous afternoon. "I hope we'll get a good spot to watch the walk ourselves. We'll have to see how big the media hype is. " Wallenda's family has been walking high wires as the Flying Wallendas for generations.

A Baltimore circus-arts instructor and her students are at Niagara Falls today, where they'll be helping to prime the live audience for Friday's televised walk across the falls by high-wire artist Nik Wallenda. "It's going to be chaotic," Erica Saben, founder of Charm City Movement Arts, said Friday morning after arriving at Niagara Falls the previous afternoon. "I hope we'll get a good spot to watch the walk ourselves. We'll have to see how big the media hype is. " Wallenda's family has been walking high wires as the Flying Wallendas for generations.

Niagara Falls, N.Y., is planning to hold its Festival of Lights from Saturday to Jan. 3, when tens of thousands of colored lights, scores of animated displays and continuous entertainment will be presented. Opening night will feature a parade, choral singing and fireworks, leading up to the traditional flipping of the switch that turns on the lights and displays.The festival, first organized in 1981, now occupies a five-block area of downtown as well as the adjacent state park that includes the brink of Niagara Falls.

Muriel F. "Mert" Bauer, a former aerospace industry mathematical engineer, died Saturdayfrom complications of a stroke at Ruxton Health and Rehabilitation of Pikesville. The longtime Randallstown resident was 85. Muriel Frances Switzer was born and raised in Niagara Falls, N.Y. After graduating from LaSalle High School in Niagara Falls in 1942, she earned a bachelor's degree in 1946 in mathematics from Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. She began her career in the 1940s with Bell Aircraft Corp.

NEW YORK - After months of negotiation, the Seneca Nation of Indians and New York state have signed an agreement to open casinos on Indian land in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The plan must still overcome legal challenges and be approved by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. But with the recent signing of a 14-year compact that is estimated to bring several billion dollars in revenue to the Seneca Nation and hundreds of millions of dollars to the state over the life of the agreement, the two casinos came one step closer to reality.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- There is something phoenixlike about it, the glassy modernist building that lights up electric blue at night over this depressed city of incessantly gray snowy streets, vacant storefronts and abandoned chemical plants. Visible from almost anywhere in the city, it is the new Niagara Falls High School. Visitors come to see its Broadway-caliber theater, the sunlight shooting through the glass walls of the library like water over the falls, the students plugging their free laptop computers into hundreds of stations in classrooms, labs, even the cafeteria.

FBI and Niagara Falls, N.Y., police are searching for a 54-year-old Hampstead woman whose faded, dark blue Chrysler New Yorker was found locked and abandoned in a parking lot on Niagara Falls Boulevard Monday, state police in Westminster said yesterday.Sara Virginia Reed of the 3500 block of Basler Road disappeared Nov. 9 after leaving a note for her family that she was going shopping."We have had many reports of sightings and followed up each one, but nothing has turned up," Tfc. William Corun of the state police barracks in Westminster said.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Tourism is booming around the self-proclaimed Honeymoon Capital of the World, with new hotels and attractions shooting up as fast as a trip down the falls in a barrel and 20,000 visitors a day flocking to the bustling Casino Niagara. Unfortunately, all that is happening in Niagara Falls, Ontario. On this side of the border, the main attractions are ghosts of projects built and abandoned -a water park, a museum shaped like a turtle, an eerily vacant shopping mall, and a downtown rich in plywood-covered storefronts and fading signs.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - From Prospect Point, next to the giant cascade of white water, the Canadian skyline sparkles with new luxury hotels. A white tower emblazoned with the word "casino" in red taunts this side of the border. The prosperity across the gorge explains the allure of gambling to the political leaders of this faded and crumbling city. Across the bridge to the Canadian side, there is a carnival atmosphere of busy tourist strips on clean roads. Cars are bumper to bumper. Sightseers stream up and down the main thoroughfares to the falls and the old shopping center where Casino Niagara is housed.

"I don't see why we need these raincoats," 11-year-old Matt groused, donning the yellow slicker only because it was required for admission.The young attendant at Niagara Falls, N.Y., merely smiled knowingly. A short elevator ride and slippery walk later, Matt was drenched, despite the slicker.We all were drenched, and shaking from the thrill of walking right under the thundering Bridal Veil Falls, getting splashed and sprayed on the Hurricane Deck and on the wooden ramps that get so much abuse from the elements they must be replaced every year.

Colonial Players is capping its 60th season with a sparkling comedy about a couple grappling with their version of the seven-year itch. A major bonus of CP's excellent season was discovering American playwright David Lindsay-Abaire in October with Rabbit Hole and now being treated to another of his works, Wonder of the World, at the end of the season. Lindsay-Abaire, who was recently nominated for a Tony as author of the book for the musical Shrek, established his comedic gifts with Wonder, which premiered on Broadway in October 2003.

10 Places to See Before You're 10 1 American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore 2 Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Va. 3 Disneyland, Anaheim, Calif. 4 Ellis Island, New York 5 Grand Canyon, Ariz. 6 Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles 7 Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, Calif. 8 Muir Woods, Marin County, Calif. 9 Niagara Falls, New York and Ontario 10 Sears Tower, Chicago Travel+Leisure online

Louise Haifley says her life has been filled with adventure and excitement as she has traveled throughout the United States. There was the time in 1933 when she went to the Chicago World's Fair and saw performances by Duke Ellington and Sally Rand. And she was stranded in Hawaii for 105 days in 1979 during an airline strike. In July, at age 89, Haifley visited Alaska, where she saw glaciers and had a run-in with a bear. With her Alaskan adventure, Haifley boasts that she has now traveled to all 50 states.

On October 10, 2006, MARGARET KEATING, 86, former fashion distributor and actress, who survived the bombing during the Blitz in London, died of pneumonia and complications from Alzheimer's disease at the Keswick Multi-Care Center. Margaret Keating, (nee Shevlin), was born in Monasterboice Co. Louth, Eire. She left school at age 14 and spent three years as a farm laborer to earn her passage to London where she moved in 1937. She worked as a conductress on double-decker buses in London. In 1941, she married Charles James Keating, who predeceased her in 2000.

Tim Hildebrandt, 67, half of the famed Hildebrandt Brothers illustration studio, whose images fired popular imagination in the late 20th century, died Sunday in New Brunswick, N.J., of complications from diabetes. He and his twin, Greg Hildebrandt, are probably best known for their illustrations and posters for The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. They also were famed among illustrators for their work on children's books, comics and fantasy illustrations, all of it characterized by unusual realism, depth and richness of color.

Robert Porter Jennewine, a former truck driver and Navy veteran of World War II, died of colon cancer Thursday in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The former Dundalk resident was 78. Mr. Jennewine was born and raised in Dundalk, and he served in the Navy from 1944 to 1948. He was assigned to the Seabees and served in Okinawa, Japan. Beginning in the early 1960s, he traveled the country as a truck driver and became self-employed as an independent long-haul driver. He retired in 1991. Mr. Jennewine was a member of Teamsters Union Local 375 and the Longshoremen's Union in Buffalo, N.Y., family said.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Rows of brightly colored slot machines await the coins of gamblers at the refurbished Niagara Falls Convention Center, where the Seneca Nation intends to become the biggest employer in this tired border city. After an $80 million face lift and $30 million worth of furniture and fixtures, the concrete dome that has been a debt-ridden, deteriorating landmark for decades has risen with new purpose from the mist of one of the world's great wonders. It has become New York state's newest casino.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Eddie Gadawski remembers when East Falls Street was the center of life for a bustling ethnic community called Tunnel Town that supplied the workers who built hydroelectric tunnels under the city. Today, the street sits in a sea of urban blight stretching more than a quarter-mile west toward the Niagara Falls Convention Center. Gadawski's restaurant and the 100-year-old Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church are all that's left of the neighborhood's working-class roots.

TV PICK-- THE MUMMY WHO MIGHT BE KING-- Could a mummy found in Niagara Falls be the remains of a pharaoh? (MPT, Tuesday 8 p.m.)

Water Power Tourists love a close-up visit to Niagara Falls Capt. Gary English powered the Maid of the Mist away from its dock and headed toward Niagara Falls and its walls of rushing water looming more than 17 stories high. He had 300 people aboard the boat for its first run of the year last month. By the season's close in October, more than 2 million tourists will have been showered by mist from the famous waterfall aboard one of the double-decker boats in the Maid of the Mist fleet.