Programs

NEW YORK -- Carnegie Hall put out the purple Monday night to welcome the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the opening of Spring For Music, a week-long festival showcasing American orchestras playing adventurous programs. Ravens-colored cloths adorned the seat backs of the musicians' chairs and the conductor's podium; more cloths were handed out to audience members to wave on cue in a salute to Baltimore. That cue came before the music started when an announcer from local radio station  WQXR interviewed the BSO's high-profile booster, Gov. Martin O'Malley, onstage.

If it has a good beat, you can count on Marin Alsop to conduct it with infectious energy. That point is being driven home by her latest program with the Baltimore Symphony, which has one more local performance before the orchestra takes it to Carnegie Hall on Monday. To start this sampling of 20th and 21st century repertoire, there is the pulsating “Shaker Loops,” an early-1980s classic of minimalism for string orchestra by John Adams. To close, Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 4 (the revised version of 1947)

Commentators Zainab Choudry and Saqib Ali complain that Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin co-sponsored legislation to extend a visa waiver program to Israel ("Don't let Israel discriminate," April 30). The waiver program currently allows citizens of 37 European and other countries - including Japan, Australia and South Korea - to travel in the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. The writers claim the legislation would let Israel dispense with a "reciprocity" provision so it could "discriminate against Americans based on their ethnicity or religion" - particularly against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.

Jamila Ward and Lionel Jennings had been house hunting on and off for two years when their agent pointed the couple in a new direction: a formerly condemned property in a revitalized area of Baltimore. Some city neighborhoods, just years ago marked by abandoned or deteriorating single-family homes, are becoming places of renewal, with nonprofit agencies buying up properties and renovating them for sale to first-time homebuyers. Ward and Jennings, her fiance, qualified for one of these properties in the Johnston Square neighborhood on the city's east side.

There has been a lot of conflicting information in the local and national press recently about pre-kindergarten. As longtime practitioners of the art of early childhood education, the Maryland Family Network would like to offer some perspective and broaden the conversation. First, publicly funded pre-K is just one piece of a much larger system of early care and education. This system consists of child care centers, family child care, Head Start and a range of other early learning settings, such as private nursery school.

President Barack Obama has named an Annapolis man to head the multibillion-dollar grant program through which the Federal Emergency Management Agency helps local governments prepare for disasters. Brian Kamoie, 41, will oversee a vast portfolio of federal grants used by states and cities to prevent and respond to terrorism and other disasters, the White House said. Kamoie was most recently senior director for preparedness policy on the White House national security staff. Kamoie takes control of the FEMA grant program as the Obama administration pursues a controversial consolidation of $2 billion in preparedness funding it says will streamline a system that grew unwieldy following the attacks of Sept.

I disagree with the University of Maryland's Animal Science Department's decision to expand its horse-breeding program. There is a glut of unwanted horses and ponies across the country. Horse Rescue Farms are over-crowded and are turning away the no longer wanted animals for lack of space, feed, medication and shelter. Due to the economy and cost of keeping horses, owners are desperately trying to find homes for their no longer wanted horses, ponies, mules, and donkeys. Many are beloved pets or used for pleasure or racing or work or have outlived their purpose.

Children in poor Baltimore neighborhoods can get free meals this summer through an extension of the National School Lunch Program, city officials said Wednesday. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the Summer Food Service Program, which is expected to feed more than 20,000 children a day, will be available five days a week to children younger than 18. The program will run from June 17 to Aug. 16 and serve both breakfast and lunch at schools, rec centers and churches. "I want to tell every parent who hears me: If you need support during the summer months, do not hesitate to go to BaltimoreHousing.org and find out where your young person can get a great meal," Rawlings-Blake said.

The United Way of Central Maryland will provide nearly $3 million in community grants intended to provide financial stability to families, quality education to children and healthy alternatives to individuals, the organization said this week. In all, 71 nonprofit programs will receive funding to change the lives of impoverished Marylanders. The money is expected to help offset a loss in services some may experience as a result of federal sequestration. "Our region is simultaneously experiencing increases in poverty rates and government cuts to critical social programs," said Dominique Moore, chairwoman of the local United Way's Baltimore City Partnership Board.