Rebirth

Like letter writer John Starling ("Hampden owes a lot to Denise Whiting," June 13), I too became familiarized with Hampden because of Café Hon and moved here. I have watched its owner, Denise Whiting, only become better at what she does. There have been many businesses and restaurants that have opened in Hampden because they knew it would be profitable "settling" in a neighborhood that would embrace them, and we should thank Ms. Whiting for doing that groundwork! Arlene Layton, Hampden

This spring's season at Pimlico includes attractions designed to renew long-fading interest in thoroughbred horse racing: live music, a wine festival, beer and bourbon tastings, tutorials on betting and special contests. Get them to come once, the thinking goes, and spectators will be hooked on the experience. For the first time since the mid-2000s, Pimlico Race Course is poised to become more than an off-track betting center maintained just enough to host one of the country's most important races - the Preakness Stakes.

I find it amusing that The Sun fails to see the inconsistency of positions on the rebirth of Baltimore City ("Baltimore and rebirth," July 5). Until the city can achieve property tax parity with the surrounding jurisdictions, stop increasing taxes and fees, reduce crime and improve the school system there is no way it will ever see its population grow. Nothing about Baltimore City - or the state of Maryland - encourages the development of new businesses and jobs. To answer The Sun's own question - "Are we doing everything that can be done to attract and retain business?"

There's a lesson to be learned in Fells Point's past and present along its main business street. South Broadway, between Aliceanna and Fleet streets, looks like a scene out of World War II Eastern Europe. On both the east and west sides of the street, the once-familiar rowhouse businesses are gutted. Steel beams support what remains, a thin brick crust of 19th-century brick facades. Stand on Broadway, and you'll see straight through to Regester or Dallas streets. But not for long. After decades of waiting and unkept promises from past developers, residents are now looking to a rebirth here, with 159 new apartments constructed in two sets of blocks behind the old shop fronts.

In my first meeting with Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette back in January, he talked about appreciating Baltimore's rich baseball history and realizing that fans in this city were hungry for a winner. He talked about learning from the legendary Harry Dalton, who built the Orioles' dynasty teams from 1966 to '71. Duquette's first major league job was working under Dalton in Milwaukee. So Duquette could appreciate the excitement of Sunday's first postseason game in Baltimore in 15 years.

Easter and Passover evoke a recurring message of sorrow, hope and rebirth. Each year, amid the chaos of the moment, these important holy days serve as a much-needed touchstone, a reminder that the tragedies and triumphs of human existence are inextricably intertwined.This season finds us embracing our victorious troops after a mercifully brief war in Iraq even as that war-ravaged nation disintegrates into an abattoir of wanton killing and human suffering. Factional violence continues to claim lives in South Africa amid real and sustained progress toward the sunset of apartheid.

"Drinking the Rain: [a memoir]," by Alix Kates Shulman. 242 pages. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $20Henry Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately. Alix Kates Shulman went to an island to write a book. But in the course of her stay, the natural world so engaged her that she lost the urge to write, or for that matter, to do anything but live deliberately. Ten years later, she tells us where she lived and what she lived for.It's a great American tradition, going back to nature, testing the soul against the soil.

FIFTY SUMMERS AGO, an austere French soldier in his 50th year sat before a microphone in BBC studio 2B and told France that she had lost only a battle, not the war. It was June 18, 1940, the day of Churchill's ''finest hour'' speech. And the 125th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.History has recently been histrionic. The 200th anniversary of the French Revolution coincided last year with the collapse of the husks of Europe's supposedly ''revolutionary'' tyrannies. This year, while Europe experiences the rebirth of nations, and while Britain's prime minister has been punished politically for resisting the dilution of national sovereignty in the name of the abstraction ''Europe,'' France commemorates the 100th anniversary of a prophetic nationalist, Charles de Gaulle.

Hillendale remains largely the same, even though a new generation of homeowners is finding it the perfect place for pleasant neighbors, excellent schools and access to public transportation, recreation and shopping.In the mid-1950s, Hillendale was considered the outer suburbs, even though it was just over the city line. When the Hillendale Country Club closed, 748 brick rowhouses went up in its place, beckoning middle-class families who wanted a two- or three-bedroom brick house along open streets where residents had larger front and back yards than were possible in city rowhousing.

Though Easter is usually celebrated in the United States with an endless stream of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, there are many other traditions associated with the holiday. The feast that celebrates Christ's return to life after His crucifixion and death has many ancient antecedents.Greek and Roman festivals that celebrated the passage of winter into the rebirth of spring have common points with Easter as well as Passover, the Jewish feast celebrating the passage of the Hebrews out of Egypt.

In my first meeting with Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette back in January, he talked about appreciating Baltimore's rich baseball history and realizing that fans in this city were hungry for a winner. He talked about learning from the legendary Harry Dalton, who built the Orioles' dynasty teams from 1966 to '71. Duquette's first major league job was working under Dalton in Milwaukee. So Duquette could appreciate the excitement of Sunday's first postseason game in Baltimore in 15 years.

I find it amusing that The Sun fails to see the inconsistency of positions on the rebirth of Baltimore City ("Baltimore and rebirth," July 5). Until the city can achieve property tax parity with the surrounding jurisdictions, stop increasing taxes and fees, reduce crime and improve the school system there is no way it will ever see its population grow. Nothing about Baltimore City - or the state of Maryland - encourages the development of new businesses and jobs. To answer The Sun's own question - "Are we doing everything that can be done to attract and retain business?"

Last week's report that Baltimore's population continues to shrink was not good news but hardly surprising, given the city's history. The drop was modest compared to the residential losses Baltimore has experienced in years past, but more importantly, the U.S. Census statistics contained ample evidence of a potentially brighter future ahead. That's because many U.S. cities are on the rebound. The same Census figures that show Baltimore lost about 1,500 people in the year ending last July also revealed that more than half of the country's 51 largest metropolitan areas saw greater growth within their city limits than in their suburbs.

For decades, Liverpool soccer fans at the team's 120-year-old stadium, Anfield, have been singing their adopted anthem, "You'll Never Walk Alone. " Brendan Rodgers, who was named the team's new manager June 1, is hoping that the partisans of the former English Premier League power stay true to the words that were penned nearly 70 years ago by the legendary songwriter Oscar Hammerstein. Rodgers and "The Reds," as Liverpool is known because of the color of its home jerseys, will start walking together during a summer U.S tour, including a friendly against rival Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur, on July 28 at M&T Bank Stadium.

R&B artist Brian McKnight, rockers Clutch and funksters the Rebirth Brass Band will headline this year's Artscape festival, set for July 20-22. The performance lineup, along with other details of the three-day festival that attracts about 350,000 visitors each year, was announced Wednesday by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. McKnight, a 16-time Grammy nominee whose albums have sold millions of copies, will perform at 7:30 p.m. July 20. Clutch, whose four members hail from Germantown, has released nine albums, most recently 2009's "Strange Cousins from the West.

"Don't assume this is a two-hankie book. It is not. You will cry, but you will also laugh. You will experience not only anger, but also gratification. And in the end, you will be uplifted. " - Eileen Rudnick, from her book, "The Glass Between Us" Eldersburg resident Eileen Rudnick is living proof that sometimes out of the worst, the best can come. The evening of Oct. 3, 2000 was just another mild Tuesday, another relatively uneventful day ... until the moment that everything changed for Rudnick, a wife, mother of two, grandmother of two and an accountant.

The winds of change are carrying the prospect of a true renaissance to the former blue- collar bastion of Dundalk, complete with the community's first gated housing development - the Lakes at Stansbury Shores. Private developers are working on two projects. The larger one, Stansbury Shores, is headed by John H. Riehl IV, principal of Obrecht-Riehl Properties of Baltimore. He is crafting a blueprint for an upscale development with up to 50 homes, along with condominiums, a small midrise building for seniors and boat slips off Bear Creek.

In her blighted neighborhood, marooned between the remade Inner Harbor and the booming suburb of Towson, Gwendolyn Williams used to believe it was just a matter of time before prosperity seeped into the boarded-up homes and empty lots of the Oliver area.But now, when people talk of Baltimore's renaissance, the executive director of the Oliver Community Association wonders: What renaissance?After nearly two years of cutbacks in the public schools' budget, business failures and a rising crime rate, the mother of two sometimes contemplates abandoning Oliver, a neighborhood that adjoins the Green Mount Cemetery.

Baltimore's tally of 196 homicides in 2011 is at the same time a triumph and a tragedy. The city remains one of the most violent in the nation, and that is nothing to celebrate. Nonetheless, dropping below 200 murders in a year for the first time since 1977 is a major milestone in Baltimore's long road to rebirth. It reflects years of effort from all segments of the city to make Baltimore safer, and it is a symbolic validation that the strategies to turn around a violent culture are having an effect.

During one's school days, summer vacation offers the opportunity for reinvention. Who hasn't fantasized about returning in the fall triumphantly sporting a new look, a new skill, a new attitude? If you don't have three months off for that makeover, try one of these three books on for size. Each features an individual seeking his or her place in the world. "The Breaks" by Richard Price Picador, $16 "The Breaks" may surprise fans of Richard Price's work on "The Wire" and of his gritty recent novels.