Renaissance

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

Any effort that promises to attract new residents and businesses to a historic Baltimore neighborhood could do a lot worse than make the arts a magnet for bringing people together. That's why we can't see any down side to a city proposal to create a third arts and entertainment district for Baltimore, this one on the west side of downtown. If the idea of a new cultural destination works anywhere near as well there as it has elsewhere in the city and state, the results are practically guaranteed to be an improvement over the status quo. State economic development officials are expected to decide by June 1 whether to approve Baltimore's request to designate 117 acres of downtown as the Bromo Tower Arts and Entertainment District.

I 've long given up predicting where and how Baltimore will reinvent itself. So, one day this week, on a walk down Guilford Avenue, I spotted the construction a few blocks east. I also drew a deep breath. A new structure was rising at Greenmount Avenue and Oliver Street facing the Gothic Revival entrance to Green Mount Cemetery. On a perfect spring day, with the old burial ground's walls enclosing hundreds of flowering and budding trees, it seemed perfectly natural for some new housing to be rising here.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake climbed into a cherry picker Wednesday morning, rising above Harford Road to install a new surveillance camera in Northeast Baltimore, one of 33 the city is adding to a network that has grown to nearly 600. The new cameras, which have been installed along East North Avenue and will eventually spring up along Harford and Belair roads around Clifton Park, are funded by federal and local grants. Rawlings-Blake has overseen the addition of 100 cameras to the network since taking office.

There was a time not long past when music lovers -- even knowledgeable ones -- pretty much figured that great music began with Bach and Handel.Early music from the medieval and Renaissance periods was the exclusive province of musicologists and a few dedicated ensembles that performed and recorded in relative obscurity.But as anyone who cruises the CD bins knows, those days are over.Early music has become big box-office as many conductors and their groups have been navigating through this once-forgotten territory, turning up many remarkable pieces and composers in the process.

THE UNIVERSITY of Maryland, Baltimore, has occupied the same site since 1807 as the founding campus of the University of Maryland.With new buildings and programs, the university has played a pivotal role in the rebirth of the west side of downtown. But problems crying out for urban renewal lie between the eastern borders of our campus and downtown.Our neighborhood's complete rebirth is not possible without more redevelopment. And that will only occur with investment in projects that serve as catalysts, such as the Hippodrome Theater.

In his first hour in Maryland yesterday, Burton Hummell caught a glimpse of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, heard a sales pitch about the state's mass transit system and toured the National Aquarium.Then he ate his lunch -- a Maryland crab cake.It was a hectic start for Mr. Hummell and 79 fellow members of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, who arrived yesterday for a three-day tour of Baltimore. They are checking out the city's renaissance to see if it offers any lessons to apply toward the redevelopment of Tennessee's second-largest city.

What's the best way to "jump- start" Baltimore's renaissance?How about running an east-west branch of the state's light rail line through Lexington Market? Or allowing cars back on the downtown stretch of Howard Street where they're now banned? Or transforming the Lower Jones Falls into a park with jogging trails and biking paths?Those are a few of the suggestions outlined in "The Renaissance Continues," a provocative report that was presented to Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke earlier this month.Prepared by the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the 62-page document consists almost entirely of citizens' ideas for making physical improvements throughout downtown Baltimore.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival in Crownsville is open weekends between 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. through Oct. 18.Special events are planned, such as the Scottish Celebration, Sept. 19 and 20, featuring Highland Games, pipe bands, music and dance; Senior Citizen's Day Sept. 26, when people 62 and older are admitted free; and Deaf Awareness Day on Oct. 3, with stage shows interpreted for the hearing impaired. The Columbus and the New World Celebration is scheduled for Oct. 10 and 11, followed on Oct. 17 by the High School Madrigal Competition.

They were the first self-made millionaires in modern history: a group of Italian merchant princes whose quest for human self-sufficiency would become the defining energy of their age.The Renaissance, as their era would be called to reflect their interest in the rebirth of classical antiquity, would trigger perhaps the most breathtaking explosion of art the world has known.In burgeoning urban centers like Florence, they prayed, plotted, ran municipal affairs and held court in a style grand enough to inspire envy among the kings and popes who were their contemporaries.

Joe Boylan was sitting with Jimmy Patsos at last Saturday's Loyola-Duke lacrosse game when the former athletic director asked the man he had hired as the school's basketball coach eight years ago if he had any preference as to where Greyhounds would play their first NCAA tournament game in 18 years. "Jimmy wanted to go to Pittsburgh because our fans could get there - and then he said, 'I've set it up for the team to go to the Andy Warhol Museum,'" Boylan recalled Monday. "How many coaches whose teams are going to the NCAA tournament are thinking about that?

I take exception to those who feel demolishing blight won't create new and better housing opportunities ("Market forces alone can't produce more affordable housing in Baltimore," Dec. 30). In 1980, the city demolished several acres of land in Upper Fells Point's Washington Hill neighborhood to attract development and moderate-income people to the area. The land was attached to a federal UDAG (Urban Development Action Grant) and a city block grant. Through the vision of Jay Brodie, director of the Baltimore Development Corporation, Betty Hyatt, a Washington Hill community activist, the Union Trust Bank and others, I and my partner Tom Henderson developed a community of 109 new homes surrounding a one-acre community park.

On any given day at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, there is a seemingly endless combination of actors and performers dressed in period clothing, demonstrating period activities. And from stage combat to leather working, from longbow building to a flea circus, one actor does it all. James Frank, who at the festival goes by the name of "Nymblewyke" (pronounced "Nimble Wick"), is rounding out his 26th year at the Crownsville celebration, which closes for the season on Sunday. His repertoire has grown along with the festival.

Elizabeth E. Farrell, owner of Rosie's Posies East that supplied vintage garlands to Renaissance festivals around the country, died Sunday of acute liver failure at Union Memorial Hospital. The longtime Towson resident was 83. The daughter of a Navy shipyard worker and a postal worker, she was born Elizabeth Echelmeier and raised in Philadelphia, where she graduated in 1946 from Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she worked in the post office in Philadelphia before moving to Baltimore in 1956.

Lifelong Dundalk resident Scott Holupka has heard the jokes. He's heard Dundalk residents stereotyped as some "combination of Archie Bunker and a West Virginia hillbilly," the community knocked as dirty, industrial and smelly. Much of that perception is outdated, or vastly oversimplified, said Holupka, a founding board member of Dundalk Renaissance Corp. The nonprofit has unveiled a study showing that the peninsula in southeastern Baltimore County - historically a working-class section of many neighborhoods - is well thought of for its proximity to Baltimore, its waterfront, affordable houses, small-town atmosphere, July Fourth parade and other displays of community pride.

Two Baltimore city high school students were arrested Monday after they were found in the bathroom at the Renaissance Academy High School with an unloaded hand gun, city school officials said. The incident occurred during the "morning class change" at Renaissance Academy, a school located in Southwest Baltimore, a statement from the school system said. Both students were arrested, the statement said. The incident is under investigation and the disciplinary process is underway, officials said.

GLOWING paintings by Raphael and other masters, a majestic marble sculpture of Apollo Victorious by the Belgian artist Pietro Francavilla, exquisite religious artifacts and handsome Gothic art works are among the stunning Renaissance museum pieces in a new living history play at the Walters Art Gallery."

LOS ANGELES -- The future of America's cities may lie in the urban past.Instead of attempting to salvage the great mass-industrial centers of the 20th century, with their bulging populations, smokestacks and gleaming high-rise towers, today's cities would do better to emulate the cities of the Renaissance and the early modern period -- Venice, Florence and Amsterdam. These relatively small but dynamic urban centers created the forms, attitudes and patterns of commercial interaction that have shaped -- and continue to shape -- our civilization.

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