Streets

On June 20, 2006, LOUIS (LOU) T. STREETS of Millersville; beloved husband of Mary Streets for 59 years; loving brother of the late Roy Streets The family will receive visitors at the family owned Singleton Funeral Home, 1 Second Ave., SW (at Crain Highway), Glen Burnie, on Thursday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Friday at 8:30 A.M. at St. Athanasius Catholic Church, 4708 Prudence Street, in Curtis Bay. Interment Maryland Veterans Cemetery in Crownsville.

Was it the smell of pit beef on an open fire that drew thousands yesterday to the corner of Cross and Charles streets? Or was it something else?What it was was the South of the Harbor Fun Fest, which proved once again that in Baltimore, there's nothing like a Sunday street bazaar in spring to bring out the Bermuda shorts crowd.Live rock music thumped. Couples danced on a gas station's asphalt surface. Children threw pingpong balls at little glass bowls, and some actually took home prizes of goldfish.

Baltimore City work crews have repaired two water mains that broke last Thursday and reopened nearby streets to through traffic. Alfred Foxx, director of Baltimore's public works department, announced Monday that repairs are complete to water mains that closed parts of the 1800 block of East Cold Spring Lane and the 4600 block of York Road. According to a statement from the public works department, the 1800 block of East Cold Spring Lane has been repaved and reopened to traffic in both directions, while the 4600 block of York Road has one lane open in each direction.

Early in the summer, the Mulberry Street that cuts through downtown Baltimore becomes just one of many Mulberry Streets. From the Charles Village end of Guilford Avenue, one of my recently-graduated students writes, ''. . . Mulberries fall to the cement making a sweet slick patch . . .''Ricky's letter/poem flies me to a mid-city lot, now the site of a bank. Officially ''vacant'' during most of my Baltimore childhood, this lot was crowded with mulberry trees that grew crowds of neighborhood children as soon as PS 53 and ''Saints Philip and James'' let out for the summer.

IMAGINE THE PUBLIC uproar if the United States experienced a full-scale air disaster every two weeks or so -- some 200 to 250 lives snuffed out in each conflagration. The toll would exceed 6,000 victims a year.In fact, more than 6,000 Americans are struck by and killed by trucks and autos on the roadways each year. Another 110,000 of us are injured, some lightly, some grievously, when motorized vehicles plow into human flesh.Driving itself is safer today, thanks to mandatory crash testing, seat belt laws, drunk driving programs and the like.

The Trayvon Martin story is a tragedy justifiably causing outrage among thousands of citizens, including President Obama ("A show of solidarity on 'Hoodie Sunday,'" March 26). Yet on the same day that story appeared there was just a single paragraph about another young man only a few years older than Trayvon who was killed in front of his home in Baltimore ("Man, 18, fatally shot outside home in West Baltimore," March 26). No speeches or condolences from the president were mentioned in that story, and none are likely to be forthcoming because this is an almost daily event in Maryland that draws little attention.

The old town of Kernville in central California was condemned, bulldozed and flooded when a nearby river was dammed to make a reservoir. Since the early 1950s, the town site has been underwater, and the old building foundations, like a freshwater Atlantis, have gathered moss on the lake bottom, catching fishing lines and providing a hiding place for bass.But as California's drought has dragged on, and the level of Lake Isabella in the southern Sierras has continued to drop, this lost city has resurfaced.

With the Grand Prix of Baltimore over, workers were taking down fences, removing safety barriers and opening streets Monday with the goal of restoring the flow of traffic through Downtown Baltimore in time for the Tuesday morning commute. By 5 a.m. Tuesday, Grand Prix of Baltimore General Manager Tim Mayer said, all major streets around the two-mile circuit would be open to traffic. Only Sharp Street, which connects Pratt and Conway streets through the Baltimore Convention Center, would still be closed, he said.

A small deer shook up downtown Annapolis residents yesterday when it bounded down city streets and leaped over fences as it was being tailed by police officers.About 6 p.m., residents of a neighborhood near St. John's College and the Naval Academy spotted the deer, not a common sight so near the City Dock.Causing no damage -- except to the ego of a neighborhood German shepherd -- the deer ran through the car-packed streets and eluded officers."What's a deer doing in the middle of downtown Annapolis?"

The Sykesville Town Council unanimously approved an ordinance last night banning portable basketball hoops and other outdoor sports equipment from municipal streets. The vote occurred after a public hearing, a 30-day delay, clarification of wording in the proposal and several months of sparring with residents who maintained the town was overstepping its bounds with the ban. Officials countered that the safety of residents ultimately falls to them and they pointed to liability issues if they allowed street play to continue.