Winnie The Pooh

The "kids of all ages" rhetoric won't wash here, Mom and Dad.The Moonlight Troupers production of "Winnie the Pooh," which winds up its run this weekend at Anne Arundel Community College's Pascal Center, is strictly for the little ones.They won't much care if the Act I script is weaker than Clinton on Bosnia. Or if the obnoxious background noise of buzzing bees blots out most of the opening scene. Or if the din of chattering, nattering 3-year-olds does away with other portions of the dialogue.

Nancy Carpenter Barton, a former teacher at the Church of the Good Shepherd's day school in Ruxton, died Wednesday of Alzheimer's disease at the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville. She was 80. Mrs. Barton was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Akron in the mid-1940s. She moved to Baltimore when she married Alexander K. Barton in 1949. They divorced in 1962. For 42 years, Mrs. Barton lived on Carrollton Avenue in Ruxton, just two doors from the church where she taught day school in the 1970s.

Theatre on the Hill has scheduled five shows for the 1997 summer season, including the first production of "Blood Brothers" staged by an area company.Entering its 16th year in residence at Western Maryland College, the professional theater company also will present "My Fair Lady," "Noises Off," "Winnie the Pooh," and on Saturdays, "The Fabulous Post Show Revue."Auditions for the four plays are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 1 and March 2 at the college's Alumni Hall main stage. Participants are asked to prepare one short monologue, one ballad in correct key, and one up-tempo song in correct key, and come dressed to dance.

The living flag On an average day, Fort McHenry is a pretty nifty place to visit. And on a patriotic holiday, Fort McHenry is all the more nifty with the pomp, pageantry and circumstance. But Tuesday, when the fort plays host to the Living American Flag, it'll be even better. The Living American Flag brings together 2,000 elementary school-age pupils from around the state to form an American flag. Children and their parents will hold red, white or blue rectangular cards over their heads, creating a replica of the 15-stripe, 15-star Star-Spangled Banner that flies over the fort and inspired the national anthem.

Walt Disney Co. revealed in a government corporate filing that a court fight over the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh characters could, in the worst-case scenario, cost the company several hundred million dollars and affect the value of future licensing rights for the lucrative Pooh characters. The disclosure was made in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It marks the first time Disney has notified shareholders of the potential impact of the 11-year-old legal battled with Stephen Slesinger Inc. That family-owned company acquired the merchandising rights to the Hundred Acre Wood characters from author A.A. Milne in 1930.

KB Gear keyboard has Winnie the Pooh give reading lessonsKB Gear Interactive is banking on a captive audience for its Learning Keyboard featuring Winnie the Pooh. And what preschooler can resist the lovable character?The idea is to entice little ones to the computer. With the included learning software, it just might work. The keyboard plugs into the standard port on a Macintosh or Windows computer. After installing the Winnie the Pooh Ready to Read program (Mac users run the software directly from the drive)

With the strains of "Hark, Hark the Lark" and "Sheep May Safely Graze" still lingering in the air, two veterinary researchers were married April 19 at the Baltimore Zoo.Katherine Feldman and Stephen Davies met in a class at Cornell University's vet school three years ago. It wasn't a very romantic occasion, but they did find they had a common interest in bird-watching, Katherine says.Stephen watches birds daily - "though not in the last month," he quipped, speaking just two days before his wedding.

THE HUMAN WHO was Christopher Robin died this month, but the real Christopher Robin will live forever in the Hundred-Acre Wood, playing with and consoling Winnie the Pooh and his other animal friends, as long as there are children to sit on a parent's knee and listen in wonder.The wide-eyed, mop-haired son of British author A. A. Milne inspired the beloved tales about Pooh and Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger and their young companion 70 years ago. They remain enduring children's classics, revitalized for later generations by films of Walt Disney.

Through workFirst Patience O'Briant, 19, has already learned the important basics of holding a job: attendance, punctuality and appropriate dress. Now, workFirst, which provides training and placement services for people with disabilities, will prepare O'Briant for a future job. The nonprofit, based in East Baltimore, holds its first benefit tomorrow in conjunction with the opening night of Harbor Court Hotel's annual Celebration of Food and Wine event...

MARTINEZ, Calif. -- It is lights-out time at Juvenile Hall, but the boys are in no mood to rest. Locked up in the dark in their small rooms, the streetwise teen-agers are anxious -- stewing about the future, perhaps, or about why their parents have not come to see them in weeks.One distressed youth pounds his head on a wall and wails. Another curses the world, and everyone in it. Then all at once a new voice pours forth, descending through speakers into the bare institutional rooms. It is a woman's voice, melodic and warm.