About Baltimore's Mount Vernon

Baltimore Book Festival Starts Today - September 24, 2010

Do you love books and reading as much as we do? Then this is the place to be this weekend. The Book Festival starts today in Mount Vernon Place (The 600 block of North Charles Street in Baltimore) today at noon and lasts until 8pm tonight. It is open Saturday from 12-8pm and Sunday 12-7pm and entry to the event is FREE.

In 2010, the 15th annual Baltimore Book Festival welcomes more than 225 celebrity, nationally known and local authors including Holly Robinson Peete, Rodney Peete, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Nigel Barker, Ree Drummond, Michele Norris, Sherri Sheppard, Judge Glenda Hatchett, Jesse Ventura, Warren St. John, Amy Dickinson ("Ask Amy") and Matt & Ted Lee.

If you want to plan your visit to see your favorite author or authoress then you'll want to check out the schedule to plan your time. Bring the whole family, there will be something for everyone.

For more information about the Book Festival visit their website.

If you are thinking of buying or selling a home give me a call today. If you are thinking about buyer, we'll talk about what you are looking for in home and some areas you might consider as well as getting you approved for a mortgage. If you are thinking about selling, we'll talk about the market conditions and what your home could possibly be worth in today's market place. You can save thousands by listing your home with Advance Realty Professionals.. If you are considering buying a home, there is no better time than now to buy. The tax savings and wealth building alone is worth the plunge into today's market.

In keeping with saluting our heroes, during 2010 I am waiving administrative fees active duty military, retired military and the families of fallen military, as well as policemen, firemen and emt's. If you enter into a contract by the New Year's eve I will waive the admin fee at settlement. This is a $395 savings. If you are thinking about buying or selling a home give Advance Realty Professionals a call and receive full service real estate assistance from an experienced agent. Our office is open 7 days a week and we can be reached at 410-744-2100.

June Piper-Brandon, Associate Broker - Advance Realty Professionals.

Many of my blog followers know that my first career was in the field of opera. Time on the road and away from the family, made switching my JOB (opera) and HOBBY (real estate) a couple of years ago, pretty easy! Now, I still do sing on occasion, and I also run a small opera company here in Baltimore. It never ceases to amaze me, how similar the two worlds are, but that is another story!

We hear all of the time in real estate about "overcoming objections." I thought that I would try my hand at overcoming some "operatic objections." People have preconceived notions of large ladies in horned helmets...and many people never give this great artform a fair shake.

Forward this video around to your friends that might be "on the fence." Give this great music a chance! Who knows, you might like it!

A little over a year ago, we ran this video on our website, showing how easy it is to commute from Baltimore's Mt. Vernon neighborhood to DC.

I was sifting through old files on the computer, and thought I'd run it again...as the weather is warm in this video, perhaps it will cheer everyone up!

In all seriousness, Mt. Vernon to DC is a very easy commute. Mount Vernon has an incredible housing stock, with plenty to look at right now, from studio condos to 5000+ sq/ft mansions. It's a great time to move into Baltimore's cultural district, which is home to:

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The Lyric Opera House

Peabody Conservatory

The Walters Art Museum

and of course, tons of fine dining!

Come on up, DC folks...I'll buy the coffee.

Those of you that have followed my posts know that I have split my time for years between a career in opera, and in real estate. As the rigors of the road have not meshed very well with my family life, and as we've been in an incredibly difficult economic climate for arts organizations, opera has taken a back seat over the past few years. I still sing professionally, but it has become a hobby, and real estate has become my full time career. Until recently, I'd been able to keep singing locally with the Baltimore Opera Company, which sadly fell victim to the recession last year, and closed its doors after a rather storied tradition. It was like a giant punch in the gut to many of us here in Baltimore, and we wondered how we'd ever recover.

Some of us decided to make lemonade out of lemons, and start our own company, The Baltimore Concert Opera. There are a number of other exciting operatic ventures taking place in Baltimore right now, including the Lyric Opera House which will present international opera start Renee Fleming this week, and a production of Carmen in February.

All in all, it is an exciting time to be an opera fan in Baltimore. If you have interest in following the operatic landscape in Baltimore, you can sign up on www.baltimoreopera.com where a colleague of mine purchased the old domain name of the Baltimore Opera at auction, and now uses that site to keep the public informed of operatic events in town. With Opera Vivente, American Opera Theater, and Baltimore Opera Theatre, as well as the Washington National Opera, there is no shortage of Opera in and around Baltimore.

These organizations are struggling, however, and need your help. Please remember them in your end-of-year charitable giving.

Below is a video promotion of Baltimore Concert Opera's upcoming production of Cavalleria Rustica and Pagliacci. Please feel free to forward to anyone who might like to attend!

We're almost through the holiday season! In fact, since this is the last day of 2008, I shall end it in style: with a blog entry. Clearly, I am getting a head start on my new year's resolution of blogging more frequently. Less clear is what I should blog about in this installment. I have had so many wonderful Christmas treats this year, many of which have been in Mount Vernon, that it's hard to pick just one. But one highlight keeps jumping out at me: the Holly Tour. www.hollytour.com

I've been one of the Mount Vermin for eight years, and have managed to attend the Holly Tour on several occasions. It is an amazing opportunity to snoop into other peoples' houses. Seriously though, it's an amazing opportunity to see, in detail, the architectural beauty of Mount Vernon, and its beautiful décor, Christmas and otherwise. The Holly Tour is organized by the Friends of Mount Vernon Place, "a membership organization, which is dedicated to the conservation and revitalization of the Mount Vernon Place parks to make them more civil public spaces. [Their] purpose is to enable residents and visitors to enjoy the wealth of natural beauty, historical significance and cultural resources of Mount Vernon Place." www.friendsofmountvernonplace.org All proceeds from the Tour goes to this organization. Tickets can be ordered online, for the bargain price of $25.

This year, the Tour registration was at the Monumental Life Building. You were issued a Holly Tour Guidebook, which served not only as a wealth of information about the 12 fabulous buildings on the route, but also as your ticket to gain entry into them. Despite gusty, chilly weather, intrepid tourers viewed the properties, taking as much time as they wanted in each property. The 2008 Holly Tour focused on Biddle Street, with three properties within a two block radius, and a fourth just off of Biddle on Hunter St. The entire route spanned much of the neighborhood, with the farthest afield being Tyson St. The properties included personal residences, as well as Government House (www.ci.baltimore.md.us/visitor/inn@gh/), The Belvedere (www.belvederebaltimore.com ), decorative arts design firm McLain Wiesand (www.mclainwiesand.com), and Agora Publishing (www.agora-inc.com/Mtvrn.htm ), among others.

The only complaint I heard was that the distance of the route was a bit much for some of the guests with impaired mobility. However, since the tour is self-guided, it is easy to go to as many or as few of the properties as one chooses. And with all of the restaurants and coffee shops in Mount Vernon, there were plenty of places from which to choose to sit for a break or have a hot drink along the way. The only suggestion I heard for the 2009 Holly Tour organizers was that they consider having a spring tour, too! I second this idea, not because they weather was too cold, but because then I'd get to snoop...I mean see... into peoples' gardens, as well as their homes! Many thanks to the organizers and volunteers of the 2008 Holly Tour. A job well done!