Here's how Lois Rosenthal knows Uptown Arts is a success: “Small signs. Like the mother who called out of the blue to say her daughter's grades have gone up since she started here. Or the working mothers who skip lunch hours so they can drive kids here. Or the school principal who actually walks his kids down here.”

        Down here is the 123 E. Liberty headquarters of Uptown, an enrichment program Rosenthal and husband Dick founded and funded to provide arts education for kids who couldn't otherwise afford it.

        Open to kids 5 to 10 years old who live within a 5-mile radius of the Over-the-Rhine center, it had 300 kids last year in 12 art, drama, dance and theater classes.

        Next year, it expands to 21 classes and more kids — “we're up to about 250 and enrollment (651-1,500) is open until September,” Rosenthal says.

        And gracious hello, didn't she snag some big guns?

        She tapped Daniel Simmons, head of the Otto M. Budig Academy of the Cincinnati Ballet, to set up the dance curriculum. He liked what he saw so much he's sending his instructors to teach.

        She nailed Ed Stern, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's artistic directo, to set up the theater curriculum. She lined up top-flight artist Sarah Jane Bellamy (her Big Pig Gig offering was the one all covered in found jewelry) to teach art classes. She got the whole Medasi African Dance Theater to teach drum and dance.

        “I went to the top people in town, told them what we were doing and didn't get a single "no thanks.' ” Rosenthal says. “I shared some success stories, and they were sold.”

        Success stories like this:

        “We had (storyteller) Lu Ann Adams in, we must have had 100 people here, and a group of mothers, these are women who work all day and support whole families, got so excited they actually took their kids to the Playhouse's Next Generation series. That tells me we're doing something right.”

        So does this: “Ed Stern comes down here now and then and you know what? He cries every time he's here.”

        On the hoof: Well for goodness' sake, look who's all over the Internet. It's Cincinnati runner Barb Smith, sometimes known as the Red Siren. Hair, you know.

        Anyway, she ran the recent San Francisco Bay to Breakers race all dressed up as the Cincinnati flying pig. Honest — 7.2 miles in that big old pink suit — hot, hotter and hottest — with headpiece and snout.

        And was apparently quite a hit. There are 24 photos of her on sportphoto.net (she's number 15684 if you want a look-see), including one of her crossing the finish line, several of her running and posing. Not bad in a field of 80,000 runners.

        Bay to Breakers, for the record, is more of an event than race. It includes a tortilla sailing event and costume contest — four people dressed as a rolling blackout, a guy dressed as a hamster, complete with a running wheel and “I don't know, lots of naked people,” says Joe Ganim who walked the race with wife Kathy and friend Tom Joseph.

        Smith's goal was to stir up interest in the Flying Pig Marathon. We think she succeeded.

        E-mail knipenquirer@yahoo.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/knip

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