Biography
Dan Rodricks has been an award-winning columnist for The Baltimore Sunsince 1979, and speaks of his adopted hometown as both its champion ...
O'Malley's calculated indifference toward parole
May 21, 2011
On the matter of parole for convicted killers, Americans generally split into two camps, each grounded in their own morality and common sense — "Yes, sometimes" and "No, never." Here's how I would describe the two campers:
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Striving for the Modern Orthodox middle
May 18, 2011
The parents who started Yeshivat Rambam 20 years ago knew what they wanted for their children: a Modern Orthodox day school philosophically in the middle of the Jewish spectrum. Many of them were newcomers to Baltimore; several were doctors who had taken jobs here and who had decided to settle in Park Heights or Pikesville and raise families there. When they looked around for Jewish schools, they saw extremes — on the one hand, Orthodox institutions that made it difficult to combine aspects of secular and religious life, and on the other hand, non-Orthodox schools that provided a good education but presented too many conflicts (such as birthday parties on the Sabbath) for their Orthodox children.
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Back to the message on trash
May 16, 2011
This spring marks 40 years since the famous "Crying Indian" anti-trash campaign, featuring a television commercial with a character actor known as Iron Eyes Cody in the part of a Native American in buckskin. The commercial came from Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council, launched as a sustained public service effort to get people to stop littering.
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'Illegal' immigrants and the next economy
May 15, 2011
Today in Boca Raton, a South Florida woman named Ann Van Wagner pays a debt to an illegal immigrant who saved her life. Ms. Van Wagner has organized a fundraiser at a Boca bowling alley — "Bowling For Brains" — to support the Johns Hopkins Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory headed by Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa.
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The only grownup on the bus
May 11, 2011
The way Maurice McClain tells it, he was driving to his ex-wife's house in the Gwynn Oak area of Baltimore County on Friday afternoon and, approaching that destination, noticed a boy who appeared to be walking home from school. The boy appeared to be about 10 years old, alone and upset. He looked familiar, too, and there was good reason for that: The boy was Mr. McClain's son, Myles, a fifth-grader at Powhatan Elementary School.
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Thor's nuclear-powered hammer
May 9, 2011
Thor, the Marvel Comics superhero, hammered his way into movie theaters over the weekend, saving the world, winning Natalie Portman and grossing about $66 million. Kenneth Branagh's "Thor" is based on Stan Lee's Thor, which is based on the Thor of Norse mythology — god of thunder and protector of mankind.
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'Bridges' — a poem for spring
May 8, 2011
(The following is inspired by "Birches," with apologies to Robert Frost.)
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Bin Laden death: Call it execution, not 'justice'
May 4, 2011
President Barack Obama, who takes an Osama bin Laden victory lap at Ground Zero today, ought to just come out and say the plan was to kill the guy all along. Stop with all the who-struck-John about what happened during the "firefight" inside bin Laden's lair in Pakistan — whether the world's most wanted man "resisted" his would-be captors when he wasn't armed. As details emerge from what a White House aide called the "fog of combat," execution appears to have been the order of the day.
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Schaefer: Politics as performance art
April 18, 2011
I stepped into his City Hall office to ask William Donald Schaefer, the mayor of Baltimore, a question. He was watering his African violets and did not appear to be soothed by that labor of love. In fact, he was upset about the reason for my visit — an audit had turned up lots of billing errors at what was then called City Hospital, now Bayview — and he avoided eye contact with me.
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On booze, politics and poached rockfish
April 17, 2011
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the veteran Democrat, tells me that some of the 87 Republican freshmen in the House of Representatives fear they may face 2012 primary challengers "even more conservative than they are." That's why they're pushing for more cuts in spending on social and environmental programs, Mr. Cummings said. Meanwhile, Maryland's contribution to the GOP freshman class, Andy Harris, tells Nicole Gaudiano of Gannett's Washington bureau that he's considering joining the Tea Party Caucus, led by the amazing Michele "The founding fathers fought tirelessly to end slavery" Bachmann. "I'm very aligned with tea party principles — that this government spends too much and we need to bring it to a more constitutional basis," Mr. Harris says. Well, as someone noted on Facebook the other day, no bait and switch there.
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A governor's duty
April 14, 2011
The Maryland governor can no longer do as Martin O'Malley has done for most of his five years in office — ignore recommendations from the Maryland Parole Commission. Dereliction of executive duty is no longer going to be tolerated. Under a measure passed by the General Assembly, the governor must act within 180 days of a parole recommendation for an inmate serving life; if the governor doesn't act, the recommendation takes effect.
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Not even cake sprinkles for Iran
April 11, 2011
Should children in Iran not have sprinkles on their birthday cakes because the leaders of their country are considered sponsors of terrorism? Should McCormick & Co., the spice giant, stop selling seasonings and salad toppings in Iran because the country's leaders are suspected of pursuing an illegal nuclear weapons program?
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The right's obsession with abortion
April 10, 2011
Republicans in Congress, including Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, would require a woman's accountant — or perhaps an agent of the Internal Revenue Service — to be informed of the circumstances necessitating an abortion. Even when paying for the abortion with her own money, a woman would have to prove to her CPA or the IRS that she was the victim of rape or incest. Otherwise, she would have to forget about deducting the cost of the abortion as a medical expense.
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Stanley Black & Decker expansion: politicians kissing up to corporations
April 6, 2011
I see from my newspaper about that $12 million investment Stanley Black & Decker plans to make for long-overdue upgrades to its Towson corporate campus, and I'm thinking: Beautiful, that's the way it should be — no need for the government to be involved anymore, and not after what the state of Maryland and Baltimore County went through with this company. If a company makes gobs of profits, it shouldn't need welfare from the states or towns where it does business.
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Grieving Foxwell family beleaguered by a blogger
April 3, 2011
One of the region's nightmares — the kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl on Maryland's Eastern Shore during Christmas 2009 — came to its public conclusion Tuesday morning at the Elkton courthouse. The accused killer, a 31-year-old convicted sex offender named Thomas Leggs, pleaded guilty and received life in prison without the possibility of parole. The family of the victim, Sarah Foxwell, had asked the state not to pursue capital punishment.
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Tossing the dice on ex-offenders
March 31, 2011
Last time I checked, Maryland had about 22,000 inmates in its sprawling prison system from the Eastern Shore to Allegany County. The general trend has been for the prisons to release between 10,000 and 15,000 inmates per year, and about two-thirds of them return to live in Baltimore City ZIP codes. Within three years, more than half of them violate the conditions of their release or commit new crimes — in the city and elsewhere — and return to our prisons.
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Verizon issues? Don't call me, call PSC
March 28, 2011
Emails and phone calls from readers of this column who have had an unsatisfying experience with Verizon continue to come in — and Saturday, a pleasant woman who walks regularly through my neighborhood stopped by to tell me all about her unpleasant business with the humongous telecommunications company. She'd made a couple of appointments to have a Verizon technician come to her house to investigate a staticky line, and the tech never showed. That's a common complaint.
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Despite Three Mile Island and Fukushima, nuclear is still the way to go
March 27, 2011
I received general absolution at the Church of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Middletown, Pa., on the Sunday after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. It was April Fool's Day, but everyone was as serious as sin when the priest stood on the altar and, with the authority granted by William H. Keeler — then the bishop of Harrisburg, later the cardinal of Baltimore — absolved all contrite Catholics within his gaze.
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Archdiocese has provided for charter schools
March 27, 2011
Once again, Dan Rodricks has voiced his hang-up with the Catholic Church with a cheap and inaccurate shot accusing the Archdiocese of Baltimore of "looking petty when it refuses to sell its vacant school buildings to city charter schools" ("Street food and soccer, war and Westboro," March 24).
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Street food and soccer, war and Westboro
March 23, 2011
Nobody asked me but . . .
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Another opening, another war
March 21, 2011
Because the United States has no military draft — and hasn't had one since Vietnam, the one and only war stopped by popular protest — the politicians and corporations running this country continue to do as they please. They might even launch a ground war in Libya next. What's to stop them? Public opinion?
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Fukushima to Baltimore: Disaster in a shrinking world
March 20, 2011
Here where we live, far from Fukushima, we go about our business. The amygdala, the part of the human brain that worries about things, is not conditioned to worry about earthquakes and tsunamis in the Mid-Atlantic.
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Stop the presses: Rodricks is right about governor
March 17, 2011
I agree with Dan Rodricks ("O'Malley shows more ambition than leadership," March 15) and this does not happen often. Our alabaster nanny Martin O'Malley or "MOM," is very ambitious, and he is also a good politician, but he is very weak in management and is a poor leader. By the way, these are all traits he shares with President Obama.
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Counting blessings, counting crows
March 16, 2011
The other night in North Baltimore, a swarm of crows — hundreds of them — filled the canyon of high-rise apartment buildings along University Parkway, between Calvert and Charles streets, and for a moment I thought I had been transported to a surreal moment in a Harry Potter movie, all gold and black and macabre.
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O'Malley: More ambition than leadership
March 14, 2011
So you're the governor of Maryland. You've served one term, providing generally sound stewardship through the Great Recession and handily winning re-election over a popular Republican in what was a big year for the GOP almost everywhere else. You're supposedly a progressive Democrat — some even say a liberal one — in one of the bluest of blue states. The state legislature, controlled by the dominant party, is generally friendly to you.
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Golden Girl: Giving thanks for a long life
March 12, 2011
Last Sunday, my brother and I went to the Catholic church in our hometown to make arrangements for a funeral Mass for my mother, Rose — more familiar to readers of this column as the former Rose Popolo — and, for the first time in all the years since I lived there and served as an altar boy, I didn't recognize a single soul in the pews.
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Don't like potholes? Pony up
March 6, 2011
As my car bounces and rattles over yet another pothole, and I look up at the price of a gallon of regular gasoline — about $3.30 — I have the following question: Is anybody ticked off about this? We were paying about $2.70 a year ago. I mean, I understand there has been unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, and this time there's something seismic going on. But when the price at the pump goes up like this, I don't believe it's because of anything real, such as a drop in the production of crude in Libya. The price just goes up because of "market fears" and the exploitative habits of sheikhs and sharks. You know it. I know it. Revolution in the Arab world is just another excuse.
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Facebook privacy: You get what you pay for
March 3, 2011
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland brings us the matter of Robert Collins, a 29-year-old corrections officer who says he was required to give up his Facebook password when he reapplied for his job after a leave of absence. He also says an investigator checked out his Facebook page and, oh my, what an egregious invasion of privacy that was.
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Honor is not for cowards
March 1, 2011
Before he went out last Wednesday to arrest 15 of the officers charged in the Majestic towing scandal, the police commissioner of Baltimore attended a morning retirement ceremony. It was for a cop who had had a long and honorable career and who, a few years ago, risked it all to expose some bad police work within the ranks. The farewell for Mike Andrew, who retired as a lieutenant colonel after nearly 38 years of service to the people of this city, took place in the commissioner's board room first thing in the morning.
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Jury duty: Seeking truth in a drunken fight
February 27, 2011
They picked me for a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore, Judge John Carroll Byrnes presiding. It was an attempted murder case: A young fellow named Bradley, also known as Doo Wop, allegedly stabbed another young fellow named Massey in a drunken fight over a woman named Jones, supposedly the "baby mother" of the defendant. This happened early on Friday, March 26 last year, on East 34th Street near Ellerslie Avenue in northeast Baltimore.
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Verizon service: Goodbye to all that
February 21, 2011
Readers will recall how it took an hour for me to get a representative of Verizon, the communications superpower, to do as I asked and simply disconnect my home telephone and leave me with Internet service only. Of course, Verizon Internet service turned out to be more costly by itself than in combination with a land line, but that's the Egg Roll Principle of Commerce at play: An egg roll at Happy Wok costs more by itself than it does when ordered with the lunch combo.
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Recession changing Baltimore region's housing paradigm
December 16, 2010
Memo to the mayor of Baltimore and City Council members: The housing bust and the recession have made significantly more homes in the surrounding counties affordable to first-time home-buyers. That means the city could be losing its long-standing edge in affordability. So you'd better do something to reduce the city's ridiculously high property tax rate — and fast — or lose even more potential customers to the suburbs over the next few years.
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In class warfare, the wealthy already won
September 19, 2010
The 2009 census shows that one in seven Americans now live below the government's laughable poverty line for a family of four: $21,954. (How many more families of four live between $21,955 and, say, $31,954 a year? Are they not impoverished?) More than 20 percent of all children are poor. We have not seen these levels since the 1960s.
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Vision lacking in Ehrlich’s comeback bid
April 22, 2010
Bob Ehrlich, running for governor for a third time, wants to repeal the 1-cent sales tax increase that Martin O'Malley wrought, and he wants to finish some "unfinished business." This is what he said on my radio program Wednesday. Wondering if he had something significant or inspiring to offer — a little more so than a penny tax reprieve (not that there's anything wrong with that!) — I pressed him on the "unfinished business" part.
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'Saving us more than saving them'
April 6, 2010
Thirty-five years have come and gone since Dan Schuster, just out of high school in Reisterstown, discovered something about the concrete business — he could do it better himself.
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The marrying judge explains himself
March 30, 2010
G. Darrell Russell Jr., the Baltimore County District Court judge who married the defendant in an assault case to the woman he was accused of beating, has been condemned by advocates for abused women, ordered to desk duty by his superiors and suggested for retirement by this columnist. He's also remained silent about the three-week-old controversy, on the advice of District Court leadership.
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No app can replace city's need for vibrant libraries
March 16, 2010
Interesting, these times we live in -- the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore reports a 20 percent increase in visitors through its doors, while Steve Jobs and Apple prepare to roll out the iPad, the computer tablet that allows you to download a book in seconds while you're anywhere within WiFi or 3G range, including your bathroom.
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Criticism of archdiocese strikes nerve with readers
March 9, 2010
There has been so much response to my Sunday column on the Archdiocese of Baltimore's decision to close 13 schools, including Cardinal Gibbons School, I thought I would share some of the more interesting and thoughtful comments with all my other readers today.
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Tragedy in Madeira stirs memories of paradise
February 23, 2010
News reports of the horrific flooding on the Portuguese island of Madeira refer to it as a popular tourist destination, and it is -- if you happen to be British or German. It is not so well known here, even among Americans affluent enough to take vacations abroad. In fact, before the scary videos of the mudslides hit television over the weekend, I would bet most Americans had never heard of Madeira, one of the most beautiful places on earth.
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Media's evolution alters how we experience 'weather events'
February 16, 2010
Over the past two weeks -- and at different times over the last 30 years, whenever we had big snowstorms in Maryland -- I've tried to figure out what it is about them that's different than the ones I experienced growing up in another part of the country, where snow was more common but still a "weather event" that raised blood pressures and affected the behavior of the human beings around me.
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Big Snow means Big Slow — a good thing
February 9, 2010
Maybe you've shoveled too much snow by now, or tried to walk or drive down too many clogged side streets by now -- or worried too much about three feet of snow on your flat roof by now -- to appreciate the pace-reducing power of a big storm. But I still see it, and I still like it.
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A generational change the city needs
February 4, 2010
Starting today, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has an opportunity to recharge the city and become the leader of a new generation of public-spirited citizens who have the most to say about what kind of place Baltimore becomes in the next decade.
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The crimes, forgivable. But that pension?
January 10, 2010
Sheila Dixon made history - the first woman elected mayor of Baltimore, and apparently the nation's first female big-city mayor to resign over criminal charges. Her trial took place in the courthouse where, in 1973, a vice president of the United States (and former Maryland governor and Baltimore County executive) named Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion in connection with thousands of dollars in kickbacks and bribes gladly taken during all but one of his 11 years in elected office.
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For city, Rawlings-Blake a fine reflection of her father
January 8, 2010
In Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, Baltimoreans get a young, bright and serious new mayor who could bring some urgently needed stability to city government even as she faces one of the toughest fiscal challenges in municipal history. She's the No-Drama Queen, and that should suit everyone around here just fine. Faced with a projected budget shortfall of $127 million or more in the coming fiscal year, the last thing Baltimoreans need from City Hall is more drama.
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An apology from Dixon? Forget about it and be glad it's over
January 7, 2010
And there you are, my fellow citizens - resignation by the mayor of Baltimore, and without a formal apology. But you can't always get what you want. Sheila Dixon was not about to say she was sorry for anything. If you were thinking that might happen, you need to see a doctor; your expectations are too high and you probably need to go on a reduced-Pollyanna diet.
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Shot takes away what so much else couldn't
December 27, 2009
In one of the first phone calls he made from Afghanistan, Army Pvt. Clifford Jamar Williams took a moment to savor how much he had accomplished - much more than many of his peers back home in Baltimore could claim.
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Questionable claims leave a-rabbers idle
December 22, 2009
This is the time of year when Donald Savoy Jr., one of Baltimore's last a-rabs, might have had two or three of his horse-drawn wagons parked on inner-city corners, loaded with tangerines and oranges and late-season greens. But Mr. Savoy and other men who sold produce from his wagons are idle in this Christmas week 2009. A heavy-handed move by the city last month – after breaking promises to help the a-rabs maintain their livelihoods -- led to the confiscation of Mr. Savoy's seven horses and eight belonging to his nephew and niece, James and Shawnta Chase.
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What's appropriate sentence for Dixon?
December 17, 2009
The other day, while waiting for the bread dough to rise in my kitchen, I filled out a Maryland Sentencing Guidelines Worksheet for the mayor of Baltimore, and this is what it looks like: probation to six months, with the possibility of the judge hitting Sheila Dixon harder or softer - and I'll tell you why it could go either way in a moment.
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Gifts for needy kids: Local group quietly shows how it should be done
December 15, 2009
The annual solicitation letter from Santa Claus Anonymous arrived in the mail the other day, with its trademark depiction of a classic Santa with his hat pulled over his eyes. The iconic drawing, of course, suggests a fundamental tenet of the 75-year-old organization – poor children who receive holiday gifts never need know they came from charity. Nor do donors need know the names of the children who benefit from their contributions; they merely trust that Santa Claus Anonymous delivers as promised. Giving and trusting in the city of Baltimore – imagine that.
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Bloodsworth, prosecutor move on to new things
December 7, 2009
Kirk Bloodsworth, the first American death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence, has lived to see something he never could have imagined -- an award named after him, and its first recipient a Democratic senator from Vermont.
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Baltimore deserves better, needs better
December 6, 2009
So, here in the grand city of Baltimore, Mayor Sheila Dixon, who embezzled gift cards intended for poor children, gets to stay in office for who-knows-how-long - as if nothing has happened - while a city cop who took part in that goofy mock raid/marriage proposal at the behest of a politician gets charged with misconduct and could lose his job.
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Dixon verdict: The cynics were wrong
December 2, 2009
All the cynics were wrong this time: A jury of her peers - nine women and three men, the majority of them black - found the city's first African-American female mayor guilty of a crime. We didn't have the jury nullification many had predicted - that is, acquittal in the face of strong, conclusive evidence, something that many lawyers, cops and judges have seen for years in the old courthouses on Calvert Street.
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No one is above the law
December 1, 2009
The jury of her peers took seven days to find the mayor of Baltimore guilty of a charge that prosecutors proved in a few hours of impeccable testimony during her trial -- that she talked a major commercial real estate developer into buying gift cards for needy children, then used them for herself. That part of the state case seemed the most solid, almost like an old-fashioned shakedown by a politician of a mover-and-shaker, except the payoff was gift cards and not cash. Had the jury found Mayor Dixon not guilty of that charge, I would have been shocked.
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Dixon trial just one of city's problems, but an important one
November 23, 2009
Of course, there are bigger issues, and bigger offenses against society, than the alleged theft of gift cards by the mayor of Baltimore. Monday morning, you could walk across North Calvert Street, from Courthouse East to the Mitchell Courthouse, and find an auctioneer in a suit on the broad sidewalk there and, promptly at the top of the hour, he started a sale of houses upon which a bank has foreclosed in the lingering aftermath of the subprime mess and the massive financial meltdown that pushed us into recession.
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As Dixon trial nears end, a demand for 'equal justice'
November 19, 2009
I am sticking with my instinct: Lindbergh Carpenter Jr. could turn out to be the most effective witness for the prosecution in State v. Dixon. It wasn't so much the testimony he presented, because certainly that of the Baltimore developer Patrick Turner was the most damaging. But Lindbergh Carpenter gave the state an opportunity to remind the attentive jury in Circuit Court East of a principle engraved in the Supreme Court building in Washington and resonant in the memory of every American who paid attention in civics class: Equal Justice Under The Law.
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Mayor's defense hopes silence is golden
November 19, 2009
When he instructs the jurors in the Dixon theft case, Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney will tell them not to infer anything from the defendant's silence during trial - and they certainly should not interpret it as a sign of guilt. The judge will do this, of course, because, by the time her underwhelming defense came to a rest Wednesday morning, Mayor Sheila Dixon had not uttered a single word.
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The defense rests, and Dixon is silent
November 18, 2009
When he instructs the jurors in the Dixon case, Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney will likely tell them not to construe or infer anything from the defendant's silence. Mayor Sheila Dixon did not testify in her own defense against charges that she's a thief. This might have been the plan all along; having a defendant testify in any criminal case always comes with risks, and in this case they were probably big risks. But, still, the mayor of Baltimore doesn't speak? They say she took gift cards intended for needy children in her city, and she doesn't have an argument?
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The Dixon case turns into an episode of CSI-Target
November 17, 2009
The last time I visited the Baltimore courtroom where Mayor Sheila Dixon is on trial, it was for a homicide case, and a medical examiner was among the many witnesses. This time, the alleged crime is theft and, instead of a medical examiner, the state calls to the witness chair the "asset protection manager" for a major retail chain.
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Is taking some gift cards a big deal? Ask Lindbergh Carpenter — he lost his job for it
November 17, 2009
In the buildup to the trial of Mayor Sheila Dixon on theft charges, we did not hear much about Lindbergh Carpenter Jr. He was not billed as the leading man or even a star witness. He is not, as far as anyone knows, a former boyfriend of the mayor. He's not a current boyfriend, either. He's not a real estate developer. He's neither mover nor shaker.
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Defense message: Dixon cares
November 13, 2009
The lawyers defending Mayor Sheila Dixon in her trial on theft charges will attempt to convince the jury -- the one in the courtroom and the much bigger one out here in the rain -- that that the only pattern of behavior in the case was a pattern of caring for the poor, of generosity and charity. You wait and see. It's coming up.
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Mayor Schaefer kept it clean during dirty times
November 10, 2009
The irony is 7-foot-2 and made of bronze: A statue of William Donald Schaefer goes up along the Inner Harbor promenade just a week or so before the current mayor of Baltimore goes on trial, accused of stealing gift cards intended for the needy. What a town!
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Why do they keep killing each other? Baltimore's most enduring question
October 13, 2009
I saw what looked like a drug transaction on a fairly busy corner of downtown Baltimore the other day. Six 20-something guys -- one white, the others black -- pulled together for a few minutes on Franklin Street and, while two of them took lookout positions, the others exchanged some items that appeared to be cash and small envelopes.
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Au revoir to more than a father-in-law
October 11, 2009
Over the years, I've asked a lot of men about their fathers-in-law: whether they get along with them, whether they play a significant role in their lives. These conversations took place over a beer, or on a fishing trip, maybe at an Orioles game. I usually had to bring the subject up; in most cases, the guys I've known wouldn't do it themselves, or there just wasn't much to say. They had married the man's daughter, and that was about it.
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How can state leaders still cling to death penalty?
February 22, 2009
The death penalty in the hands of politicians: Few things seem as twisted and as troubling as the matter of state-sponsored executions authorized by men and women with large nameplates pinned to their lapels. While in the ideal they might be devoted to public service and to representative democracy, what most of them seek, first and foremost, is name recognition and re-election. And in a nation as violent as ours, re-election has required being tough on crime, and being tough on crime has required support of capital punishment.
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A new low for corporate greed
February 1, 2009
Super Bowl Sunday fun: Try saying these words out loud, in the incredulous voice of former NFL coach Jim Mora in that Coors beer commercial:
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Handmade signs signal persistent hope
November 5, 2008
Thirty-two years of elections in Maryland and I've never seen so many handmade signs. Someone told me weeks ago that you couldn't get your hands on an official, campaign-issued Obama sign anywhere; they ran out of them in Baltimore, which might explain all the hand-painted signs I saw yesterday. They were on the eastside and the westside. I saw one on North Avenue, one on Druid Hill Avenue, one on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
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Slots aren't the answer to what ails the tracks
October 28, 2008
Here's what the people who run Laurel Park are willing to do to get you and me, betting customers, through the gates between now and the end of the year: half-price beers every time a randomly selected jockey wins a race on a Friday; a "special surprise" if one of us grabs the lucky rubber ducky out of the Laurel Lucky Duck Pond between 11 a.m. and noon Nov. 8; free apple or pumpkin pie to the first 5,500 fans on Thanksgiving Day; "Live Pasta Station" every Thursday in the Terrace Dining Room; free ice scraper to the first 4,000 fans Dec. 13.
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Here's one way to call the slots tossup
October 7, 2008
The last poll I saw on slots showed about 54 percent of Marylanders still supporting a state constitutional amendment allowing the gambling machines. That support was not as large as it appeared to be eight or nine months ago, which fits a theory I have: The closer we get to Election Day, the more people will think about this, and the more they think about it, the more of a tossup the outcome. It all comes down to which of the following attitudes prevail.
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The little boy who no longer lives here
August 26, 2008
I won't be reading this column today; it was hard enough just to write it. This is the father-notes-little-boy-growing-up column that I fought off a dozen times. Nick's high school graduation was in June. I attended, of course, and found myself too melancholy - and too much in denial - to write about it in public. Saturday was take-the-first-child-to-college day. I resisted, with full self-consciousness, taking up this space and your time with my little bit of miserable joy - what my Portuguese ancestors called saudade, the mixture of feelings one experiences at the landmark events of life. But it didn't work, so you'll just have to bear with me.
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City's awash in arena visions
August 3, 2008
I need to ask the people who've been writing letters to the editor expressing nostalgic affection for the 1st Mariner Arena - and horror at the prospect of that outdated box being torn down and replaced - the following question: When was the last time you were there? When the Beatles played, or was it Herman's Hermits?
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Integrity an early McKay hallmark
June 8, 2008
Back at the dawn of Baltimore television, when the Sunpapers owned the first station here, a 25-year-old Evening Sun reporter named Jim McManus agreed to work in front of the camera for $65 a week. It was 1947. The station, WMAR-TV, had to fill hours upon hours with original programming. So its crews did remote telecasts, running from the races at Pimlico to supermarket openings to professional wrestling matches at the old Baltimore Coliseum.
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In face of violence, looking within
February 7, 2008
Parents and teenagers are walking around this week awed by the violence that destroyed the Browning family in Cockeysville - one of those events that are so shocking we all look at each other and wait for someone to make some sense of it. But there is no sense to it, and the explanation might never come.
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Cultivating their future
May 11, 2006
They renamed the old, scary Maryland Penitentiary a few years ago and changed its purpose. It's now called the Metropolitan Transition Center, a place where inmates go when they are in the last couple of years of prison time. Given its purpose and potential, it's probably one of the most important institutions in Baltimore - a crossroads where men who once caused so much trouble in their home communities either beat the devil or re-up.
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Trying to embrace St. Francis' message
April 30, 2006
Even though ex-offender threw away a second chance, don't throw in the towel on all
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Get out by phone call or get out by bullet
April 24, 2006
Icompare the names in reports of killings in Baltimore with the names of men who called The Sun during the last 10 months to ask for help in finding jobs that might get them out of dealing drugs or other potentially deadly crimes. So far, I know only of one man who came in from the street for help, returned to his old lifestyle and ended up dead because of it.
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The lesson for Easter: Life can be renewed
April 16, 2006
There are young men out there - teenage boys from Baltimore to Columbia, from Aberdeen to Annapolis - who will be making decisions this spring. Some will have to decide where to go to college in the fall, or which lacrosse team to play with this summer, or which girl to ask to a prom. Some will have to decide whether to continue to be a stickup boy or a young thug who sells heroin.
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City officer strives to help break the cycle
April 10, 2006
Alittle more attention must be paid: Keith Harrison, The Sun's Police Officer of the Year for excellence in community service, has been deeply engaged in the effort to get drug dealers and drug addicts out of that miserable game. We kind of missed the story the other day when we reported on Harrison's selection from among dozens of nominees across Maryland. He's done more than "set up an office where citizens can talk privately to officers about their lives." Like street-corner missionaries, Harrison and his colleagues from the Baltimore Police Department's Get Out of the Game unit have been encouraging hard-core drug offenders to change their lives. Their work isn't about arrests; it's about breaking the dreariest of cycles in this drug-infested city.
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Dealing, gangs, jail, release -- now what?
March 26, 2006
I can't use Chico's full name because he thinks he'll be killed for talking to a newspaper columnist. It's a small big town, Baltimore. Everybody knows everybody, or everybody knows somebody who knows somebody, and particularly in the miserable drug life - guys selling dope, or guys sticking up guys selling dope - it's all this kill-or-be-killed stuff among homie familiaritas in sales territories that have become even more compact under O'Malley-era police pressure.
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After lure of the street, a return to honest life
March 20, 2006
On the morning of Sept. 5, 2000, Baltimore police conducted what drug dealers call "a house raid" on 43rd Street in a North Baltimore neighborhood that had been beleaguered by gang activity for several months. Police arrested four people and listed these confiscated items for a Sun reporter: 160 vials of cocaine; 19 ounces of pure heroin; 6 ounces of pure cocaine; $8,000 in cash; and a .22-caliber Intertec machine pistol with a silencer. Police placed the value of the heroin at $285,000, the cocaine at $20,000.
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Jim's story highlights enigmatic lure of drugs
March 5, 2006
Sometimes I'll sit there - in a courtroom maybe, or at a desk with a phone to my ear - or I'll stand on a Baltimore sidewalk and do what they pay me to do, which is listen to people give their arguments, tell their stories and explain themselves, and it'll hit me: I couldn't be a psychiatrist.
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Shining a light for a man in dark despair
March 3, 2006
This is for Jim, who called here the other day. I won't use the last name you left on The Sun's voice-mail system because I haven't been able to speak with you. It doesn't matter. You know who you are. There's only one person who called 410-332-6166 this week to say he was going to take his own life.
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Out of the 'wickedness' and into the kitchen
February 26, 2006
Iam regularly pleased by the number of Sun readers who ask about Harry Calloway Jr. I get it all the time. People ask how he's doing, what he's doing, whether he's staying out of trouble - and this continues several months after Calloway first emerged as a kind of poster child for second chances among drug dealers, drug addicts and all the miserable others who drained the life out of long stretches of Baltimore over long periods of time.
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Obstacles on the road to a man's redemption
February 12, 2006
Take LaFawn Weaver, for instance. Here's a young man who admits to making bad choices and getting arrested a couple of times -- back when he was a teenager, primarily -- and blowing a good job because he liked to smoke reefer. OK. So it's time to move on. He says he's made a personal declaration to try again and do it right. But so far, Weaver hasn't been able to find the legitimate job that gets him off the street for good and into America's taxpaying, mainstream work force.
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Feds are in the game, and they're serious
February 5, 2006
Guys with guns in the city of Baltimore: I got a Super Bowl Sunday gift for you. Some people pay $100 an hour to get this good stuff. You're getting it for free -- a little advice that could change your life. Here goes:
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Ex-offenders need help finding way back to life
January 22, 2006
Take a guy like Eric Brooks, for instance. He's 30 years old and he's been in trouble for - here's a shocker - dealing drugs in Baltimore. Last year, Brooks received a taxpayer-financed trip to a Maryland prison for seven months. He went to the Metropolitan Transition Center, which is the old Maryland Penitentiary, that Frankenstein castle commuters see from the Jones Falls Expressway. Based on what state officials have told me, it cost us about $14,000 to keep Eric Brooks there.
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Lend a hand or an ear to start year on right foot
January 1, 2006
Here's a suggestion for 2006: Be a mentor, be a mensch. Make a difference in the life of one man or one woman trying to stay off the drug corners and out of prison -- just by showing some interest. You could sign up for this service at an event Jan. 16 (see below), or you could phone in your support. Milton Bates did, and things have worked out pretty well so far.
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Homicide clock ticks louder as year ends
December 30, 2005
Aclock ticks in Baltimore, and I don't mean the one in Oriole Park. It's the homicide clock. It's not something you can look up and see, but something you feel and hear - part of Baltimore's biorhythm - and every year at this time, the ticks get louder, the pulse grows stronger, and anyone who still cares about this stupid waste of life gets a headache.
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Cause for ex-offenders crosses party lines
December 22, 2005
Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's public safety secretary, said it again last week at a breakfast honoring both ex-offenders who find their way into the mainstream working world and the companies that have the guts to hire them: "This is not a liberal issue. This is not a conservative issue. This is not a Republican issue. It is not a Democratic issue. This is a common-sense issue that will serve all of us."
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Our city's firms must reach out to 51st state
December 18, 2005
America's 51st state - the state of Incarceration - has a citizenship of about 2.1 million now, making it just about as populated as Nevada or Utah. Incarceration USA had just 500,000 residents in 1980; the war on drugs, more than any other factor, contributed to its striking growth - and continues to fuel its remarkable retention rate. In 2000, nearly 605,000 inmates were released back into the other 50 states. In 2003, that number reached 656,320, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Despite this, Incarceration still boasts more people than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
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Despite help, some still slip through the cracks
December 11, 2005
Just so you know, before I take you into the thorny stuff: I've heard from dozens of people - city and suburban families of longtime drug addicts - who say things are better now. Their sons, husbands, brothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, sisters are clean, staying out of trouble and away from their old junkie friends, working and taking care of their children. There are a lot of stories like that.
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Want to save Baltimore? Start with one person
December 5, 2005
One man, one woman at a time - let's try it that way. Let's say you own a small business, or let's say you're in middle management of a medium-to-large-to-extra-large company. Maybe you're even the CEO, or the COO or the CFO. Maybe you have an MBA, belong to the GBC, work in HRD, drive a BMW, or something GMC.
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Access to drugs in jail was a death sentence
December 4, 2005
There's no question that Michael Rabuck should have been institutionalized. People and their property in the city and Baltimore County were safer with him off the street. But this drug-addicted man ended up in a maximum-security prison, the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, where other inmates were eager to give him heroin - and willing to kill him if he did not get his family to pay for it.
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Gratitude for second chances
November 24, 2005
Thanks to those who try to make life better for all of us by making life better for themselves. There are still too many homicides in Baltimore - though, at 242, not as many as the 259 last year at this time - and too many men and women addicted to heroin and cocaine. But there are people among us trying to get to a better place in their lives, away from the addictions that create the drug market that begets so much of the violence, and out of unemployment, crime and prison. We should praise and thank them for their efforts, against tough odds, because therein lies the progress of a city, a state and a nation - one man, one woman at a time.
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Knocked down, but ready to try again
November 17, 2005
And so it begins again for Harry Calloway. Once more, he restarts his life. On Monday, Calloway started classes at Sojourner-Douglass College for the second time this year, and on Nov. 30 he'll be back at the Moveable Feast culinary class.
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Savor the warmth of youth, family, summer
October 13, 2005
I need to get this out. My cousins, Vinnie and Eddie Voci, will close on the sale of Uncle Gene's cottage on Cape Cod tomorrow, and I'm pretty bummed out about the whole thing -- accepting it, but still bummed -- and I hope you won't mind the use of this space for a kind of elegy. I admit to being a baby boomer tossed into the mosh pit of middle age. Some guys drown in the melancholy. I get to write my way out of it, at least for a day or so.
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Hope and despair for those who wait
September 26, 2005
I call them "ladies in waiting," the mothers and grandmothers, sisters, wives and fiancees who, with hope and prayer and superhuman patience, keep the faith that one day their men will straighten up, emerge from the drug life or prison and come safe home. I hear from them frequently.
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Ex-dealer is no longer the man he used to be
September 25, 2005
A young, beautiful, dark-skinned woman, her hair in cornrows and her arms wrapped around her pregnancy, sits at the end of a park bench, silent and depressed, and for good reason: She's married to a 25-year-old drug dealer who suffered brain damage in a beating last spring, and he faces prison this fall. You can understand why she might want to avoid the conversation at the other end of the bench - the one between the father of her unborn child and the newspaper guy. The woman turns her back slightly and stares at the dry grass at her feet.
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Calling all those who said they needed help
September 22, 2005
You know who you are. Kenneth, Leon, William, Joseph and Walter. You know why I'm calling your names out in print today. And Arthur, Tina, Gordon, Andre, Tory and Shawn - where are you?
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After falling so far, coming back can be a long, hard climb
September 18, 2005
HERE'S WHAT happens in the big city: A 42-year-old man, who wasted half his life in jails and prisons because of heroin, announces that he's clean and wants out. No longer will he do dope or deal dope. He wants to leave the ranks of the thousands of men and women who for years helped suck the life out of vast stretches of Baltimore. "I just want to get back to working, and being productive," the man says. He sounds earnest.
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High cost of drug sentences in Maryland
September 15, 2005
I ASKED Donta Ellerbe, a 28-year-old Baltimorean who spent too much of his young life selling heroin in his hometown, what he would like to do for a living, now that he's sworn off the hustle, and this is what he said: "I'm a good people person. I think I would be good at customer service."
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Ehrlich can put money behind good intentions, expand drug treatment
September 11, 2005
BALTIMORE DRUG dealers and former dealers, drug addicts and recovering addicts didn't vote for Bob Ehrlich in 2002. Check me if I'm wrong, brothers and sisters, but many of you either have felony convictions, which means you weren't allowed to vote, or you were incarcerated at the time of the gubernatorial election. Others were just "distracted," committing crimes to feed your addictions, and therefore not engaged in that grand thing we call democracy. And even if you were, you were not inclined to vote for a Republican.
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An excavation company offers a second chance, and six ex-dealers take an important first step
September 1, 2005
LIVING DRUG-FREE, feeling part of the working world and the progress of your city, making $10 an hour for a new company owned by people who believe in second chances, knowing your relatives are glad to see you and that your neighbors might even respect you - all that beats hustling heroin for $50 a day. Any way you measure it, the lives of Thomas Willis, Ricky Smith, Sean Wright, Craig Wright, William Taylor and Melvin Richardson are better at the start of September than they were at the start of August - and so, by a small increment, is the quality of life in Baltimore.
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An FAQ for readers of previous columns
August 28, 2005
AT A MEETING of recovering drug addicts in West Baltimore the other night, there were more answers than questions, which is a good thing in group therapy - it means there's honesty in the room. Everyone seemed to feel free to recount their struggles and express their feelings, and no man put his brother on the spot with questions - until they got to me.
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Taking family's pain public takes courage, and a lot of love
August 25, 2005
DEAR NICOLE Sesker: Your stepdaddy must love you a lot. He's the police commissioner of Baltimore, and yesterday Baltimore and the world learned what you, the commissioner and some of his officers have known for a long time --- that you're a heroin addict.
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A troubled soul, another tragic ending in the 'other Baltimore'
August 21, 2005
RALPH E. "Casey" Kloetzli died in an alley behind an abandoned house on a short side street I had neither heard of nor visited in my 27 years in Baltimore. Until two weeks ago, he had lived a tormented life in the "other Baltimore," the subculture of addiction and distress that so many of us know only from a distance.
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Weary dope dealer aims to go straight into a new line of work
August 18, 2005
LISTENING to a man named Troy talk about his life as a drug dealer -- with 20 clients who buy marijuana from him on a regular basis, Troy didn't want his full name printed because of the legal ramifications -- I think to myself: This guy could have been somebody.
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O'Mayor could have a little more passion about city hotel plan
August 15, 2005
BEFORE THE Baltimore City Council votes on Mayor Martin O'Malley's proposal for the public financing of a $305 million convention center hotel, it would be nice to hear from Mayor Martin O'Malley. Exsqueeze me? Have you noticed that O'Mayor has been relatively low-key on this high-profile project?
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Updates give hope for life off the street
August 14, 2005
TWO MONTHS and two days have passed since the first profiles of men and women caught up in Baltimore's drug life -- and eager to get out of it -- appeared in this space. The contact count is up around 150 now, and today's column is an update on where the many hours of conversations with present and former dealers and addicts (or their mothers and grandmothers) have led.
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Weary mothers, grandmothers also are victims of drug trade
August 11, 2005
DRUG DEALERS: Your mothers have been calling; your grandmothers too. I speak with them almost daily. The conversations are always pleasant, but the subject is always sad, and the subject is always you - the sons and grandsons who hustle drugs on the streets of Baltimore.
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City hotel can provide a start for jobs plan
August 7, 2005
DEAR BALTIMORE City Council: Several of you are questioning the proposal to have the city finance the construction of a $305 million hotel to give the downtown convention business a boost. You're in rare form. We're not used to the City Council doing this sort of thing - challenging the mayor, demanding a better deal for taxpayers. I'm impressed.
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Prison won't heal Baltimore's blight, but helping out its victims would
July 31, 2005
BALTIMORE'S drug cancer has eaten away at people, families and whole neighborhoods for more than three decades. It has affected the entire region in some way and, considering the thousands of citizens involved in this problem, seems intractable, a lost cause.
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Taking a leap off the street, into a job hunt
July 28, 2005
DOZENS OF Baltimoreans have contacted The Sun during the past six weeks to express a desire to end their roles in one of the city's most serious problems - the drug trade that supplies thousands of city and suburban residents with heroin and cocaine, ruins families and neighborhoods, and fuels the violence that keeps Baltimore high on the homicide charts.
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Drug dealers offered an exit to get out of game
July 24, 2005
LEONARD HAMM, the Baltimore police commissioner, could be standing on a street corner watching his officers make a drug arrest, or he might be attending a community event, walking into a barber shop, or just sitting on the front steps of his house. It could happen any time, and often does. Someone recognizes Hamm, walks up to him and says: "Commissioner, I got to get out of the game."
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If you stay in the drug life, you are choosing your death
July 21, 2005
DEAR BALTIMORE drug dealers: It's like this. You either want to live a long, relatively happy life or die young and horribly (or, if you're lucky, maybe middle-aged and horribly). You either want to have a home, family and friends (maybe even DirecTV), or go back to prison.
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Effort's goal is to make solid citizens of criminals
July 17, 2005
TOMI HIERS, who serves in the Ehrlich administration with a half-mile title - executive assistant to the deputy secretary for operations, Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services - believes the Republican governor of Maryland means to do what no Democrat in recent memory was able to do: turn criminals into productive citizens, give a guy a second chance. The administration wants to stop wasting taxpayer money - $24,000 per year per inmate - on a revolving door. "We are trying to change the culture of corrections," Hiers says.
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A longtime addict wants out; he needs helping hand
July 7, 2005
HERE'S DARRYL Logan. Here's a 45-year-old lifelong Baltimorean, a graduate of one of its venerable independent schools - and a longtime drug addict. He seems like a bright guy. He's certainly a congenial conversationalist. And he's one of our estimated 40,000 heroin users.
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Here's a choice: Burn out or really start cooking
July 3, 2005
DEAR BALTIMORE drug dealers: Tired of your loser life? Tired of being used to spread the poison in your hometown? Tired of living with your mother because, despite what people think, you can't afford a place of your own? Tired of the prospect of going to jail again, or ending up with a bullet in your head?
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Passing on hard-learned lessons on Father's Day
June 19, 2005
THIS IS Berson Tyner's first Father's Day as a free man in 10 years. For most of the past decade -- and for several of the years before that -- he was a prisoner in the Maryland correctional system. If he saw his three sons on Father's Day, it was probably in a guarded visiting room, in Hagerstown or Jessup.
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Former drug abuser finds a chance to regain happiness lost to addiction
June 16, 2005
UPON HEARING her story, a consoling preacher might have been tempted to give Towanda Reaves that old, hopeful proverb about doors -- when one closes, another one opens. We found out yesterday that the door Reaves thought had been closed to her forever is still open a crack. It's hard to see from about five years away, but there's definitely a small opening.
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Program envisions a chain of mentors pulling kids from street life
June 13, 2005
STEVEN "Take Back The City" Mitchell is certainly dedicated to the cause, and he's always trying to get other men - black, white, Asian, Republican or Democrat, city or suburban - to join him in taking on one of the most persistent and daunting challenges in our midst. He's all about saving Baltimore kids from drugs, thugs and violence.
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Why they sell poison, and why many can't stop
June 12, 2005
FOUR MEN - one in his 40s and tired of going to jail, one who just barely escaped the bullets that killed his best friend, one under pressure from police and family to change careers, another who left the streets six years ago to work toward a middle-class life - all agree: Many who sell drugs in Baltimore will never stop, unless arrested or killed, but many more would prefer another way to make a living. If there were more decent jobs and more employers willing to give a felon a second chance, there might be fewer dealers competing for corners and this city might be a less deadly place.
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Dealers, deal if you must -- but please, stop the killing
June 9, 2005
DEAR Baltimore drug dealers: I promise this will be the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. Here goes: How about taking the summer off to see what it might be like around here without all the shooting and killing? Serious. How about a cease-fire? A little break could save lives, maybe even your own.
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Act of forgiveness sets example for the world
April 3, 2005
BY THE TIME he came to Camden Yards in Baltimore on that sun-splashed autumn Sunday in 1995, Pope John Paul II had for more than a decade been encased in glass when he traveled among crowds. The "popemobile" circled the baseball field and turned along the warning track, and for a few memorable seconds, as a reporter free to roam in the grass of left field, I had my audience with the Vicar of Christ. He looked right at me - I swear, right into my eyes - and gave the papal blessing from behind bulletproof glass.
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Exploiting the tragedy of Terri Schiavo
March 24, 2005
MAYBE YOU know the feeling - that you're about to see or hear something that's really someone else's private business, and it makes you embarrassed and uncomfortable. You're a sucker for human drama in all forms, but you'd rather not be caught gawking.
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A grieving mother brings this war home
November 18, 2004
I TOLD MARTINA Burger, who was very accommodating and who gave me more of her time than I ever expected, that I would not debate the war in Iraq with the grieving mother of a Marine who was killed there.
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Once again, young guns shatter hope
May 9, 2004
SOMETIMES, SOME days, you wish you could just reach right in and rewire the brains of fools - like the fat one who apparently drove up to Randallstown High School Friday afternoon and decided to open fire on a crowd of kids after a charity basketball game. What do you suppose was the gunman's story this time? Had he been dissed by someone in the crowd? Did someone owe him money? Or was he just upset about the Krispy Kreme plant closing?
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Ehrlich, O'Malley sparring over schools may be Round 1
March 11, 2004
WAS THAT a risky thanks-but-no-thanks Martin O'Mayor sent to Bobby Governor the other night, or the first shot in the 2006 gubernatorial campaign? Is this precious? Do we live in interesting times? Is this shaping up to be a battle of political frat boys, or what?
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Given failed war on drugs, Lewis charges no surprise
March 4, 2004
ALITTLE news for the many Jamal Lewis fans -- of whom I am one -- who think the Baltimore Ravens' great running back is a victim of an overzealous federal prosecutor reaching too far to make a case out of the word "Yeah," uttered during a cellular telephone call four years ago: We're still at war.
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Ehrlich realizes we all have a stake in the city's schools
February 26, 2004
MORE HIGH-FIVES to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Arbutus for his leadership in Baltimore's school crisis. Last week, the governor pledged a $42 million loan to help the school system pay its bills, and this week, with the deficit numbers looking even worse, Ehrlich came closer to advocating a complete state takeover of the system, declaring himself its new guardian with these words: "I have 90,000 children in Baltimore City schools."
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Ehrlich's gamble on the city shows glimmer of greatness
February 19, 2004
ROBERT L. Ehrlich Jr. of Arbutus is just the man to cure Maryland of its "pre-existing antagonism." No doctor can do it. O'Malley can't do it. Nor Sarbanes. Nor Mikulski. Nor Mfume. Not even Ripken. But the state's first Republican governor since Spiro T. Agnew could lead the way on regional big-think, and the sooner he realizes it the better. He has a choice - to be a statesman who unites modern Maryland across jurisdictional, economic, class and racial lines, or go down in history as "Bobby Slots."
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City should have put brakes on Fast Eddie a long time ago
December 11, 2003
THOSE WHO find themselves lost in the sordid details of the indictment of Fast Eddie Norris, and terribly lacking in knowledge of fashion, should please note: Il Bisonte is a line of leather goods from Italy, and Faconnable is a clothing line with a store in Manhattan.
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No one can tell grieving family of city Marine how to feel
March 24, 2003
THE BALTIMORE family of Staff Sgt. Kendall D. Waters-Bey, killed Thursday in a helicopter crash in southern Iraq, took some heat over the weekend - from talk radio, what else? - for suggesting that the 29-year-old Marine died in an unjust and pointless war, not in a noble cause to make the Middle East safer or to free an oppressed people.
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Referendum on slots wouldn't be a gamble
February 28, 2003
ILIKE the idea of referendum. It's a bright, blunt instrument of democracy -- people voting not on men but on ideas and laws, specific issues of significant public importance. If from time to time we present large questions on the ballot that ultimately affect the quality of life in a place -- say, the state of Maryland -- what's the harm? In fact, a great good might be served; government might better reflect the wishes of the little people.
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Take a break from shoveling and check your quiz score
February 19, 2003
IN CASE YOU missed it - and chances of that are pretty good - I promised to produce answers today to the Winter Day Quiz, presented in this space Monday as a public service to snowbound readers of The Sun.
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30 questions for all stuck at home on a winter's day
February 17, 2003
IWOULD LIKE to start off today's column by thanking all the intrepid men and women involved in the production and delivery of today's newspaper. If you can read this -- and I don't mean online through Baltimoresun.com -- hug your carrier. I would further like to thank the three guys who stopped in the middle of my street yesterday at noon to give my snow-stuck motor vehicle a push into a position out of the way of traffic and the city snowplow that will -- in my dreams -- make it down my street some day this month. Good snows make good neighbors.
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Slots number becoming game of high-low
January 27, 2003
FIRST WE heard that the racing industry wanted 18,000 slot machines in Maryland. Then the number fell to 13,500, and by the end of last week Bobby Governor reportedly was pulling back even more to find some palatable number. Pete "Cut Me In" Rawlings, the city delegate and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was talking 10,000. By the time you read this, they might be agreeing to ask for 11 slots and a mahjong table at the Royal Farm store in Hampden.
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In sniper shootings, prison, not death, is best outcome
October 30, 2002
PERHAPS ALL the federal and local prosecutors who want to take the sniper case should have a televised drawing on Saturday night - something on the order of Mega Millions or Powerball - to see who gets to kill the guys. Until yesterday, when the feds stepped in, there seemed to be a considerable argument brewing over which county in which state should get to do the rest of us the big favor of prosecuting the sniper suspects and giving them a long dirt nap. So, settle it with a drawing.
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Fight to take back streets can't be forgotten
October 25, 2002
IDRIFT UP to Preston and Eden again, the firebombed, Formstone Dawson house, and I think it should be turned into a shrine -- a memorial to a martyred family who in the first years of the new century died in the civil crusade for a better Baltimore. We could put up a memorial to Angel Dawson, her husband and kids, and I would go for an engraving about the price of liberty being eternal vigilance, something otherwise reserved for the headstones of soldiers.
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Normal people, living amid abnormal danger
October 23, 2002
CHARLES MOOSE, the police chief in Montgomery County, thinks it was unwise for the governor of Maryland to call the sniper a coward, apparently because such public name-calling is counterproductive in the delicate "dialogue" the police are trying to establish with this killer. "The governor's training is not in the law enforcement field," Moose said. "I am convinced the governor will never do that again."
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Tragedy on E. Preston St. can't shake faith in future
October 18, 2002
BY YESTERDAY morning, word had spread through the neighborhood about the Bible, and a few people came by to see it where it lay - open and still readable, flat atop the pile of ashes and embers from the rowhouse fire that killed Angel Dawson and her five children.
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A primer on 'real Democrats' in era of blurred party lines
October 2, 2002
LET ME TELL you something," Melvin A. "Mickey" Steinberg, the former lieutenant governor, said in Glen Burnie Monday, the day he and about 20 other former Democratic officeholders endorsed a Republican for governor. "Real Democrats care about the state of Maryland."
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One last vision of a Unitas-to-Berry pass
September 18, 2002
RAYMOND BERRY was at the lectern, giving his fond eulogy for Johnny Unitas, when I looked up at the nearly 90-foot ceiling of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and had the strange, fleeting and irreverent vision of a football spiraling perfectly through the somber atmosphere, under the contemporary-Gothic buttresses, all the way from the back of the great place and through the main nave to the sanctuary.
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Unitas' reach extended past Md. borders
September 16, 2002
PLEASE PARDON this personal memory of Johnny Unitas, even though it does not stem from the few special times I was actually in his company here in Baltimore. While natives can attest to seeing him throw footballs at Memorial Stadium -- or buy shirts at Hamburger's -- my experience was limited to what I saw, until about 1969, on black-and-white television.
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On sad anniversary, a lesson for the kids
September 11, 2002
IWOULD LIKE to say something to the kids today, so you grown-ups will have to excuse me. All memories of the year past have me thinking of the future, and the future is where children live. So this is for them.
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Hyannis Port high society won't help Townsend's cause
August 16, 2002
KATHLEEN K. Townsend is a Kennedy and there's nothing she can do about that. But she could have skipped that $2,000-a-head Hyannis Port party last month - the $4,000-a-plate one two summers ago, with chocolate mousse boats and white-chocolate sails bearing KKT's initials, was bad enough - and maybe she could chill on the out-of-state fund raising and the cocktail parties at Uncle Teddy's house. If I were advising this woman - and who isn't these days? - I'd tell her to lay off the lobster-and-Chablis fetes because those events come with a pretty high gag factor among the Great Unwashed.
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The anger of the faithful a dire wound for the church
May 20, 2002
IGO BY WHAT I hear from my 88-year-old mother, Rose, the most ardent Catholic I know. She's disgusted with the whole thing. I don't get any of the Roman Catholic warrior stuff from her on this one. Rose is more angry than sad, and so, based on this -- the most accurate measure available to me -- I believe the church is in bigger trouble than it realizes.
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Death penalty support looks tough but does no good
May 13, 2002
SUPPORTING the death penalty -- saying so in public -- is a way for an otherwise liberal and progressive-thinking man or woman to flash tough-on-crime bona fides. Personally, they might think capital punishment to be barbaric; they might believe in their hearts that no society that puts criminals to death can consider itself civilized. But they flash support for the ultimate penalty anyway. This has been the trend among Democrats as they've played catch-up-to-Republicans since the Reagan Revolution.
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Church is blind to damage caused by vow of celibacy
April 5, 2002
AND NOW, having read the sordid details from the police report, we regard the pathetic pastor of St. Clement I Catholic Church, caught in a lie of fear and desperation, his license to practice suspended, his whereabouts for a week known but to his attorney and, one assumes, God. All because he did that which his vows forbid him to do, and allegedly lied to a Baltimore County police officer to cover it up. Another one bites the dust, and while the development was decidedly regrettable, one assumes there were sighs of relief among Father Steven Girard's superiors that a little boy wasn't involved.
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Newfound friendship between local, N.Y. firefighters cut short
September 26, 2001
BACK ON Jan. 28, Super Bowl Sunday, the phone rang at a Baltimore County fire station, and LeRoy Edmunds picked up. This is Vinny Princiotta, the caller said. New York City Fire Department, Engine 16/Ladder 7. "We wanna make a bet on the game."
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Americans enter a test of will with new clarity
September 17, 2001
"INEVER was much for putting out a flag," I heard a woman say in the weekend sunshine, "until now." She went into the basement of her home and fetched two small ones - starchy cloth flags on sticks - and stuck them in the potted plants in front of her house.
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A plea for peace to the one God of Muslims, Christians and Jews
September 14, 2001
JUST BEFORE sunset last night in the old basilica in Baltimore, with the nation still shattered by ungodly acts of terrorism, an imam sat next to a cardinal who sat next to a rabbi, and they prayed for peace and healing in the face of terror and hate. They did the difficult thing that people expect of them - they tried to use words to restore hope in a week that tested a believer's faith in a merciful God.
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Events shake belief in a better future
September 12, 2001
We organize the tools in our garage and line up the shoes in our closets. We trim the hedge and water the lawn. We shop in malls. We jog. We walk the dog. We sip dark-roast coffee. We drive reliable cars with full tanks of gas. We go to work. We come home. We watch Monday Night Football. We read a novel. We sleep soundly. We have a pretty good life -- orderly, even routine, comfortable, plentiful. We keep going. We believe in the future.
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Firefighters deserve high-fives and another fete
July 23, 2001
NOW THAT was a cool coincidence: "Firefighter Appreciation Day 2001" at Oriole Park fell in the midst of the diehard, underground inferno that put the city's Fire Department to an extraordinary test. Too bad many of the firefighters who deserved the tribute could not attend, though they were near Camden Yards. There will have to be another honor for those who worked so hard to end the danger posed by derailed tankers of hazmats stuck in a downtown tunnel fire that burned as hot as 1,500 degrees and turned railroad steel red.
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Stream of consciousness
June 17, 2001
I can hear him now: "All that for that?" I can pretty much see him, too, in his khaki trousers and white T-shirt, over in the small clearing by the honeysuckle thicket on the little river I love. My father is watching me fish in the way I have chosen to fish in the years since his death: With a fly rod and tiny lures fashioned of feathers to look like the bugs that finicky trout eat. I can hear him now, as I stand knee-deep in the river and extend a small, delicate net for a trout that's all green, yellow and white with brown spots, about 10 inches of God's glory. I hold the trout in my hand for a moment so that my father might appreciate it. But he only laughs: "All that for that?" And when I ease the little fish back into the river, he laughs harder and disappears into the woods.
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Destructive and creative sides of man in tug of war
February 16, 2001
ADIGITAL photograph of the one they call "Crazy Frank" appeared on my computer screen at home Wednesday afternoon as I clicked through The Sun's Web site -- swollen face, large ears, deep-space eyes, arms pulled behind him for the handcuffs. My son, who is 10, looked over my shoulder.
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Bargain-basement justice not much of a deal for city
February 14, 2001
YESTERDAY, IN what used to be the basement of a department store, a prosecutor named Patricia Deros called 106 minor criminal cases - drug possession, trespassing, theft, perverted practices, rolling dice for money - in Early Disposition Court, the one the wise-guy mayor of Baltimore promoted last year, in stick-figure terms, as a remedy to the city's clogged judicial system.
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As prodigy matures, his light still burns bright
February 12, 2001
LOCAL MEMBERS of the Piano Technicians Guild, who 13 years ago logged 700 hours rebuilding that old Stieff baby grand for the shockingly talented baby pianist Jermaine Gardner - he was only 4 at the time - will be pleased to know that both are thriving. The piano fills a third of the front room of the Gardner house, off The Alameda in Northeast Baltimore, and the other night Jermaine sat behind it to play Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 18, the allegro. He performed it wonderfully. I felt lucky to have been there.
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City that needs hope has a way of killing it
February 9, 2001
PAY ATTENTION long enough - say, two weeks - and you notice that a lot of people around here tend to look at almost everything in terms of the health of the city of Baltimore. Martin O'Malley gets elected mayor, and that's good for the city. The Ravens win the Super Bowl, and that's great for the city. A gunman kills the owner of a popular and thriving Mount Vernon cafe, and that's not only an unspeakable tragedy for a family and the man's friends, it's bad for Baltimore.
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Uncommon valor yields all-too-common response
February 7, 2001
THURSDAY afternoon, Rob Bruns, who operates a brake shop in Waverly, had a flash about a doughnut -- the kind with vanilla icing he likes so much. He can usually find one, even by late afternoon, in one of the glass cases at the 7-Eleven two blocks away. It was 4:30. Bruns decided to indulge his craving.
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Archive: Old broom factory sweeps into present
April 26, 1999
NINETY-TWO years ago, August Rosenberger built a four-story brick factory at the corner of Baylis and Boston in the Canton section of Southeast Baltimore. His workers made Little Lady and Little Nugget brooms, and Rosenberger shipped them all over the country under the Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Co. banner. The broom boom at Baylis and Boston ended in 1989.
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Wounded family gets healing hand
October 9, 1995
On a day when he extolled the power of faith and family, Pope John Paul II held the hands of a man and woman who had their faith and family shattered.