August 2009 Issue

Scenes from Sandtown • Man v. Salad • Sneak Preview: Fall Arts august 2009 issue no. 62

New Voices The Emerging Writers Issue

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august 2009 issue no. 62

the emerging writers issue

contents

40 keynote: words on paper

writer/illustrator duo matthew swanson and robbi behr reflect on the writing life and offer a cut-out “one-page wonder.” interview by david dudley

ction: the doctor’s son 45 fi by charles talkoff ction: steak, peas, potatoes, ritalin 46 nonfi by abigail higgs capra pyrenaica pyrenaica 49 poetry: by kevin krause

33

selections from baltimore rhapsody 50 play: by miranda rose hall selections from homepages, 1–5 53 poetry: by jenny o’grady

departments 9 editor’s note

back to the workshop

11 what you’re saying healing hokum

57

13 what you’re writing

tall tale: mom knows best, a live birth, and impersonating an oriole

17 corkboard

this month: tango time, blue-ribbon pies, and a renaissance revival

this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: more writing from baltimore’s young bards an audio slideshow on new life in sandtown video: author/illustrators matthew swanson and robbi behr demonstrate how to make a “one-page wonder”

19 the goods: urbanite looks at some intrepid entrepreneurs who set sail amid economic doldrums.

29 baltimore observed turning a corner

a coffee shop and a community commit to sandtown’s future by holden warren

33 student bodies

pondering porn at public universities by marianne k. amoss

35 locked up

the roots of baltimore’s natural hair movement by ak cabell

on the air: urbanite on the marc steiner show, weaa 88.9 fm august 4: more on the natural hair movement august 17: first amendment rights on campus

37 peacemaker

remembering community activist leon faruq by mat edelson

57 eat/drink

goddess complex

one man’s reluctant love affair with salad by andrew reiner

61 reviewed: miss shirley’s and joss café 63 wine & spirits: oldies not goodies 65 the feed: this month in eating

on the cover:

illustration by warren linn

67 art/culture: urbanite’s fall arts guide 82 eye to eye

urbanite’s creative director, alex castro, on ben piwowar w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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For All Your Travel Needs,

Call Eyre!

Issue 62: August 2009 Publisher Tracy Ward Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com Creative Director Alex Castro General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Editor-in-Chief David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com Managing Editor Marianne K. Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Editor Greg Hanscom Greg@urbanitebaltimore.com Literary Editor Susan McCallum-Smith literaryeditor@urbanitebaltimore.com Proofreader Robin T. Reid Contributing Writers Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Clinton Macsherry, Tracey Middlekauff, Richard O’Mara, Andrew Reiner, Martha Thomas, Sharon Tregaskis, Michael Yockel, Mary K. Zajac

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urbanite august 09

Advertising/Editorial/Business OfďŹ ces P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial inquiries: Send queries to editor@urbanitebaltimore.com (no phone calls, please). The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2009, Urbanite LLC. All rights reserved.

Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. To suggest a drop location for the magazine, please contact us at 410-243-2050. Postmaster: Send address changes to Urbanite Subscriptions, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211.

editor’s note

photo by Valerie Paulsgrove

photo by Christine Abbott

courtesy of Daniel Bedell

contributors Photographer Daniel Bedell studied photography at Andrews University in Michigan before pursuing commercial and editorial photography in Baltimore, where’s he’s discovered “a great array of beautifully gritty photographic opportunities.” For this issue’s retail shopping guide, “The Believers” (p. 19), Bedell shot portraits of new business owners. “You can never pigeonhole the type of person who starts a business,” he says. “Seeing that up close was a big part of the fun and challenge of the assignment.”

Baltimore-based freelance writer AK Cabell has written for E/The Environmental Magazine, Black Issues Book Review, Heart & Soul magazine, BET Weekend magazine, and Brandchannel. com. She also contributed to Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s The African American National Biography. In this issue, she follows the rise of “natural” hairstyles such as dreadlocks and Afros (“Locked Up,” p. 35). A native of Seattle, Washington, Cabell stopped “relaxing” her hair at 19. “My parents were black hippies— we had an organic farm. So I wasn’t venturing too far off,” she says. She currently sports her second set of dreadlocks, which she hasn’t cut in six years.

Urbanite editorial intern Cara Selick, a New Jersey native, has spent the last three years studying fiction at Johns Hopkins University, where she’s also served as a staff writer and editor for The News-Letter, JHU’s student newspaper. Sitting through all those fiction workshop classes left her well prepared for one of her duties in this issue: helping choose the finalists in the magazine’s package of short fiction and poetry from emerging student writers (p. 40). “A lot of value comes from the workshop experience,” Selick says. “Sometimes you get better ideas from your fellow students than you do from the professor. And you learn to not take things personally.”

As a writing student

Climax in college, I became very familiar with the thing pictured on the right.

Rising Action If you’ve ever taken a fiction or playFalling Action writing class, you probably know this little chart. It’s called Freytag’s Triangle, after the 19th-century German dramatist and scholar Gustav Freytag. He’d based it on his study of classical Greek and Elizabethan drama, Exposition Dénouement which he divided up into these five sharp, inviolable acts: exposition (explaining who everyone is and what they’re doing), rising action (complications ensue), climax (the big turning point), falling action (things go to hell), and the hardest part—dénouement.

The dénouement was supposed to be the resolution, where everything gets wrapped up in a neat little package and we tell the readers what they’ve learned. But we student writers often balked at the dénouement. What was the point of wrapping things up in a neat little package? Our endings were brief and chaotic: lots of sudden deaths, inexplicable reversals, random violent acts. Most of my stories ended with people driving cars into walls, which seemed to me to possess almost unbearable poetic finality.

Frankly, we balked at Herr Freytag’s whole M.O.; most of us weren’t sitting in a fiction class because we were good at diagramming things. The triangle smacked of mathematical precision and boring hidebound rules. Real life was unruly, and so were our stories.

Still, something about that triangle stuck with me. In part, it was the idea that storytelling wasn’t just a parade of incidents or a display of writerly fireworks, all flash and smoke and then nothing. It was an actual craft. Even the classroom process—the workshop— conveyed this sense of methodical narrative gruntwork. You could chart the components of your tale on a blueprint and build it, like a house. And, most amazing of all, you could train someone else to do this.

Hundreds of college and university writing programs have been established since the 1970s, feeding a need to tell stories that must have been previously met via other means.

What this remarkable new industry is providing, besides teaching jobs for otherwise unemployable writers, remains a topic of some debate. Beyond the big cosmic question—can you actually teach someone to be a good writer?—lies a practical concern: There’s virtually no commercial market for short fiction and hasn’t been for decades. I sometimes felt, as I labored to produce my required three stories per semester, that I was being trained as a steamengine repairman, or in some other antique profession.

Maybe they won’t all end up making a living from their training, but the young authors we gathered in this month’s “Emerging Writers” package (p. 40)—creators of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays, all students or recent graduates of area writing programs—are skilled users of words, practitioners of an ancient and essential craft. I’d like to think that they and the thousands of other students that emerge from workshops every year walk out with some eminently useful tools for making sense of the world. They will be better equipped to fulfill the drive to organize human experience into these neat little packages called stories and to find new ways of interpreting, or flaunting, the rules of narrative.

—David Dudley

Will this be on the test?

Coming Next Month: The education issue www.urbanitebaltimore.com w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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what you’re saying Chicken Little when he kept saying, “The sky is falling”? After a while, no one believed him.

—Dan Kuc, Fells Point No Free Ride

photo by Chris Rebbert

In response to the letter from Vern Tyler of Bel Air (July): While some are bemoaning public transit projects in our city because “mass-transit beasts require perpetual feeding from taxpayers everywhere” and are claiming that public transit “should be expected to pay its own way at the fare boxes,” it is prudent to point out that roads do not pay for themselves either. Gas taxes only provide a portion of the funding.

Also, in a city where (as of 2005) 200,000 residents do not have access to a car, it might be wise to focus on public transit.

Open for Discussion On a recent visit to Baltimore from the Atlanta, Georgia, suburbs, I read with (non-erotic) pleasure your July 2009 issue. I found it a refreshingly open discussion of sex and your city. In the background were radio talk shows on NPR about the movement to repeal the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.

I applaud your efforts to spark intelligent conversation about this “messy” subject. My hope is that honesty and integrity guide us as a nation and lead us to greater comfort with ourselves and each other as human beings with our own sexual AND spiritual dimensions. Thank you for your leadership.

—Martin Isganitis, Decatur, Georgia Diagnosis: Snake Oil The employment of the “Semmelweis gambit”—i.e. the argument that science once wrongly dismissed a theory, so another theory must be right—in your July 2009 article on integrative medicine (“Mixing Medicine”) is ironic given that Ignaz Semmelweis’ methodology, which led to the discovery of the cause of childbed fever, is the opposite of what alternative medicine advocates encourage.

Semmelweis made observations of behaviors that could lead to fever. He then created and rigorously tested a plausible hypothesis before trumpeting his findings. He pioneered the use of statistics to prove the effectiveness of treatments.

The scientific method utilized by Semmelweis and others brought about the annihilation of traditional “Western” medicine and its analogues to today’s popular alterna-

tive medicine techniques. Reiki is the 20thcentury equivalent to the old, pan-Christian tradition of the anointing of the sick: Each requires specially trained practitioners to tap into an infinite “cosmic life force” to work its magic. Only differences in detail and ritual separate Western medicine’s long-discarded practices from modern alternative medicine.

Undoubtedly, scientific medicine is often a messy affair. Its demands for evidence, data, peer review, and replication make it sluggish in accepting new information, occasionally with grave consequences. However, it cannot be forgotten that scientific medicine has vanquished smallpox, nearly doubled life spans within a century, and allowed children to be vaccinated against the most devastating plagues to ever haunt the planet for little more than the cost of a tank of gas. No other medicinal tradition has accomplished so much, so quickly, for so many. If this is the price for scientific medicine’s supposed fixation on “disease management” at the expense of “health and well-being across the life span,” it is a price worth paying.

—Jed Weeks, Baltimore High on Art I truly appreciated the research and forward thinking displayed in “Arts on the Run” (June). Yes, the financial issues of arts organizations are formidable now and for the foreseeable future, but John Barry has eschewed the “nail-in-the-coffin” approach chosen by most of our print media and instead is highlighting some of the organizations and leadership who are artfully pursuing new routes to healthy sustainable arts: Keep arts affordable, even free when possible (You go, Gary Vikan); trim production budgets and focus on connection (Temple Crocker); create new avenues for PR (Jack Livingston); and engage our communities (Marin Alsop).

These are only a very few of the community’s resourceful, creative people and approaches! Thank you for recognizing that the arts community is “On The Run,” more in pursuit of solutions than away from its needs.

—Matthew Hood, Halethorpe —Lynda McClary, Lutherville If I Had a Hammer As far as the charges of racism by Timothy Dean, Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, Larry Young, and Nathaniel Oaks are concerned (“Kitchen Confidential,” July), I’d like to quote Mark Twain: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

I’m sick and tired of hearing charges of racism only because it is a convenient tool to get what one wants. It clouds the issues and creates mistrust for the accusers. Remember

We want to hear what you’re saying. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number.

Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

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tall tale

what you’re writing vealed to me that he once told a group of fans at a restaurant that he was famous Cleveland Indians right fielder Rocky Colavito.

When it comes to impersonating a ballplayer, I guess what goes around comes around.

—Louis Berney is a freelance writer and journalist who lives in Baltimore. He formerly wrote as a journalist from Vermont, India, and Eastern Europe, and he enjoys bicycling, tournament Scrabble, traveling, and eating and cooking ethnic food.

illustration by Taryn Negan

My mother tells the story

Whenever I bring

out-of-towners to the Inner Harbor, I always stop at the corner of Pratt and Light streets to point up at those white girders that decorate the top of the T. Rowe Price building. I then start telling them about how the guy who built it was a renowned mystic, fabulously wealthy but well known for being into the zodiac and the occult. I’m sure to embellish this story depending on my audience and how many details they ask for, but I usually wrap up with how he disappeared mysteriously shortly after the building was completed. I don’t think anyone has believed me yet, but they are always sure to take a picture off to the side where, when you look straight up, the girders at the corner of the building form a perfect pentagram.

—Renfield has performed with the Fluid Movement water ballet troupe. He lives in Lansdowne with his wife and house rabbits.

In college,

I worked in the Orioles front office. I was paid a pittance, and the job was akin to what today is considered an internship. The Orioles called my position “general duties,” a description far more apt than “intern.” I did a little bit of everything—kept stats for the farm department, assisted the PR director, did odd jobs for General Manager

Lee MacPhail, and ran errands for everyone. I even shagged flies during batting practice.

I also occasionally accompanied the team on road trips. One evening following a game in Kansas City, I was wandering downtown and spotted an old jet plane that had been converted into a restaurant. Intrigued, I went inside. It was late, and the place was almost empty. Despite the hour, I was able to get a bite to eat at a table across from the bar.

At some point, either my waitress or one of the men at the bar asked who I was and why I was in town. I said I was with the Orioles. Everyone’s ears perked up. They asked what I did. I told them I was Bob Johnson, a reserve infielder. I have no idea why I fabricated this story. I chose Johnson as my alter ego because he was anonymous enough not to be recognizable to most people.

The few folks in the place—the barkeep, the waitress, the imbibers—were thrilled to have a major leaguer in their midst. They asked for my autograph and peppered me with questions about what it was like to play in the big leagues. They asked me to visit again next time the Orioles came to town.

I am not a good liar; I amazed myself that I could pull this whopper off convincingly.

Three decades later, I was writing a book about the Orioles. One of the players I interviewed for the book was Bob Johnson. He re-

of my middle name with the same excitement that infuses just about everything she talks about. “When she was born, she wasn’t breathing, and of course I was in a panic. But the doctor told me not to worry: ‘She’s only holding her breath!’ Well, she turned a bright green before we could convince this stubborn little lady to breathe.”

The story goes that I was named Jessica Teal because, as my mother likes to say, “I couldn’t rightly name her Green!” She says this as if there is no question that this event in my life would have to be commemorated in some permanent way.

It’s an anecdote that gets smiles and laughs at parties, but most likely it’s padded to add interest. I know this because there has never been a story that wasn’t a bit more interesting coming from my mother’s mouth than when it actually happened.

When I was in high school, this used to annoy me. My music sounded like cats screeching. My friends were felons. My outfit was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. Nothing was mediocre, ordinary, or uneventful.

Emotions were always high and strong.

However, at the same time, my ex-boyfriends were the biggest jerks in the world.

My viola recital was magical and inspiring.

And when I got my first job as a waitress, my mother left me an 80 percent tip because “You were the best server your father and I have ever had!”

While both my parents love me, I know my mother would cut off both her legs and feed them to starving wolves for me. I know this because my mother told me so. And while she always exaggerates, my mother never lies.

—Jessica Teal Ashley Beitler, like much of the country, is recently unemployed. She is using this time off to pursue her passions, which include writing, reading, cooking, and learning Mandarin.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Eyes darting

and toenails clacking on tile floor, the dog was a short-haired terrier.

That is, if she existed at all.

Spring 1971, and I was in Mrs. Hanna’s kindergarten in Wichita Falls, Texas. Mom picked me up one Friday and asked about my day.

“We had Show and Tell. A girl brought her dog.”

Pause. Mild maternal interest.

“And it had puppies.”

“What?”

“The dog had puppies during Show and Tell. I guess it was pregnant.”

“What happened?”

“Mrs. Hanna fainted, and this other kid and I had to carry her out of there.”

Monday came. When Mom retrieved me after class, she sought out Mrs. Hanna. “I hear you had a lot of excitement on Friday,” she said—only her last word came out as “Fridaaay” because I started yanking on her arm.

Mrs. Hanna, white hair piled up in a bouffant, must have smiled uncertainly at this point.

I think Mom got out the word “dog” before my looping cries (“C’mon, Mom. Let’s go.

C’mon, Mom. Let’s go … ”) and arm-pulling dislodged her and got her moving toward our

green Ford station wagon.

At kindergarten, we had spent a week hearing tales of Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, and Pecos Bill. I liked them. I liked the idea of story untethered by reality, how words could fashion the most fantastical lies.

I liked the crows spending a day flying from one of Babe’s horns to the other; or Pecos Bill riding the “biggest gol-durned tornado you ever saw.” Mostly I liked the other kids’ reactions, the way they guffawed, how their eyes became wide circles as their brains scaled the implausible.

I ’fessed up years later. Mom remembered the story, having shelved it in her memory as a minor oddity from those harried years. “But you had never said anything like that before,” she said, explaining her gullibility. The story entered the canon of family lore, brought out every decade or so for a laugh.

The details (whether the dog existed at all, what Mrs. Hanna looked like, which station wagon we had then …) have long since slipped the bonds of certainty.

Like so many stories, now only the lie is real. ■ —Brian W. Simpson is editor of Johns Hopkins Public Health magazine.

“What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month we pick a topic. Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month’s theme. Only previously unpublished, nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We reserve the right to edit heavily for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits. You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know. Only one submission per topic, please.

Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211, or e-mail it to WhatYoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com.

Submissions should be shorter than four hundred words. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned.

Topic

Deadline

Publication

Shelter All Grown Up Broke

Aug 10, 2009 Oct 2009 Sept 15, 2009 Nov 2009 Oct 13, 2009 Dec 2009

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Don’t lose count of your steps at Tango Element Baltimore. A nonprofit promoting the Argentine style of the sensual dance form, Tango Element hosts four days of classes, all-night-long DJ-ed dances, and performances by renowned tango maestros.

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Hang ten at the Creative Alliance with surf rock bands El Patapsco, Atomic Mosquitos, and the Tritons. Prepare for twangy guitars and an ocean of reverb.

3134 Eastern Ave. $8, $6 members (free ticket and preshow happy hour if you become a Creative Alliance member) 410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org

Ravens Preseason Games

Aug 13 and 24

Bust out the purple pants: The Ravens preseason kicks off August 13 with a scrimmage against the Washington Redskins at M&T Bank Stadium. On August 24, former defensive coordinator Rex Ryan comes back to town to put his new team, the New York Jets, through their paces.

Regular season action starts September 13.

1101 Russell St. www.baltimoreravens.com

Vintage Baseball

Aug 16, noon

Two of Maryland’s four vintage baseball teams—the Dauntless Base Ball Club and the Chesapeake and Potomac Base Ball Club—face off in Havre de Grace. The clubs play by 19th-century rules (no gloves!) and employ vintage-inspired uniforms, equipment, and lingo. Here’s hoping there aren’t any “boodlers,” or ungentlemanly maneuvers, when the teams take to the field at the Steppingstone Museum in Susquehanna State Park.

Susquehanna State Park 4122 Wilkinson Rd., Havre de Grace www.hdgtourism.com/calendar.php

Maryland State Fair

Aug 28–Sept 7

Billed as the “eleven best days of summer,” the Maryland State Fair is packed with prizewinning animals, crafts, and pies. It also includes children’s rides and games, cow-milking lessons, bull riding, and the birthing center, where steel-stomached attendees can see live births of calves, piglets, and chicks. This year’s musical headliner, ’90s R&B group Boyz II Men, performs on August 28.

Timonium Fairgrounds 2200 York Rd. Call 410-252-0200 or go to www. marylandstatefair.com for ticket information

Renaissance Festival

Aug 29–Oct 25

Hear ye, hear ye! Come one, come all to this year’s Renaissance Festival, set in 1543 England. Visitors are encouraged to buy and wear period costumes as they eat giant turkey legs, learn to juggle, take in theatrical performances, and browse shops selling blown glass, leather goods, and more.

Crownsville Rd., Crownsville 800-296-7304 Go to www.rennfest.com for individual and group ticket information

Photo credits from top to bottom: no credit; photo by Mariah Gillis; photo by Phil Hoffman of the Baltimore Ravens; photo by Amanda Shaffer; photo by Edie M. Bernier; © Michael Klenetsky | Dreamstime.com

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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2 for 1+ Sale

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521 N. Charles St. 410.528.1877 www.pariswestoptical.com

The Believers I

the goods

photo by Daniel Bedell

t’s been a tough year for local retailers. But some intrepid entrepreneurs have seen the imploding economy as an opportunity rather than a curse. For this installment of our thrice-yearly shopping guide, we salute new businesses that opened their doors in the last twelve months.

High Style

JP Robertson spent his growing-up years in three very different cities— Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Tokyo—but one thing tied it all together: fashion. “ Having the baddest sneakers and outclassing the scenester is what I do,” Robertson says. “ It’s really all I know.” So in September, after a corporate job left a bad taste in his mouth, Robertson opened Cult (817 N. Charles St.; 410-913-8913). As befi ts its name, the one-room Mount Vernon shop is a gritty little outpost of underground chic from around the world: “dirty luxury jeans” from the Japanese line Evisu; jeans, T-shirts, and a sleeveless dress/vest from the Australian brand Ksubi; and carefully selected vintage pieces, sneakers, and wares of local designers (such as oversize fabriccovered sunglasses created by 19-year-old local Steven Strawder, under the moniker Stevie Boi). Prices run between $20 and $350, and Robertson says his fashion-crazy clientele isn’t likely to be fazed by the gloomy economy. “ I think I’ve hit a niche. Most people that are gonna buy collector Nikes are willing to pay $300 for a pair of shoes because that’s what they’re into, regardless of whether the Dow Jones is up or down.”

—Marianne K. Amoss

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Bohemian Chic Fashion for the

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* With this ad. One discount per person, per visit. Not valid towards purchase of gift certificates. Not valid on sales items. Valid thru 09/30/2009 urbanite august 09

the goods Into the Groove

photo by Daniel Bedell

Gary Gebler is a record-store lifer. He spent a combined twenty years at the music retail behemoth Sam Goody and the local chain Record & Tape Traders. When the bottom fell out of the CD game, he started hearing the same thing from his stores when he asked them what they needed: vinyl. “That just reverberated in my head,” Gebler says. Lying in a Frederick motel room one night, he had a vision—an old-school, all-vinyl record joint in the old Record & Tape Traders space on the strip of music stores in Catonsville. His Trax on Wax (709 Frederick Rd.; 410-869-TRAX) opened in May, and if you’re a vinyl die-hard or a kid just discovering the analog whomp of the needle and the groove, this is the place to be: racks of well-cared-for LPs—rock, jazz, pop, and punk—most for a frugalista-friendly $3 to $4. If your turntable died in first Bush administration, Trax carries new models, and there’s a house stereo so you can test-drive that Cheap Trick platter before purchase.

Plus comfy chairs, coffee, a small stage with a drum kit for Thursday night jam sessions, and lots of vintage record-store vibes. “I’m 52—I can’t do anything else,” Gebler says. “I’ve been selling records since since I was 16. What the hell else am I going to do?”

—David Dudley

photo by Christine Abbott

Baby Step

After struggling to find brick-and-mortar stores that carried comfortable, fashionable, and organic clothes for her now-2-year-old daughter, Bridget Quinn Stickline decided to fill the void in the market. This May, she opened Wee Chic—A Baby Boutique (10751 Falls Rd., #101; 410-878-7400; www.weechic.com) in Greenspring Station, and she says business has been booming, despite the flailing economy. “Sometimes in times like these, there are opportunities that wouldn’t be available in better times.” Wee Chic carries clothing and accessories for children up to 6 years old from such lines as Appaman (sold nowhere else in Maryland) and Pitty Shants. But don’t come looking for the usual ruffled kid-wear: Stickline prefers to dress the little ones with some style and attitude. At the “onesie bar,” all-cotton onesies ($24–$38) are plastered with funny sayings (“Poops, I did it again” and “I’m a boob man”) and screenprints of paintings by local artist Jennifer Knott. As Stickline insists, “You have to have a sense of humor to survive motherhood.” The store also sells gifts and items for alterna-moms and -dads, such as CDs of local kid-rock band Milkshake ($16) and lullaby versions of songs by bands such as Green Day, the Beatles, and Bob Marley ($22).

—Cara Selick

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Find Your

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urbanite august 09

the goods Square Deal

photo by Valerie Paulsgrove

Ricky Fuller’s friends called him crazy when, a year ago, he quit his job with a Fortune 500 business technology firm, moved in with a college buddy, and launched a Web-based business and a furniture store in Fells Point.

“Sometimes I think they were right,” says Fuller, a frenetic 32-year-old Baltimore native. The website, Ecosumo.com, sells earth-friendly clothing and household products. The furniture store, called Cube (1611 Eastern Ave.; 443-690-5280), attracts young professionals looking for high-end, modern furniture for moderate prices. The colors here are blacks, whites, and browns; the upholstery is leather, and there’s an emphasis on economizing space. The “OZ” sofa from Innovation Home ($1,305) is a chic update to the futon. From Nuevo comes a patio furniture set that stacks into an hourglass-shaped tower ($1,999). Ethanol-burning EcoSmart flueless fireplaces add a cozy touch. The store also features chairs and bar stools ranging from $169 to $329 and ceramics that start at $45. While Cube shares a block with shuttered storefronts, Fuller is confident business will pick up. And as for his decision to leave the corporate world? “I had to break out of the hamster wheel.”

—Greg Hanscom

Re-gifting

photo by Daniel Bedell

For ten years, Linda Secor walked across the street from her Lutherville home to work at her gift shop, Sweet Annie Ice Cream and Gifts. But when her lease ran out in May, Secor decided the high Lutherville rents weren’t for her anymore.

She’d heard about the revitalization of Hamilton’s main street from a colleague, she says, and was interested in being part of the action. So in June, she headed over the city/county line and opened up (sans the ice cream) as The Heart of Hamilton (5523 Harford Rd.; 443-627-8769). The store, fronted by two wide, sunlit display windows, carries much of the same as her Lutherville location— scented candles, purses, cheerful flowerpots, and items for kids and babies. Just about everything falls into the $10 to $20 range, and Secor offers free gift-wrapping. Even in hard times, affordable presents will always find a market, she says.

“People are still buying gifts. I’m optimistic.”

—M.K.A.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Sizzlin Summer ’ Sunglas se Sale s

Eyewear

With A Flair

Thames Street

Fashion

Featuring Designs by:

Joseph Ribkoff Monica Ricci

eye candy opticianry, located on the Avenue in Hampden, offers

a large selection of artistically inspired and architecturally executed eyeglass frames for women and men. Prescription eyewear is filled with the most technologically advanced lenses and lens treatments housed in sophisticated and chic frames. These are not your grandmother’s glasses! Euro style with Baltimore charm. The collections include offerings from Theo of Belgium, Vanni of Italy, Markus-T of Germany and Kala of California, just to name a few. The shop is open Sun. 11-4, Mon. and Tues. 10-5, Wed. 10-6, Thurs. 12-7, Friday by appointment only.

900 W. 36th Street Cerrill Meister Baltimore, MD

eye candy

opticianry

410.889.0607

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900 W. 36th St. Baltimore, MD 21211 410.889.0607

Online

A journey to wholeness ...

For more information on these and other artists please visit my website

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Acorns

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Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 from 6-8 pm

Original fine art in 2 & 3-D media

the Sheridan Patterson Center executive Park West 3100 Lord Baltimore drive, Suite 203 Windsor Mill, Md 21244 (corner of Windsor Mill Rd.)

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urbanite august 09

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the goods

A Second Look

photo by Daniel Bedell

When C-Mart, the Baltimore County outpost of deeply discounted fashion and home goods, closed last year, much moaning was heard. Partially filling that void is Re Deux (5002 Lawndale Rd., in Wyndhurst Station; 410-323-2140), a high-end consignment store that opened in Roland Park in June. Co-owners Linda Eisenbrandt and Jan Braun found an audience for their shop right away. “When we started, we only rented the space for a month,” Braun says. “After a week, we asked about extending the lease.” Re Deux accepts clean and contemporary high-end clothing (those selling have the option of keeping the money or giving it to charity) and then sells it in the store. Everything at the shop is at least one third of its original retail price; many pieces cost even less. Among the store’s many racks of clothing can be found Burberry purses, Lilly Pulitzer dresses, and all the shoes, sunglasses, and accessories needed to make the outfit complete.

—C.S.

Glass Half Full

Here’s the innovative business strategy of neophyte wine-seller Dave Carney: no paid employees. “This is a 100-percent volunteer organization,” Carney says of the Wine Bin, located in a renovated firehouse in historic Ellicott City (8390 Main St.; 410-465-7802). A longtime wine collector but first-time retailer, Carney began the process of launching his “cool little wine store” with business partner Giuliana Cox before the economy tanked.

Luckily, friends stepped up to help the bottom line. A contractor buddy did the drywall, another hooked up the computer system, and more pals signed on to work the register in exchange for buying at wholesale prices. The Bin concentrates on small producers of “weird little wines,” Carney says, with a large selection of bottles for less than $20, along with such oenophile accessories as insulated wine carriers, stemware, and gourmet chocolates. An eccentric roster of microbrews and spirits dominates the rear of the store; soon to come are an artisanal cheese counter, a chilled cellar room, and a small gourmet market area. Despite the sluggish economy, Carney donates 5 percent of his Wednesday sales to area charities— more than $8,000 since opening in December 2008. “That’s actually paid off,” he insists.

“This is how you get entrenched in the community.”

photo by Valerie Paulsgrove

—D.D.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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See the complete line of B&W speakers at Gramophone home theater

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Coming This Fall “Celebrating All Things Beer In The Land of Pleasant Living”

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Kernan Hospital, 1913

The original orthopaedic and rehabilitation hospital.

Serving the Baltimore community for over 110 years.

At Kernan, our history of treating patients in the region runs deep. As Maryland’s original orthopaedic hospital and the largest rehabilitation facility in the region, Kernan offers total joint surgery, non-operative management of back pain, the latest minimally invasive techniques for shoulder surgery, integrative medicine, and leadership in sports medicine and pediatric orthopaedics. Our expert staff is trained to treat a full range of rehabilitative issues resulting from stroke, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries and neurological disorders. And now, nationally recognized radiologists also offer 21st century CT services on-site. With convenient locations throughout Baltimore County and minutes off the Beltway, it’s easy to access our state-of-the-art facilities and take advantage of the personal care provided by University of Maryland School of Medicine faculty and community physicians. To learn more, or to schedule an appointment, call 1-888-4KERNAN (453-7626).

Kernan Orthopaedics And Rehabilitation 2200 Kernan Drive, Baltimore

Kernan Physical Therapy 2200 Kernan Drive, Baltimore 3104 Lord Baltimore Drive, Woodlawn 1 Texas Station, Timonium

kernan.org

baltimore observed

a L s o i n B a Lt i M o r e o B s e r v e d : 33 Education: The University of Maryland’s X-rated dilemma

35 Encounter: Getting to the root of the natural hair movement

37 Appreciation: Remembering Leon Faruq

transForMer

Turning a Corner sometimes change starts with a hot cup of coffee

O

n a bright summer morning, business is brisk at Gerry’s Goods, a coffee shop in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown. A couple of middle-aged women order iced mochas. Three stoic young men buy muffins and AriZona iced tea. A young kid grabs bags of Munchos and Funyuns for his buddies from the shelves of snacks in the back of the store. With a stainless steel coffee grinder on the counter and a menu on the wall behind the baristas listing espressos, doppios, and Americanos, the sunny space looks a lot like any other coffee shop. But for proprietor Gerry Palmer and his business partner, Antoine Bennett, in this neighborhood, on this corner, it is much more than that. story And pHotogrApHs by Holden wArren

“I was once the drug dealer, the bad guy. I was making sure that I was the only one serving on the block,” says Gerry Palmer, owner of the Sandtown coffee shop Gerry’s Goods. “But I guess God had a plan to cut me off. All that came to a halt. Somehow he pulled me back, and now I’m serving another way. Every day I walk out that door, it’s not just coming here just to open up a store. It’s like this is what I have to do.” w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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“A few years ago, this corner was not a place you could sit and drink coffee,” says Antoine Bennett (lower right), rattling off a list of those killed or wounded in an ongoing street battle between rival cliques. Crime is still a part of life in the neighborhood, and unmarked police cars frequently prowl the streets. But since Gerry’s Goods opened, Bennett says, “knock on wood and thank God, we haven’t had any major issues with theft or robbery or anything like that. I feel like we are loved and protected by the people who live near our shop.”

Depending on who you talk to, Sandtown is either one of Baltimore’s greatest success stories or its most heartbreaking failure. In the 1990s, the neighborhood was the city’s poster child for urban renewal. With the enthusiastic support of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and more than $60 million in public and private dollars—much of it from developerphilanthropist James Rouse—the Enterprise Foundation, Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, and other organizations constructed close to a thousand new homes here. New Song Urban Ministries, a Christian nonprofit that is Sandtown’s largest and most active communitybased organization, built a $5 million school for neighborhood kids that opened in 1995.

But while the effort increased homeownership and improved education for neighborhood children, the redeveloped portions of Sandtown today remain an island in a sea of

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urbanite august 09

blight. Crime is still rampant, and the drug trade rules many streets. Most of the stores here—and there are only a handful—are run by outsiders who barricade themselves behind bulletproof Plexiglas.

Palmer and Bennett know their community’s troubles well. On June 6, 1989, on the corner where Gerry’s Goods now stands, Bennett, then 18, shot a man who threatened his friends. Bennett was a founding member of the CBS gang, named for the streets that made up the intersection its members vowed to defend: Calhoun, Baker, and Stricker. “I was the enforcer, quick to fight and stand up for my clique,” he says. A judge found him guilty of assault with intent to murder and sentenced him to ten years in prison. He was released after three years and five months.

Palmer once controlled the drug game on this block. He started hustling at the age of

18, to provide for himself and his two younger sisters. His father was dead of a drug overdose and his mother incarcerated. It was the early 1980s, and the crack cocaine epidemic was spreading through the streets of Baltimore.

For both men, transformation came hard. Bennett says it was prison that changed him. He earned his GED behind bars, and upon his release, he enrolled in a program that taught construction skills, later teaching others. Today, he is the co-director of New Song Urban Ministries, which acts as the umbrella for a job development and placement program called Eden Jobs, as well as Sandtown Habitat for Humanity, New Song Academy, and a substance abuse transitional facility called Martha’s Place (see Urbanite, July ’08). In March, Bennett received the Champion of Hope Award from YouthBuild USA, presented by Martin Luther King III.

baltimore observed

“I’ve had pigeons all my life. I think if I didn’t have them, I probably would have been on the streets earlier … selling drugs,” Palmer says. He claps to make the birds fly higher and whistles when it’s time for them to return to their backyard coop to feed. “I don’t know what I would do without ’em. You know, coming home from a hard day’s work, and couldn’t really get a grip on things, and then I come home to them. It’s just family, you know?”

For Palmer, the turning point came in his 20s, when the drug game became more violent and people he knew started dying.

His wife laid down an ultimatum: Either me or the streets. Palmer chose the girl, moved across town to East Baltimore, and got a job at a Safeway outside the city. “Do you have any idea what that was like, to go from running a corner to being the night porter, the low man, at a enormous supermarket where I was the only black person?” he asks. But he stuck with it. “After six years, some [of the other employees] still might not have liked me, but they all respected me.”

Today, Palmer is divorced and lives in a Habitat house down the street from Gerry’s Goods, which opened last New Year’s Eve. He got a crash course in coffee shop management from friends of New Song founder Alan Tibbels and a brief stint serving coffee

at Starbucks. New Song spent $275,000 to remodel the building and is providing two years of technical assistance, including a full-time business advisor during the first seven months.

While the business is not expected to turn a profit for nearly three years, Palmer says he wants to offer up not just steaming cups of coffee, but also inspiration. “My role is as a leader,” he says. “Hopefully one of the young guys here might look up to me and want to do the same thing in their community.”

Sandtown Habitat for Humanity also opened a ReStore last year, which sells donated building materials. In the future, with the right combination of time, resources, and people, New Song plans to incubate more businesses in its five other corner properties.

It is this patient, methodical, and homegrown approach to redevelopment that distinguishes

the current redevelopment efforts from those of previous decades, says Bennett’s co-director at New Song, Patty Prasada-Rao. “Jim Rouse thought when he came here [in the 1990s] that in ten years, this neighborhood would be turned around,” she says. “But it’s going to take at least a thirty-year commitment.”

“This is our community. This is what we do,” says Palmer. “When the sun go down and the people come out, we still here. You know?

This is our community.” ■ —Urbanite Senior Editor Greg Hanscom and Marc Steiner Show producer Justin Levy contributed to this report.

Web extra: Find an audio slideshow with more voices and images from Sandtown at www.urbanitebaltimore.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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She thinks it was something she ate. * * *

What she doesn’t know is that her symptoms are a result of Crohn’s disease. She doesn’t know her doctor is going to recommend the University of Maryland Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program, where our multidisciplinary team offers the latest therapies and most advanced treatments. She doesn’t know that the combined expertise of gastroenterologists, surgeons, radiologists and nurses, along with the right medications, will help give her the close management she needs to live a normal and productive life.

w e h e a l . w e t e a c h . w e d i s c o v e r. w e c a r e .

*

u m m . e d u / i b d | 8 0 0 - 49 2 - 5 5 3 8

*

illustration by Samuel Mattics

baltimore observed

Hot topic: Can the University of Maryland make a model pornography policy?

e d u c at i o n

Student Bodies In the first eight minutes of Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge, billed as the most expensive adult film ever made, there’s no nudity. There is a scantily clad bosom (belonging to star Jesse Jane), a ghostly pirate ship, and a battle between rival sailors over what looks like a big glowing marble, which is bloodily retrieved from the bowels of a priest.

Digital Playground, the company that produced Pirates II (and its 2005 predecessor, Pirates), claims that the $10 million flick—with its 80-foot pirate ship and elaborate Pirates of the Caribbean-style special effects—was meant to “break down popular notions of what adult movies are capable of.”

It’s an intriguing premise—but soon the sex begins, and it’s triple-X business-as-usual, albeit with better production values: lots of writhing, slapping, and moaning. In other words, it’s a lot like the furor that broke out over the proposed screening of the film at the University of Maryland, College Park, in April.

The Pirates showing was to be partered with a Planned Parenthood talk on safe sex.

Then Andy Harris, a Republican state senator representing Baltimore and Harford counties, got wind of the screening. “Porn isn’t fun; it’s poison,” he told lawmakers during a debate in the Maryland General Assembly. (Harris refused repeated interview requests.) In the ensuing hubbub—which took place, perhaps not coincidentally, near the end of the legislative session—lawmakers threatened to withdraw about $424 million in state funding from the public university. UM administrators pulled the screening, to the dismay of some students, faculty, and First Amendment advocates. Cecilia Rio, an economist in the women’s studies department at Towson University, believes the university failed to create an atmosphere of critical inquiry for its stu-

dents. “[College Park] could have used that as a teaching moment as opposed to censoring it,” she says.

Defiant UM students then held their own screening, this one with speeches from freespeech experts. Left in the Pirates wake was a dilemma for William “Brit” Kirwan, chancellor of the board of regents of the University System of Maryland, which oversees College Park and ten other public universities. In response to the screening, the General Assembly demanded that the University System create an official policy about showing pornographic materials on campus.

The problem is, the request is basically unprecedented. “We haven’t yet found an institution with a policy dealing explicitly with pornographic film,” says Kirwan, who was president of UMCP for ten years. “I’m very wary of any kind of restrictions on expression on a university campus. On the one hand, we want to be responsive to the request from the General Assembly, but we want to be very careful about not crossing the line.”

Assisting in the effort are several legal experts, including Robert O’Neil, the director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Virginia. “It’s an important issue in the relationship between free expression and policies of state colleges and state universities,” O’Neil says. So significant is the case that the Jefferson Center is helping out pro bono. “It goes well beyond the University of Maryland system. I hope we may be able to provide some guidance more broadly for public higher education.”

Supporting free speech and unbridled academic inquiry, even though it may be offensive, can be a challenge given the diversity of academic communities. Public universities enjoy the protections of the First Amendment (private universities may create their own policies), and, as O’Neil states in his 1997 book, Free Speech in the College Community, campuses have streadily become more sup-

portive of openness over the last century.

But debates regularly arise over “free speech zones” (designated areas to which political protests and potentially disruptive events are directed) and controversial speakers.

Collegians and administrators sometimes face off over student sexploits: Recent controversies have flared over Boston University’s student-run sex magazine, Boink, and Harvard undergrad Lena Chen’s candid blog, Sex and the Ivy, for example. But adult film screenings are common on American campuses. According to Digital Playground coowner Samantha Lewis, the Pirates films are college staples—some students hold “pirate parties,” where they dress up in buccaneer garb. Wesleyan University’s screenings of Pirates and Pirates II during WesFest, a fourday welcome for prospective freshman, has become an annual tradition, says Wesleyan student and “film hall” manager Rose Agger.

“Not only is it funny to screen a porno at college, but you get to see what the most expensive pornos ever made are like,” she says. “It’s kind of like a cultural experience.”

Whether students in the University of Maryland system will be able to partake in such cultural experiences won’t be decided until at least early 2010. Kirwan says he’s aiming to get a draft of the UM policy to the General Assembly before its next session starts in early January. The original deadline was September 1, but Kirwan says he felt that a thorough discussion of the policy that would involve students and faculty members couldn’t be properly undertaken before that time.

There are other challenges: For one, no legal definition of pornography exists, although the Supreme Court did set down a standard for obscenity in 1972. However, that definition rests on “community standards”— with “community” referring to a jury in a criminal court. How a community might be defined in the College Park case, or in other cases outside the courts, is uncharted territory. “The courts, interestingly, haven’t yet quite grappled with that issue. … [A criminal court] is really the only place we know how this process works,” O’Neil says.

It may not be possible to satisfy all or any of the parties involved, O’Neil concedes, but he hopes that the policy can at least be responsive to their concerns. “There ought to be some way in which you can accommodate those conflicting forces, consistent both with the First Amendment and with the ongoing needs of local government,” he says. “It’s a tall order, but we’ll do our best.” ■ —Marianne K. Amoss On the air: More on this story on WEAA’s Marc Steiner Show, 88.9 FM, on August 17. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Roots movement: Stylist Malaika Tamu-Cooper has put Baltimore on the natural hair care map.

encounter

Locked Up Walk into Malaika Tamu-Cooper’s hair salon in Gwynn Oak on a Saturday morning and the first thing you’ll notice is the dreadlocks. The thick, ropey strands of matted hair cascade down the shoulders of the hair stylists in deep auburn hues, some with blonde streaks, others with shocking cherry-red tips. They adorn the heads of clients sitting in the styling chairs. And under the hot dryers, a variety of freshly reshaped and re-twisted dreadlocks are held in place with metal clips while they dry and set. Tamu-Cooper herself has waistlength, licorice-black “locs”—a style that has grown, like her once-tiny basement business, into one of Baltimore’s signatures.

On this morning, Tamu-Cooper weaves adornment jewelry—tiny pieces of stone and wire that look like dangling earrings—into the sand-colored, floor-sweeping dreadlocks of longtime client JoAnn Cason. “Malaika understands natural hair better than anyone I know of,” Cason says.

Thanks in part to Tamu-Cooper and her shop, Dreadz n’ Headz Natural Hair Care Center, Baltimore has become a hotbed of the natural hair movement, which focuses on styles like dreadlocks, Afros, and braids that celebrate African Americans’ naturally curly hair and can be maintained with natural, chemical-free products. The dreadlock hairstyle has its origins in the Jamaican Rastafarian religious sect, whose members refuse to cut their hair as a way to remain “whole.”

But Tamu-Cooper feels dreadlock wearers have been stereotyped as disheveled and un-

clean. “There is a myth that because you have dreadlocks in your hair, you’re unacceptable for the conservative work world,” says TamuCooper, who says she once lost a major client as a corporate photographer because of the newly formed “baby locs” in her hair. “We’re myth busters. We have had over four thousand clients who have proven that when your hair is groomed, oiled, washed, and styled, it still looks professional and well-kept.”

Case in point: Cason, who has a Ph.D. in urban leadership and a high-paid job as the head of a charter school in Washington, D.C. To get a sense for what Tamu-Cooper does, take a deep breath inside her salon. The smells here are woodsy and earthy, with hints of jasmine and nag champa, an incense made from sandalwood. It is a far cry from the chemical scents that have saturated African American beauty salons since the early 1900s, when Madame C.J. Walker, an entrepreneur and daughter of slaves, revolutionized black hair care. The “Walker method” combined a heated metal “straightening comb” with “relaxer” chemicals. Early relaxers were derived from chemicals developed to straighten fabric under industrial sewing machines. (Many still contain lye, which can singe the scalp.) But for blacks trying to blend into a white world just a generation or two removed from slavery, they were a godsend.

The 1960s saw a backlash against what some argued were “white” standards of beauty. Black men and women began wearing their hair blown out in free-form halos— Afros—and experimenting with braided hairstyles from Africa. Such natural hairstyles became part of the uniform for many black artists, poets, and writers. But hair straighteners with names like Dark and Lovely and Dr. Miracles continued to roll off the supermarket shelves. It would take another generation for natural hair to go mainstream.

Ayana Byrd, co-author of the 2002 book Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, says natural hair styles gained popularity in the 1990s thanks to such superstars as Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Lauryn Hill and soul singers Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. “There was also a push for more honesty about hair,” she says, pointing to TV talk show host Tyra Banks and R&B singer Toni Braxton, who admitted to having hair weaves when they were still frowned upon. “I think that freed a lot more women up to try out various styles, to explore the texture that naturally grew out of their heads.”

Natural hairstyles have also been buoyed by the green lifestyle craze. “Women who once would have never thought about the ingredients in their shampoo now will pick up a brand like Aveda or Jane Carter because they know it works just as well and is natural,” Byrd says. “It speaks to a larger shift in our thinking about supporting efforts that

baltimore observed help the environment and the earth—and, by extension, ourselves.”

It was this green lifestyle, as well as a desire to reconnect with her African roots, that drew Tamu-Cooper into the field. She started working on natural hair in her rowhouse home in the Windsor Mill neighborhood when she could find no one else in the city who would maintain her own locs. In 1994, she renovated the first floor as a beauty salon, specializing in creating and maintaining dreadlocks, as well as braids and twists, and natural treatments for chemically treated hair. She later expanded into the basement, but in 2000, space constraints and complaints from neighbors about “Rastas” convinced her to move to a rugged commercial space, and Dreadz n’ Headz was born.

To find stylists, Tamu-Cooper had to look no further than the porches and stoops in her neighborhood, where African American girls braided each other’s hair. She taught them how to take care of hair in its natural state.

She gave them jobs. Then she taught entrepreneurial workshops to help them start their own businesses.

“The art that goes into styling natural hair is something that is passed down from generation to generation,” says Tamu-Cooper, whose mother, Shindana Cooper, is a traditional storyteller and oral historian.

Today, Tamu-Cooper also teaches summer workshops, each one booked solid with a long waiting list. She has been invited to give presentations and workshops on natural hair care from Atlanta to Paris. And in April, Tamu-Cooper hosted her sixth annual Baltimore Natural Hair Care Expo at the Pikesville Armory. The show featured stylists from around the world, a fashion show, musical entertainment, and hundreds of vendors selling products made from natural fibers or ingredients. Stylists in special booths took clients on the spot, turning dry, brittle hair into fresh, gleaming dreadlocks, as well as sky-high up-dos, healthy looking natural tresses, long braid styles, and coiffed, round Afros.

Tamu-Cooper says she has had numerous offers to move the expo to other cities, but she has refused. “For so long, we’ve seen black hair care magazines that talk about New York, Washington, D.C., even Philly.

Our city gets lost in the sauce,” she says. “I’ve made it my own mission to put Baltimore on the map.” ■ —AK Cabell

On the air: More on this story on WEAA’s Marc Steiner Show, 88.9 FM, on August 4. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Voice of change: Safe Streets director Leon Faruq on the march in McElderry Park in 2008

a p p r e c i at i o n

Peacemaker We old-school journalists like to think of ourselves as world wise and street smart. It’s like a cop walking a beat: Do it long enough, and you convince yourself that you really know your neighborhood and your neighbors. I thought I was that guy.

Leon Faruq showed me how far I still have to go. I’d driven through his adopted East Baltimore neighborhood of McElderry Park many times—it was less than a mile from my front door—but I understood it, and its denizens, about as well as a stone that skips a few times across a murky lake only to come to rest on a safe shore.

Faruq, who died on June 24 from a kidney ailment, was the site director for Safe Streets, an anti-violence program operated since 2007 by the Living Classrooms Foundation in partnership with the Baltimore City Health Department. Based on a Chicago program called CeaseFire, Safe Streets is an urban experiment, an academic exercise in outreach: Could ex-offenders—former gang members and drug dealers—be trained and employed as mediators and sent back into the streets they once prowled, this time to stop violence and shootings? (See Urbanite, May 2008.) According to an independent study from researcher Daniel Webster and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, Faruq’s neighborhood of McElderry Park went homicidefree during the first seventeen months of Safe

—Mat Edelson Leon Faruq was also a participant in the 2008 Urbanite Project: Read his entry at www. urbanitebaltimore.com/project/2008/teams/ team5/full.html.

Gold standard: The Herring Run Watershed Association’s year-old Watershed Center (see Urbanite, August 2008) is so green it’s gold. The U.S. Green Building Council, which doles out LEED (that’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) ratings, gave the building Baltimore’s fi rst LEED gold rating, the second-highest available. The center, a former bakery that now houses classrooms and HRWA offices, boasts a green roof and uses recycled rainwater in its bathrooms.

u p d at e

photo by Jefferson Steele

baltimore observed Streets implementation (statistically, four homicides were expected); 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed said they were less likely to support reaching for a gun to solve a problem. The program has since been expanded into other troubled neighborhoods, with a new office opening recently in Cherry Hill.

Faruq knew all the numbers. They were important, politically and financially, to the continuing survival of the program. But he also recognized their limits. Twenty-seven years in jail—the time he served for his involvement in a 1972 jailbreak in which an escapee died (a Prince George’s County circuit court later overturned his first-degree murder conviction and life sentence)—makes one take data with a large grain of salt.

What concerned Faruq most was the utter helplessness he had witnessed, both in jail and on the streets. His work drew media attention because it stopped triggers from being pulled, but to Faruq that was the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

He knew firsthand the effort it took to free the heart and mind from violence and find higher ground. During his incarceration, he earned three college degrees. Fostering selfworth through education was the only way, in Faruq’s mind, to break the cycle of selfdestruction.

To walk through the doors of Safe Street’s Monument Street offices was to be offered a safe haven, a place for learning and employment and basic human understanding. For the clients the program served and the outreach workers themselves—just about all of whom had done some jail time—Safe Streets and the man who led it represented the possibilities of personal transformation; they saw in Faruq the opportunity to become the same positive role model that he represented in their lives.

My sense was that Faruq believed that compassion and empathy transcended bitterness. I never sensed any anger in the man.

He was almost Mandela-like in his bearing; dignified, quiet, and thoughtful, he radiated the authenticity of a person who had been stripped bare of the denial in which so many of us cloak ourselves. What remained was an essence of humanity, a sense that witnessing suffering could lead to an overwhelming desire to find and implement solutions.

More than anything, Faruq helped others, including me, realize that his clients—people whom outsiders might have labelled thugs, or worse—were first and foremost men. And, like him, survivors. ■

Highway stars: In late June, members of a new coalition of sprawl-fi ghting nonprofi ts gathered at the “Highway to Nowhere”—that sunken stretch of Route 40 that embodies bonehead highway planning (see Urbanite, June 2009)—to announce a report from Smart Growth America that analyzed how states have been spending their stimulus dollars. The Transportation for Maryland coalition plans to monitor the state’s transportation planning and advocate spending on mass transit and existing infrastructure, not new roads. “We need to start moving away from the highway and bring in [other] transportation choices,” says Jennifer Bevan Dangel, deputy director of 1000 Friends of Maryland, a coalition member.

Other member groups include the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance and the Citizens Planning and Housing Association. So far, the report showed, Maryland earns high marks: 94 percent of the state’s stimulus dollars went to fixing existing roads and infrastructure (the national average is 63 percent).

Get smart: Imagine having a robot that tells you to do the laundry during off-peak hours, when power is cheap. In July, Baltimore Gas and Electric announced plans to spend $500 million to outfit two million homes and businesses with just such a gadget, called a “smart meter.” The devices allow you (and the power company) to track electricity use hourly so you can use less during peak hours (see Urbanite, August 2008). To start, you’ll get this information via the Internet or a monitor in the house, says Mark Case, BGE’s senior vice president of strategy and regulatory affairs. Down the road, the meters will work with “smart appliances” to manage tasks automatically. The company says the meters will save ratepayers $2.6 billion— and allow the grid to handle more renewable energy and charge electric cars at night, when power plants have nothing better to do. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Le arn t o L ive Gre e n

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For more information or to be part of the Maryland Green Home & Living Show, please contact Jane-Marie at 410-265-7400 or email jane-marie@homebuilders.org

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Words on Paper The Emerging Writers Issue

W

hat kind of idiot wants to be a writer? The publishing industry is in tatters, print is dead, and anything longer than 140 characters taxes the attention span. Right? And yet, more books were published last year than ever. Clearly, somebody is still reading the damn things.

And writing them: College and university writing programs are full, and there are more of them than ever—some 822 degree-granting creative writing programs for undergraduates and grad students clutter the curricula of American schools, according the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which supports and monitors the higher-ed lit farms. (In 1975, there were seventy-nine.) More than fourteen thousand students are currently workshopping and sitting through each others’ readings, dreaming of their own enshrinement in the canon, or just a sweet screenplay deal that will let them pay off their student loan.

For Urbanite’s fourth summertime tip o’ the hat to the not-deadyet art of putting words together, we dipped into this deep pool of emerging talent and asked local collegians to contribute their best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We received 174 submissions, a pile of writerly ambition that was ably tackled by editorial intern Cara Selick (herself, appropriately enough, a toiler in a well-known local university writing program) and Managing Editor Marianne Amoss. We could select only a small handful for print publication; look online at www. urbanitebaltimore.com for more.

To open the package, we also asked the husband-and-wife writer/ illustrator duo Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr to create a story about storytelling. Matt and Robbi, who teach at Washington College in Chestertown, are the proprietors of a small press called Idiots’ Books, which has produced a series of elegant, whimsical volumes of what they call “satirical illustrated books for adults.” Matt writes; Robbi draws the pictures. Their work frequently challenges the boundaries of linear storytelling. Their Ten Thousand Stories, for example, is just that: Each page of the illustrated book is divided into four interlocking flaps, so that the reader can assemble umpteen variations. Lately, the couple has been experimenting with what they call “One-Page Wonders”—circular confections of words and images whose elements can be cut, folded, and manipulated by enterprising readers. Get your scissors out: The story on the opposite page should be physically removed from the magazine and folded according to the instructions provided. (For tips, check out an instructional video online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com.)

After the Idiots submitted their yarn, Urbanite Editor David Dudley talked with Matt and Robbi about finding new ways to tell stories and the trials of the literary life.

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Q: Where did you get the idea of creating a story from a foldable piece of paper that the reader has to cut up and reassemble?

Matt: We actually took the original template for this from a Cracker Jack prize. It was a picture of a young George Washington and an old George Washington, and it’s exactly like ours, with the cuts and the folds. We said, “That could be made a lot more interesting.” This was three years ago. I’ve had it in my wallet since then. I thought that when the right project comes along, I’ll pull it out. We can’t take credit for the paper-folding concept either—that’s an old trick that people use to make a four-spread book out of a single piece of paper. So we’re introducing complexity into old conventions and pushing the idea of what it means to read by forcing people to make and then engage with the story actively. The combinations of words and images they end up with are beyond the power of the author or the illustrator to imagine. So there’s a degree of authorship in the act of working with the thing.

Q: Back when the Internet was fairly young, there was a lot of hype

about “hypertext” novels, with the idea that reading fiction would turn into an interactive experience, with readers clicking and opening up millions of various story options. But hypertext fiction hasn’t exactly taken off. Do readers really want that level of authorship?

Robbi: I do think most people aren’t willing to work that hard as readers—they just want to know what happens. We’ve been conditioned that reading is an absorbative process. In our books, we do leave a lot of space for the reader to figure out a lot of stuff. Not that we’re trying to re-school people on how to read or anything, but we are interested in engaging the reader in ways that they aren’t typically actively engaged.

Q: Your story circles, of course, also have no beginning, middle, or

end. The three protagonists in this One-Page Wonder just endure an endless cycle of changing fortune—which is fairly true to the life of a writer.

Matt: I think that every piece we do can be fairly described as satire or commentary. And, in general, we try to do it with a degree of benevolence and kindness. We’re hard on our subjects, but we’re not cruel to them. At the same time that we are satirizing the emerging writer here, we’re absolutely pointing the lens at ourselves and our own travails.

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ONE-PAGE WONDERS STORY CIRCLES:

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The Plight of the Emerging Writer

There are dozens of stories hidden in this piece of paper. Follow the instructions to create an unruly recombinable folding thing. The more carefully you cut, fold, etc., the better it will work. (Use an X-Acto knife or scissors.)

Don’t like diagrams? Go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com to watch a short video that shows you how it works.

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Idiots’Books

JustIdiots’Books a Couple of Idiots Writer Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr are the creative force behind Idiots’ Books, a (very) small press imagined in Baltimore and now thriving on the Eastern Shore. Idiots’ Books publishes odd little illustrated volumes that are distributed through a mostly-monthly subscription service Idiots’Books and range across subjects from Richard Nixon to donkey slaughter, French colonialism to self-loathing, and funnel cakes to traffic theory. Usually funny, often irreverent, the books pose questions and ask the reader to fill in the blanks—or to cut, fold, and tinker with pieces of paper, as the case may be.

The Idiots cut their graphic design teeth at Baltimore’s North Charles Street Design Organization, where Swanson works as director of special projects.

More of their work can be found at www.idiotsbooks.com.

We’re guilty of all of the crimes that we have accused these three of committing.

Q: So are you really working on your own ferret-wizard project?

Matt: I met with an agent in New York a couple of months ago

the grid. This myth of just sitting in your apartment and creating art and having it become your career might work for a few really lucky people, but in general making art is kind of a deliberate byproduct of a life plan that includes some other things that you have to do along the way. Hopefully, they are things that you enjoy and have relevance.

who wants me to create something marketable, so I’m working on a book about a space man fighting a nervous monster, which has some integrity and will certainly be nicely illustrated by Robbi, but which is being written with a slightly more commercial context. I’m going to try and give her something we can live with that she can also sell.

Q: As people who hope to make a living off readers and reading, do

Q: When you’re teaching student writers, do you give them the

selecting, so our students are avid readers. I think we’re also benefiting from the fact that we have pictures with our words. That’s a big trend now for the younger readers.

brutal truth about their dim prospects for actually making a living with this skill? How do you prepare young people for a career in this business?

Matt: Our bottom line is to try to teach them to be thinking people. Even though we are helping them with their craft, we care far more about the evolution of thought and the development of concept and the ability to draft an idea and articulate it. That is paramount to us.

Robbi: For the writing to work, it’s not just about spinning an interesting narrative; it’s about getting an idea across in a thoughtful way. In terms of preparing them to be writers, mostly we just tell them it’s work. No matter what you do, if you’re going to be successful at it, you have to work. If you’re not willing to just do the hard work, it’s not going to happen.

Matt: We also tell them that both of us had to spend a decade

Robbi: The trick is that the classes that we teach are sort of self-

Matt: They’re much more interested in Neil Gaiman [author of the cult comic book series The Sandman] than they are in John Updike.

Robbi: Some haven’t even heard of Updike.

Matt: It’s disconcerting to us how much they love The Sandman.

The other thing I’d say is that we can’t predict who our audience is.

Because our books have pictures, people say, “Oh, it’s a children’s book.” We suffer from genrelessness. We don’t even really tell stories so much as we advance ideas or stimulate questions. If we tell a story with one of our books, it’s kind of accidental. Nobody really knows what to call us or where to put us. And this interactive stuff we’re doing now is further compounding things. I kind of like that, from a standpoint of art. But it’s frustrating from a commercial standpoint. ■ Web extra: Watch an instructional video demonstrating how to properly assemble your One-Page Wonder at urbanitebaltimore.com.

courtesy of Matt Swanson

mucking through the professional world while developing other skills and creating salaries for ourselves so that we could go off

you fret about the future of the publishing industry? Do you think your students today will grow up to read and buy books?

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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UP C O M IN G EV EN TS

Lancaster City’s 12th Annual Car and Cycle Show Entertainment, Food and Wheels September 13th, 11am – 3pm

October 17 and 18 Saturday 10 – 5, Sunday 12 – 5

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C h a r l e s

Ta l k o f f

First he became a doctor to please his father who was a doctor and he did it even though he hated being a doctor and being a doctor made his stomach hurt so badly he had to go see another doctor to get a diagnosis about what was making his stomach hurt and then he married a girl who was the right faith to please his father who didn’t give a damn about faith but talked in a way that made his son feel as if he did and he was married in a kind of traditional ceremony and the party was nice enough and then after a while they got a divorce and even before that he had started up with the girl who would become his trophy wife and she was really like a piece of white bread and they had a terrible time getting pregnant and then when they did they had twins and they gave them wonderfully generic names that sounded like they were characters in a soap opera Alex this and Britney that and they lived in a big house across the bay and he had an office in Little Vienna with all of the other psychologists and then his wife was diagnosed with lupus and the last time we ever spoke I asked about her and he smiled and said she was fine and he didn’t know that I knew but it was a small city and the girl I was with then knew a woman who knew him and his wife and that last time I spoke with him I watched him fixing a nonexistent crease in his tie and he pulled the knot tight to his throat and his eyes got a little big and his face went a little red the knot brightly red and then he put his hands down and looked at himself in the mirror and said softly that’s just perfect.

Charles Talkoff is a December 2008 graduate of the Johns Hopkins Master of Arts in Writing program. His work has appeared in JMWW, Undergroundvoices.com, the Midway Journal, and Realitystudio.com. He lives in Baltimore and is writing a collection of short stories.

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illustration by Okan Arabacioglu

Steak, Peas, Potatoes, Ritalin b y

B

A b i g a i l

randi shoved herself through the riptide of students in the corridor, extending a jazz hand toward me. I glanced away, pretending not to notice her sprawled fingers in my face. “Oh my God,” she said as she squeezed her large frame between me and a trophy case. “I just got my algebra test back from Mr. S. He’s so copious.”

I didn’t know what “copious” meant so I shrugged, yanked on a strand of hair.

“What’s wrong, Abby? Didn’t you take your medicine today?”

Brandi bowed to meet my hair-curtained eyes. Her breath reeked of Doritos. Her teeth were orange. She was a foul cheese-breathing dragon.

“It’s not even lunchtime,” I replied, “but judging from the smell of your breath, I’m guessing you couldn’t wait to eat.”

The aftertaste of old watermelon gum lingered in my mouth.

Brandi’s face 2 inches away made me nauseous. I gagged. The flat flavor of long-chewed gum and the Doritos smell was a gross concoction; it reminded me of the disgusting way my dad mixed potatoes with peas and gravy and steak onto one forkload. I couldn’t fathom that some people considered mixing food scrumptious.

You’d never catch me forking a wad of gum and a Dorito chip into my watering mouth, “ooh”ing and “aah”ing at the flavor, exalting on behalf of my delighted taste buds.

I pleaded for her to back up.

Brandi ignored me and waved sheets of stapled paper in my face. “Can you believe I got a C-minus on the algebra test?” Her jazz hands were in full effect. She was preaching to the ceiling tiles. “And, unlike you, I don’t even take medicine to concentrate!”

A few students turned around and giggled. I could’ve sworn one girl pointed in the general direction of my brain. I growled. “I did worse,” I said, “because I hate math, Brandi. Medication has nothing to do with it.” I toyed with the padlock that hung heavily from my belt loop. I thought it looked cool—like I not only owned my locker, I wore my locker. A foot away, inside my locker, were papers chest-high with red Ds and D-minuses scrawled urgently upon them. I hadn’t flunked anything yet. And I didn’t care if my fellow students rummaged through my accessible locker because the bad grades were all they’d find. And gum wrappers.

“It does matter, Abby. Math is one of your learning disabilities.”

Brandi knew this because we went to the same psychiatrist.

Apparently, we had appointments back-to-back. More than twice I’d seen her waddling up Dr. Darr’s stairs on Saturday mornings, talking to herself, rehearsing some soliloquy I imagined to be about algebra and potato chips as I hightailed my way to my mom’s car. One afternoon at school, she followed me into a bathroom. She asked

H i g g s

why I was seeing Dr. Darr. Over my streaming urine, I’d shouted, “Because I have attention deficit hyperactive disorder!” After exiting the bathroom stall, I asked her why she went to see Dr. Darr, thinking that, maybe, we were having a “moment,” a nice girl-to-girl chat about psychiatry. At the sink, she leaned over my shoulder, caught my frightened gaze in the mirror and whispered, “Why, that’s none of your business, Abby.”

Brandi and I didn’t get along, but we loved to disagree. For example, in English class I’d raise my hand to answer a question, saying something like: “Well, I think so-and-so should have done blah blah blah,” and, suddenly inspired, Brandi’s big ol’ jazz hand would shoot into the air like a missile, ready to fire off zinging retorts.

She’d say, “Well, I think so-and-so couldn’t have done blah blah blah.”

Then we’d level glares, acknowledging the battle between us. What Brandi found particularly threatening about me, I don’t know. But I figured Brandi said tomato and I said to-mah-to. Brandi probably forked her tomatoes with steak and potatoes and Doritos.

In the corridor, I looked Brandi up and down. Her hands were sprawled at her hips; her big brown eyes bounced beneath her thick glasses. When she rummaged in her backpack for a candy bar, I felt sorry for her. But only for a moment.

“Brandi,” I said, calmly. “Please shut up about my medication.”

Before she could snap back at me, I jumped into the tidal wave of students, the din of slamming lockers, and, flicking my bangs back, I walked off.

Brandi’s fascination with my learning disabilities and my ADHD wasn’t an uncommon experience for me. Sunny Hill Middle School was an “academy” for the “gifted and talented.” I figured I met a quota. One mentally challenged student per thirty geniuses.

It made perfect sense. And most of the students knew about my ADHD because word spread fast. After I’d told Brandi, the other students knew within a week. In order to be recognized as an actual school, Sunny Hill had to enroll a certain number of students. There were about sixty of us in all. I was in the seventh grade. That meant there were, I think, about four or five other mentally challenged kids. Or three. Or nine.

My brother, Zach, was admitted to Sunny Hill before me. He was a year younger and had a knack for mechanical things, science and math. I’d attended the sixth grade in a public middle school where I stole Jolly Ranchers from a nearby gas station and called my English teacher, Mr. Woo, a bitch. My parents wanted me to get continued on page 79 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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801 Key Highway • Baltimore, MD • 21230 • thepearlspa.com • 443.692.1191

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Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica b y

K e v i n

1

K r A u s e

The mysterious extinction was complete when the tree fell on the goat.

They would not rest at that.

They sampled cells before she passed, preserved in vials her gift for future advancements, brought forth progenitor, nine years long dead, suckling sweet air of life, held their breath seven minutes as the kid gasped and hacked to God, to Christ, and then an entire species suffocated on some laboratory table.

A failed experiment to be dissected and analyzed by men in white coats, learned doctors, and academics who sit in conference rooms, or at dinner parties and scratch their heads.

1 ScientiďŹ c name for the Pyrenean Ibex, a subspecies of Spanish Ibex that went extinct for unknown reasons in 2000. Using preserved tissue samples from the last living member of the species, a cloning project was undertaken and produced a living specimen in 2009 that died shortly after birth due to complications caused by defects in the animal’s lungs.

Kevin Krause, a Baltimore native, recently graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with a degree in English.

Currently weathering the turbulent job market, he plans to pursue graduate studies in creative writing at some point in the near future.

deanna staffo

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from Baltimore Rhapsody m i r a n d a

R o s e

ha l l

Warren Linn

b y

Miranda Rose Hall is a rising junior at Georgetown University studying theater, English, and French. She works as a performer, playwright, poet, and director at Georgetown and as a critic for the D.C. theater scene. In May the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded her one-act play Witness first place in dramatic writing as part of the Larry Neal Writers’ Awards. Hall grew up in Reservoir Hill and is a graduate of the Bryn Mawr School.

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The stage is simple: There are six black metal folding chairs. One by one, the six characters deliver monologues while the others reassemble the chairs around the speaker.

There will be projections of the city—maps, photographs, etc.— on a screen or blank white wall behind the chairs.

The audience takes their seats as the song “Sail Away” by Randy Newman plays.

The actors enter via the aisles during the song.

William, 42, a recent veteran of the Iraq War, delivers the following monologue. He has lost civilian jobs twice from disability and is now homeless.

William sits on two chairs, as if on a bench. As he speaks, members of the company drape clothes on him—coats, blankets, a hat—as if they are awarding him medals for his service in the war. By the end of his monologue, it appears as if he is wearing everything he owns. On the screen we see images of Baltimore’s war memorials.

William: When you asked me to go, I told you I would and together we hoped for an easy return.

Persist, we whispered, survive, recount.

And truly my city I believed that we would.

At night, in dreams I reached for you city like a child towards water like roots towards darkness like handcuffed wrists laced around bone.

I wailed your name city in fire in English in Arabic city and brick and sand.

But when moons rested high on your temples my city did you think of me then far off in my fears?

My left ear spits the dust of Fallujah my toes sink blindly like bullets in mud.

I am one man of hundreds shuffling through you half-returned searching for your Iraq.

But your war lives

Your war is a name in rows my city in walls in statues your war is stone.

But surrounding me here are bodies in rags, huddled silent trapped in neglect.

We thicken with wind oh city my city like mucus thickens in a dying man’s lungs.

City I have asked you to come to me— sit with me soothe me claim what I bring you.

Grant me city a room for my memory (one chair some music a small wooden table) where you will instruct me as you’ve instructed yourself slowly indifferently how to forget.

in marble, in placards.

It is basement encampments and a memory of lye.

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Artist Showcase Maritime Artist Patrick O’Brien

UNIQUE

by DESIGN Marketing plays a critical role.

It drives growth through communication of targeted information, helping us make informed decisions. Contact us so we can begin to create custom-fit solutions for your next project, campaign or marketing initiative.

410.366.0505 • www.mjachdesigns.com • 3000 Chestnut Avenue, Suite 111 • Baltimore, Maryland 21211

When: September 1, 2009 Time: 6pm - 8pm Where: Tide Point at the offices of Ayers/Saint/Gross Architects 1040 Hull Street (Joy Building) Baltimore, MD 21230 Cost: Free (space is limited) RSVP: http://patrickobrien.eventbrite.com Personally meet the artist after the presentation aboard the Maryland Independence Yacht, which will be docked at Tide Point.

Additional Sponsors

www.nlgroup.com/events.htm

Rams Head Live

20 Market Place, Power Plant Live!

Baltimore, Maryland

6:30pm to Midnight

The evening includes:

Open premium bar, Dinner, Music, Dancing and Auctions

Band includes artists from:

Night Ranger, Billy Joel, KISS, .38 Special, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Saturday Night Live Band, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes *Artists subject to change depending on tour schedule

For tickets call 443-568-0064 or visit www.CaseyCaresFoundation.org

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from Homepages, 1–5 b y

j e n n y

o ’ g r a d y

<html>

<head><title>3: Martha & Bill’s Baby Scrapbook</title></head>

<body style="crisp edges, feathered black ink">

<p>Baby Comes Home

<img src="mart_new_mom.jpg"

ALT="image not found">

<p>Baby’s First Tooth

<img src="joey_cuts_tooth.jpg"

ALT="image not found">

<p>Baby’s First Haircut

<img src="joey_braveface.jpg"

ALT="image not found">

<p>Baby’s First Steps

<img src="joey_big_boy.jpg">

ALT="image not found">

<a href="http://www.gazette.com/obits/joey-hall.html"> empty</a>

</body>

</html>

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Hamilton Lauraville Keepin’ It Real On The East Side!

The Chameleon 8 DIFFERENT SAUCES RIBS, CHICKEN, BRISKET PORK, BURGERS

Jewelry for home and body....

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Handcrafted with gemstones, vintage glass, sterling silver & gold

Open Tuesday thru Sunday

Mention this ad for 15% off your purchase of $50 or more!

Fresh, locally roasted coffee, loose leaf teas and brewing accessories.

4337C Harford Road • Baltimore, MD 21214 (above Red Canoe) 443.226.5871

3003 Montebello Terrace Baltimore, MD 21214 443-992-4388

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Yarn is hot!

Work those summer projects with Spinster Yarns & Fiber Yarns!

The Little Yellow Brick House at: 5713 Harford Rd. • 410.444.6422

An eco-friendly yarn and spinning shop located in Lauraville

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CATERING NOW AVAILABLE WWW.BIGBADWOLFBARBEQUE.COM

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Double your eating pleasure!

Visit our newly expanded restaurant

We change our dinner menu daily, make our own charcuterie and, in general, offer fabulous food for not so much dinero.

Wed-Thurs ~ 11am - 9pm Fri-Sat ~ 8:30am - 10pm Sun ~ 8:30am - 9pm 5402 Harford Road ~ 410.444.1497

www.bmoreclementine.com

Keep your business on course through tough economic times ENHANCE your management skills, GROW your company’s value and RENEW your entrepreneurial spirit!

Registration is now open for EDC’s high-impact fall program for Maryland entrepreneurs and business owners.  Program includes six educational seminars led by noted business experts . . . plus two business networking events  Once-a-month sessions run September 2009 through May 2010  Center conveniently located at Dorsey Station in easy-to-reach Howard County Learn more and register today.

Visit umuc.edu/edc or call 443-459-3500 EDC and UMUC partner with these leading local business organizations.

BALTIMORE gbc GREATER C O M M I T T E E

Berman Goldman & Ribakow LLP Certified Public Accountants

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Business Consultants

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1 u09-MDOP-081_UrbaniteEDCAd_F2.indd rbanite august 09

GREATER BA LT I M O R E COMMITTEE

5/4/09 10:14:25 AM

<html>

<head><title>5: Dinner</title></head>

<body>

<table bgcolor="burgundy chenille, fringe" width=" crevasse">

<tr>

<td align=left>Martha

</br></br>

</br></br>

<img src="fork_mouth_fork.jpg" ALT="">

</br></br>

</br></br>

</td>

<td>candlesticks, silver, wedding gift from materna

l parents; peas, withered, in silver serviette with ma

tching engraved serving spoon; steak, desiccated,

topped with grated yellow cheese (Bill will like); ma

shed potatoes in good china with hand-painted lov

ebirds; flames, cold and straight; Waterford, pinot, b

lack and heavy

</td>

<td align=right>Bill

</br></br>

</br></br>

<img src="fork_mouth_fork.jpg" ALT="">

</br></br>

</br></br>

</td>

</table>

</body>

</html>

These two poems are part of a five-part series called Homepages, 1–5, all of which were written in a variation of HTML code and focus on the lives of Martha and Bill Hall, whose marriage has been strained by the loss of their baby, Joey. Author Jenny O’Grady is director of alumni and development communications at University of Maryland, Baltimore County; she graduated from the University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program in 2006. You can see more of her work at www.kineticprose.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Complete RAVENS Coverage —

every Sunday — at 11:30 a.m.

BALTIMORE SPORTS. PERIOD. PressBoxOnline.com

Teavolve Cafe & Lounge Harbor East 1401 Aliceanna St. 410.522.1907

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Brunch.

Fun drinks, alcoholic and non Cool music

WHERE EVOLUTION IS HAPPENING

TEAVOLVE.COM Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/teavolve

STEINER’S

BACK

Two full hours of the Marc Steiner show Monday-Thursday, 5-7 pm Join the conversation at www.steinershow.org 56

urbanite august 09

61 Reviewed

Miss Shirley’s and Joss Café and Sushi Bar

eat/dr ink

63 Wine & Spirits There’s something in the cellar

65

The Feed This month in eating

Goddess Complex When salad was scary

When my seventh grade classmates and I learned about Newton and his apple in Mr. Bowen’s science class, my first thought was, What the hell took him so long? That’s what made him finally feel the Earth’s gravity? Hadn’t the guy ever been a 12-year-old? by andrew reiner

p h o t o g r a p h y b y s t e v e b u c ha n a n

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Line-caught bluefin tuna with roasted beet infusion and an herb bouquet

chefsexpressions.com 410-561-CHEF

58

urbanite august 09

fashionable catered events

guy behind the counter directed me to the salad bar. I looked around to make sure that no one noticed me, then flung raw onions onto my hamburger wrapper. I put them on my burger back at the table and bit into it. The taste was a revelation: I had never experienced onions like this before. They were sliced so fine they draped over the hamburger like a silk scarf, and they tasted sweeter than ketchup.

Months later, when I grew used to the salad bar’s presence (ferns breed familiarity), I screwed up my courage and actually ordered a salad. Handed a rectangular Styrofoam plate, I approached the bar and furtively filled my platter with green and white iceberg lettuce, wedges of tomato, and medallions of cucumber. Sweat formed on my brow.

“Try the Green Goddess dressing,” said a voice from behind me. “It’s to die for.” As I turned around, I noticed a smiling, mousylooking Pot employee adding condiments to the bar.

I never would have gone for Green Goddess dressing. For one thing, it looked like Martian vomit—lime green and speckled with parsley. A mainstay of 1970s salad bars, Green Goddess was created at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 1923 as a tribute to actor George Arliss, star of the eponymous play. In its original form, its major ingredients included tarragon and anchovies—hardly likely to appeal to a 12-year-old’s palate. Then there was the matter of its texture—creamy, the same mayonnaise-y milkiness that dripped down Goldstein’s fingers. But in those days before the Ranch Revolution, the bottled Seven Seas Green Goddess version was among the most popular dressings in the grocery store.

I obeyed the command and ladled the Green Goddess onto my salad as my head throbbed with heat. Back at the table, I nervously poked around the curved white lettuce leaves that bowed outwards like tulip petals.

Then I stuffed them into my mouth, hoping to finish in case someone from school appeared. Time slowed down, and in between throbs I grew aware of the power of thresholds: The piquancy of this garlicky dressing propelled me way beyond the vapid Kraft Italian and Catalina that I was used to. I knew they would never taste the same again.

Sweat trickled down my face with every plastic forkful. “Jesus, are there hot tamales in that salad?” my father asked. I couldn’t explain my reaction. I only knew that the mousy Pot employee was right: As I ate that Green Goddess and freed myself from the laws of Newton and my school cafeteria, part of me was dying, and part of me was busy being born. ■ —Andrew Reiner wrote about the joy of melancholy in the May 2009 Urbanite.

photo by Lisa Van Horn

Everywhere I walked, I felt apples raining down. I stood 4-foot-nothing yet slogged around size 8-and-a-half feet, as big as muskmelons, for nearly two years. Luckily, my feet didn’t draw ridicule because every guy I knew, myself included, obsessed over bigger apples, namely the fear of being gay. I was reminded of this during lunch in the school cafeteria, where a chubby kid named Eric suffered through a day in, day out ritual. Everyone, girls included, questioned the masculinity of Piggy, as he was known. As in Lord of the Flies Piggy. Eric earned his pariah status because of the way he walked (a slight sway) and spoke (an elocution teacher’s dream). His lunch didn’t help either: Out of his brown bag he produced tins of Alouette cheese that he spread on whole-wheat crackers, vegetables with Knorr onion dip, and, the pièce de résistance, Waldorf salad.

I was something of a salad fan myself at the time, blithely plucking iceberg lettuce from the Lucite bowl my mother served at the dinner table every evening. The 1970s were ground zero for such health-food fare as granola and The Moosewood Cookbook, and, accordingly, a proliferation of exotic salad dressings filled American supermarket shelves. Most of all, I loved the way salad left me feeling afterwards—slightly full with healthy roughage, yet light enough to head back out for an evening game of Wiffleball.

My commitment to flora-based eating sagged, however, once I witnessed Eric’s weekly hazing, and the concentric circles of contempt and loathing that rippled out from it. One day a kid named Goldstein snagged Eric’s salad and ran through the cafeteria with the Tupperware bowl aloft, his fingers milky with mayonnaise, bellowing, “Look at Piggy’s homo trough!” This spectacle was all I needed to curb my own salad intake.

That year, my father started taking me to a new burger joint. He had a soft spot for any place that reminded him of his beloved White Castle, a chain he patronized as a boy in Depression-era New Jersey whose customers and employees looked as if they stepped out of a Reginald Marsh painting. Seeking places with a similarly bedraggled persona, he found the White Coffee Pot Jr., a small fast-food chain spun off from Baltimore’s White Coffee Pot Family Inns. “The Pot,” as my father called it, had few distinguishing features or personality.

It did have, however, one thing that the other burger places we frequented didn’t: a salad bar.

At first, I didn’t know how to handle the long wooden aisle adorned with hanging ferns. It commandeered the dining room like the proverbial elephant in the room. I ate my hamburgers and fries, looking everywhere but at the salad bar, the way that I showered after gym class, with my eyes averted. One day I asked for onions for my hamburger, and the

recipe

eat/drink

Grilled Salmon Salad with Green Goddess Dressing 2–3 servings Keep your flatiron steak salads: Real men don’t need to testosterone up their greens. Hearthealthy salmon, on the other hand, speaks to an evolving masculinity in the 21st century. ½ lb. fillet of wild salmon 1 medium head of Romaine lettuce Handful of capers 2 ears of sweet corn, cooked and shucked 1 red onion 1 cucumber 1 tomato Balsamic Vinaigrette ½ cup olive oil ½ cup balsamic vinegar Pinch of sugar (if not using high-quality balsamic vinegar) Pinch of salt Broil or grill salmon until cooked and cool for at least 15 minutes. While salmon is cooking, prepare Green Goddess dressing (below).

Dice onion, cucumber, tomato. Add corn to the mixture. Mix balsamic vinaigrette ingredients in a bowl and dress diced vegetables. (This salad tastes better if refrigerated overnight.) Tear washed lettuce into serving-size pieces and put into large bowl. Add capers and Green Goddess dressing and toss thoroughly. Flake salmon over the greens and top with marinated summer salad.

—A.R.

Green Goddess Dressing 1 cup parsley 1 clove garlic, crushed 1 scallion, cut into 1-inch pieces 2 tbs. tarragon vinegar 1 tsp. Dijon mustard 1 tsp. anchovy paste (or more, if desired) 1 cup mayonnaise 1 cup sour cream In a food processor or blender, combine parsley, garlic, scallion, vinegar, mustard, and anchovy paste until vegetables are minced. Add mayonnaise and sour cream and blend well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight to develop flavors.

Use within five to seven days.

—Adapted from Endangered Recipes by Lari Robling (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009) w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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SIMPLY FRESH!

THANK YOU. Art on Purpose wishes to express our

deepest gratitude to all who made our 2008-2009 season the success it was:

The new way to do Italian

Our Funders Our Volunteers Our Partners Our Participants Our Audience Our Friends

Introducing “Piatti Piccoli”: Italian Small Plates

What a Year! We look forward to your joining us again in 2009-2010 in another rollicking set of activities...

Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner • Now Serving Sunday Brunch Waterside of the Pier 5 Hotel 711 Eastern Avenue • Downtown Baltimore • 410-528-7772 Vegetarian and vegan friendly • Organic, fresh, health conscious restaurant

www.artonpurpose.org

reasons to try us out

pizzazztuscangrille.com 1 Contemporary, Luxurious Atmosphere 2 Southern Fusion cuisine 3 Braised Beef Short Ribs 4 Georgia Fried Catfish 5 Chicken & Waffles 6 Baked Macaroni & Cheese 7 Only 3 Blocks From the Inner Harbor 8 Sweet Potato Pie 9 Grand Marnier Cheese Cake 10 Signature Cocktails & Martinis

Dinner Tuesday - Saturday 5pm - 1 1pm Happy Hour Tuesday - Friday 5pm - 7pm Late Night Menu Available 10 South Calvert Street Baltimore Maryland 21202 60

urbanite august 09

www.brasserie10south.com 410.528.8994

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Miss Shirley’s

Tower of power: Crab and fried-green-tomato eggs Benedict at Miss Shirley’s

It makes sense that Miss Shirley’s, known both for its spare-no-cholesterol brunch and weekday power-lunch scene, would find a niche downtown. The Roland Park restaurant’s formula of localized updates on Southern classics seems like a good fit on Pratt Street. Tucked into the corner of the Constellation Energy building near President Street, the new space is a worthy alternative to such expense-account venues as the nearby Capital Grille. Inside, you’ll find the same purple and orange jacquard booths and cherry veneer as the uptown original.

The breakfast-and-lunch-only menu (with a selection of decadent cocktails—a sweet mint julep stuffed with fresh mint leaves, a crabmeat-topped Bloody Mary) has likewise made the journey without many changes. Don’t expect simplicity or restraint: It’s sad to order a plain bagel only to see a plate of thick pancakes laced with raspberries and white chocolate sail past. Omelets are stuffed with brie, lump crabmeat, asparagus, and artichoke hearts; a cheddar-andonion waffle is piled with fried chicken and drenched in honey-mustard aioli. In true

Southern style, Miss Shirley knows her way around a deep fryer. Crispy cornmeal, sweet and subtly spiked, encrusts fried green tomatoes as well as soft-shell crab, the creature sprawling magisterially atop the “Born on the Bay-O” salad of wild greens with roasted corn kernels and chunks of bacon. Sandwiches likewise defy simplicity. A BLT adds chicken and avocado to the trio, grilled cheese comes with lobster, and a mega-caloric riff on the Monte Cristo layers crabmeat, ham, and Swiss cheese between slices of French toast, which are then deep-fried and paired with honey-mustard aioli for dipping. Heart attacks optional.

Efforts to defy this celebration of excess are only minimally rewarded—even a simple grapefruit half is crowned with caramelized sugar. Dessert options, however, are slim, perhaps due to sheer redundancy. Who really wants dessert after putting away French toast stuffed with raspberry cheesecake? (Breakfast and lunch daily. 750 E. Pratt St.; 410-528-5373; www.missshirleys.com.)

reviewed

eat/drink

—Martha Thomas

The 400 block of North Charles is sacred ground for Baltimore sushi lovers, albeit tainted by recent events. The pioneering Japanese restaurant Kawasaki opened here in 1984, at the dawn of the American rawfish craze, and for years the restaurant and its later satellites served as the city’s most celebrated sushi brand. The Kawasaki empire met a sudden and squalid end in 2006, when the FBI swooped in to arrest the proprietors on charges of money laundering and harboring illegal immigrant laborers. So the opening of Joss Café and Sushi Bar in the former Kawasaki space in May represents more than just the addition of yet another rainbow-roll emporium in an increasingly over-served market. This is a reclamation project.

Appropriately, the new tenant is itself a celebrated sushi brand: Annapolis’ popular Joss has been a best-sushi perennial for years.

The Baltimore outlet promises a similar but slightly smaller menu, and it’s a handsome reboot of the once-dim dining room, full of bamboo accents over exposed brick and dominated by a long, sweeping bar manned by a battalion of chefs ready to make swift work of a la carte orders. Browsing the colorful creatures within reveals some comparative rarities, such as a velvety semi-cured salmon, seared on one side, with a taste and texture somewhere between raw and smoked fish.

There’s also a full bar with a more serious

selection of sakes than the norm, including Taru Sake, an amber-colored dry brew scented with cedar and served cold. The menu mixes the usual Japanese standbys, from tonkatsu to teriyaki, with a few funky variations. Maguro poke (say poke-eh), a hockeypuck shaped arrangement of diced raw tuna and mango dressed in a punchy Hawaiian chile-sesame sauce, makes a vibrant opener.

The adventure-minded (or choice-averse) can ask for the omakase option, which opens up a chef ’s selection of nigiri and sushi; on a recent visit, rockfish and escolar were the standouts. Fans of seriously fishy fish should seek out the saba shiso roll: mackerel paired with the haunting, lemony leaves of shiso.

But perhaps the most compelling ingredient at Joss isn’t fish at all—it’s Kobe beef.

The famously pampered cattle appear in a multitude of forms, from a classic tartare topped with a quail egg to a maki roll with asparagus. A Kobe hand roll graced with roasted chips of garlic is handsomely presented in a cone of nori resting in a black lacquered stand. But all the trimmings get in the way of the delicate shreds of beef, each pristine and preternaturally buttery. Next time, try it naked. (Lunch and dinner daily.

413 N. Charles St.; 410-244-6988; www.joss cafe-sushibar.com.)

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Joss Café and Sushi Bar

Bar hop: Annapolis’ Joss Sushi hits Baltimore.

—David Dudley w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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urbanite august 09

The bitter truth about old wine

© Alexey Tkachenko | istockphoto.com

By Clinton Macsherry

L

ike it or not, those of us born in 1959 are experiencing “big” birthdays in 2009. Mine falls this month, yet the AARP cheerily notified me that I was eligible for membership back in the spring. Maybe they wanted to make sure they weren’t late (seniors are like that), but I thought the folks at AARP were rubbing it in.

Do I sound cranky? Red wine may help. There’s mounting evidence that the resveratrol in the skins of grapes forestalls the effects of aging. Perhaps my favorite tipple will spare me the indignities my doctor plans for my post-50 checkups.

Wines face their own challenges as they age. Contrary to myth, most don’t improve. The overwhelming majority (estimates exceed 95 percent) are produced for near-term consumption, and they die before they get old. Wines that can evolve beneficially for a decade or more are relative rarities. Variables that can affect their lifespan include vintage, vinification, and storage. Over the long haul, wines should be cellared at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, with enough humidity to keep corks supple.

Young red wine comprises a grape soup of sugars, acids, pigments, tannins, minerals, and flavor compounds. Ageworthy reds have more of these constituents than short-timers. (With the exception of hyper-concentrated dessert wines, white wines typically lack the stuffing to age.) On release, these reds typically offer more potential than pleasure. After several years, many shed their baby fruit and enter a surly adolescent phase, tasting harsh and somewhat disjointed. But over time, interacting with the limited oxygen in the bottle’s headspace—known as “ullage”—they gradually mature. Sus-

pended solids, particularly tannins and pigments, form larger molecules and precipitate as sediment, leaving the wine paler and softer. Ideally, the remaining components harmonize in rich, complex ways. Once-boisterous aromas develop subtleties. (Connoisseurs reserve the term “bouquet” for smells that blossom with bottle age.) Vigorous fruitiness subsides, but flavors gain more layers. The body loses muscle but grows more graceful.

Predicting when a wine will peak, how long it will stay there, and when it will decline into over-oxidized yuckiness is, at best, educated guesswork. Hugh Johnson’s annual Pocket Wine Book ($15 well spent) offers recommendations as good as any, with requisite caveats. Not all enthusiasts prefer mature wine, but most agree it’s a taste everyone should experience.

I went Web shopping for a bottle from my own vintage but didn’t get any hits in Maryland. Offers around the country ranged from $90 for a Santa Maddalena from Northern Italy to $30,000 for a magnum of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Burgundy. (Large-format bottles command a premium because their proportionately smaller ullage theoretically slows their aging. The opposite holds for half bottles.) Maryland law makes it a monumental hassle for consumers to have out-of-state wines shipped in, but I’d have trouble pulling the trigger anyway. Given the vagaries of aging, I’m disinclined to trust any wine over 30.

That doesn’t save me from the occasional crapshoot on not-quite-geriatric bottles, especially from regions known for age-worthy wines. Five years ago I bought eight mid-1990s Bordeaux at firesale prices. I can only speculate on their storage to that point, but they’ve been mollycoddled ever since. Along with some Right Bank trophies, I bagged a few bottles from respected mid-rank producers, including a Chateau Chantegrive 1996 from the Graves district, whose producer recommends cellaring it up to fifteen years. (I paid $11; it’s usually $20 to $25 on release.) It shows its age with an amber rim surrounding an orange-ruby core. Roses, kirsch, spiced plum, and autumn leaves make for a heady bouquet. Light-bodied with soft acidity and shadowy tannins, it offers pretty but fading raspberry tea flavors and a hint of licorice on the clean finish. When drinking an elderly bottle, remember to decant or pour carefully to avoid the sediment—that’s the bitter side of wine’s old age. ■

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wine & spirits

eat/drink

Time in a Bottle

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410.517.1457 | www.marylandteambuilding.com Corporate programs for peak performance • golf • scavenger hunts • wine tasting • yoga • and more

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eat/drink

This Month in Eating Compiled by Martha Thomas EASTPORT PEACH FESTIVAL

AUG 1

The main event at the Peach Festival is the chicken dinner (fried or grilled) with fresh corn, biscuits, and, of course, peach pie, peach cake, and peach preserves. Check out the surprisingly popular pickled beets—last year, the three hundred jars ($7 per quart, $4 per pint) sold out. “Don’t ask me what it is about the beets,” says Wendy Edstrom, administrator for the United Methodist Church, which hosts the 34-year-old festival. “People are crazy for them.” Noon–5 p.m. Dinner $15 adults, $5 children.

Eastport United Methodist Church, Annapolis 926 Bay Ridge Ave. 410-263-5490 www.eastportumc.org

BALTIMORE RESTAURANT WEEK

AUG 7–16

Many see Baltimore’s biannual Restaurant Week as the chance to check out the restaurants they’ve been dying to try but can’t always afford. Dozens of local eateries offer a three-course dinner for $30.09 and a prix fixe lunch for $20.09. Go to www. baltimorerestaurantweek.com for restaurants and specials.

www.baltimorerestaurantweek. com

FESTAFRICA

AUG 8–9

FestAfrica keeps things authentic with spicy marinated beef kebabs called suya, jollof rice in a tomato base, plaintains, and palm wine to wash it down. This year the festival includes an African tourism fair, with embassies and travel agencies showing their stuff—along with volunteer and nonprofit organizations that may suggest a more challenging (albeit more affordable) way to see the continent. Also promised are traditional African crafts and music, with instrument demonstrations for the kids. Noon–8 p.m. $5, children 10 and younger free.

Patterson Park 410-608-0420 www.festafricausa.com

MARYLAND STATE BBQ BASH

AUG 14–15

Contestants at Bel Air’s annual BBQ bash take their ’cue seriously. And well they should: The winner takes home not just $2,500, but also the coveted title of Maryland BBQ Champion and a chance to go on to Kansas City for the American Royal barbecue contest in October. The competition, sanctioned by the Kansas City BBQ Society, includes four categories: brisket, chicken, pork shoulder, and ribs. There’ll also be bands, a beer garden, and plenty of barbecue for the twenty thousand or so bystanders. Fri 4 p.m.–10 p.m., Sat noon–10 p.m. Free.

State Office Building parking lot, 108 S. Bond St. Bel Air 410-937-9037 www.mdbbq.com

HAGERSTOWN AUGUSTOBERFEST

AUG 22–23

October comes early in Hagerstown, when the town pulls out all the stops to celebrate its German heritage and its sister-city relationship with Wesel, Germany. Start with the 10K “volksmarch,” a non-competitive walk on Saturday morning, then gorge on sauerbraten, grilled Debreziner sausage, spaetzle, and Bavarian pastries at the Frühschoppen (German for brunch).

Sat 11 a.m.–10 p.m, Sun 11 a.m.–5 p.m. $5 a day, children younger than 12 free.

Downtown Hagerstown 301-739-8577 ext. 116 www.augustoberfest.org

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One of the Nation’s Top Art Colleges Within Your Reach

MICA offers programs for adults, teens, and children…painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, jewelry-making, ceramics, design, illustration, new media, and more. Stretch your creativity with fine arts and design classes. Hone your business skills with the MICA/UB Certificate in Creative Entrepreneurship.

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69 ART 71 MUSIC 73 LITERARY

art/culture

75 THEATRE/FILM

Paint the town Urbanite’s Fall Arts Preview

I

t’s no secret that many of Baltimore’s arts institutions await September with fingers crossed: Last year’s financial mischief could have an unhappy impact on this season’s ticket sales, charitable giving, and the other revenue sources that keep cultural life lively. Seeking salvation from the stimulus-minded folks in Washington, D.C., many have proposed some sort of federal arts bailout. In the July/August issue of The Atlantic, Reuters economics blogger Felix Salmon explained why the worker with the viola is more effective than the one with the shovel. “For every $30,000 or so spent on the arts, one more person gets a job, compared with about $1 million if you’re building a road or hospital.”

So if you’re reluctant to pay for a play or piece of art, think of it in cold, hard economic terms: Your support keeps people in Baltimore working and spending. (Artists—unlike a few banks we could mention—promptly re-invest all the funds they take in.) Plus, the job you save might be your own. For Urbanite’s first arts guide, we not only offer a preview of highlights on gallery walls and stages in the coming months, but we also emphasize cultural participation: By all means, buy that ticket, but also pick up a brush or a camera and put yourself in the frame. (For seven great places to start, see page 77.)

COMPILED BY MARIANNE K. AMOSS, DAVID DUDLEY, GREG HANSCOM, AND MARTHA THOMAS ILLUSTRATIONS BY APRIL OSMANOF

THE BSO EXPERIENCE. You just have to be there.

The unprecedented collaboration between the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Marin Alsop delivers performances of artistic innovation and gripping intensity. This season explores musical influences from around the world, celebrates the whimsical sounds of the circus and showcases the talents of world-class artists.

Order tickets or subscribe today to experience the passion, energy and innovation of your BSO.

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Symphony meets bluegrass as Time for Three teams up with Marin Alsop and the BSO to perform Jennifer Higdon’s groundbreaking Concerto 4-3, built on one of America’s great folk country traditions. Plus, Brahms’ Hungarian Dances and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

Sat. Sept 12

Maestra Marin Alsop and the BSO kick off an exciting season with piano superstar Lang Lang performing Tchaikovsky’s unforgettable First Piano Concerto. Supporting Sponsor: Audi of America LANG LANG

DLA Piper Series

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TCHAIKOVSKY & BARTÓK Fri. Oct 2, Sat. Oct 3 & Sun. Oct 4

Fri. Oct 9, Sat. Oct 10 & Sun. Oct 11

Marin Alsop leads a program filled with life and dance including Harmonia performing traditional Eastern European folk music, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Grammy winner James Ehnes’ captivating interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s brilliant Violin Concerto. M&T Bank Series MARIN ALSOP

The ever-entertaining Jack Everly conducts the opening of the BSO SuperPops season performing epic film scores including music from Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, Star Wars and Gone with the Wind.

Presenting Sponsor: Constellation Energy

SIMPLY CLASSICAL Thur. Oct 22 & Sun. Oct 25

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein makes her BSO debut with one of Mozart’s most joy filled concertos.

Conductor Louis Langrée explores an animated symphony by Haydn and the early Romantic contours of Beethoven’s powerful Fourth Symphony.

JACK EVERLY

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B A LT I M O R E S Y M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A 68

urbanite august 09

art/culture

In true Baltimore style, the season’s visual art offerings range from gala museum exhibits to underground warehouse shows.

This year was the first for the Baker Artist Awards, which rewarded local artists of all genres for their hard work, creativity—and adeptness at creating an online portfolio to showcase their work. The result: More visibility for and camaraderie among members of Baltimore’s creative class.

Indians, Algerian War veterans, and Guantánamo Bay detainees. Make sure to lie down in the “Purr Generator,” which reverberates with happy cat noises. (www.avam.org)

As part of Nevermore 2009, the yearlong salute to the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, Baltimore Museum of Art Director Doreen Bolger curates Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon (Oct 4–Jan 17), an exhibit of books and fine art exploring the themes and life of Baltimore’s favorite bummed-out writer. A recent gift of prints by French artist Henri Matisse gave rise to Matisse as Printmaker (Oct 25–Jan 3). Eighty-four new prints, given to the museum after the death of one of Matisse’s sons, flesh out the museum’s Cone Collection and offer an opportunity to see how the artist refined his processes throughout his life. “It’ll be a revelation for people who have seen the occasional print on people’s walls to see the breadth of what he did,” promises exhibit curator Jay Fisher. (www.artbma.org)

School 33’s annual Open Studio Tour is the public’s chance to get a glimpse into the workspaces of Baltimore’s artists. The two-day event (Oct 17 and 18) is conveniently scheduled (for instance, southeast Baltimore studios are open Saturday 10 a.m.– 3 p.m., while studios in the southwest corner are open Saturday 1 p.m.–6 p.m.), with a digital map of participating galleries at www.school33.org.

The big fall show at the Walters Art Museum is Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece, a traveling exhibit that explores the history of hero worship through more than a hundred statues, reliefs, and pieces of jewelry from European and North American museums (Oct 11–Jan 3). Related programming includes an opening day talk by exhibition curator Sabine Albersmeier (Oct 11) and a discussion led by art historian Lee Sandstead, host of the Travel Channel show Art Attack with Lee Sandstead (Nov 15). (www.thewalters.org) In conjunction, the community arts nonprofit Art on Purpose is presenting Heroes in Our Midst, two exhibits celebrating everyday heroism.

The first, A Thousand Ships, salutes twelve individuals who’ve had a positive impact on Baltimore City public schools (Sept 16–Nov 8). The second, Twenty Years of Wandering (Nov 11–Jan 3), features artwork by members of Baltimore’s homeless and refugee populations (www. artonpurpose.org).

Acclaimed fiber and mixed media artist Warren Seelig, a guest faculty member this fall at Maryland Institute College of Art, talks about innovative uses of diverse materials in making art on Sept 14, part of the Monday Artist at Noon series. (MICA also hosts a retrospective of his work, Warren Seelig: Textile per se, that opens Dec 4.) Also at MICA is the conference Transformations: New Directions in Black Art, originally scheduled for last November (Oct 22–25). Open to the public and with programming at other local schools, galleries, and museums, it focuses on the impact of race and culture on making art and includes panel discussions with artists and arts professionals, a gospel/jazz brunch, and a dance party.

It also marks the grand opening of MICA’s new Center for Race and Culture. (www.mica.edu)

The American Visionary Art Museum’s fifteenth megaexhibition, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Oct 3–Sept 5), uses the Declaration of Independence as a springboard for an exploration of human rights and the quest for personal fulfillment. Artists include Iroquois

At the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, the exhibit 381 Days tells the story of the Montgomery bus boycott through political cartoons, illustrations, fine art, and text (Sept 5–Jan 3).

Local youth nonprofit Kids on the Hill hosts a workshop on Sept 26, where attendees can make their own animated film about the boycotts. (www.africanamericanculture.org)

Through the Curators’ Incubator, Maryland Art Place becomes a laboratory for ideas. Fledgling curators are guided through the process of dreaming up an exhibit, choosing work, and writing a catalog. Three individual exhibits, one curated by each participant, are up Sept 15–Oct 24, with a gallery talk on Sept 25. (www. mdartplace.org)

Towson University’s Asian Arts and Culture Center Hosts Furniture for the Divine: Selections from the Foo Collection, an exhibition of Ming and Qing dynasty-era altar tables and shrines used to worship Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian deities. Sept 12–Dec 12; opening and curator’s lecture Sept 12. (www.towson.edu/asianarts)

member Jo Smail, who creates strong yet delicate charcoal and watercolor pieces (Sept 1–Oct 14). Following that is a group show featuring multimedia artists Joyce J. Scott and Sanford Biggers and painter Sam Gilliam (Oct 22–Dec 12). (www.goyacontemporary.com) Located since 2004 in a condemned building at 30 S. Calvert Street, the Current Gallery is finally due to meet the wrecking ball. Check out the final exhibition, Abandon Ship, while you can. The show will be demolished, along with the building, sometime this fall. (www.currentspace.com) continued on page 77

GET SCHOOLED

Don’t miss these top-notch shows at area colleges and universities.

McDaniel College’s Rice Gallery hosts Zoë Charlton’s drawings (Aug 25–Sept 18), Rick Delaney’s mixed media work (Sept 22–Oct 16), Rowena Smith’s paintings and collages (Oct 20–Nov 13), and sculpture and mixed media by Linda Bills (Nov 17–Dec 11). (www.mcdaniel.edu/5135.htm) Joseph Reinsel’s intensely colorful prints of stills from videos of sound being produced, created while he was artist in residence at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York, appear in Resonations at the Gormley Gallery of the College of Notre Dame, where Reinsel teaches digital media arts. Aug 31–Oct 9. (www.ndm.edu) At Stevenson University, David Page—a native of Cape Town, South Africa—explores power and scale with his leather, steel, and aluminum sculptures and large drawings in Staan nader, staan terug!, which means “Come closer, get away!” in Afrikaans. Nov 30–Jan 29. (www.stevenson.edu) The traveling exhibit Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports confronts the idea of the male athlete. Matthew Barney is one of the featured artists.

At UMBC’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture.

Oct 8–Dec 12. (www.umbc.edu)

Goya Contemporary exhibits the work of MICA faculty w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

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Renée Fleming

art/culture

Those not-so-sweet sounds music lovers have been hearing lately? Budget cuts and bankruptcies. The liquidation of the Baltimore Opera Company left the city without a grand opera company for the first time since 1950, belt-tightening at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra made news when the players volunteered $1 million in salary cuts, and sundry rumors of fiscal woe have rippled though many local music orgs.

If listeners fail to open their wallets and turn out this fall, the 2009–10 season may be make-or-break time for some. So get out there and open your ears, folks

.

For the BSO’s third season under Music Director Marin Alsop, the theme is musical roots, which translates into programming emphasizing pieces based on folk or ethnic music traditions. Chinese piano phenom Lang Lang opens the season with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (Sept 12). On Sept 24 and 25, the string trio Time for Three blends bluegrass and classical on Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3.

Oct 2–4, Eastern Europe gets a turn with the BSO debut of the cimbalom-wielding gypsy ensemble Harmonia; while French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet unleashes his lush technique on a quintessential American composer: an allGershwin program Nov 12 to 15. (www.bsomusic.org) The Shriver Hall Concert Series, the city’s premier outlet for chamber music and recitalists, has a new executive director this year: former BSO manager of artistic administration Stephen Jacobsohn. Its big name this fall is violinist Midori, making her Shriver debut with pianist Robert McDonald on Nov 1, but Jacobsohn is equally enthused about the return of the renowned Juilliard String Quartet on Dec 6; the venerable ensemble last played the series more than thirty years ago. (www. shriverconcerts.org) Some other classical options: The Baltimore Classical Guitar Society brings the Katona Twins, a duo of Hungarian siblings, to Towson’s Harold J. Kaplan Concert Hall on Oct 3 (www.bcgs.org); and the Handel Choir of Baltimore joins the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra for a night of Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven at Goucher’s Kraushaar Auditorium on Oct 18 (www.thebco. org). The Peabody Conservatory hosts a quartet of pieces by 20th-century French composer Francis Poulenc

on Oct 8 and the premiere of bassist/composer Michael Formanek’s jazz-themed Duologue for Double Bass and Piano on Nov 11 (www.peabody.jhu.edu/events). And Pro Musica Rara, the city’s cool early-music ensemble, kicks things off on Oct 11 with “Poe and the Diabolical Baroque,” a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado accompanied by super-scary baroque music (www.promusicarara.org).

Opera fans may mourn the Baltimore Opera Company, but there are new options: Baltimore Concert Opera performs intimate, non-staged performances to piano accompaniment at the Engineers Club in the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion; its first full season begins with Faust on Sept 11 and 13 (www. baltimoreconcertopera.com). Opera Vivente, the city’s English-only company, mines fairy tales this season: Its take on Rossini’s Cinderella bows at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Sept 25 and 27 and Oct 1 and 3 (www.operavivente. com). The American Opera Theater brings soprano Sylvia McNair to town for Songspiel, a cycle of Kurt Weill pieces, at Theatre Project Nov 6–14 (www.americanoperatheater. org). The nascent Baltimore Opera Theatre promises a fully staged Barber of Seville at the Hippodrome on Nov 22. There’s even opera at the Opera House, of all places— superstar soprano Renée Fleming gives a recital of arias at the Lyric on Dec 17 (www.lyricoperahouse.com).

Mobtown Modern, the adventurous contemporary music series presented by (naturally) the Contemporary Museum, moves to bigger new digs in Metro Gallery this year; the Oct 7 show, “Low Art,” showcases pieces for the bass and baritone saxophones (http://mobtownmodern.com).

Not out-there enough? Hit High Zero, the woolly annual festival of experimental improvised music, at various venues Sept 10–13 (www.highzero.org).

Jazz audiences should consult the comprehensive calendar of the Baltimore Jazz Alliance (www.baltimorejazz.com).

A few standouts: Saxophonist Branford Marsalis brings his quartet to the Lyric Opera House on Oct 9 (www. lyricoperahouse.com), while drummer/composer John Hollenbeck performs at Towson University with his brainy Claudia Quintet on Dec 7 (www.towson.edu/artscalendar).

Quick notes from the pop front: The rejuvenated Merriweather Post Pavillion jams out the season on Oct 6 with the Allman Brothers Band and Widespread Panic (www.merriweathermusic.com), and sometime Allman guitarist Derek Trucks and his band headline the

17th annual Hot August Blues fest (www.hotaugustblues. com) at Oregon Ridge (Aug 15). In town, Rams Head Live hosts hip hop stalwarts De La Soul on Aug 12; Sept 19 brings hair-metal heroes Kix (www.ramsheadlive.com).

And mark your calendars for the world-famous Night of 100 Elvises (Dec 4 and 5): This year’s weekend-long blowout of Elvis interpreters and celebrators will be the 16th such showcase at SoWeBo’s Lithuanian Hall (www. nightof100elvises.com).

HOT NUMBERS

Five musical highlights Merriweather Post’s “Heavy Metal Weekend” unites two titans of British steel: Judas Priest, complete with singer Rob Halford, and Heaven and Hell, (most of) the post-Ozzy formulation of Black Sabbath. Aug 22 and 23. (www.merriweather music.com) Boister, an artful ensemble of rootsy eccentrics fronted by Anne Watts, does its Kurt-Weill-meetsLucinda-Williams thing with a host of guests for a 13th anniversary show at Creative Alliance. Sept 26. (www.creativealliance.org) English early-music singer Dame Emma Kirkby, proclaimed the “tenth greatest soprano of all time” on a 2007 critics’ survey in BBC Music Magazine, opens the Candlelight Concerts chamber music series in Columbia. Oct 24. (www. candlelightconcerts.org) The Towson University Percussion Ensemble performs “Things that Go Bump in the Night,” a program of scary banging pieces that includes Edward Varese’s 1931 Ionisation. Audience members should come in costume, so don your wild-eyed French avant-gardist outfit. Oct 30. (www.towson. edu/artscalendar) Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Tony Bennett: The ageless crooner busts out the Great American Songbook at the Meyerhoff. Dec 5. (www. tonybennett.net)

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M A R K E T P L A C E

art/culture

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art/culture

OFF THE PAGE

Take a seat and listen up at these local reading series.

This June, Baltimore’s pen-wielding worlds collided at the first Literary Arts Summit.

Twenty-five attendees, from lone writers to representatives of big cultural organizations, spent the day sharing experiences and discussing ways to work together—an encouraging trend for the historically fragmented crowd.

The Baltimore Book Festival in Mount Vernon is the fall’s biggest public celebration of the written word (Sept 25–27). This year’s version, the fourteenth, promises to be packed with readings, workshops, music, and performances. Authors making appearances include such diverse litterateurs as Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, activist Ralph Nader, and rapper KRS-One. (www. baltimorebookfestival.com) Also appearing at the festival will be James McBride, whose novel Song Yet Sung, about free blacks, slave traders, and escaped slaves on Maryland’s mid-19thcentury Eastern Shore, was chosen for the Maryland Humanities Council’s One Maryland One Book program.

The nonprofit hopes to bring together the Free State’s diverse communities by organizing programming around the state based on the book of the year. McBride will appear at the Book Festival Sept 27 at noon. (www. onemarylandonebook.org) Local literary nonprofit CityLit Project (which hosts a stage at the Book Festival) is helming two events under its own banner this fall: “Spooky Stories and Creepy Creations”—family-friendly writing activities held before the annual Great Halloween Lantern Parade in Patterson Park (Oct 24)—and the Baltimore Writers’ Conference, a one-day event at Towson University about writing and selling fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (Nov 14). This year’s keynote is Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden; also appearing are poet Jane Satterfield, editor and fiction writer Susan Muaddi Darraj, and Urbanite editor David Dudley. CityLit also hosts the Write Here Write Now workshops. One offering, led by local writer Christophe Cassamassima, is “Poem as Sound: Creating, Editing, and Distributing Texts in Audio Format” (starts Oct 6).

Check out the full list of workshops on the website. (www. citylitproject.org) The annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference at Montgomery College in Rockville includes workshops and panels for writers at all levels (Oct 17). This year’s Fitzgerald Literary Award honoree is Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents; past

awardees include John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates.

Don’t miss the promised visit to Fitzgerald’s grave. (www. montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott/) The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American Culture and History’s book club, Things Hold Lines Connect, will discuss James McBride’s aforementioned Song Yet Sung on Sept 20; R. Dwayne Betts’ A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison is next up on Nov 21. (Betts also appears at the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Library on Sept 9, as part of their Writers Live series.)

To complement the exhibit 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story, the Black Writers’ Guild of Maryland will read poetry commemorating civil rights activists on Nov 21. (www.africanamericanculture.org) As part of the bicentennial celebration of Edgar Allan Poe, the Pratt Library’s central branch hosts a reading by Ellen Datlow, editor of Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, with three of the anthologized authors (Oct 15).

On Mencken Day, the annual nod to the Sage of Baltimore (Sept 12), there’ll be talks, a living history presentation, and an exhibit curated by Pratt staffer and Mencken music devotee David Donovan (see Urbanite, May 2009). (www. prattlibrary.org) Here’s the tricky thing about Stevenson University’s starstudded Baltimore Speakers Series, which is entering its third season: You have to purchase a subscription to the whole series; individual tickets are not available. So if you’re dying to listen to former president of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf (Sept 29), you’ll have to pony up for underwater explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau (Oct 20) and former First Lady Laura Bush (Nov 17), among others. Subscriptions for the series start at $265. (www. baltimorespeakersseries.org) If that’s a bit too rich for your tastes, Stevenson University also hosts the J.R. Mitchell Memorial Book Talks, named for the late Dr. John Mitchell, who taught religion and philosophy at the school. At the university’s library, faculty members will lead discussions of such books as The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage by Daniel Mark Epstein (Sept 14) and Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (Dec 1). (www.stevenson.edu) To commemorate the 50th anniversary of British scientist and writer C.P. Snow’s “Rede Lecture”—in which he stated that the modern divide between the sciences and the humanities created a barrier to solving the world’s

The Baltimore chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association holds monthly meetings with guest speakers, open-mic opportunities, and writing exercises; the location alternates between Ukazoo Books in Towson and Cyclops in Station North. The association also holds readings at White Marsh’s Barnes and Noble on a regular basis. (www. mwabaltimore.org) The editors of the poetry journal Smartish Pace hail from all over the country (and the Virgin Islands), but it—and its editor and founder, Stephen Reichert—is based locally. As part of the SP reading series, poet Elizabeth Spires reads from her most recent books, I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings (2009) and The Wave-Maker (2008), on Sept 20. (www.smartishpace.com) Two regular series based in Annapolis—Poetry at BB Bistro, on the second Friday of the month, and the Poet Experience at Zü Coffee, on the fourth Friday—are both run by poets Cliff Lynn and Rocky Jones. Poetry at BB Bistro features Kwame Alexander on Aug 14, and the Poet Experience lineup includes Barbara DeCesare on Aug 28. (http://rockydude.com/ art/poets/annapolis_readings.htm) Loyola College starts off its Modern Masters series with poet Daniel Tobin on Sept 21, novelist and memoirist Paul Lisicky on Oct 22, and fiction and nonfiction writer Robin Hemley on Nov 11. (www. loyola.edu) Since January 2008, the 510 Readings—Baltimore’s only regular fiction series—has crammed Minás Gallery and Boutique in Hampden with standingroom-only crowds. Tania James, Michael Pollack, Paula Bomer, and Jason Tinney are slated for Aug 15. Organizers Michael Kimball and Jen Michalski will read from their work on Sept 26 at the Baltimore Book Festival. And in addition to the regular Nov 21 reading, there’s a special reading on Nov 14 to celebrate Goucher writing professor Madison Smartt Bell’s Devil’s Dream, which is published that month. (http://510readings.blogspot.com) The Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Writers Live series continues at the library’s main branch. The lineup this fall includes Maryland delegate Barbara A. Robinson, CBS News chief national correspondent Byron Pitts, and M*A*S*H* actor (B.J. Hunnicutt!) Mike Farrell. (www.prattlibrary.org)

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art/culture

The new big thing in live theater? Shorter, faster, cheaper. In part to accommodate a younger demographic, and in part to save resources, a number of local companies, large and small, are increasingly turning away from big works and offering a medley of varied staged entertainments.

Center Stage has re-configured its programming to draw more of the Facebook generation, or, as dramaturg Gavin Witt says, “people who don’t want to come and sit for two hours.” Full-length productions have been cut from six to four, including Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (Oct 7–Nov 8) and the Lookingglass Theatre’s child-friendly take on Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days (Nov 24–Dec 20). Added to the menu are two short plays, a reading series, and a musical cabaret.

The official marketing moniker is “theatrical tapas,” but Witt calls it “a TiVo experience.” (www.centerstage.org) One of Baltimore’s newest companies, the 2-year-old Single Carrot Theatre, is also looking to lure channelsurfers. “In the age of instant gratification, asking people to sit through a full-length play with a fifteen-minute intermission is a tall order,” says company member Brendan Ragan. Most of its new season features shows that are 90 minutes and intermission-free, beginning with Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice (Sept 23–Oct 18), based on the Orpheus myth. Later, look for the original movementbased work Illuminoctem (Nov 25–Dec 20). (www. singlecarrot.com) Another newcomer, the Strand Theater Company, kicks off with The Mercy Seat, Neil LaBute’s account of love and adultery in the days after 9/11: It opens, naturally, on Sept 11 and runs to Oct 4. Next, the Strand demonstrates its commitment to newly minted female playwrights with Graves in the Water (Oct 29–31) by Alexandra Hewett and Lynn Morton, which is based on the women’s voices from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. (www. strandtheatercompany.org)

Everyman Theatre opens with the Baltimore premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole (Sept 9–Oct 11), about a couple affected by unimaginable tragedy. Then, company member Bruce Nelson will channel Charles Ludlum in The Mystery of Irma Vep (Nov 11–Dec 13), a spoof on Gothic melodramas. The Explore! Everyman series, devoted to new work, continues for a fourth season with The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (Nov 16–Dec 14), a nonfiction account of six wrongfully convicted death row inmates. (www. everymantheatre.org) A.R. Gurney’s autobiographical The Cocktail Hour, a gin-soaked comedy of manners based on Gurney’s uppercrust upbringing in Buffalo, New York, runs Sept 4–27 at Vagabond Players (www.vagabondplayers.org). At Fells Point Corner Theatre, Terrance McNally’s Love! Valour!

Compassion! kicks things off (Sept 18–Oct 18). Then, playwright Sarah Ruhl is back with The Clean House, a comedy about a Brazilian maid’s search for the perfect joke (Nov 6–Dec 6). (www.fpct.org) Columbia’s Rep Stage opens with a transplant of the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s production of the historical comedy Wittenberg (Aug 26–Sept 13), followed

by Bruce Nelson as Salvador Dali in Terry Johnson’s farce Hysteria (Oct 7–Nov 1). (www.repstage.org) Theatre Project is presenting its usual mix of edgy new plays, solo shows, performance art, and movement. In the subscription series, Sara Felder returns in the one-woman show Out of Sight, about a nearly blind woman and her adult lesbian daughter (Dec 3–13). Visitors to the space include DanceRink, presenting Dracula (Oct 28–Nov 1) and Alice in Wonderland (Dec 6–23). (www.theatre project.org) More kids’ stuff: Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Lyric for The Wizard of Oz on Nov 13–15 (www.lyricoperahouse. com). And at the Spotlighters Theatre, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Cinderella runs Nov 27 to Dec 20.

For fidgety youngsters—or maybe just folks with short attention spans—there’s a 45-minute version on Saturday afternoons. (www.spotlighters.org)

SCREEN GEMS

Five cool film happenings Every Wednesday at 7 p.m., the Hexagon gallery and performance space screens 16 mm flicks for free (BYO food and beer). In August, it’s all animation, with children’s sci-fi (Aug 5), weird pre1940 shorts (Aug 12), Dr. Seuss (Aug 19), and Will Vinton Claymation (Aug 26). (http://hexagonspace. com) The annual Baltimore Women’s Film Festival resumes at the Landmark Theatres in Harbor East with a weekend-long lineup of cinema by and about women (Oct 22–25 ). Half of the proceeds go to breast cancer research. (www.bwfilmfestival.com).

The Pratt Library’s film series serves up an eclectic mix of titles for adults and kids. For the latter, there’s the Pixar fave The Incredibles (Aug 29) and the spooky Coraline (Oct 31); Mom and Dad can revisit the 1960s with Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War classic, Dr. Strangelove (Aug 15), or relive the 1980s with The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, paired with the seminal short Heavy Metal Parking Lot (Sept 26). (www. prattlibrary.org) For the 20th anniversary of Towson University’s Fall Film Series, Electronic Media and Film professor Greg Faller has asked other faculty to program the series by picking a favorite film from 1989. Screenings are free and include a discussion.

Monday nights in TU’s Van Bokkelen Hall from Sept 14–Dec 14. (www.towson.edu/EMF) The Charles Theatre’s Cinema Sundays series continues this fall, providing cineastes with bagels, conversation, and films on Sunday mornings. Brunch is served at 9:45 a.m., and the screenings start at 10:35 a.m., with each film presented by a guest speaker. (www.cinemasundays.com)

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Art continued from page 69

Literary continued from page 73

That irritating technological wonder, the fax machine, is the basis for the Contemporary Museum’s latest show, FAX (Sept 12–Dec 20). The traveling show will be augmented by work from local artists and area high school students, all delivered via fax. New transmissions, plus the inevitable error messages, will be received at the Contemporary throughout the duration of the exhibit. (www.contemporary.org)

problems—UMBC hosts a lecture series, fittingly coorganized by its Dresher Center for the Humanities and Human Context of Science and Technology Program. The kickoff takes place Sept 30, with an introduction to Snow; the four other events take place in October and November. (www.umbc.edu/dreshercenter)

Three galleries on the third and fourth floors of the H&H Building on the West Side combine forces for one mega-exhibit called H&Hscape, which opened July 11.

Emily C-D and Jessica Unterhalter (together, they’re the TwoCan Collective) curated Radix at the Whole Gallery, which runs through Aug 9 (http://wholegallery. blogspot.com). Through Aug 29, Gallery Four hosts Protocol: \ Syntax \ Semantics, featuring the work of four artists who repurpose everyday materials (www. galleryfour.net). Nudashank’s exhibit of all black-and-white sculpture, video, and photography, Where the Sun Don’t Shine, closes Aug 5; the gallery’s next painting show, Chromatose, opens Aug 21 (www.nudashank.com).

Creative Alliance resident artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum exhibits her beautiful, violent drawings alongside Atlanta-based artist Torkwase Dyson’s new media work from Nov 5 through Dec 19. (www. creativealliance.org) Local photographer Lashelle Bynum captures otherwise unnoticed moments in Baltimore in Many Moods … at the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center (Sept 3–Oct 3). (www.eubieblake.org) A bit farther afield, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art highlights the stunningly rendered but little-known maritime paintings of John Singer Sargent, an acclaimed 19thand 20th-century American painter (Sept 12–Jan 3). The museum also exhibits some of the skillful portraitist’s drawings, portraits, and landscapes from its permanent collection (July 11–March 21, 2010). (www.corcoran.org)

Former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall kicks off the fall season for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, known as HoCoPoLitSo (Oct 4). Hall, who has won two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Robert Frost Medal, among other awards, will read and discuss his work and answer questions from the audience. (www. hocopolitso.org) College of Notre Dame hosts writer Kent Meyers, who teaches at South Dakota’s Black Hills State University (Oct 27). He’ll read from his novel Twisted Tree and The Witness of Combines, a collection of essays about growing up in Minnesota. (www.ndm.edu) Carolyn Chute reads at Goucher College’s big Kratz Center for Creative Writing event on Oct 22. Chute is the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine, and other works about impoverished rural Maine; she’s also a staunch Second Amendment defender and the founder of a nonpartisan populist militia group called the 2nd Maine Militia. Hecklers beware. (http://meyerhoff.goucher.edu/ cwpromo/kratz/) Explore the Writer’s Center in Bethesda—which hosts workshops, readings, and other literary events—at an open house on Sept 12. On Sept 20, Michael Montlack, the editor of My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, and other authors in this anthology will read their essays on Annie Lennox, Bjork, Julia Child, and other inspirational women. (www.writer.org) Barry Nemett, who’s chaired MICA’s painting department for twenty years, exhibits poems and paintings at the Creative Alliance (Sept 12–Oct 24, with an opening on Sept 12 and a poetry reading Oct 8). Also at Creative Alliance, local celebrities such as scribe Rafael Alvarez and artist/ bon vivant Joyce J. Scott perform Voices of A People’s History, based on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (Nov 21). And mark your calendars now for the First Day Poetry and Performance Bash on Jan 1—this year, each hour will be curated by a different member of Baltimore’s literati. (www.creativealliance.org) Shattered Wig Night—an occasional evening of performance and music, curated by Normals Books and Records co-owner Rupert Wondowlowski—holds a special event with Charles Brohawn and Chris Mason, better known as the semi-legendary local band The Tinklers, to celebrate The Element, their long-awaited book of stories inspired by the periodic table of elements (Oct 9). (www.normals.com/wignite.html)

art/culture THE ARTS, DIY-STYLE

Seven ways to join Baltimore’s art scene 1. Broadcast a Big Idea

Performance artist Rebecca Nagle’s interactive, commuter-driven billboard project, “Drive at Five,” will take over a Station North billboard starting Sept 1. To suggest a billboard message, head to St. Paul Street and North Avenue: The artist will be collecting statements there from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on four Mondays this month (Aug 10, 17, 24, and 31). Vote for the best messages on Nagle’s website (www.northavebillboard.com).

2. Tell All

The Stoop Storytelling Series presents “First Times” on Sept 14. E-mail info@stoopstorytelling.com with your tale of a memorable initiation; seven storytellers will get to spin their yarns at Center Stage. On the night of the show, three audience members will be picked to tell a story on the spot. (www.stoopstorytelling.com)

3. Make a Movie

Spend a weekend writing, shooting, and editing a short film for CAmm Slamm at the Creative Alliance, a homegrown version of the international 48 Hour Film Project (Oct 9–11). The results are screened at the Patterson on Sunday night, with the audience voting for the winners. (www.creativealliance.org)

4. Play in the Mud

Hand-build an earthen vessel or turn a pot on the wheel at Baltimore Clayworks’ Clayfest (Oct 16–17). Kids can add to the giant Mudhead sculpture and watch potters compete in the Clay Olympics. Clayworks is also offering free “Try It!” workshops around town in October. (www. baltimoreclayworks.org)

5. Get Spooky

Plan ahead to take part in this year’s Great Halloween Lantern Parade in Patterson Park on Oct 24: Lanternmaking workshops are held a few weeks before the parade. (www.nanaprojects.com)

6. Sock It To ’Em

Say hello to your little friend at the American Visionary Art Museum’s “Sock Monkey Saturday” on Dec 12.

Bring two pairs of socks. AVAM will provide needles, thread, and all the trimmings. (www.avam.org)

7. Make An Unholy Racket

Discover the true meaning of Christmas at the fourth annual “Unsilent Night” boom box parade on Dec 12, organized by the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern music series. Meet in front of Penn Station and bring a boom box for the 7 p.m. start. (www.mobtown modern.com)

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imagine the possibilities.

The Urbanite Project—Urbanite magazine’s annual special issue—asks, What if?

What if we persuaded five unexpected pairs to collaborate? An architect and a television screenwriter? A filmmaker and an economist? Or a typographer and a fiction writer? What if some of the city’s most creative minds were to intersect at the junction of frustration and passion? What if we let them ask the questions, and we didn’t control the results?

This year, we will again include Urbanite readers in the project.

To apply, go to www.urbaniteproject.com.

Tell us who you are and why you should be a part of this special annual issue.

The deadline has been extended—applications are now due August 11.

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Steak, Peas, Potatoes, Ritalin continued from page 47 into Sunny Hill. At first, I was gung-ho for it. The idea of being in a school for gifted and talented kids appealed to me. I knew some of the other students; one was even my best friend, Meredith. So I sat down one night and, in six hours, made my entire application portfolio. It worked. I was admitted. But, once there, I felt awkward and frequently embarrassed. Everybody was so smart. One student traveled to Europe to play the violin with a touring orchestra. Another student, in the seventh grade, attended a high school geometry class each day. Meredith, whom I’d known since the age of 5, surprised me the most. I knew she was super smart, but I’d never seen her in action. At Sunny Hill, she was the brainiest of all. She excelled in everything. She excelled in excelling.

Of course, I’d gotten another D-minus on the algebra test. But I wasn’t about to reveal that to Brandi. She’d love the news too much.

I took the crumpled exam from my back pocket and threw it away.

Algebra class was the worst for me because we were encouraged to learn at our own pace. I usually sat under my desk with earphones on, staring blankly at a textbook, sometimes scribbling down nonsensical symbols that eventually turned into little anarchy and peace signs. Mr. S. wasn’t keen on my seating preference but, hey, we were a bunch of quirky gifted kids. Why not? I daydreamed about throwing my calculator through a window and shouting, “Down with the regime!”

Math is what started all the trouble in the first place. I knew something strange was happening to me when I was younger, say 8 or 9, and the multiplication, the division, the page-long equations about trains and their destinations at so many miles an hour started to confuse me. I would concentrate on verbs. If a train departed at 50 miles an hour from Tucson and another train took off at 36 miles an hour from a station in Long Island, where would they meet? I would think funny thoughts like departed means starting slow and eventually working up to a steady pace. Taking off means putting your lead foot on the acceleration pedal making like a jet to wherever it is you’re headed. The verbs and the numbers together confused me. I would think funny thoughts like 50 miles minus 36 miles at 9 o’clock equals a Boeing jet defecting a train’s slow departure due to the conductor’s pestering athlete’s foot. Math never made any sense to me. And when I started to learn algebra, mixing math with English, the variables x and y not spelling a damned thing, it made my least favorite subject unbearable. The only word I knew with x and y in it was “exactly.” Math didn’t mix with English just like potatoes didn’t mix with gravy and peas and steak onto one fork, or tomatoes and Doritos whenever Brandi was involved, because it was disgusting. Insane.

Dr. Darr persistently reminded me that having ADHD was nothing to be ashamed or frightened of. She told me to think of having the disorder like riding a bike downhill at a high speed with broken brakes. I thought Dr. Darr was nuts because that’s something to be frightened of. She had presented this example to my mother as well. My mom had jotted the words on a little notepad: attention, deficit, bike, hill, brakes, broken. Sometimes, just to be funny, I ran through the kitchen on an invisible bike, screaming, “My brakes are busted, Mom!”

Brandi was always there when I took Ritalin at school. I never found out why—perhaps she was taking psychotropics or prescribed weight-loss pills—but when I was summoned into the nurse’s office before lunch, there she sat, her wide eyes fixated on me, following my every movement as I gently sat the little round tablet on my tongue, took a hearty drink of lukewarm water, gulped emphatically, and crushed the Dixie cup and sent it flying in a practiced arc toward the trash can.

It never failed, Brandi would smile when I turned to her afterward, smacking my lips: “Aaah.”

I was supposed to take Ritalin three times a day: before breakfast, before lunch, and before dinner. Sometimes I’d go and spit a half-dissolved tablet in a toilet or into my hand, gagging it out like it was toxic Tylenol. Sometimes I swallowed the tablet.

Once I fed a tablet to my dog, Sadie, but nothing cool happened; she didn’t start reciting the periodic table of elements. Only in school, before an audience of Brandi and the nurse, did I regularly take my medication.

I learned how to cope with my thought processes before I’d started taking Ritalin. I learned that it might take me longer to figure out some formula than it did other students, but I’d get there eventually. Ritalin didn’t quicken my pace; it just made me focus on one distinct aspect of a problem. If a train departed at 50 miles an hour from Tucson and another train took off at 36 miles an hour from a station in Long Island, where would they meet? On Ritalin, I’d think, Tucson, Long Island. Tucson. Long Island. Train. Thirty-six miles. Train. Thirty-six miles. Train. Fifty miles. Train. Fifty miles.

Wait, class is over? But I was so close!

Taking Ritalin before dinnertime was the worst. Once the medicine kicked in I couldn’t help but focus on my dad’s eating habits.

At dinnertime on Ritalin, it was peas, gravy. Peas. Gravy. Steak.

Potatoes. Steak. Potatoes. Dad’s mouth open wide. Dad chewing, his squirrel cheeks bloated with peas, gravy, steak, potatoes. Dad swallowing, his Adam’s apple pushing the concoction further down his esophagus. Dad smiling as his fork scraped the plate in search of more peas, more gravy, more steak. Dr. Darr warned my mom that loss of appetite was a common side effect of Ritalin. So when I didn’t eat much at dinnertime, she didn’t pester me about it. She had no idea it was all my dad’s fault.

I ran outside to my bus. I waved “hi” to the other kids as I walked on. A handful sat doing their homework, their textbooks propped on the back of the seat in front of them. Couples held hands and chatted quietly. I took my usual spot near the back and leaned against the window. A moment later, Brandi sat down next to me. I didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at me. We sat humming to ourselves until the bus revved its engine and took off. ■ Abigail Higgs is a graduate student at the University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program. She lives in Baltimore with her partner, Alice. Currently she is working on her book-length memoir about reuniting with her biological family.

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9107 Reisterstown Road

at McDonough Rd. Valley Village Shopping Center Owings Mills • 410-363-3353

1150 E. Lombard Street Baltimore • 410-327-1177

www.lennysdeli.com

We’re seeking a candidate for the following position ...

Advertising Sales Executive Urbanite is seeking a dynamic, self-motivated sales professional with a minimum of 3 yrs. media sales experience to join our team. We are a fast-paced selling environment in which you will prospect to establish an active account list, develop sales proposals, and successfully manage the entire sales process.

S e n S e t h e

d i f f e r e n c e

e n g ag e yo u r S e n S e S .

At McDaniel College you will develop new t a S t e S , both in and out of the classroom. You will learn to S m e l l the difference between fact and fiction, and to form opinions in grounded logic. You will f e e l the challenge of academic rigor, as well as the comfort of belonging to an authentic community where Students come first. You will begin to h e a r your inner voice—and trust it. At McDaniel College you will discover your future through numerous research, travel, and internship opportunities. Come S e e for yourself.

http://admissions.mcdaniel.edu/ T wo College Hill, weSTMinSTer, MD 21157

Urbanite is a customer-focused and forward-thinking company that rewards hard work, innovation, and teamwork. EOE. Send cover letter with salary requirements and resume to: Tracy Ward, Publisher Urbanite 2002 Clipper Park Road, 4th Flr. Baltimore, MD 21211 Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com

800-638-5005

KaRen bacKhaUs C: 410-808-2969 O: 410-561-0004 kmb925@comcast.net karensellsmaryland.com UniqUe oppoRtUnity to own 2 spectacUlaR homes on one lot in poplaR hill neighboRhood of mt. washington

www.urbanitebaltimore.com No phone calls, please

EQUAL HOUSING

OPPORTUNITY

R EALTOR

Rent one and live in the the otheR. Separate driveways allow privacy. Both homes feature high end upgrades.The main home is a traditional 3BR,2.5BA w/ refinished Georgia Pine & fir floors throughout. The kitchen boasts Corian counters,wonderful breakfast bar and generous cabinet space.First floor laundry room. Master suite with private outdoor balcony. The second home follows a modern floorplan with open spaces.The custom combination of oak floors,granite counters, imported tiles and stained glass showcase the architectural detail of this 1BR, 1.5 bath dream home. Large family room with vaulted ceilings and cozy gas fireplace. Unique Soja screen in master suite.Bedroom level laundry room with added closet space. Beautifully landscaped yard provides the finishing touch on this gem. Don’t let this opportunity slip by. Call today for a private showing. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m a u g u s t 0 9

81

eye to ey e

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How does an artist work in the quiet of the studio? He or she begins with nothing but thought and makes it physical. The process is difficult and somewhat different for every person.

Ben Piwowar is an artist working in Baltimore. He is especially candid about making art, about his particular way of moving himself through the process toward a meaningful end. I have selected four of his small, sketch-like works to give a sense of his method. His own words tell it best.

“My simplest and foremost goal in making these little paintings was to find a way to make more paintings—to ramp up my productivity in the studio, to increase the quantity and range of the images I can generate. Equal parts playfulness and desperation. The smaller scale affords me a speed, spontaneity, and willingness to fail—the things that are hardest to sustain in the larger, more worried-over paintings I’m accustomed to making.

“Each piece is meant to stand alone—as vignette, as one-liner, as autonomous fragment—but I also want these images to accrue complexity and meaning as their ranks grow and the viewer moves from one to the other.”

ben piwowar

—Alex Castro

the world and everything in it 8 x 8 inches

urbanite august 09

four small works (acrylic on panel, 2009), clockwise from upper left: holdout 8 x 8 inches carrier 6 x 6 inches parent 8 x 8 inches

www.benpiwowar.com/

I used to flash gang signs at the bowling alley.

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M ov e i n n ow. u n p r e c e d e n t e d p r i c e s f o r a l i M i t e d t i M e .

IndII fference Ind

once a 1920’s grain elevator. now 24 stories of glass, concrete, steel and soul. in celebration of our July Grand opening, a very limited number of tower residences are available at unprecedented prices with premium services and amenities included. tower residences from $600,000 to over $4 million. silo residences from $264,900.

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Silopoint.com

Condominium Sales by: CSM Partners, Seller’s Agent

2009 Winner National Community of the Year

MHBR #5575

Obtain the Property Report required by Federal

law and read it before signing anything. No Federal agency has judged the merits or value, if any, of this property.