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contents
december 2010 issue no. 78
features 40
the god that fails
gregory s. paul says the presence of god is bad news for societies. and he believes he has the research to prove it. by m i ch a e l a n ft
44
the unreleased
inside maryland’s prisons are hundreds of women serving life sentences, many without possibility of parole. mary joel davis believes that it’s time to start letting them go. by r i ch a r d o’ m a r a
48 40
keeping the faith
like many in my generation, i had every reason to abandon the church. but something kept drawing me back. by ch r i s j a ck h i l l
departments 9 13 15 19 23
73
31 this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: recipe: homemade eggnog
editor’s note
winged migration
what you’re saying doggie names
what you’re writing
the dinner table: beach picnic, wild america, and the white coffee pot
corkboard
this month: kwanzaa, mitzvah day, and a monumental occasion
the goods: for the birds. plus: homemade caramels, handmade jewelry, and midcentury modern baltimore observed
the french connection does baltimore’s partnership with a paris-based company offer the solution to the city’s infrastructure problems? by john barr y
57
cents
money in the bank banks have money to lend, but do you have the wherewithal to borrow it? by will morton
on the air:
radio: urbanite on the marc steiner show, weaa 88.9 fm
63
by brennen jensen
69
dec. 7: mary joel davis dec. 21: ethan watters dec. 29: gregory paul
space
second edition a unique library-turned-residence holds relics from the far east.
eat/drink
object of desire a tiny french confection inspires cultish devotion among its foodie fans. by tracey middlekauff
73 75 77 79
on the cover: sculpture and photography by Karen Yasinksy
reviewed: darker than blue and chiyo sushi wine & sprits: nog heaven the feed: this month in eating art/culture
let me tell you a story at one public school, immigrant students share tales from their lives. by marianne amoss
plus: the second city does baltimore, freedom’s sisters, and this month’s cultural highlights
90
eye to eye
urbanite’s creative director, alex castro, on artifacts from the world trade center w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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issue 78: december 2010 publisher Tracy Ward Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com creative director Alex Castro general manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com editor-in-chief Greg Hanscom Greg@urbanitebaltimore.com managing editor Marianne K. Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com assistant editor Carrie Lyle Carrie@urbanitebaltimore.com editor-at-large David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com online editors green/sustainable: Heather Dewar Heather@urbanitebaltimore.com home/design: Brennen Jensen Brennen@urbanitebaltimore.com food/drink: Tracey Middlekauff Tracey@urbanitebaltimore.com arts/culture: Cara Ober Cara@urbanitebaltimore.com literary editor Susan McCallum-Smith literaryeditor@urbanitebaltimore.com proofreader Robin T. Reid contributing writers Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Michael Corbin, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Michelle Gienow, Clinton Macsherry, Richard O’Mara, Andrew Reiner, Martha Thomas, Michael Yockel, Mary K. Zajac editorial interns Juliette Eisner, Jennifer Walker art director Kim Michalov Kim@urbanitebaltimore.com production manager Belle Gossett Belle@urbanitebaltimore.com design manager Lisa Van Horn Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com designer Kristian Bjørnard Kristian@urbanitebaltimore.com staff photographer J.M. Giordano Joe@urbanitebaltimore.com production interns Ed Gallagher, Lisa Scott, Rachel Verhaaren senior account executives Catherine Bowen Catherine@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan Econ Econsusan@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com advertising sales/events coordinator Erin Albright Erin@urbanitebaltimore.com advertising sales intern Shanisa Gardner bookkeeping/marketing assistant Iris Goldstein Iris@urbanitebaltimore.com administrative assistant Shantez Evans founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, 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 2010, 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, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211. Urbanite is a certified Minority Business Enterprise.
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10% TOTAL RECYCLED FIBER
urbanite december 10
photo by J.M. Giordano
photo by Margaret Rosser
photo by Cory Donovan
contributor s Since graduating from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004, Alex Fine has been illustrating for various local and national publications and playing guitar in his band, Thee Lexington Arrows. A lifetime Maryland resident, Fine lives and works in Mount Vernon with his wife, Chloe, and his cat, Pepperoni. His illustration accompanies Chris Jack Hill’s essay, “Keeping the Faith” (p. 48). Chris Jack Hill, author of the essay “Keeping the Faith” (p. 48), divides his time between working with words and the Good Word. A minister at the nondenominational Church of the Redeemed of the Lord in northeast Baltimore, he teaches English at Sandy Spring Friends School and Sojourner-Douglass College. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Black Issues Book Review, the Afro-American, the Baltimore City Paper Paper, and elsewhere. His forthcoming book, When Jesus Gave Me Water: Essays on Faith, Spirituality, and Wellness, includes the writing of Wes Moore, Cornel West, Jamal Harrison Bryant, Cora Daniels, Clarence V. Reynolds, Ron Walker, and others. Photo intern Rachel Verhaaren is a senior photography major at the Maryland Institute College of Art. When she’s not attending class, Verhaaren enjoys singing with her a cappella group on campus and performing with the thespian club. She is originally from Long Island, New York, and, like any good New Yorker, constantly craves pizza and bagels. This month, her photography appears in the Goods (p. 23), Baltimore Observed (p. 31), and the Feed (p. 77).
editor’s note
Every year about this time—I’m writing this in early November—a
funny thing happens in Baltimore: The trees in local parks are suddenly all atwitter with the small talk of songbirds. For most people, this phenomenon passes unnoticed; within a few days, the tiny winged critters are gone again, vanished into the air from which they materialized. But for those who are attuned to such things, it is a marker of the changing season and cause for some small celebration. The songbirds are returning from their breeding grounds in the northern forests, headed to points south for the winter, and Baltimore’s small islands of green are good places to stop over and fuel up for the rest of the trip. David Curson, conservation director for the Audubon Society’s Maryland-D.C. chapter, says that on a good day during migration, Patterson Park lights up like a patch of the boreal forest. “The trees can be alive with the sounds of rose-breasted grosbeaks, scarlet tanagers … It can really sound like you’re in the middle of Canada someplace.” Why we find this spectacle so inspiring, I don’t know. Perhaps it is just a reminder of larger life cycles and the insignificance of our all-consuming, day-to-day routines. There is something heroic, too, about a creature that weighs little more than a peanut crossing an entire continent, then turning around and doing it again a few months later. The fact that they do this sans map and compass is truly awesome. But there is something more: These birds are on a mission, and it is next to impossible to distract them from it. Scientists have tried sidetracking migrating Arctic terns, for example, by laying out buffets of dead herring, one of their favored foods. The response from the birds? Not even the time of day. Nature writer David Quammen sums it up like this: “The Arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose.” And that, right there, is what this issue of Urbanite is about. We all know people like this—so driven by their personal cause that, try as we might, we can’t talk them into joining us for a beer on the porch, people who will deny themselves all manner of pleasure in order to chase some far-off dream in which they fervently believe. Perhaps we all have an inner purpose like this, but we just manage to squelch it in the name of making a living. There is something special about those who are incapable of pushing these things aside, who are truly possessed with pursuing that One True Thing. This issue’s feature stories kick off with Michael Anft’s “The God that Fails” (p. 40), a story about Gregory Paul, a man who has dedicated a significant chunk of his life to proving that faith in God is bad for societies. But his belief—or disbelief, if you prefer—grows at least in part from a deeper passion. In “Keeping the Faith” (p. 48), writer and pastor Chris Jack Hill tells of his decision to stick with the church, despite any number of forces pulling him in the opposite direction. And in “The Unreleased” (p. 44), Richard O’Mara tells the story of Mary Joel Davis, who has dedicated her life to helping women in the criminal justice system. Davis “retired” a few years ago, but refuses to let up. Elsewhere in this issue, Urbanite’s online home/design editor Brennen Jensen writes about a one-of-a-kind library-turned-residence in the Jonestown neighborhood. Online food/drink editor Tracey Middlekauff tells of the delightful macaron, a confection positively built for the holidays. And managing editor Marianne Amoss describes a unique program that encourages high school kids from around the world to tell the stories of the homes and traditions they left behind. The program is designed to bridge the divides between people who have come to call this city home—call it a higher purpose. Happy reading, and as always, if you like what you find here, you’ll love our website and weekly e-zines. Find it all at www.urbanitebaltimore.com.
—Greg Hanscom
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? Coming Next Month: Groundbreaking ideas for a better Baltimore 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 d e c e m b e r 1 0
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what you’re saying DANCE ∙ L AT I N rising
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7 no. 7 issue
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who’s the pooch? I enjoyed the article focusing on the many different ways that a family is made up (“The Ties that Bind,” November). I do want to point out that you identified every family member in the photos with the exception of the dog in the Smith-Burden family. The way that FT Burden is touching the dog and the fact that this lovely animal was included in the photo makes me think that he is cer certainly a member of this amazing family. —Suzanne Bailey, Fells Point The eds respond: Thanks for the note. Her name is Endora. She’s 12, and, reports Charles Smith, she “rules the house with an iron paw.” from the web with family, past is not prologue Re. “Family of One” (November): I think that this kind of research [on African Americans who have chosen not to marry] is both important and resonant with the lived experiences of many young professionals. It is both validating and reassuring to know that this has become a normal life course phenomenon, and I appreciate that [University of Maryland assistant sociology professor Kris Marsh] describes it as an end point, rather than a transition point. I think that people need to know that the past is not prologue and shifts happen. I also like that she de-
scribed the shift as value neutral rather than value negative like many folks would have. Research on the changing definition of family is valuable to me. My husband and I don’t plan to have kids, and I am always confused when people ask us if/when we are going to start a family. We already did. We ARE a family. I’m not sure that I would define SALAs [individuals who are single and living alone] as “families,” but I appreciate the dialogue. —Posted by USC Alumni the higher-ed hamster wheel Re: “Branching Out” (November): Interesting article, though I have to say that 1) I love how the author paints historically black colleges as the only colleges benefiting from the noncompete law. Other Maryland area schools have benefited as well; it is simply that, more times than not, the amount of monetary muscle these other schools have has allowed them to stay out of the courts (read: heavily endowed Johns Hopkins, among others). And 2) I wish the education industry would stop lying to incoming freshmen: It is a blatant lie that having a master’s degree when you graduate will make you more qualified [for a job]. Having a master’s degree plus a year-long internship or some other type of experiential learning will make you more qualified. Simply having another degree will only add to your debt and increase the expectation that education alone will increase your lot in life. It is almost the greatest marketing campaign in history. Now we have all these people with tons of degrees and no jobs, yet “educators” rarely have anything to say except “Keep going to school; things will get better.”
profpeach): So that’s what Scott’s up to in the orchard! :^) The kids and I can vouch for how delicious the fruit it. I love to cook, and it’s wonderful to traipse into the orchard and pick what we will eat. Pies made from justpicked fruit are heavenly! —Julia Kim Smith, Mount Washington get your own Re. “In Search of the Great Pumpkin,” in which online food/drink editor Tracey Middekauff chronicled her you-pick adventures on local farms (http://bit.ly/urbanpumpkin): Every year me and my girlfriend go to Baugher’s Farm just north of Westminster. They have pick-your-own strawberries/ peaches/apples/etc. (depending on the season) and about a 60-acre pumpkin patch, not to mention hayrides, stuff-your-ownscarecrow, kettle corn, etc. Then on our way home we stop by Hoffman’s Home Made Ice Cream just west of Westminster. Great day. —Posted by ryan97ou corrections In a production-week fog, we managed to misspell photographer (and former Urbanite intern) Tyler Fitzpatrick’s name in a couple of credits in the November issue. We also claimed that the annual Punkin Chunkin contest was in Newark. It actually takes place outside of Bridgeville. (You’re welcome, Newark, for the extra tourist traffic, confused as it must have been.) And finally, Dan Heneghan called to say that he and his wife, Nell, are not Mennonite, as we reported in our review of their restaurant, Soup’R Natural. Our apologies for the errors.
—Posted by Natisha the mysterious fruit farmer In response to “Meet Professor Peach,” a Web-only story about Scott Smith, who Urbanite online green/sustainable editor Heather Dewar describes as “a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins Univer University and a serious fruit nut” (http://bit.ly/
We want to hear what you’re saying. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore. com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
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urbanite december 10
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what you’re writing
As their voices traveled to me, I would hold back my desire to run toward them; I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew they would wait for me; maybe because they always did, because I had a feeling they always would. Maybe because what they gave I could count on, so I did just that. —Melinda Jennifer Cianos lives in Towson and is more than a little bit happy spending time with her husband, three children, and several special friends. She studies English and creative writing at the College of Notre Dame, is pleased to find her way into Urbanite for a second time, and hopes, in the future, to put together a thing or two worth reading.
t h e din ner tabl e
illustration by Polly Becker
“is mrs. dash coming to dinner today?”
i was the first one called in. When I left, my friends didn’t even look up from their painted toes or the circles they swirled in the grass with their feet. My mother yelled for me to come to dinner, and I stepped out of the yard, away from them, and headed home. The kitchen window was open, and I could hear things being moved around. Through the opening I could barely see her, but I knew what my mother was doing: rolling lemons on the countertop until the hard yellow skins grew soft enough beneath her hands to squish the insides and make juice for the iced tea; shaking flimsy chicken thighs and legs in a brown paper bag filled with flour and then laying them in babbling grease. I knew she was wiping forks, spoons,
and knives once or twice on a threadbare apron before placing them in the proper for formation. I knew she was filling glasses to the top with the ice cubes that would numb my top lip as I took a drink. Through the screen door the people inside were not discernable yet, not from where I stood at the end of the yard, and not with the sun laying flatly across the gray screen, but I knew who was at the table. My father was home from the steel mill with his black work boots still on, but not his hard hat. He smelled of metal shavings and sweat, like the palms of my hands after holding a fistful of pennies, but I would want to sit next to him; I hoped I had made it home before my brother so I could have that seat.
a lady with Styrofoam-white hair yells from the other table, wildly waving the salt-free seasoning packet in the air. “Who’s Mrs. Dash?” the man across from her asks. “She’s my friend!” she snaps back. The walkers are lined against the dining room walls. A round-faced staff member announces, “Time for dinner!” and the trays come out. My grandmother is at her usual place. You can imagine it now: four ladies hunched over their trays at her table on the third floor of the memory care unit in northern Baltimore. She could confuse me for her niece or daughter today, but titles aren’t important because my grandmother’s midnight eyes light up when I enter the dining room. She waves me over to her table from across the room. I pull up a chair. “Want something?” she asks. Dinner is sweet-and-sour chicken in rounded cubes with an orange sauce that glows. Iced tea in Styrofoam cups so sweet and syrupy it aches as it goes down. Cream of asparagus soup with a light green film on top. My grandmother stuffs cracker packets and plastic cutlery into her pockets. Remembering is like walking through a dark house. We feel around in the shadows, stumbling upon memories like objects on a dusty shelf. I remember: the scratched yellow pan that Drew made root bakes in two autumns ago, the first season we lived together. My grandmother bending over the open oven in her apartment. The heat from the oven heavy as Baltimore summers. From that oven came baklava wrapped tighter than skin around honey and walnuts. Spanakopita browned on the top, warm white feta melting out of it. Pastitso and olive oil-fried potatoes
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give. Treat yourself or a loved one to the gift of a nurtured body, mind, and soul this holiday season.
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settling into clusters on my grandmother’s green-glass plates. My father standing over a cast-iron pan in the kitchen of my childhood. Hot oil dancing across tofu as he layers it into the pan. Now my grandmother’s apartment is full of dark rooms, memories that she has left dusty on the shelf. The laundry lies, crumpled and cold, each piece of clothing awaiting its moment of glory. The vacuum cleaner sits in a corner, anticipating its song, its roar to life. The refrigerator shutters into a deep sleep, dreaming its electric dreams. Now my grandmother’s world is her nursing home room, the window she sits by awaiting my visits and her nightly dinner trays. I collect these memories with her like the cracker packets that she holds tightly in her hand as she wheels her walker back from dinner. —When Ariana Deignan-Kosmides is not visiting her grandmother, she enjoys writing poetry and creative nonfiction, imagining a shift in our current criminal justice system that does not rely on over-incarceration, and cooking with her grandmother’s recipes. i always wondered about those pods that wash up on the beach: black and leathery-looking, 3 to 4 inches long, with a pair of hooks on each end. I’d often see them on the beach caught in algae or old fishing nets. Turns out the pods are the egg cases of skate fish. Skates are related to rays and have a similar body shape. They’re flat and look like they are made up of two “wings” attached to a central spine, with a long skinny tail in back. Skates start life in the egg cases as embryos, but once they grow, they bust out underwater and swim freely. At the end of September in Corolla, North Carolina, the breaking waves seemed full of young pink skates. No more than a few inches across, a skate could easily fit in my hand. These guys would have been better off in deeper water; many were washing up on shore and getting stranded on the sand. If they were lucky, the next wave was big enough to wash them back out. If not, they flopped around until gulls swooped in. Watching a seagull eat a skate is like watching a human eat a tire. Skates are cartilaginous, and even though gulls have sharp beaks, they seem to have no means, or perhaps patience, for cutting up their catch. Instead, they dip a young skate in shallow water to remove sand, get the right grip to swallow it headfirst, and then with what looks like some effort choke the palmsized flat fish down whole.
At water’s edge near sundown, I was just far enough back for waves to wash over my feet without getting swamped. After I watched several skates get eaten, one washed up at my feet. I believe in the Great Circle of Life and all, but then again it’s hard to watch something flop around stranded, all the while knowing it’s about to become dinner. So I picked the skate up and put it back in the water. Three minutes later another skate, or maybe the same one, washed up again at my feet. Ah, geez. Again, I put it out to sea but farther this time. In the same spot two minutes later, a skate was again stranded. This time, I let it ride. A gull flew in and grabbed it. It was dinnertime, and the sea was serving up plenty. —Bernadette Burger loves to travel and occasionally write about it. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and self-important cat. Her hobbies include tennis, cooking, gardening, and obsessively gazing at the Domino Sugars sign. we had two dinner tables back in the ’60s: one at home and one at the White Coffee Pot restaurant in Pimlico. There were five of us: my mother, who worked part-time; my father, who pounded the pavement as a salesman; my younger brother and sister; and me. My father came home from work about 6 every night. Before he could get out of the car, my mother would call out the front door, “Don’t even get out of the car, Leonard. We’re going out to eat tonight.” This conversation took place at least three times a week. The White Coffee Pot was a small place, with only two waitresses. Why did they look as if they wanted to put the “closed” sign on the front door when they saw us coming? Why did it always seem that they flipped a coin to see who got stuck waiting on the family from hell? My sister, for some reason, hated to go out to dinner. As my father attempted to enjoy his meal, my mother unsuccessfully tried to reason with the screaming 5-year-old, who was under the table with her legs sticking out. My brother and I had no social etiquette whatsoever, taking punches at one another continuously, each trying to have the last word. To say my family wasn’t welcomed there is an understatement. On the nights that my mother cooked dinner, the players were the same, but the scenario was a bit different. My annoying brother, who was perfect weight-wise, could eat as much as he wanted. My little sister
was cute but overweight. And I hated to eat and especially hated my mother’s meatballs. We didn’t have a dog, so when no one was looking, I stuffed the meatballs, one by one, down the hollow legs of our aluminum kitchen table. I never told anyone about it until now. I don’t remember any real conversations, just my mother yelling at me, “Eat, eat!” To my sister, she would say, “Don’t eat!” and my brother would hear, “I don’t care if you eat or not.” My father just sat and smiled, completely defeated. My parents are long gone, hopefully enjoying a peaceful dinner somewhere other than the White Coffee Pot. Today, their children don’t eat meatballs, but all have family dogs, just in case. ■ —Timonium resident Phyllis Woolford is a medical secretary by day. She writes short stories, children’s stories, and poetry, and is completing her first novel. Her hobbies include creating specialty gift baskets and designing furniture.
“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, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211, or e-mail it to WhatYoureWriting@urbanite baltimore.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 Love and Hate Problem Solved Bedtime Story
Deadline Dec 6, 2010 Jan 5, 2011 Feb 7, 2011
Publication Feb 2011 March 2011 April 2011
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FREEDOM TO JUGGLE 3 KIDS AND 6 CREDITS.
PeoPle are caPable of doing amazing things. Take our flexible undergrad and graduate students at College of Notre Dame of Maryland. These women and men are defining and redefining themselves and their careers, and they’re often doing so while carrying a full load of responsibilities outside of school. They have spouses, families, jobs, commitments. It’s why we do everything we can to work around their schedules and provide the kind of flexibility that few colleges even attempt. Our programs in business, education, nursing and the arts will propel you to what’s next in your life without taking you away from the life you currently have. Visit us soon.
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Discover our flexible undergraduate and graduate programs, meet faculty and take the next step in your career. Main campus from 5:30 to 8 p.m. • Fourier Hall 410-532-5500 • ndm.edu/firstthursdays
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4701 N. Charles St. | Baltimore, MD 21210
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urbanite december 10
ndm.edu
corkboard
Holiday Festival of Trains
Through Jan 2
Every year the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum presents what they bill as Baltimore’s largest exhibit of toy and model trains. Kids can ogle the miniature neighborhoods and moving trains in the layouts, installed by eight different area train enthusiast groups, and get a photo with Santa Claus or Frosty the Snowman.
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum 901 W. Pratt St. 410-752-2490 $14; $12 seniors; $8 children 2–12; museum members free www.borail.org
World AIDS Day
Dec. 1
Celebrated each year on December 1, World AIDS Day raises awareness of the global AIDS pandemic. Baltimore, which as of 2007 has the fifth-highest AIDS case report rate of major U.S. metropolitan areas, is marking the occasion with several different activities, including a commemoration at the Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church (10 E. Mt. Vernon Place; 410-685-5290) and a reception and exhibition of a mosaic mural created by Baltimoreans living with AIDS and HIV at the Walters Art Museum (600 N. Charles St.; 410-547-9000). For more info, go to Baltimore World AIDS Day’s Facebook page.
www.facebook.com/ BaltimoreWorldAIDSDay
A Monumental Occasion
Dec. 2, 5:30 p.m.
Kick off the holiday season with the thirty-ninth annual lighting of the 181-year-old Washington Monument in Mount Vernon. Planned are performances by the Morgan State University Choir and the Gilman Traveling Men, as well as strolling entertainment, refreshments, and the official lighting of the monument as fireworks fill the sky.
Mount Vernon Place 600 block of N. Charles St. www.promotionandarts.com
Holiday Heap
Dec. 4, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
More than fifty crafters from the Baltimore area and afar display their handmade, one-of-a-kind creations at this year’s Holiday Heap, hosted by the Charm City Craft Mafia. Also promised are snacks from Red Emma’s and Curbside Café, a free photo booth, and a chance to win a crafts-filled raffle basket.
2640 St. Paul St. www.charmcitycraftmafia.com
Kwanzaa Family Day
Dec. 12, 1 p.m.–5 p.m.
“Heri za Kwanzaa!” The Baltimore Museum of Art hosts a free family day marking the holiday that celebrates African heritage and culture. Families learn about the seven “Ngozu Saba,” or principles of Kwanzaa; take part in hands-on art activities; and enjoy live performances.
Baltimore Museum of Art 10 Art Museum Dr. 443-573-1700 www.artbma.org
Mitzvah Day
Dec. 24, 8:30 a.m.
Get in the holiday spirit with Mitzvah Day, a day of service organized by the Jewish Volunteer Connection. On Christmas Eve, hundreds of volunteers travel throughout Baltimore, handing out care packages with winter essentials such as hand-knit hats and scarves to hospitals, nursing homes, and homeless shelters. Pre-register online.
Weinberg Park Heights Jewish Community Center 5700 Park Heights Ave. 410-843-7490 www.jvcbaltimore.org
For more goings-on about town, get thee to Urbanite’ Urbanite’s newfangled website: www.urbanitebaltimore.com. Photo credits from top to bottom: courtesy of B&O Railroad Museum; © Picsfive | Dreamstime.com; photo by Mark Dennis; photo by Jenny Markley; photo by Glenwood Jackson; photo by Stuart Zolatorow
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Home for the Holidays? Whether you’re traveling or staying put this holiday season, Brentwood Automotive can prepare your European, Asian, or Domestic vehicle for the road or just for the Winter. . Complete mechanical and electrical repairs . We perform all recommended maintenance
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urbanite december 10
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Dang Good Food, Fancy Pants Cocktails & Ice Cold Beer
Whether’s it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, we’ll feed your face! 5402 Harford Rd, Baltimore, MD 21214 410.444.1497 www.bmoreclementine.com
MCPA presents “The Nutcracker” December 5, 2010 – 2pm Chesapeake Arts Center Call today for tickets! MCPA offers professional dance training in classical ballet and all contemporary dance styles. Spaces still available in most classes. MCPA was recently ranked fifth on Dancer Magazine’s list of the top 50 dance studios in North America. 5543 Harford Road, Baltimore 21214 • 443-438-4525 www.MidAtlanticCenterforthePerformingArts.com
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Enjoy a cup of coffee and local pastries in house, or grab a pound to brew at yours!
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I filmed my own sex tape and “accidentally” sent it to everyone. The pop made me do it. William knows all too well what pop music can do to your life. If you or someone you know is dealing with a pop addiction, there is hope. WTMD 89.7. STOP THE POP INSANITY. LIstener supported radIo from toWson unIversIty
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For the Birds
You wouldn’t want to eat off festering dishware, and neither do your backyard finches, chickadees, and cardinals. The new EcoClean line of bird feeders from Wild Birds Unlimited (branches in Cockeysville and Gambrills; 888-302-2437; www.wbu.com) are made with antimicrobial materials that inhibit the growth of bacteria, mold, mildew, and other microbes. Whereas regular feeders should be cleaned monthly with a bleach solution, these just need soap and water. EcoClean feeders are available in standard tube models, tube feeders for finches, and a “dinner bell” design.
photo by Jim Carpenter
—Brennen Jensen
ph
ot
y ob
Je n
n
a yL
Bu
dd
e
Bag Lady
When she was in college, Jenny LaBudde snagged some large burlap coffee bags from her local coffee shop. “I just thought I would find something to do with them someday,” she says. A short time later, the Baltimorean bought a computer and decided to use the bags to make a case for her laptop. Pleased with the results, she decided to sell her creations. The laptop cases—which come padded and with a pocket for a power cord—are meant to protect computers while they are carried in backpacks and other bags. Pre-made cases can be purchased on LaBudde’s Etsy site (www.etsy.com/shop/ labudde); custom orders are also available.
—Jennifer Walker
—B.J.
photo by Brennen Jensen
Still Stylish
Backstabbing, bed hopping, bad habits—they permeate Mad Men, AMC’S plunge into Madison Avenue of the 1960s. But while behaviors might be ugly in this saucy glance back at the advertising world, the furniture never is. It’s “midcentury modern,” and if you want these sleek lines and cool colors for your 21st-century abode, head to Catonsville and Home Anthology (91 Mellor Ave.; 410-744-0042; www.home anthology.com). Here, the husband-and-wife team of Rob Degenhard and Nini Sarmiento have been collecting vintage teak, chrome, and leather goods since well before Don Draper graced our TV screens. Their 5,000-square-foot store is choc-a-block with it all, from cocktail shakers to 9-foot-long sofas. They’ll introduce you to Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, Herman Miller, and a host of others from Denmark and beyond who left their mark on this still-hip-after-all-these-years style.
Holidays at The Rotunda! FREE Holiday GiftWrap & Coffee!
Wed., Dec. 15–Thur., Dec. 23
Mon-Thurs 10am-3pm ~ Fri 10am-8pm Saturday 10am-6pm ~ Sunday 12-4pm
ROTUNDA CINEMAS
711 West 40th Street
FREE Holiday Movies! Dec. 18-19 at Rotunda Cinemas Saturday & Sunday 10:30am H Polar Express H Elf H
BOMBAY COSMO FASHION BOUTIQUE
CASA MIA’S
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE READING ROOM
RADIO SHACK
RITE AID
ROTUNDA CLEANERS
GIANT FOOD
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HAIR CUTTERY
TOMLINSON CRAFTS COLLECTION
shop • work • live
THE STYLE MakEr
TEXTILES INC.
Gian Marco Menswear Happy Holidays
Visit our Thrift Corner all under $10
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urbanite december 10
517 North Charles Street | Baltimore, MD | 410.347.7974 Mon - Sat. 10-6 pm | www.gianmarco.org
Baltimore
photo by Rachel Verhaaren
Sparkle and Shine
Unique, handcrafted jewelry is the thing at Amaryllis in Harbor East (612 S. Exeter St.; 410-576-7622; www.amaryllisjewelry.com). Since 1985, the shop has been supporting local, national, and international artisans, selling necklaces, bracelets, pins, and earrings made of semi-precious and precious stones, 14- and 18-karat gold, Austrian crystal, sterling silver, and other materials. Most of the offerings are appropriate for everyday wear, with some special pieces availavail able. Owners Ann Marie Fiume and Allison Wolf travel to jewelry shows around the country handpicking distinctive creations, such as the pictured necklace, with a tree of life etched into 24-karat gold vermeil, by New York-based artist Satya. “We aren’t run of the mill,” Fiume says. “The different factor is what we are all about.” —Juliette Eisner
Sweet Treats
B.G. Purcell started out making caramels as gifts for family and friends, using her stepmother’s family recipe. “Everyone always told me they were so good that I just had to start selling them,” she says. In January 2007 she founded Mouth Party Party,, which turns out caramels in six flavors: original, sea salt, chocolate, chocolate sea salt, maple, and cappuccino. They’re sold in two-piece, four-piece, and 1-pound packages, as well as gift bags, for the holiday season. Caramels are available at the retail store (8923 Old Harford Rd.; 443-465-7401) and at various stores in the Baltimore area; go to www.mouthpartycaramel.com for a list. —J.E.
photo
by R a c
hel Verh
aaren
photo by Justin Nethercut
Urban Style
“You can’t find these brands anywhere else,” says Garth Young, who carries popular but hard-to-find clothing lines like Mishka and Rocksmith at his store, PEDX, in Fells Point. That’s why the store has built a loyal following—and needed to expand to a larger space. The new location (1715 Aliceanna Street; 410-276-0038; www.pedxbaltimore.wordpress. com), which opened in October, sells T-shirts, hats, hoodies, and button-up shirts that Young describes as “creative urban apparel.” (The old space at 1707 Aliceanna is now a consignment shop that Young plans to turn into an art store.) He says that the clothing designs hark back to 1980s skatewear—and that everything is sold in limited quantities: “Once we sell the piece, we never get it back.” —J.W.
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urbanite december 10
special advertising section
Purpose:
Restoring America’s
Health One local company has an audacious goal, and all scales are tilting toward achieving it. by robin t . reid photography by david rehor
H
elping people improve or possibly even save their lives while working for one of the fastest growing public companies in the world might sound like a pipedream. And a company vision that pledges to “provide hope, health, and happiness to millions of Americans” may strike some as overreaching. Not so. Take the case of Medifast. Based in Owings Mills, Md., the company helps people manage their weight through a carefully designed menu and simple behaviors developed by doctors over the last thirty years. And considering that nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese, such a program does indeed have the potential to make a hefty difference. Ivy Allen saw that when she came to work for Medifast in May after several years of working for Fortune 500 companies and a university. “I am promoting health, balance, and well-being—access to a new life really,” the
“Unlike fad diets that restrict a specific macronutrient such as protein or carbohydrates, Medifast is nutritionally balanced.”
special advertising section
The Pipeline Medifast uses a four-pronged approach to get out the goods Medifast supports its products to clients through four channels: doctors, Medifast health centers, direct shipments, and health coaches. The first comprises the more than 20,000 doctors who have recommended the weight loss plan to their patients since Medifast began thirty years ago. As health care evolves, so does this channel, which now includes physicians who focus their efforts solely on weight loss. The second channel—health centers—are one of the company’s fastest growing areas. In August 2010, the company had thirty; by the end of next year, that number is in schedule to double, with outlets in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, and the District of Columbia. In keeping with the doubling trend, Medifast plans to have 120 by the end of 2012. Channel three ships products right to clients. Since many people these days have a do-ityourself mindset, this serves their needs. Medifast has built and is always adding to its sophisticated online and call-in support areas; the Web site offers chat rooms, blogs, customer profile pages, and an “ask the nutritionist” section. Both the call center and the Web team have well-trained staff members on hand to assist consumers. And last but far from the least are Medifast’s health coaches, some 9,000 people across the country who help others lose weight. About 85 percent of the coaches are either on the plan or have succeeded by adhering to it. But the work goes beyond shaving off the pounds. Through the company’s “Take Shape for Life” program, these coaches work with clients to develop the long-term behavior and habits that help ensure success for their clients. Health coaches also have the ability to earn income for helping friends and family improve their health. This holistic approach is rooted in the belief that helping others alleviates stress and therefore encourages optimal mental and physical health.
41-year-old human resource business manager said. “When you change your health, your stamina, your appearance, something magical happens inside of people. They suddenly feel better about themselves, their lives, and their future. They get into action and inspire others to do the same.” Founded in 1980, Medifast has seen explosive growth in the last few years, sadly in part due to the growth in American waistlines. In September, the company weighed in at twentynine on Fortune’s list of the 100 fastest growing companies in the world, one ahead of Amazon.com; it also was ranked seventh in the magazine’s “Best Investments” category. Rapid Sales Growth (in millions)
To keep up with increasing sales, revenue, and profitability, Medifast is hiring—an unusual mode for companies in today’s slumping economy. Currently the company has between ten and twenty new job openings each month. The departments that need employees run the gamut, from marketing and finance in the Owings Mills headquarters to management and sales in the thirty health centers in eight states to product distribution from its centers in Ridgely, Md., and Dallas, Texas. In keeping with the company’s mission of promoting well-being, Medifast gives employees free memberships to health clubs, as well $ 243
$ 3.5 2000
2010 (e)
“I am promoting health, balance, and well being— access to a new life really.”
as medical and dental insurance. A full-time employee is charged with setting up in-house health fairs, risk assessments, smoking cessation clinics, and similar events. And then there’s the food, of course. Medifast employees get all the program’s foods gratis, and they can share the wealth as family members receive discounts of up to 75 percent. Chili, spicy chai latte, beef stew, peanut crunch bars, and brownies are some of the menu’s offerings. “Each Medifast meal consists of a combination of carbohydrates and protein, so users can lose weight while maintaining lean muscle mass,” explained Dr. Lisa Davis, the company’s vice president of scientific and clinical affairs. “Unlike fad diets
special advertising section
Growth in Medifast Employment
600
100 15 2000
2005
2009
that restrict a specific macronutrient such as protein or carbohydrates, Medifast is nutritionally balanced… This helps you continue to burn fat as you transition and maintain your weight loss long term.” Davis said the company relies on sound medicine and research. And those methodologies have helped Medifast gain the trust of more than 20,000 doctors, who in turn have recommended it to patients. “We’ve sponsored third-party research of our products and programs at several universities and teaching hospitals, including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, University of Alabama, and Baylor College of Medicine, to name a few,” she added. “The doctors who recommend us are comforted by the fact that we invest in clinical research… To date, Medifast has completed nine clinical trials and has several ongoing.” In addition, her department has staff experts in adult weight management,
Number of Medifast Centers
60
45
15
2005
2010
2011 e
kidney disease, diabetes management, and weight-loss (bariatrics) surgery. They’re spread out in three divisions: product development, clinical research, and nutrition. And members include nurses, a physician assistant, food scientists, registered dietitians, diet technicians, behavioral scientists, certified personal trainers, and PhD researchers. All of this science makes it easier for an employee like Allen to feel good about working for Medifast. (Plus she’s become a fan of the S’more Crunch Bar.) But perhaps more importantly she’s become a fan of the entrepreneurial corporate spirit she’s tapped into at
Growth in Health Coaches
administrative and executive teams—everybody is shaping our client’s experience. And we’re humbled by the fact that hope, health, and happiness is a very powerful experience.”
11445 Cronhill Drive # 200 Owings Mills, MD 21117 410.356.3752 www.medifast1.com
7,100
0 2003
Medifast. “Many of the companies I worked for previously already had so much in place, the energy was stagnant or flat at best,” she said. “Opportunities here are low-hanging fruit, or fruit that just falls off the tree into your lap. It’s wonderful to know that it’s really easy to grow yourself, your department, and the company with such speed and ease.” “We don’t grow unless we’re delivering on the promise of our vision,” said Medifast Chief Executive Officer Michael McDevitt. “Everyone from our product development team to the associates who operate our manufacturing facility, to our call center operators and distribution center associates, to our fastgrowing marketing group, and our
2010
“We don’t grow unless we’re delivering on the promise of our vision.”
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410-462-8300 30
urbanite december 10
www.bccc.edu
photo by Rachel Verhaaren
baltimore observed
The French I Connection Does Baltimore’s partnership with a Paris-based company offer the solution to the city’s infrastructure problems? By John Barry
Teaming up: Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, and Barry Robinson, chief of transit/marine services at the city’s transportation department, collaborated to create the Charm City Circulator bus service.
n June 2009, downtowners noticed a distinctive new creature lumbering down Lombard Street from Harbor East to Hollins Market: the Charm City Circulator’s large, rounded, hybrid-electric buses. This year, the trademark DesignLine buses made their appearance on a second route connecting Federal Hill and Penn Station. Now with a monthly passenger count of about 150,000, they have slowly woven themselves into Baltimore’s public transit system. But while the Circulator is performing a public service, it isn’t operated by the Maryland Transit Administration. It isn’t funded by the state. The buses are run by an arm of a French-based multinational company that deals in transportation, water, energy, and environmental solutions across the globe. The Circulator is worth looking at in detail, because it’s an example of how, in our cash-strapped age, cities like Baltimore solve infrastructure problems by partnering with private corporations. The model is increasingly becoming part of a national debate about how cities and local governments are going to create a public transit system that will meet the needs of the 21st century.
The idea for the Circulator originated at the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, a nonprofit dedicated to attracting business and residents to the city’s center. Partnership president Kirby Fowler says that several years ago, local businessmen began pushing for a new service for downtown commuters. “We proposed the idea to the city,” he says. “We also did research on the buses themselves.” The city did its own homework and found a way to cover the $5.5 million annual price tag by increasing parking taxes. Several companies bid on the contract, and the decision ultimately came down to two large international companies: the Scotland-based First Transit and Veolia Transportation, a North American subsidiary of Paris-based Veolia Environment, a conglomerate with more than 300,000 employees worldwide. The city’s Board of Estimates chose Veolia, both because of its price and because it had ties to the community: Veolia Transportation CEO Mark Joseph is former president of Yellow Transportation, a company with a fleet of 600 Baltimore cabs and airport shuttle buses. Joseph sold Yellow to Veolia in 2001.
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—John Barry has written on the arts and urban planning for City Paper, Style, the Washington Post, Salon, and others. He also teaches writing at Maryland Institute College of Art, and co-hosts The New Mercury Readings, a nonfiction reading series.
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contractors to make profits. “The buses cost the same, the insurance costs the same, oil costs the same,” he says. “The only way you can do it cheaper is to pay people less.” In fact, in Baltimore, Veolia’s Circulator operators earn considerably less than city-employed drivers and lack the pension benefits that city-employed operators enjoy. Neither Veolia nor the Teamsters, which represents some of the Circulator drivers, would offer details on salaries, but Veolia’s human resources office, which was recruiting new drivers, said a Veolia driver in training earns $10 an hour. An MTA driver in training earns more than $15 an hour. First-year Veolia operators earned about $12 an hour, with 50-cents-per-hour increase per annum. The top salary for an MTA operator is currently $22.57 an hour. Like the MTA, Veolia has its share of disgruntled drivers. Several Circulator operators complained that the low wages result in high turnover. An MTA driver worried that while Veolia prides itself on rigid safety standards, the Circulator wages make its demands unrealistic. “If you want [operators] to act like professionals, you’ve got to pay them that way.” But not all Circulator drivers agreed. One nonunion operator noted that driving the Circulator’s relatively calm route through downtown was “the gravy train.” “I love this job,” the driver said. These issues aside, Baltimore City’s experience with the Circulator indicates that public-private partnerships face some of the same problems that government agencies do. The company has struggled to keep Circulator buses running on time; the hybrid buses have been slow in coming—the city has purchased only thirteen of the anticipated twenty vehicles; and a third line connecting City Hall and the Johns Hopkins medical campus, which was expected to be in operation by now, has been delayed until 2011. Klaus Philipsen, owner of Archplan, a local architecture and urban planning firm, says that the Circulator is a “very creative” solution to a public transit problem. In Europe, he says, there are plenty of examples of cities and private corporations like Veolia developing productive relationships to create public transit. Still, he says, it behooves cities to consider the long-term implications of these partnerships. “If the deal looks too good, it probably is too good,” he says. “It’s like gambling. You’re not going to do it for a long time and make money. It won’t happen.” ■
Going Bananas F r om A r t s /C ult ur e
Artistic duo Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker create a Warhol-inspired installation at the BMA that is a mishmash of happy color, pixelated textures, and historical references. http://bit.ly/urbanitebananas Printing for the masses F r om Arts/Culture
Rachel Bone of Red Prairie Press recommends studios that offer screen printing workshops or use of the facilities. http://bit.ly/urbanprintshops photo by Tracey Middlekauff
In Baltimore, Veolia also owns the Super Shuttle and Checker and Regency Cabs. The Veolia brand is prominently displayed on Baltimore’s MTA paratransit fleet and the Hopkins Shuttle. The company also operates public transit systems in New Orleans, Phoenix, San Diego, and Las Vegas. In Boston, it runs the country’s largest contracted rail system. In Miami, it runs Tri-Rail. One of the company’s primary ways of doing business is through “public-private partnerships.” These partnerships came into use in the 1990s as, faced with rising debts, governments looked to the private sector to invest in infrastructure. It is not dissimilar to privatization, but there’s an important difference: When a city privatizes a service, it sells that service, or the associated infrastructure, to a private company. In public-private partnerships, government and private interests combine efforts in a single nonprofit venture. Government provides funding, while a private contractor operates and assumes financial risk (or reward) for the project. Local governments save money by choosing from low-bid contracts. Private companies, with long-term leases, benefit from a dependable source of income. It’s a system in which “both sides play to one another’s strengths,” Joseph says. “We help cities solve problems,” Joseph says—and not just in transportation. Veolia also owns the city’s Trigen district heating and cooling systems. “We believe we could be a solution to the city’s aging water infrastructure,” he says, adding that if Baltimore ever gets high-speed rail, Veolia will probably bid for that contract as well. (See “The Third Rail,” June ’10 Urbanite.) The Downtown Partnership’s Fowler says response to the Circulator has been positive and points to other examples of public-private partnerships at work: principally, Center Plaza, a long-barren square on West Fayette that was turned into a “vital green space” thanks to a combination of $3 million from private sources, including Constellation Energy and local property owners, and $4.5 million from city, state, and federal governments. But the term “nonprofit” can be ambiguous. When Veolia operates a public transit system like the Circulator, in addition to answering to the city, the company has to answer to its shareholders. Those shareholders, and their demand for profits, change the whole equation for public transit, says Ronald Heintzman, former president of ATU International, the union that represents Baltimore’s MTA workers and transit workers across the country. “As far as I’m concerned, public-private partnership is just another word for privatization,” he says. As cities turn to private contractors to run public transit, he says, there is only one way for those
No Harm, No Fowl F r om F ood / D r ink
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Over the years, it has been likened to everything from a Cold War bunker to a “zombie redoubt.” What will become of the Morris Mechanic Theatre? http://bit.ly/urbanmechanic Tasty, Wild, and Free F r om G r e e n /S us ta in a bl e
A walk in the woods turns into a treasure hunt as a visiting botanist shows a group of Baltimoreans how to forage for the wild foods our ancestors savored. http://bit.ly/urbanforager
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urbanite december 10
photo by Chris Hardy
voices
baltimore observed
D e fi n in g a G e n er a tio n
Author Ethan Watters on urban tribes, the Tea Party movement, and the dark matter that holds cities together interview by greg hanscom
E
than Watters is a reluctant spokesman for his generation. But he has only himself to blame. In 2001, he penned an essay for the New York Times Magazine in defense of his group of friends, who, from all outward appearances, were the pictures of “Gen-X” slacker culture. Watters argued that while his pals were in their 30s and still unmarried, they functioned very much like a family would. He called groups like his “urban tribes.” The essay catapulted him into the national spotlight and provided the seed for his 2003 book, Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? “Writing the book was an attempt to figure out my own life,” Watters says. “I graduated from college in the late ’80s. The mindset [up until that
point] was that after graduation, you were waiting around to get married. But I had gone for fifteen years outside of a traditional family, and so had many of my friends.” Come to find out he and his buddies weren’t alone. “A whole generation suddenly went into this marriage delay,” he says. Watters writes for publications such as Men’s Journal and Wired. His work has appeared on the radio program This American Life. His latest book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, about the spread of American views on mental health, came out earlier this year. He recently spent some time with us revisiting his work in Urban Tribes and talking about what has happened since the book came out.
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urbanite december 10
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urb:
What was different about your group of friends in the 1990s in San Francisco and, say, similar groups in the 1960s or ’70s?
ew: There was always a template for men to do this kind of thing—going off to war, spending time outside the house. But there was never a template for women. Women were suddenly taking education very seriously, getting advanced degrees. But they were also taking time afterward to pursue careers. Suddenly you had men and women in these groups. The addition of women made those groups much more vibrant. There was a sexuality to them that was not true for men’s groups in earlier generations. And something interesting happened: It became a style of living, not just a transition period. urb: Sounds like a scene out of Seinfeld or Friends. ew: The Friends model—this group of incredibly self-centered, self-obsessed individuals—it’s hard to make a great case that that is a good way to live for ten or twenty years. But I had this gut feeling that this was not what was happening. I saw this incredibly vibrant tribe of people being kind and supportive to each other. Robert Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone, made a compelling case that social organizations are on the decline. I did not join the Lions Club. None of my friends are in the League of Women Voters. My generation has abandoned those organizations. But we have the art culture ethos, the Burning Man events, other ways that people are creating what Putnam calls “social capital.” We’ve really as a generation invested in friendship. It’s less about your employer, your hometown, your relatives. We’ve developed these groups of friends instead. If you ignore those, you will indeed look out over the social landscape and say, “We are in deep trouble. People are not getting married. They’re jumping from city to city. They’re abandoning social organizations. It’s a dire picture.” All those statistics are true, but I feel tremendous social connection to place. I have this vibrant group of friends who connect me to the city. urb:
How does a group of friends, a tribe, contribute to the broader society?
ew: Putnam makes a distinction between the social good one does for one’s friends versus the social good one does for the community. His suggestion is that the social capital that you create when you volunteer at the children’s hospital is better for the community than the time you spend helping your friend paint his apartment. I would suggest that there is not as much distinction there as he would claim.
I don’t want to overstate this. There is a distinction between an urban tribe and the Lions Club or the League of Women Voters. When I looked at these groups [for the book], I wanted to make an exact parallel. I wanted to be able to say that this [what urban tribes did] was social capital in another form. I surveyed people [in urban tribes] and asked, “What does your group do to help social good?” I pawed through thousands of surveys. There were a couple of groups doing quixotic things. One group cleaned bathrooms at gas stations. But it was not a case I could make. But I think a couple of things get missed. First, my parents were always part of the League of Women Voters, the Lions Club—they did all the social things. And what I know about those groups is that they themselves are largely friendship groups. I’m not sure that putting friendship and the League of Women Voters in different categories makes a lot of sense. I think Putnam makes too hard a distinction. Also, if you look back in American history to the time before these groups existed, what you find is a time when people did things informally for each other. You’d go help a neighbor build a fence. And you still hear echoes of that today. It’s something I see behind the Tea Party movement: I think these people want to give to the social good, but not through an intermediary like a social organization or government programs. It has a great deal of meaning in America today.
I wrote the epilogue to my book on my honeymoon. I was about to make the transition between tribe and more traditional family … to step off that cliff. The question was, “What happens to the urban tribe now? Is it just about your 20s and 30s and youth in the city?” The answer, I think, is that if you stay in the same place, and you’ve already recognized social capital exists in these groups, then indeed it does go on. My new demographic, we make social capital and do really interesting things with it. I created the San Francisco Writers Grotto. We now have 9,000 square feet of office space in downtown San Francisco. There are thirty-three writers working in the space. People help each other out, collaborate, and develop internal networks, but we’re all freelancers. It’s gone way beyond a group of friends. We’ve had more than 150 writers come through here. We teach writing classes. It’s one example of things that you see all over—organizations that are maturing into something that the Robert Putnams of the future might be able to quantify. That was one of the problems when I wrote the book: Urban tribes—you can’t count them. There’s no membership. They don’t wear fezzes in parades. But now there are organizations like 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers’ tutoring program that has spread all over the country, and art cooperatives, and Burning Man. There are entities, social organizations that are bridging the gap for what Putnam considers social capital.
urb: How have things changed since you wrote the book?
urb:
ew:
voices
baltimore observed
Was the urban tribe just a product of a certain generation that had time to kill?
ew: I wrote in Urban Tribes about Mark Granovetter, a Stanford social psychologist who wrote a paper called “The Strength of Weak Ties.” His argument was that one’s success is dependent largely on having good information. That’s true whether it is mate selection, job acquisition, or finding an apartment. You can have a solid group of friends, but within those circles, there is a fair amount of redundant info. Success requires information from “weak ties”—people who are one or two degrees away from your good friends. It’s the friends of friends who may have the job listing you need. These urban tribes are very porous groups. They are designed to maximize your weak ties. I wrote the book just as Friendster was taking off. Now look at what’s happened: Facebook and all these social networks are all about weak ties. We want to know the one-level-more. Who’s friends with who? This comes from this unconscious understanding of the value of those weak ties. urb: I understand that since you wrote Urban Tribes, you’ve gotten married and had kids. Has the tribe survived?
The energy that creates the urban tribe grows out of our human nature. In 1982 I did not go to a city thinking, “I’ll spend the next ten years with friends.” But all the factors were there. We were away from family, living in a complex urban environment where you need help navigating the world, and we weren’t married. It’s human nature to create these [tribal] bonds in the absence of these other things. And there are no signs that the [average] marriage age is swinging back. If you talk to a 22-year-old college grad and ask them what’s next for them—they’re not drifting into this period the way I did. They know this period is coming for them. They’ll tell you, “I’m not going to get married until I’m 28.” This generation is dedicated to this idea of using this time for educational and personal growth and not getting stuck anywhere. ■ ew:
On the Air: Ethan Watters on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on December 21
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Gregory S. Paul says faith in God is bad news for societies. But his disbelief is rooted in his own personal passion.
the god that fails By
M i c h a el
Ph oto g r a Ph y
By
a n f t
J.M.
g i o r da n o
The godless gather on the second floor of an Irish
Disbeliever: Gregory Paul has become a leading voice nationally among those who claim that faith in God is a detriment to societies.
bar, sandwiched between soccer fans howling at televisions below and drink-happy tourists sucking in the harbor view from an outside deck, to talk about what they don’t believe. Tonight, about three dozen folks mill around or dive into bowls of shrimp and pints of Smithwicks. One of them, a young man, walks up to a balding, bearded guy who makes a habit of wearing vests and a look just this side of hangdog. The young man tells the older one about a delightful article he read in the Wall Street Journal that argued that people aren’t hardwired for religious belief and that countries with a high percentage of the pious are more screwed up than those that are secular. The guy in the vest—Gregory S. Paul—gets to experience the fleeting glee of authorship. He tells the young man he wrote the piece in the Journal. The article, published in April, hit on themes Paul has broadcast regularly since first publishing a lengthy scholarly piece in the Journal of Religion and Society five years ago: Quality of life improves wherever God has reached the Nietzschean end of the road. Inversely, religion thrives in societies that have a high level of social dysfunction and economic
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Lost worlds: Hovering on the periphery of academia, Paul has named at least nine different types of dinosaurs and contributed to evolutionary theory.
inequality. Among Western countries, only the United States maintains a high level of religiosity—and, he says, its citizens suffer because of it. “We’re the only country that’s dragging itself through a culture war,” Paul says. A taciturn guy most days, Paul revels in the role of religious naysayer, ditching his characteristic world-weary modesty for some bolt-upright pride. “I’m sort of the house expert here,” he says as he peels a shrimp and scans the room. “I’m the only one doing peer-reviewed journal work and writing op-ed pieces.” A nonacademic intellectual armed with little more than an associate of arts degree and a passion for scientific inquiry, Paul, 55, thinks he’s developed a formula for determining why some countries do well and others don’t. His “successful societies scale,” a metric that boils down twenty-five quality-of-life categories (including abortion, drug use, economic inequality, incarceration, and homicide and infant mortality rates) was designed to rank nations on their ability to foster the good life for their citizens. Places like Denmark and Japan, where God is little more than a merry myth— kind of like Santa Claus—scored highly. The United States is the least prosperous of the seventeen Western countries Paul measured; it is also the most religious. Paul’s attempts to measure and correlate religious fervor and socioeconomic well-being may represent little more than a man stalwartly and aggressively defending his atheism. But there’s more to this man than one might guess, watching him here, basking in a little attention from his public. He and his scholarly work have
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won the attention of those thinkers and scientists responsible for an atheist revival, including Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. He is in touch with each of them; each has expressed admiration for his arguments and the value they may have for the cause. They see him as a potential game-changer in the battle against God, a meek guy who has conjured a system by which to judge Him and his irrelevance in human affairs. More unlikely still, perhaps: Paul is responsible for many of the images of dinosaurs that grace the pages of some of the country’s glossiest highbrow magazines—Natural History, Smithsonian. His books include the cheekily titled A Field Guide to Dinosaurs. He received a credit as a “dinosaur specialist” on Jurassic Park. Paul’s nonbelief in what atheists call “the imaginary friend” and his well-considered theories on how dinosaurs moved and what they looked like creates an odd juxtaposition. His narrative is one of a man toiling quietly but diligently for decades on images of beings that have been dead for millions of years—while ripping up the reputation of one that he’ll try to convince you has never existed.
Gregory Paul’s three-room Charles Village apart-
ment, where he lives alone, is largely full of nothing—save for paintings, drawings, sculptures of dinosaurs, and models of old military aircraft. It’s here that the idea strikes you that he’s gotten to live the 5-year-old boy’s dream. He sits around and draws dinosaurs,
then waits for the checks to roll in. It’s not really that simple, but remembers that while Paul pursued his dinophilia in community the early part of the story rhymes with Paul’s biography. Baptized college, he took a liking to Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, in and raised a Mormon in northern Virginia, Paul was told early on which the author laid out his misgivings about religion. “It’s what that he could draw ancient reptiles really, really well. He was also got him started on the whole thing,” he says. told that they were fictional characters. Sometime around age 8, he got into an argument with a girl who told him dinosaurs never roamed the Earth. He met a lot of people like that, he recalls. Today, Paul is careful to note that his work merely A Nixon Republican who was turned on by the Beatles as a shows a correlation between religiosity and dysfunction, and not teenager (he’s since converted to liberalism), Paul was more mouse causation either way. Still, he makes some claims that make many than rabble-rouser—a nerdy guy with an interest in military hisbelievers very uncomfortable. He has written that God and sociotory and paleontology. He entered Northern Virginia Community economic success mix as well as oil and holy water: “No socioecoCollege in 1973, studying geology, where he showed up an instrucnomically successful and highly religious nation has ever existed, tor who was teaching his first class. “He knew far more about the and the antagonistic relationship between benign conditions and vertebrate part of the history of geology than I did,” remembers the popularity of religion probably make it impossible for one to Terry Dyroff, now professor emeritus of geology and meteorology at come into being.” For Paul, religion is a balm for the fallen. Montgomery College in Rockville. “He was already It gets more insidious than that: Paul argues highly proficient at researching, painting, and that churches actively work to stanch the flow of drawing dinosaurs. At that point, he already was progress—something he says his scale effectively Paul was told reconstructing the bones and making informed susses out. “Conservative churches didn’t like judgments on what that meant for how they lived. health care reform, even if many of their poorer early on that It was clear to me he was going places.” members would benefit from it,” he says. “They Except he didn’t—at least not to the typical he could draw push for faith-based services instead of ones run ones. Even though “he certainly had the stuff to by the government so they can hold on to their ancient reptiles go and get a PhD,” Dyroff says, Paul didn’t bother. power.” He never wanted to get tangled up in academia, Paul’s work has done more than turn a head really, really he says: “There’s too much bureaucracy. And I or two at the monthly Baltimore Atheists Meetup well. He was also never wanted to work with students.” He preGroup gabfests. He regularly swaps thoughts with ferred hovering around the periphery, soaking up Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell: Religion told that they what he could from universities but not getting as a Natural Phenomenon, and an oft-quoted sucked into them. (He lives where he does in part were fictional atheist and philosopher. In fact, the two may soon because the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns be working on a paper together, Dennett reports. characters. Hopkins—an invaluable research tool to someone When Pope Benedict XVI planned a trip to Engwho regularly consumes expensive journals such land earlier this year, Paul contacted Dawkins, as Nature—is just a few blocks away.) the anti-God evolutionary biologist and author of Not long after graduation, Paul ended up getThe God Delusion, and author/journalist Hitchens ting a job researching and depicting dinosaurs for (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons EveryRobert Bakker, a Johns Hopkins earth and planthing) to drum up support to have the pontiff arrested for child etary sciences professor who looked and sometimes acted like Rasabuse. His debunkings of other religious phenomena, such as the putin. It was a heady time to be into paleontology. Scientists were Shroud of Turin, hold prominent places on antireligious Web sites. coming around to the idea that dinosaurs were active, fast-moving, But academics who practice religion say Paul’s findings are, and warm-blooded. Some had feathers—a revelation at that time. if not offensive, at least specious. “I’m not sure he’s proving anyPaul was there to spill ink on these new developments. With Bakthing in these papers,” says John Conley, professor of philosophy at ker’s help, he continued to hone his own research into how bones Loyola University Maryland and a Jesuit priest. “You might as well moved, what the feathers might look like. “I was fortunate,” he says. say that there is a correlation between certain ethnic groups and “I got into dinosaurs as a kid and happened to be there as we went quality of life, or certain government types. There may be a bias through this period of reconsideration about what they were.” in what categories he’s mentioning, in that they reflect his view of Paul has gone on to espouse theories of his own, many of them what a happy society might feature. You’d have to be an incredibly vindicated by further research. In Dinosaurs of the Air, which he gifted sociologist to develop a method to separate all that out, and published eight years ago, he posited that the velociraptor and it’s clear he’s not there.” other theropods might have been descended from flying dinosaurs, Conley says Paul’s argument that churches have hindered soan idea that has since gained the thumbs-up of many scientists. He cial progress ignores instances in American history, including the has named at least nine different dinosaur species, redubbing the abolition and civil rights movements, which were led by churches. Brachiosaurus Grancai the Giraffatitan. “It’s my favorite dinoFurther, a wide swath of Catholic thinkers believe in physical evosaur,” he says. “It was the biggest in its day, and it’s just really cool lution but question how humans have attempted to apply knowllooking.” One theropod bears his name: Cryptovolans pauli. And edge of it during the past couple of centuries, such as through Paul designed the model for Maryland’s most famous dinosaur, eugenics or by turning class distinctions into harmful stereotypes. Astrodon johnstoni, that currently dominates the Maryland Science Center downtown. The bones of dinosaurs confirm their past. He’s a big becontinued on page 87 liever in physical evidence. He questions everything else. Dyroff w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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Biding time: Etta Myers, right, has spent thirty-three years behind bars for her part in setting up a murder. Mary Joel Davis wants to get her out.
Inside Maryland’s prisons are hundreds of women serving life sentences, many without possibility of parole. Mary Joel Davis believes that it’s time to start letting them go.
The Unreleased by richard o’mara photography by jennifer bishop
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E
tions, it focuses specifically on women who are tta Myers hasn’t enjoyed her life. She has serving long or life sentences. not traveled a lot, nor experienced much in the “It’s costing Some were surprised that Davis would take up way of heart-lifting joy during her slice of time. $25,000 a year to such a difficult challenge. Those who knew her well She knows little of the world outside, having were not. “The women have absolutely no one to spent little of her time in it. She resides today keep an old lady help them,” Davis says. “Absolutely no one.” within the same red brick buildings, walks the in prison. Why same milk-colored corridors, sits at the same tables that she did when she arrived at the Maryshould we do land Correctional Institution in Jessup thirtyhere are 4,694 women and girls serving life three years ago. Still, she has an emphatic presthis? How long sentences in the nation’s prisons; 28.4 percent of ence, a monastic knowingness about her. She’s do we have to them have no chance of parole, according to No well-groomed; her large eyes signal her pain. All Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in Amerher strength is invested in waiting, and just that. keep them?” ica, a report published in July 2009 by the nonprofit But for whom? A woman who possibly—just group Research and Advocacy for Reform. In possibly—holds the key to her freedom. —Mary Joel Davis Maryland, about 10 percent of the more than 2,300 Mary Joel Davis is less arresting, not much inmates serving life sentences are women, some taller than a garden gnome, quick to giggle, and without hope of release. warm as a muffin, but hers is a steely purpose: It was not always so bleak. “Before the 1980s, She wants to get women out of Maryland’s some judges, when giving life sentences, expected prisons—women she believes to be innocent or parole boards to let [the convicts] go within ten to fifteen years,” unjustly sentenced, and others guilty of their crimes who have been says David R. Blumberg, chairman of the Maryland Parole Comlocked away for thirty years or more, like Myers. Many of these mission, the agency that recommends to the governor those women are serving life sentences because they ended the lives of inmates deserving of parole. Lifers, both male and female, were men who, time after time, battered them senseless. Davis collects paroled regularly. Work release programs gave inmates, even lifers, their stories, many full of pathos, violence, and dark personal hisa taste of freedom. Some even went daily to jobs outside prison tories. She hopes they might soften the hard-hearted and persuade walls, paid taxes, and enjoyed home visitations on weekends. those among the political elite to see wisdom in her cause. Then one day in June 1993, a lifer named Rodney Stokes When Davis arrives at the prison for one of her regular converwalked off a work release crew and killed his girlfriend and then sations with Myers, the two women hug and then query about each himself. The shock and public outrage over this act drove thenother’s children. They always complain about the pains time has governor William Donald Schaefer to end work release and home inflicted on them. “Have you heard anything about my case?” Myvisitations for all lifers. Schaefer’s successor, Parris Glendening, ers asks quietly as soon as Davis sits down across the table. “About pledged to maintain the Schaefer policy, but instead made it even my case? Did it go down to the governor’s office?” These talks more draconian and rigid. Glendening declared his position in always revolve around the possibility or improbability of release three short words: “Life means life.” No work release, no home visibut never the impossibility. tations, fewer academic programs—no way out, unless you stood Myers is here because of a knock on a door in West Baltimore before death’s door. so many years ago. She had left a girlfriend’s house and, with her Etta Myers remembers Glendening’s remark. After serving boyfriend, was heading home. She recalls her boyfriend asking her eighteen years, she saw her work release privileges and family if she would knock on the door of a nearby house. She asked why. leaves vanish: “My hopes for redemption and freedom were dashed.” He said the man in the house wouldn’t open the door for him. So Schaefer, earlier in his administration, had freed twelve women she knocked and then went home. “That was the end of it,” she says. lifers, all of whom were convicted of murdering their spouses. In It sure was: The man inside was murdered, and for her part in the the end, the dozen did well with their freedom. “Schaefer believed night’s events, Myers was sentenced to life. in parole,” Blumberg says. So does he. “It is a reward for good be“Coming here was the shock of my life,” Myers says. “But I havior, lowers the threat of violence on our prison staff. If you were refused to give up. It made me start looking for a whole new life.” a lifer and knew you could never get out, you could do what you She means a life beyond the silver barbed fences that surround this wanted to. Parole is the primary reason inmates adjust to prison.” place. During her early years inside she earned an associate of arts The more lenient and practical system of sentencing redegree in general studies, took courses at Morgan State University, emerged briefly during Governor Robert Ehrlich’s single term in acquired a journeyman’s license as an upholsterer—self-improveoffice: He pardoned one lifer and enabled the parole commission ment amenities rarely offered in the current prison system. to release four others. The current occupant of the gubernatorial Davis, for her part, retired in December 2009 after thirty-two chair, Martin O’Malley, is famously opposed to the death penalty, years with a nonprofit she founded called Alternative Directions, but seems not averse to life without parole. Since O’Malley took ofwhich provides legal assistance to women incarcerated in Maryfice, the parole commission has selected for the governor’s considland and helps facilitate their return to the world outside. After a eration forty-three lifers thought deserving of parole: their fate is flurry of tearful gatherings, some attended by grateful ex-offenders currently “pending review,” but no definitive action has been taken. whose lives she helped turn for the better, Davis formed a new Only three members of that group are women. program called Second Chance; an offshoot of Alternative Direc-
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The situation, says former Baltimore circuit judge Elsbeth L. Bothe, who has defended capital cases, “is turning into a nightmare. All these people who can’t be paroled, they don’t need to be held; they’re just moldering away.”
W
hen asked about why she works to free these women, Mary Joel Davis says, “God told me to,” then laughs, which she does a lot. “That’s the only person I can blame.” She has no recollection of what precisely put her on this course, or just when it blossomed in her mind, although she says that very early in her life, she knew she would eventually work for women in prison. She prepared for the kind of work she does now, and for many years: She earned a degree in philosophy and studied psychology. She also took courses on feminist issues in the 1970s. (“My husband hated me,” she says. “So did my children.”) In 1979, just as she was getting out of Towson University, she did some volunteer work in the city jail. She was in her early 40s. “When I first volunteered at the city jail, I could see the problems that women had,” she says. “Women have much harder lives than men. They go to prison, they leave behind children; the family falls apart.” After thirty-three years with Alternative Directions, she says that organization no longer needed her. But although she turned over the helm, she could not walk away from the work. Today, with Second Chance, Davis has selected Etta Myers and seven other prisoners who need help. Davis has little money to finance Second Chance, mainly her own. Philanthropic institutions such as the Abell Foundation have funded Alternative Directions, but so far she has had little success drawing cash for Second Chance. So she recruits attorneys to work pro bono, reviewing transcripts of trials held long ago. Maybe pertinent evidence was withheld. Were the woman’s rights not read to her? If she was battered by her mate, was that information presented at her trial? Did the nature of the crime stimulate media sensationalism, possibly biasing the jurors against the accused? Are there people, not present at the trial, who might be willing to offer useful testimony at a re-hearing, even now? Joyce White was convicted of murdering her live-in boyfriend in August 1984 and drew a sentence of life without parole. According to the attorney working on her behalf, it is uncertain whether her story was told in court. That story went like this: She came home one day and caught her boyfriend sexually abusing her 3-year-old son. He threatened to continue doing it. She got a gun and shot him dead. Twenty-five years later, White is still inside. Her son grew up under terrible circumstances; he too spent time in prison. Another of Davis’s clients is Tonya Renee Lucas, who in July 1993 was convicted of murdering six of her own children. The case made headlines during the trial: According to prosecutors, Lucas set her rowhouse afire in an attempt to conceal the battered and starved condition of her youngest child. Unlike other Second Chance clients, Lucas’s actions seem inexcusable. Davis chose her as her first client. She has known Lucas for about twenty years and meets with her on her regular visits inside the prison, when allowed. “I don’t believe she did the crime,” Davis says.
M
ichael Millemann is a University of Maryland law professor who has gotten some wrongly convicted people out of prison— people like Walter Arvinger, charged in 1970 with a murder he didn’t commit and finally pardoned in 2004, having lost thirty-four years of his freedom. “She’s one of my heroes,” Millemann says of Davis. Second Chance, Millemann says “is absolutely necessary. People with possible paroles have been backing up in Baltimore for fifteen years, and many are in prison who shouldn’t be.” Michele Nethercott, director of the Maryland Innocence Project at the University of Baltimore, says, “We have really gone overboard in Maryland in being punitive toward all lifers. We are warehousing people due to the politicization of the parole process.” “There are certain individuals who could be pardoned,” she adds, “people who have made efforts to improve. We punish extremely harshly.” Not everyone agrees. Russell P. Butler, executive director of Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, which advocates for people who have suffered from crimes against them, says flatly, “Letting people out who have life without parole goes against truth in sentencing.” Whether justified or inhumane, life without parole inflates the costs of incarceration, which have been growing exponentially, driven by ideologies that favor harsh treatment and long sentences, many for relatively small offenses. The United States has more than 2.3 million people imprisoned, an increase of 600 percent over the past thirty-five years, the largest collection of convicts on the planet. And the costs of holding these men and women balloon as they age and require more medical attention. Davis estimates that the state of Maryland has spent about a million dollars on the incarceration of Myers alone. “It’s costing $25,000 a year to keep an old lady in prison,” Davis says. “Why should we do this? How long do we have to keep them?” Davis’s face gains a certain ruddy darkness when she thinks of this, especially when she’s attempting to comfort a client behind the razor-trimmed fence in Jessup, explaining to Lucas the slim possibility of eventual parole, or trying to answer an unanswerable question such as the one she received in a letter from Myers: “I know I’m responsible for knocking on that door. But do I have to be here for thirty-three years?” Davis’s frustration derives from her incapacity to dislodge these people from that dark, leper’s life. Having to live with that awareness of her inadequate strength weighs her down. But it doesn’t overcome her. Every other week she’s back behind the fence, concocting rash tactics to make people aware of just how squalid the American system of incarceration really is. “I’m going to collect the stories of ten people who maybe knocked on a door and wound up in prison for thirty-three years,” Davis says. “Stories about what happened to them. All true stories that will be outrageous to anyone who reads them.” ■ —Richard O’Mara spent most of his journalistic career at the Baltimore Sun, as an editorial writer, a correspondent in Europe and Latin America, and the paper’s foreign editor. On the Air: Mary Joel Davis on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on December 7 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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Like many in my generation, I had every reason to abandon the church. But something kept drawing me back.
Keeping the Faith by chris jack hill illustration by alex fine
On a brilliant Friday afternoon in September,
my wife stood with a blank stare in the hallway of our home just outside the place where I often converse with God. She sighed, cupped my hand, and followed me with her eyes until I sat on the couch and braced for her news: Bishop Eddie Long, leader of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, an Atlanta-area mega-church with nearly 25,000 members, was accused of sexual misconduct with four young parishioners; they claimed Long had plied them with cars, money, and travel, then coerced them into sex. I was heartbroken. For me, it was that all-too-familiar disappointment with the church. It was the same way I had felt when my uncle revealed to me that my grandfather, who was the reverend at an East Baltimore church, was guilty of his own sexual misconduct. My grandfather was from Jamestown, South Carolina. He was born and raised in the most rural of rural towns, and it’s been said that he loved living such a small and simple life. However, during the Roaring
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Faith is not found in the presence of our triumphs, but in the moments of greatest struggle—the moments in which we need it the most.
Twenties, when limited opportunities, racial tension, disenfranchisement, and segregation affected most blacks in the South, my grandfather moved north. In Baltimore, he was greeted with the vibrant sounds of lovemaking songs (think Jelly Roll Morton), wide-brimmed hats, and the seemingly infinite dialogue surrounding the status of the Negro. He had left the South as a child full of energy and curiosity. Little did he know that he would be greeted by a seductive, immoral, and racist culture. Once, in conversation, my grandmother described him during his early years as invisible; lost, that is. Like many preachers of his day, my grandfather found visibility in his faith. Most knew him as a sincere, lemonsmelling old man with thinning black hair and large olivecolored eyes—the Good Reverend, people in the neighborhood called him. He spent most of his days serving the ministry, while working menial, penny-pinching side jobs for extra money. It was only upon his death that I learned of his incestuous relationship with my aunt. At his funeral, his six children and thirteen grandchildren looked on in silence as his rigid body lay in a shiny mahogany casket. I imagined him unbuttoning my aunt’s bright shirtwaist dress while his slow-moving fingers explored her young body. I understood that the church taught forgiveness, but as the newest Good Reverend in my family, I wondered if he ever forgave himself. Like many in my generation, I had every reason to abandon the church—and I almost did. I was raised by a single mother who believed that faith was all that mattered. My church was not a denomination known for understatement: Rollicking gospel music, flashy clothes, and bright robes were the norm. Growing up in the ’80s, I learned to attend Bible class and keep my pants up. But I often wondered what these lessons mattered when I could turn on MTV and watch nearnaked women dance like wild things on music videos. I remember the day I first accepted my faith. It was a sort of rite of passage. I was 13, skinny, and scared. It was a scorching hot August day, and to me, being saved was weird. I remember how the ministers swiftly surrounded me. They were like beacons of light, but the light was immeasurable; it had no scientific means. I was not ready. I remember wondering if I needed salvation. I recalled my grandfather saying that sin had an odor. Could the congregation smell sin on me? If sin does have a smell, I wasn’t washed clean that day. At 15, I would find myself unlocking the mystery of bra straps and acid-washed jeans. Later, I’d struggle to overcome the seduction of late-night drinking, low self-esteem, depression, and the feeling of insecurity and rejection that haunted me much of my adolescent life as a result of my father leaving
my family. And at 26, I violated the most sacred pillar of the church when I conceived my daughter outside of wedlock. My girlfriend’s parents, who pastored a sizeable congregation for nearly twenty years, felt that we should be excommunicated. I held her for three straight days, her small onion-shaped belly pressed against my stomach, wondering if her eyes would ever stop welling with tears. But rather than turning away from the church, I found that these trials drew me back toward it. These experiences focused my feelings about the world and how I made sense of it. The guilt and invisibility I felt during these difficult times only strengthened my faith. It was a strangely satisfying experience to depend on God despite the fear and uncertainty. I thought of Christ, nailed to the cross, his burial, and his famous transfigured ascension to life. Today, I am a minister at the Church of the Redeemed of the Lord. We are a nondenominational black congregation with nearly two thousand members. I am part of what President Barack Obama calls the “Joshua Generation,” a postcivil-rights generation of faith leaders who are trying to bring sanity back to a culture that places more value on hyperconsumerism and material wealth than spiritual and moral transformation. We are using faith, technology (think Twitter, Facebook, and podcasts), and popular culture to reach the supposedly unreachable younger generation. This is why I made the decision last summer to stand against the state’s plan to build a $100 million jail for youth offenders tried as adults: In our changing, globalized world, there are still members of our society who are invisible. I believe that the church plays a valuable role in helping bring them into the light. Still, I often wonder how the recognition of my sin and my grandfather’s sin led me down this path. The answer, I suppose, is that it is in the moments that my faith is tested that I find my greatest strength and purpose. Now, despite the church’s imperfections, despite the mega-church media scandals, I often go to the place that I converse with God, knowing that we are all imperfect people. Faith can at times be incomprehensible, but I’ve learned that faith is not found in the presence of our triumphs, but in the moments of greatest struggle—the moments in which we need it the most. ■ —Chris Jack Hill is a minister, scholar, and writer. He divides his time between teaching English at Sandy Spring Friends School and Sojourner-Douglass College. He is the author/editor of the forthcoming book When Jesus Gave Me Water: Essays on Faith, Spirituality, and Wellness. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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WHAT do you call the youngest person ever to argue before the Supreme Court… a person who has a best-selling book written about them… an endowed professor at Harvard… a cutting-edge biomedical researcher… a leader of a Fortune 500 corporation… a director of a national arts festival… and an Emmy and a Pulitzer-Prize winner? At McDaniel College, we call them ALUMNI. Learn more and find out how we change lives. Go to www.mcdaniel.edu/changinglives
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Souped Blues Robert Earl Price
Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy
men don’t like me
blues been tattooed on my skin
cause I always speak my mind
sugar and sorrow sweeten my tears
women crazy about me
Lead Belly was my doctor
cause I always take my time
Robert Johnson left me his mojo hand
Acclaimed for his work in fiction, drama, and poetry, Robert Earl Price has received many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, the American Film Institute’s William Wyler award for screenwriting, and a Cultural Olympics commission for theater. Among his published works are four volumes of poetry; his plays have been performed both nationally and internationally. Price is currently a lecturer in the drama department at Washington College in Chestertown.
born on a bottle neck scream
I am yellow pin stripes
raised in a gut bucket hollow
in a smokey room
Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawdy
hot sauce on pig ears
blues been bred in my blood
indigo flames licking
guitars and saxophones sewn in my genes
at the hunger in your hips
blind Willie McTell rocked my cradle
call me straight razor rage
Son House trained my traveling pony
call me cooling board regret
I’m the one they called the 7th son
call me your heartbeat bass
famous back door man
call me the smell of chitterlings and sin
sugar for your bowl
call me private lover and public pain
a hootchie coochie dream
the first funkateer
call me sweet man in the night
the voice of aching midnight
call me freight train in the morning
our oldest self speaking
call me harmonica weeping
in quivering guitar squalls
call me St. Jamestown Infirmary
call me honeysuckle ice cream
call me long gone and soon to come
call me the chinky pin man
the honky tonk river
call me the first one
a crossroads juke joint
the one standing knee deep in hell
I take pain and poison and turned them into art I steal prayer and passion
shouting these low down dirty mean and evil blues
and hide them in my heart
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urbanite december 10
Ming Lee Newcomb ’10 • Student Senate • Model U.N. • Cellist, drummer • Chamber Choir • Field hockey Attending Colorado College
MARTIN O’MALLEY, Governor ANTHONY G. BROWN, Lt. Governor
RAYMOND A. SKINNER, Secretary CLARENCE J. SNUGGS, Deputy Secretary
Ben Leiner ’10 • Cum Laude Society • Drama Club, head • Concert Chorale • The Quill, copy editor • Varsity tennis (4 yrs.) Attending Emory University as a Robert W. Woodruff Scholar
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Money in the Bank Local banks have cash to lend, but do you have the wherewithal to borrow it? by will morton illustration by joyce hesselberth
L
ike a lot of people in Baltimore, 34-year-old Angie Mogensen had trouble buying a house last year. First, someone outbid her. Then a shortsale property took too much time and paperwork. A home inspection on a third house revealed it needed $40,000 in repairs. Finally, she found a cute, two-story rowhouse only a few minutes from Patterson Park, where she likes to walk and ride her bike. She could live among friends already in the neighborhood—and get two bedrooms, hardwood floors, and exposed brick. She made an offer, and the seller accepted. Her plans for a $23,000 rehab loan fell through when her lender went belly up two days before the sale. But when settlement day came, she put $40,000 down, borrowed $130,000, and became a homeowner. Mogensen’s story says a lot about the current housing market in the Baltimore region: Despite the glut of foreclosures and short-sales, there is stiff competition for the real deals—that is, inexpensive homes that are not complete money pits. And while banks have money to lend, it’s only available to people like Mogensen, an executive assistant in Beltsville, who came to the table with sterling credit and no debt. “I didn’t have a problem purchasing this home or getting it approved,” she says, “because my parents instilled in me that I better pay off my bills on time.” In other words, it’s a great time to buy. But you’d better have your act together—and your credit rating, too. As the credit crunch and housing bust drag on, one thing is clear: Both home buyers and bankers today live in a very different world than they did before the real estate bubble burst.
Six steps to increase your chances of getting a loan Despite the lingering credit crunch, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are many ways to improve your credit and set yourself up to get a mortgage.
1. Start saving. The experts are
unanimous on this one: if you can’t get a loan, start working toward one. Pay off any lingering debts, such as unpaid medical bills, then make sure your bills are current, says Catherine C. Dorsey, who owns her own real estate firm. Lenders want to see good and regular money habits, so improve your credit by paying bills on time. Every month. Maybe even free up cash by selling your car and taking public transit for a year. “You may not be able to buy [a home] in the next few months, but let’s make a plan,” Dorsey says. “Save your money and get your credit straight.”
2. Check your checkbook. Make
a list of monthly expenses in addition to the anticipated cost of a mortgage. Remember to include car and home insurance, condo or homeowner fees, car payments and credit card debt. Make sure you will be able to save up for home maintenance and repair. Remember, buying the house is just the beginning.
3. Check your credit. A lender will
check all three major credit agencies for a copy of your credit report, which you can get for free at www.annual creditreport.com. The lender will scrutinize your credit history, unused lines of credit, and how much your income is compared with your debt, known as your debt-to-income ratio, says Maryland Bankers Association President Kathleen M. Murphy. It’s also important to know your credit score, which reflects how well you manage your debt. Actually getting your credit score is a little tricky. You can sign up for a free trial of a credit
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monitoring service—but remember to cancel before your credit card is charged.
4. Shop around. Spend time
searching for a lender. Baltimore is a terrific place for the consumer, Mur Murphy says, because there are eighty-five banks headquartered in Maryland. Get quotes from multiple lenders so you can compare rates and fees—and don’t sign a final mortgage commitment until you understand the terms.
5. Beware of shortcuts to home ownership. “If someone tells you,
‘We don’t need any proof of income,’ you’re going to be in trouble three or four years down the road,” says Thomas Simonton, with the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Maryland and Delaware. “If someone tells you you’re only going to have to make half a mortgage payment for the first five years, ask when you have to pay the other half.”
6. Think differently about which house is right for you.
Location and size are still king, says Nnaemeka Chima, a Pikesville real estate broker. But if buyers can settle for a house that needs work, they can drop to a lower price range, get a rehab loan, and put their own personality into the house. —W.M.
To appreciate just how much the world has changed in the past three years, first wrap your head around the scale of the destruction. From January 2007 through this past August, 62,229 homes have gone into foreclosure in the Baltimore region. More than a third, 22,050, have been in Baltimore City, according to RealtyTrac, an online provider of foreclosure data. (For some perspective, consider that through the worst of the Great Depression, when the population of the city alone was a quarter larger than today, local financial institutions took back only 7,375 properties—or a third as many properties as the current crunch, according to Antero Pietila, a former Sun reporter and author of Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City City.) Real estate sales have dropped 30 percent in the Baltimore metro region since 2007, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Inc., a company that compiles real estate statistics for the Mid-Atlantic region. Mortgage lending in Maryland has dropped more than 25 percent since 2007, from $12.7 billion to $9.5 billion. That’s according to FDIC data on one- to four-family homes financed through Maryland-headquartered banks. The lending freefall seems to have slowed, says Kathleen M. Murphy, president and CEO of the Maryland Bankers Association. Excluding loans by banks that merged with out-of-state institutions, single-family residential mortgage lending edged up 1.6 percent to $9.4 billion from just under $9.3 billion a year ago, she says. (Including failed or merged banks exaggerates the FDIC’s data, Murphy says, because it accounts for banks that no longer exist.) But a new round of scandals, driven by accusations of faulty
mortgage contracts and revelations of attorneys “robo-signing” foreclosure papers, threatens to cut the parachute cords. Thomas Simonton, a housing counseling manager at Consumer Credit Counseling Ser Service of Maryland and Delaware, a nonprofit that offers free education seminars, says that people’s finances are in such shambles that fewer than half of the people seeking to get into a debt management program this year even had the “financial wherewithal” to do so. The current crisis has created an entire class of people who can’t buy a home, Simonton says. And as a result of paying larger security deposits than before, they are struggling even to rent at affordable rates. If there’s an irony here, it is that, thanks in no small part to congressional efforts to keep banks solvent and avoid a wholesale economic collapse, banks are actually sitting on a lot of cash. Many local institutions have money to lend—they’re just having a hard time finding qualified borrowers. “We’re out there looking for buyers,” says Charles Mar Martin, a regional Community Reinvestment Act officer at M&T Bank. “Heavily.” “The whole world has kind of changed,” says Bob DeAlmeida, president of Hamilton Federal Bank, which issued just 200 mortgage and home loans last year—down from 800 to 1,200 in previous years. “Folks who used to be able to buy houses with no money down and with easy credit are having trouble finding buying opportunities now.” While the federal banking bailout helped banks ride out the crisis, added regulatory pressure is making lenders more cautious. Community banks traditionally have had more freedom to make loans that a larger institution might not, simply because
they know the community and the individuals better, says Joe Haskins, chief executive of the Harbor Bank of Maryland. But while the will to lend is there, regulators have added hoops for borrowers to jump through, such as collecting extra pay stubs and savings account statements, thus elongating the lending process.
“We’re out there looking for buyers. Heavily.” —Chuck Martin, M&T Bank. And it’s not going to change soon. Says Murphy, “Banks are looking very carefully at who they’re lending to.” It’s tough to pull lessons about today’s meltdown from history, whether the Great Depression, the post-war era, or the late 1970s. After all, America wasn’t always a nation of homeowners. When the Federal Housing Administration began in 1934, only four in ten households owned their homes. Pre-FHA, it was harder to buy: Depressionera mortgages typically were limited to 50 percent of the property’s market value— meaning that buyers had to cough up half of the cost of the house as a down payment— and had a three- to five-year term and a balloon payment at the end. No wonder we rented. The notion of home ownership really took off in the 1950s and '60s, when
the World War II generation snapped up FHA- and Veter Veterans Administration-insured mortgages, which allowed them to move to the suburbs and commute to work, says Michael V. Seipp, a former Baltimore City deputy housing commissioner. FHA-insured loans require little cash up front from the buyer, and they protect lenders in case of default. Created amid a moribund housing market, the FHA helped to spark construction of millions of apartments for elderly, handicapped, and low-income people in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. The mid-1970s recession offers lessons for today, but only to a point, Seipp says. But with skyrocketing oil prices and high war spending amid rising unemployment and inflation, the Carter-era recession pushed interest rates up, not down like today. Another difference: the present housing crisis grew out of grossly overpriced real estate and a crash that pushed many home prices below their mortgage values, Seipp says. “What we’re seeing today—it may be unprecedented.” The current crash will eventually end, as previous ones did, but few expect a return to the heady days of easy money. In fact, one banker says the recession might have triggered a wider cultural shift away from the notion that home ownership is an almost universal right—a shift that takes us back to something more closely resembling the preFHA days. “The notion that everyone should own a house—that’s not the real American Dream,” says Haskins, the Harbor Bank
Baltimore-Area Foreclosures City/County
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010 ytD
Baltimore City
261
2,803
4,471
5,067
5,898
Anne Arundel
207
1,477
2,079
2,765
2,755
Baltimore
566
2,151
2,804
3,459
4,044
Carroll
47
323
481
634
661
Harford
30
674
905
1,434
1,280
Howard
128
473
866
1,408
1,134
Source: RealtyTrac w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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Home-buying perks in Baltimore City Programs offer incentives for buying inside city limits
Home-buying incentives didn’t help Roy A. Miller qualify for a loan, but they helped him keep more money in his pocket after he got into a house in Belair-Edison. Miller, 50, is a homeownership counselor for Belair-Edison Neighborhoods Inc., a community improvement nonprofit. He recently bought a two-story, single-family home with a two-car garage and a Jacuzzi tub for $129,900. By borrowing through Healthy Neighborhoods Inc., a community development nonprofit, he put only 3 percent down and borrowed another $60,000 for renovations at just 4 percent. He also scored a $10,000 matching grant from the city. It was “icing on the cake,” Miller says. “I was able to use it to buy furniture.” Here’s a list of the incentives that exist for folks who buy homes in the city. For more information and links to related websites, go to www. urbanitebaltimore.com.
Baltimore City Homeownership Incentive Program:
Baltimore City has several incentive programs that can help with loans to purchase a home, and cover the down payment and closing costs, and more.
Community Development Block Grant’s First-Time Homebuyer Program: Qualified
first-time home buyers can receive $5,000 toward down payment and settlement expenses from the Baltimore Office of Homeownership.
Buying Into Baltimore Fairs and Trolley Tours: Live Balti-
more offers $3,000 to one hundred new homebuyers who participate in one of its tours of Baltimore City—one of the west side of the city in May and one for the east side in September.
Employee Homeownership Program: Employees of the City
of Baltimore can receive $3,000 for down payment and closing costs if they purchase a home within the city limits.
Live Near Your Work Program: A partnership between
employers and the City of Baltimore, this program provides $2,000 for settling and closing costs for first-time home buyers who purchase a home near their place of employment.
Additional Homeownership Incentives: Additional employer-
based incentive programs include the BRAC Homeownership Incentive and the Good Neighbor Next Door program for teachers, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and EMTs.
Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership Program:
Low- to moderate-income families can purchase decent, safe housing in the private market with the help of the Housing Choice Voucher Program, a federally funded, locally administered program.
State Mortgage Programs and Homeownership Assistance: Assistance includes
the Maryland Mortgage Program, assistance for individuals with disabilities, and the Tenants Conversion Mortgage Program.
Federal Mortgage Programs and Homeownership Assistance: The Making Homes Affordable Program can help homebuyers or owners modify or refinance their mortgage to make monthly payments more affordable.
Baltimore City Tax Incentives: To help ease the burden of
property taxes, tax credits are available for home improvements, green residences, and more.
Maryland Homestead Tax Credit: The credit limits the
increase in taxable assessments each year to a fixed percentage of 10 percent or less.
—W.M. and Jennifer Walker
executive. “The real American Dream is that everyone should be in a house that they can afford to be in.” For many, that may mean renting. But that being said, if you’re like Angie Mogensen, and you managed your money well during the boom times and didn’t get in over your head with debt, banks want to talk to you. Haskins says Harbor Bank is looking for borrowers who
“The real American Dream is that everyone should be in a house that they can afford to be in.” —Joe Haskins,
Harbor Bank of Maryland didn’t get too big a mortgage or take equity out of their house during the boom. He wants bor borrowers who have a good credit score and can af afford a 20 percent to 25 percent down payment. They will have to adjust their expectations, he says. They’re not going to get the McMansion they might have three years ago. But “I have money to loan,” he says. “With the right bor borrowers, I’m happy to sit down.” ■ —Will Morton is a freelance writer in Baltimore County. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Business Journal, and Baltimore magazine. He also worked as an editor at Dow Jones Newswires in New York.
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Stairway to heaven: Designing this access to the rooftop observatory “caused a great deal of head-scratching,” Green says.
second edition
A one-of-a-kind library-turned-residence holds relics from the Far East
by brennen jensen photography by j.m. giordano
J
ournalist and author Norman Cousins called libraries the “delivery room for the birth of ideas.” The phrase still fits a 90-year-old Enoch Pratt Free Library building in Jonestown, despite its having been decommissioned in the 1950s and long denuded of books and shelving. Instead, over the last decade the 6,000-square-foot brick edifice has birthed architectural, engineering, and design ideas as it has been creatively retrofitted into one of the city’s most unusual private residences—replete with “floating” loft space, a glass-lined rooftop observatory, and antique details and decorating from the exotic realms of Bali and Java. Oh, and the whole shebang is now for sale for $800,000.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start back in 1998 when James Green, owner of a chimney repair business, began scouring the city looking for a home—something wide, roomy, and nontraditional. “I’ve always been attracted to open spaces that fall outside the norm,” he says. After poking around various warehouses in deplorable neighborhoods, he came across the shuttered Pratt library on South Central Avenue. Following its closure as a public library, it did duty as overflow classroom space for a local school, was vacant for a long stretch, and most recently had been a workshop for a custom pipe or organ business. The plaster and paint were peeling, and lighting came
from bare fluorescent bulbs overhead. “It was rough-looking,” Green says. “I didn’t have a vision for it right away, but it had tremendous potential.” To help him realize the potential, he brought in architect Mahendra Parekh, a longtime instructor in Morgan State Univer University’s architecture department who is now a principal at the Columbia architectural firm ATI Inc. “You rarely get a chance in this profession to do something like this,” Parekh recalls. “I call it ‘finger architecture’—you just point a finger and say, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do that.’ There was never a set of drawings per se, just sketches here and there.” The plaster ceiling was one of the first things finger-pointed for removal, a messy task that created a cathedral ceiling, ex exposed an elaborate steel beam network, and cleared space for a loft with bedroom and office space. The challenge was to build this
Raised roof: Tearing out the plaster ceiling revealed steel beams and created room for a loft.
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urbanite december 10
loft without blocking the windows, which are high up on the walls on account of the bookcases that once lined them. Green’s “open space” mandate also meant that supports and support posts were to be kept to a minimum. The solution was to have a partial second floor that “floats,” suspended from above and leaving the 57-by-34-foot main floor unobstructed. “This presented some engineering obstacles,” Green says. One of the home’s most dramatic features is higher still, up in a popped-throughthe-roof room Green calls an observatory. “Penthouse” might be more fitting, as the place is decorated with plush lounge furniture and a ceiling-hung TV and surrounded by multiple decks. It was developed after Green was up on the roof making some repairs one day (a familiar perch for someone in the chimney business) and noticed the view. The observatory structure was actually
built in an adjacent lot and hoisted into place with a crane. Designing the staircase leading up to it “caused a great deal of head-scratching,” Green says. More head-scratching went into tying it all into the existing beam structure while keeping as much natural light filtering downward as possible. Green jokes that he had a welder as a roommate for eighteen months. He even spread sand all over the gleaming heart pine flooring downstairs so sparks from above wouldn’t start a fire. (Others who had a hand in helping reshape the space include Green’s former girlfriend Sharon Harrison and his since-deceased friend and contractor Lance Preller.) Entering the house today, you marvel at the inventive use of space and elaborate structures holding it all together. You also marvel at the museum-worthy array of furniture, artifacts, and antiquities from Southeast Asia. He used to bring a shipping container a
space
—Brennen Jensen produces Urbanite’s Home/ Design e-zine. To subscribe, go to www. urbanitebaltimore.com, or sign up for all of Urbanite’s e-zines by texting “Urbanite” to 77007.
From the Far East: Green, who once ran a sideline business importing artifacts from Southeast Asia, has stocked the house with a museum-worthy array of furniture, artifacts, and antiquities.
courtesy of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Maryland’s State Library Resource Center, Baltimore Maryland
year from Bali to Baltimore. Green once ran a sideline business importing mostly wooden artifacts from Bali, Java, and beyond. On display are colorful carved animals, dancing deities, and ornate beds and wardrobes. When you walk in the front door, you actually enter a Javanese house, whose carved wooden walls have been refashioned to form a vestibule or entry hall, complete with a hand-tooled bronze gong. “I bought an old teak house in Java, dissembled it, and took it to Bali, where I refinished it and then brought it over here,” Green says. “It’s a couple of hundred years old.” Suffice it to say a good deal of blood, sweat, and tears—not to mention cash—have gone into creating this unique space. So why the For Sale sign out front? “It was a labor of love and a beautiful thing, but it is no longer practical for my lifestyle to have a 6,000-square-foot home to take care of,” says Green, who calls himself semi-retired now. “I’ve decided to put this behind me and move on to the next endeavor.” That might include tooling around the Mediterranean in a sailboat. Selling the place would help in that aim, and the reimagined library is being marketed primarily as office space. Cool as it is, a home this size is not ex exactly practical for a lot of people these days. But it could also be the location keeping it on the market—not just Jonestown, which is a tough neighborhood, but Baltimore itself. “If only there were some way to move the house to Manhattan,” Green says dreamily. ■
Before and after: Originally built in the 1920s, the former library is now being marketed primarily as office space.
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This month in eating
Object of Desire A tiny French confection inspires cultish devotion among its foodie fans. text and photography by tracey middlekauff
“Macarons are nothing new,” shrugs Joseph Poupon, standstand ing beside the well-stocked pastry case of his eponymous patisserie in the Jonestown neighborhood of Baltimore City. Clad in chef’s whites, arms folded across his chest, Poupon is the embodiment of a classic French patissier— and no stranger to macarons. “We have been making them here for at least sixteen years.” But lately, he has noticed that this traditional pastry has become somewhat trendy. And, with the holidays fast approaching, these festive little sweets will no doubt become even more popular, especially with partygoers looking for the perfect hostess gift. Don’t be confused: This is not your great Aunt Betsy’s macaroon roon. That one extra “o” means the difference between a shredded coconut blob and the pastel confection that incites borderline obsession among certain foodies. Members of this cookie cult cannot get enough of their beloved mac. Yet the macaron is hardly a modern innovation. An early version of the confection may have been introduced to France via Italy by Catherine di Medici’s pastry chefs in the 16th century. But it was in the 1900s, at the nowlegendary Parisian cafe Ladurée, that the macaron as we know it was created: a perfect sandwich of two almondflour meringue cookies (a thin, crispy shell on the outside; soft, light, and cake-like on the inside) sandwiching an ethereal filling of buttercream, fruit puree, or ganache. Macarons can come in flavors ranging from the more traditional pistachio, raspberry, lemon, or chocolate (such as those baked at Patisserie Poupon) to fashion-forward creations such as apple tart tatin, milk and honey, lavender and Earl Grey, or chestnut and praline. The recent surge in popularity of this centuriesold treat may have something to do with the mobility of well-heeled food lovers who are able to make regular
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pilgrimages to the world’s culinary capitals. David Lebovitz, an American pastry chef living in Paris and author of Ready for Dessert, The Sweet Life in Paris, and The Perfect Scoop, points out that “Americans, of course, are fascinated by anything Parisian, but also we always want what we can’t have. Macarons are distinctly Parisian—and there is the
Pretty in Pink Macarons If you’re anxious to attempt homemade macs, give the below recipe, from baker Josie Tavares of DaydreamerDesserts.com, a shot. You’ll need a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients.
Macaron Shells 100 grams egg whites (roughly 3 egg whites), aged (covered in a bowl in the refrigerator) for at least 48 hours 50 grams granulated sugar 180 grams powdered sugar 110 grams ground almonds (slivered, blanched, sliced, whatever you like) 1 tsp cherry pink powdered food color
thrill of coming to Paris and hunting them down, or trying to make them yourself.” Despite the fact that both Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have offered frozen versions (“made with machines,” sniffs Poupon), it may be that the level of skill required to actually bake perfect macarons in one’s own kitchen will prevent them from ever reaching the mainstream popularity of the cupcake. While your average beginning baker can produce a respectable cupcake without much trouble, making macarons is an exercise in patience, practice, and technique. Macs are, in a word, temperamental. You must begin, Poupon says, with a “very good recipe.” Proper ingredients and equipment—a well-calibrated oven that bakes evenly, a kitchen scale—are also key. Egg whites should be a day or two old, and they must be whipped to an exact degree of stiffness. Almond flour and confectioner’s sugar must be sifted together just so. Poupon carefully mixes the sifted dry ingredients with the egg whites by hand, because he says the batter must feel right. Little round discs are then piped in ruler-straight lines onto a Silpat (a nonstick
until the batter resembles a thick pancake batter. The folding should not take more than 50 strokes. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip (Ateco #807 or #809) with the batter and pipe small rounds (1.5 inches in diameter) onto parchment paper or silicone mat-lined baking sheets. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to harden their shells a bit. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is ready, bake for 14 to 15 minutes or until the macs appear smooth, slightly rounded, and firm to the touch. Let cool.
Pink Lemonade Meringue Buttercream
(adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes)
In a bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, ground almonds, and the food color. Set aside. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites until they appear foamy. While the mixer is running, carefully pour in the sugar in a slow stream. Continue beating the whites on high until they reach a consistency similar to that of shaving cream. Be careful not to over-beat or the meringue will be too dry. Add the nut/powdered sugar mix to the meringue and begin folding. Continue folding
1½ cups frozen strawberries, thawed 1 teaspoon lemon zest 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1¼ cups granulated sugar 4 large egg whites 1½ (3 sticks) cups unsalted butter, cut into small cubes Puree strawberries, lemon zest, and lemon juice with an immersion blender or in a food processor.
eat / drink silicone baking mat) or parchment paper. Poupon demonstrates this at lightning speed with a batch of raspberry macarons. Every one of his discs is exactly uniform and smooth; no peaks are allowed to form. “You don’t want them to look like a Hershey’s kiss!” he laughs. Next, the batter must sit out long enough to harden just a bit before being baked. Otherwise the cookies won’t puff up and form the characteristic “feet,” the soft and chewy bit underneath the crunchy dome. It’s certainly not impossible to make these at home, Poupon says, but “you have to work at it until you get it right. It’s not an easy thing to do well.” If you lack the patience to make your own, don’t despair: You can always leave it to the professionals. Besides, as Lebovitz points out, “No one in France would make macarons at home.” ■ —Tracey Middkekauff produces Urbanite’s Food/Drink e-zine. To subscribe, go to www. urbanitebaltimore.com, or sign up for all of Urbanite’s e-zines by texting “Urbanite” to 77007.
Whisk egg whites and sugar in a heatproof bowl of a standing mixer. Place bowl over a medium saucepan with simmering water. Continue whisking until mixture is warm and smooth when rubbed between your fingertips. With the whisk attachment fitted on your mixer, whisk the warm egg and sugar mixture on medium-high until no longer warm and soft peaks form, approximately 10 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium-low and begin adding small cubes of butter, about a tablespoon or two at a time, making sure it is well blended before adding more. Once all the butter has been blended, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and switch to the paddle attachment. Mix on low to remove all air bubbles, 1 to 2 minutes. Add strawberry-lemon puree and continue mixing until smooth. The buttercream may curdle; it should eventually smooth out as long as you continue whipping. Pipe buttercream onto shells and then top with remaining shells to make sandwiches. Store leftover buttercream in a sealed container for up to three days in the refrigerator or up to one month in the freezer. When ready to use, whip with the paddle attachment of your mixer for about 5 minutes.
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recipe
Steady hand: Joseph Poupon creates perfectly shaped macarons.
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with what’s going on in
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urbanite december 10
www.bluehilltavern.com
443.388.9363
photo by Tyler Fitzpatrick
Southern style: Catfish and grits at Darker Than Blue Café
When Casey Jenkins opened Darker Than Blue Café three and a half years ago on a gritty stretch of Greenmount Avenue in Waverly, there were those who doubted his choice, including former Sun restaurant critic Elizabeth Large. In 2009 she wrote, “I thought [the café] would never last this long given the location.” She added: “I’m delighted to be proven wrong.” While the cozy restaurant’s presence has not exactly transformed the area into a dining mecca, Jenkins’s modern American cuisine has certainly helped the café transcend any situational limitations, real or imagined. Although he trained at the Culinary Institute of America and cooked at upscale New York restaurant Aquavit, Jenkins’ food is not the sort of thing you might expect from a chef with such a pedigree. There is no molecular gastronomy here. Duck breasts are not cooked sous vide. There are no foams. What you will find, in great abundance, is authentic Southern-style comfort food elevated by someone who really knows how to cook. And while Jenkins may balk at the label “soul food,” his dishes—like all comforting food, no matter the cuisine—have soul to spare. The all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch
offers the perfect opportunity to sample a wide range of his rib-sticking homemade specialties. Cornmeal-battered catfish fingers are juicy on the inside, crispy on the outside. The rich and creamy mac-n-cheese has the requisite crunchy-cheesy crust. The sweet potatoes melt in your mouth; the greens, which have a subtle heat, taste as if they’ve been stewing on your grandmother’s stove all day long. But it’s the smothered chicken that’s the star: falling-off-the-bone tender, it sits in an intoxicating gravy of melted onions and herbs. Filling up on starches may go against popular buffet wisdom, but you’ll want to pour that gravy on anything that will soak it up, from the buttery grits to the peppery new potatoes to the homemade buttermilk biscuits. Darker Than Blue is BYOB, but you may find a mimosa unnecessary once you taste the quaffable homemade peach mango iced tea. And save room for a fluffy made-to-order omelet or waffles topped with whipped cream. If you’re too full, don’t fret—there’s always next Sunday. (Lunch and dinner Wed–Sun; dinner only Tues. 3034 Greenmount Ave.; 443-8724468; www.darkerthanbluecafe.com.)
reviewed
eat / drink
Darker Than Blue Café
—Tracey Middlekauff
Most sushi lovers are passionate about their favorite raw fish bar—often hidden in an unassuming strip mall or cloaked in an awning on a city block. The décor varies little: Japanese prints on the wall, fabric hung between rooms, a bar where be-toqued chefs slice fish, mold rice and wasabi, and arrange slices of pink ginger on plates and wooden boards. But the end product can vary dramatically. Some joints are rigidly classic, sticking with the raw fish and seaweed formula, while others bend to Westernized taste buds, serving up tempura-battered rolls reminiscent of state fair corn dogs or ingredients more suited to a Sunday morning bagel. Chiyo Sushi, tucked alongside a parking lot in Mount Washington, is perfectly willing to be all things to all people. It’s one of those places that neighbors would shout about—if they were willing to let us all in on the secret. There’s a nod to eclectic rolls for American palates, with an occasional schmear or crispy fried casing, but that seems a reflection of Chiyo’s overriding desire to embrace its guests—in the same way that you can double-park in the tiny side lot, knowing you’ll be summoned if the poor soul you’re blocking needs to leave before you. About a hundred rolls are listed on a laminated addendum to the regular menu, and if you honestly can’t find one to suit your taste, you
can special-order any combination of ingredients. But you’d be hard-pressed to be more creative than the staff, who come up with specials like a mango roll—layers of salmon, avocado, and white fish surrounding sticks of sweet yellow fruit—and a lobster roll, which curves around its plate like a segmented sea monster, its tail an actual lobster shell, its fiery head crafted from green wasabi. While it may be hard to tear yourself from the extravagant rolls, it’s worth dipping into the menu’s Chef’s Specials, where you’ll find the Tuna Surfboard, a broad slice of tempura-fried zucchini bearing a load of spicy tuna with a slab of avocado draped atop. And there are plenty of other tuna dishes worth trying. The Fish Salad, about as far from deli food as you’ll find, is a bowl of glistening beads of jewel-like raw tuna, simply dressed in sesame. And the tuna carpaccio is lightly seared slices on a bed of seaweed and cucumber with wasabi dressing. Chiyo also has an extensive list of the usual sushi and sashimi suspects—octopus, eel, clam, sea urchin—but the place is definitive proof that all rolls are not created equal. (Lunch and dinner Tues-Fri, dinner Sat and Sun. 1619 Sulgrave Ave.; 410-466-1000; www. chiyosushi.com.)
photo by Tyler Fitzpatrick
Chiyo Sushi
Twist on a classic: Beauty Alaska—spicy salmon topped with red tobiko, or roe—at Chiyo Sushi
—Martha Thomas w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m d e c e m b e r 1 0
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eat / drink
Salmonella scares be damned: in praise of homemade eggnog By Clinton Macsherry
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Fresh and Whole Paycheck don’t—and they don’t whip very well, which undercuts their usefulness for eggnog. Recipes using substitutes like Egg Beaters or soymilk and tofu may appeal to vegetarians and fat-phobics. Commercial eggnog, pasteurized and non-alcoholic, sells millions of gallons a year. You can always spike it, but even so, it often tastes “a little bit like furniture polish,” as my friend Bill
for
I
three
courses Tues. to Thurs. Chef Becker creates a new prix fixe menu each week.
Flight of 3 wines available @ $3 a glass! You can pair wines with each course from our Selected Suggestions. Guests must order the 3 course menu to be offered the 3 wines for 3 dollars each.
Lunch Tues.-Fri. Dinner Mon.-Sat. Sunday Brunch Wine shop open 7 days
© Karahendricks | Dreamstime.com
$
921 East Fort Avenue Baltimore, MD 21230 At the Foundry on Fort 410-244-6166 the-wine-market.com
’m a sunny-side-up kind of guy, but the recall of a half-billion eggs last August spotlighted the potential danger of homemade eggnog, my favorite holiday spirit. Eggs from two Iowa mega-farms were associated with what the Food and Drug Administration called one of the largest outbreaks of salmonella ever. If you’re a healthy adult, the four to seven days of fever, stomach cramps, and severe diarrhea that salmonella causes probably won’t kill you, although for a while you might wish it had. (I speak from experience.) Vulnerable subpopulations can face graver consequences. To reduce health risks, the FDA specifically recommends avoiding traditional eggnog and other raw-egg foodstuffs, like fresh mayonnaise. This advice comes a little late for the medieval Brits from whose “posset”—a warm concoction of cream, eggs, sherry, sugar, and spices—eggnog likely descends. Whence the term “nog” emerged stirs some debate, but one researcher draws a fairly strong link to English dialect for the strong ale that probably spiked the drink at one time. Brandy and Madeira also found their way into British recipes. Eggnog hopped the pond during Colonial times, and its popularity grew. Americans made rum and later whiskey their eggnog’s kickers of choice. Today’s eggnog drinkers have a few options that would meet FDA muster. In the 1990s, scientists developed a process for pasteurizing eggs within their shells, thereby eliminating most salmonella risk. They’re typically more than double the price of regular eggs, if you find a grocer that carries them—my local Sorta
w i n e & s p i r i t s
Noggin’ on Heaven’s Door
Somerville puts it. Bill and his wife, Ann, have shared with me not only the best eggnog I’ve ever sipped but also their recipe, which “came up to Baltimore from Ann’s ancestors in Virginia after the Civil War,” Bill says. It combines separated and beaten eggs, whipping cream, table cream, milk, sugar, and, of course, good liquor. I made it using a whisk instead of a mechanical beater, which probably kept it a bit thin, and although Bill advises letting the flavors meld in the fridge for a few days, I couldn’t wait. Frothy white on top, latte-toned underneath, it had the aroma of tiramisu, with a richness that coated my cup and my palate. Flavors of French vanilla ice cream and spice cake seemed light-spirited, but with its measures of rye, brandy, and rum, this eggnog is “a little stronger than some others,” Bill notes. That potency could be a very good thing. The Somervilles married in 1957, and Bill has savored this eggnog ever since with no ill effect. “Raw eggs are no concern at all,” he says, “because alcohol kills germs”—an opinion repeated elsewhere. I’ve seen some suggestive evidence in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, but an FDA spokesperson insisted in an e-mail the “the use of liquor will not reduce or eliminate pathogens in eggnog.” I hope they have a swell time at the FDA holiday party. Me, I plan on visiting the Somervilles. ■ Web extra: For Ann Somerville’s family eggnog recipe, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.
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Wine is on the house! (*on all selected bottled wines under $40)
A World Class Waterfront Venue
Have an entree and the 1st glass of wine is on us, have 4 entrees and the 1st bottle of wine is on us. (see limitation above)
Come Experience Cozy Fireside Dining and a Friendly Bar with a “Haunted” History
Live Jazz on Friday & Saturday, free 2 hour parking.
American Melting Pot Cuisine Open 7 days a week Lunch and Dinner Plus (new) Sunday Brunch Proprietors: Executive Chef (35 yrs) Patrick James Butler and Judie Butler
The Whistling Oyster
500 Harborview Drive 410-727-3663 • www.tabrizis.com
807 South Broadway in Fells Point 410-522-0222 www.thewhistlingoyster.com
Retail Shop Open Monday - Saturday, 8am - 6pm Sunday, 8am - 4pm Fresh, locally roasted coffee, loose leaf teas and brewing accessories. 4607 Harford Road, Baltimore, MD 21214 410-254-0122 www.zekescoffee.com
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urbanite december 10
Looking for the perfect neighborhood? Try our interactive search features. ❤ Discover Your
Neighborhood ❤ Neighborhood
Match 410.637.3750 www.LiveBaltimore.com
Lenny’s Famous Trays for All Occasions Dairy • Deli • Fried Chicken Salads • Sandwiches • Desserts
Deli Check Out Our Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Menu
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
photo by Rachel Verhaaren
the feed
eat / drink
This Month in Eating Compiled by Jennifer Walker
desserts in the cellar
dec. 1–31
This month, Linganore Winecellars is offering pairings of about twenty of their spiced apple and grape wines, served warm, with five desserts made by Just Desserts in Sykesville. The sweet treats include chocolate raspberry cake and a pumpkin petit four covered in white chocolate. $8 per person.
Linganore Winecellars 13601 Glissans Mill Rd., Mt. Airy 410-795-6432 www.linganore-wine.com
holiday recipe tour
dec. 4
As part of its December First Saturdays event, Downtown Frederick holds a Holiday Recipe Tour—a twist on trick-ortreating. While sipping on a free cup of cocoa, visitors can drop in to stores for copies of the owners’ favorite recipes: cookies, pot roast, cheese dip, you name it. Also planned are carriage rides, holiday music, and gingerbread house displays and competitions. More than eighty shops, galleries, and restaurants will be open for the festivities. 5 p.m.–9 p.m. Free.
Downtown Frederick Main Street Area Market and Patrick sts. 301-698-8118 www.downtownfrederick.org
beer t tasting with hugh sisson
dec. 7
Back in the 1980s, Hugh Sisson thought the “big beer” town of Baltimore could use a brewery, so he opened Maryland’s first brew pub, Sisson’s, in Federal Hill. Today, Sisson is a general partner in Clipper City Brewing Co., responsible for Loose Cannon, Small Craft Warning, and other nautically named beers. Join him at the Baltimore Museum of Industry as he talks about the ins and outs of beer-making and leads a tasting of several of his brewery’s creations. 6:30 p.m. $10 museum members; $15 nonmembers. Reservations required.
Baltimore Museum of Industry 1415 Key Hwy. 410-727-4808 www.thebmi.org
there you go a-caroling
dec. 14
Sing your way down Hampden’s 34th Street—where houses are extravagantly and kookily decorated with lights, inflatable Disney characters, a hubcap Christmas tree, and more— with blues, gospel, and jazz vocalist Lea Gilmore, as part of Creative Alliance’s Art to Dine for series. Attendees will meet at the gift boutique Milagro on the Avenue for a vocal warm-up, walk down to 34th Street to sing, and snack on homemade cookies and hot mulled wine. 6 p.m.–9 p.m. $40.
Milagro 1005 W. 36th St. 410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org
italian christmas eve seafood dinner cooking class
dec. 22
Donna Crivello’s family used to serve salted cod and eel for Christmas Eve, but she’ll call on modern seafood like shrimp, calamari, and baby octopus for this cooking class at her eponymous café. Participants will watch her demonstration while drinking wine, sample the creations, and get some sage advice about shopping for Mediterranean ingredients, choosing fresh seafood, and cooking without recipes. For reservations, e-mail donnasalad@aol.com. 6:30 p.m.$45.
Donna’s Café 5850 Waterloo Rd., Columbia 410-465-2399 www.donnas.com/classes.htm
For more food-related events, or to read restaurant reviews, go to 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 d e c e m b e r 1 0
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Call 888.507.5359 or visit PalisadesTowson.com to learn more. Step in the right direction. 212 Washington Avenue Towson, MD 21204
Luxury Apartments
art / culture L e t M e Te l l Yo u
A Story
At one public school, immigrant students share tales from their lives. by marianne amoss illustration by natalie j. clevinger
I
t’s a sticky, rainy Monday morning in September. Inside Sally Franklin’s classroom at Patterson High School—a public school just off Eastern Avenue near Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center—three box fans and a large floor fan are doing their best to keep the air moving. It’s an atmosphere that might distract even the best student, but these teenagers are quiet and attentive. This is no standard class: These sixteen teenagers—immigrants and refugees from such far-flung locales as Nepal, El Salvador, and Eritrea—are telling each other their life stories in bits and pieces. Every Monday they sit in a large circle or in pairs, taking turns talking about the homes, friends, and family they left behind. Today, storytelling coach and educator Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff, who leads the class, starts by asking the students to describe one thing— a person or place or something more abstract, like an attitude or way of thinking—they would bring to America from their home country, and one
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music
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exhibit
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theater
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the scene
Coil Sea
Freedom’s Sisters
The Second City Does Baltimore
This month’s cultural highlights
The Marc STeiner Show iS NowTelevised
THE
Marc STEINER show
WEAA 88.9 FM
waTch Marc and hiS gueSTS Monday-ThurSday, 6-7 pM on Free Speech TV direcTV channel 368 ~ diSh neTwork channel 9415
Free SPeeCH TV Powered by our viewers
liVe STreaM liSTen
To
Marc
on
aT www.FreeSpeech.org
weaa 88.9 FM ~ Monday-ThurSday, 5-7
pM
INGENUITY AS A MATTER OF PRACTICE.
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thing from America they would take back home. A girl with kohl-rimmed eyes and long black hair says she would bring Mount Ever Everest here and would take to Nepal the “good police force, to stop trafficking and illegal work.” Another Nepali student, eleventhgrader Mano, draws laughter when he says he would take American food—specifically pizza and chicken—back home. In recent years a certain genre of storytelling has come back into vogue. Locally, there’s the popular Stoop Storytelling Series, which was inspired by the Moth, a New Yorkbased series that started in 1997 and has a tagline of “true stories told live onstage without notes.” But this particular storytelling project also has a larger purpose—to bring together young people from different cultures and give them an opportunity to really listen to and learn something about each other. In its fourth semester at Patterson, the Student Immigration Stories program is sponsored by the Jewish Museum of Maryland and Bank of America. Each year, the museum runs an endowed program, called the Herbert H. and Irma B. Risch Memorial Program, on the topic of immigration. After attending the 2008 Immigration Summit at Towson University and being inspired by the high school students who took part in it, JMM program director Ilene Dackman-Alon says the museum staff started to think about how to capture contemporary immigration stories. “Every museum tells stories,” she says. “This is just another way to capture [them]: through storytelling.” The museum contacted Zunikoff and Patterson teacher Sally Franklin, who’s been instrumental in arranging students’ schedules so that they can participate. This school is an apt place for the program: Three hundred of its students are immigrants—between one-fifth and one-quarter of the total student body. A slender, sincere woman, Zunikoff has been perfecting the craft of coaching storytellers for about fifteen years. She lists among her influences InterPlay, an affirmationbased method created by two Californiabased teachers/performers that incorporates movement, storytelling, and active listening. Zunikoff has worked mostly with the Jewish community. Since 2004 she’s co-taught a class at Goucher College in which students interview Holocaust survivors and then tell their interviewees’ stories to a variety of audiences, without a script or notes. She was also part of the first-ever Jewish-German Compassionate Listening Project in 2002, in which groups of three Jews and three Ger Germans listened to each other’s stories. This is key to Zunikoff’s method: creating a safe space that allows participants to open up. At Patterson, listeners aren’t allowed to interrupt in any way, even to praise. When the students are working in pairs, if
a speaker doesn’t want to talk anymore, the listener sits with him or her in silence. And there’s a designated time for “appreciations,” when listeners explain what they liked about the story they heard or the way in which it was told. It’s a technique Zunikoff learned from one of her mentors, New England-based storytelling coach Doug Lipman. “People need to know they’re going to be appreciated simply for trying,” Zunikoff says. “Listening and then appreciating is always important, even for native English speakers, because when we are appreciated, we are more likely to tell another story and believe we have something important to say.” Sometimes the room, which includes several adult translators and a rotating cast of visitors, is filled with laughter, as when Evelyn, an eleventh-grader from Honduras, explains her failed first attempt at playing soccer, using energetic hand motions to communicate what her fledgling English can’t yet. Other times the mood is more somber, as when eleventh-grader Pablo, who’s proven to be one of the most natural storytellers of the bunch, speaks in Spanish-inflected English about how much he misses his family back in El Salvador, especially his grandparents, who have died since he moved here. Now, he says, “they live in my heart,” tears filling his eyes. The Patterson students aren’t just telling each other their tales: This semester, they collaborateds with some of Patterson’s American-born students, and several times since the program’s inception a handful of students have shared their stories with larger audiences. When presenting their stories, these students don’t use scripts or notes; rather, they practice over and over beforehand, until they know the tale they’re going to tell inside and out. Zunikoff encourages them to focus on moments, rather than chronology, with an end result that’s more like a collage—and more true to the way memory works—than a timeline. This cross-cultural communication could go a long way toward connecting people across language and cultural barriers. It’s the kind of thing that might head off racism that can lead to discrimination, hate crimes, or acts of violence like those aimed at local Hispanics in the last several years (see June ’09 Urbanite). “I believe every person has a story, and needs to have their story heard and hear other people’s stories,” Zunikoff says. “Once you know someone’s story, you cannot hate them. When you hear other people’s stories, you become part of the world.” ■ —Marianne Amoss is Urbanite’s managing editor.
art/culture
music
Motley Crew
Coil Sea, Coil Sea (Thrill Jockey, 2010)
T
he instrumental sextet Coil Sea is something of a Baltimore supergroup, but a low key one that boasts an unlikely combination of musicians. Drummer Mike Lowry and keyboardist Matt Pierce are known for laying down brooding, electronica-influenced grooves in the experimental rock group Lake Trout and the jazzy Big In Japan, while guitarist Dave Heumann makes psychedelic epics and grandiose riff rock with Arbouretum. And when they came together with three other musicians as Coil Sea, portions of the recording, mixing, and editing for their self-titled debut album were done by brothers Chris and Mickey Freeland, better known respectively as a member of the post-punk band Oxes and rapper Mickey Free. Despite the diverse pedigree, Coil Sea is a surprisingly focused, cohesive album that shows musicians with different skills and ideas finding common ground and, in doing so, creating something altogether new. The opener, “Abyssinia,” quickly establishes Heumann’s fuzzy guitar tone and distinctive melodic style as the dominant voice of the ensemble. But the eleven-minute center centerpiece, “Dolphins in the Coil Sea,” a tribute to legendary jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock, gives Lowry room to stretch out and fill the spacious track with tumbling drum fills. Each of Coil Sea’s four tracks stretches out past the seven-minute mark and features its own variation on the band’s dense sound, such as the driving rhythm that makes the closing track, “Waking the Naga,” the closest thing to a rock song on the album. With Pierce joining Arbouretum for their upcoming 2011 album, Coil Sea may just be the beginning of more collaborations between some of these musicians. But the album also stands on its own as a beautifully recorded document of inspired improvisation.
—Al Shipley For more info, go to www.thrilljockey.com.
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Pioneers; Freedom’s Sisters honors twenty African American women who have fought for equality for all.
visual arts
All Together Now
Freedom’s Sisters at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, through Jan. 17
I
illustration by Bill Geenen
n 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger—but this is only the beginning of the story. On the day of her trial, local leaders organized a boycott of city buses; after she was convicted of disorderly conduct, the boycott continued for more than a year. During that time, 42,000 African Americans—many of whom were harassed and arrested—used other methods
t he at er
Charmed, I’m Sure
The Second City Does Baltimore, Dec 30–Feb 20 at Center Stage
I
f Baltimore were a person, muses Megan Grano, “it would be my favorite kid in high school. The person who’s funky without trying, who doesn’t really fit into any group.” That Baltimore, the cool-without-pretension Baltimore emerged during the four
of transportation, crippling the public transit system, until the law was overturned. “Parks was the catalyst for change,” says Katherine Krile, a project director with the Smithsonian Institution. “But there was a whole community that rallied around her in Montgomery to make [desegregation on buses] happen.” That’s what makes the Freedom’s Sisters exhibit at the Lewis Museum so power powerful. Created by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the Cincinnati Museum Center, the traveling exhibition launched in 2008 and finishes up in Baltimore. It tells the stories of twenty women—primarily lesser-known poets, lawyers, journalists, and politicians—who have fought for equality since the 1800s, often under dangerous circumstances. Geared toward elementary school-age children and their families, the exhibit includes some hands-on features, the biggest of which is an open model of a bus with three seats. To hear a quote from Parks, children have to work together, one standing in a certain place, another pushing a button—a
days Grano and TJ Shanoff, writers for the famed Chicago comedy troupe, The Second City, spent immersed in the city’s neighbor neighborhoods and culture. The two visited such landmarks as Cross Street Market, City Hall, and Werner’s restaurant; chatted up locals; sampled local delicacies—and even attended a dinner party in Roland Park, all in search of a way to make Baltimore funny. The results will be presented starting this month in the Center Stage-commissioned The Second City Does Baltimore. The Second City, a sketch comedy and improv troupe known for its famous graduates—Dan Aykroyd, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert among them—began its foray into other cities with How I Lost My Denverginity in 2006. This year, six metropolises—including Cincinnati, Atlanta, Louisville, and Rochester, New York—will get the treatment, according to Jenna Deja, the company’s producer for touring and theatricals. During “the immersion,” as they call it, two writers visit the victim city for four or five days, escorted from place to place by representatives of the host theater. While the Second City is known for its sharp wit, Deja says the writers try to tread lightly, stopping short of outright mock mockery. “We try not to say, ‘This is what your city is all about.’ Instead, we want to learn
art/culture
small-scale model of the community cooperation in Montgomery. Other interactive features, such as audio recordings, videos, and a Harriet Tubman game, are peppered throughout. The centerpiece, however, is a group of large panels—pages of a history book, if you will—that tell each woman’s story. But it’s in the take-away that the goal of this whole project becomes clear. At the end of the exhibit, children can get their pictures taken in a photo booth and then add it to a book—a folder filled with biographies of the twenty women—as a tactile reminder that they too could become a Freedom’s Sister (or Brother). “These are not twenty icons who are up on a pedestal and what they did is untouchable,” Krile explains. “We can all live lives that can make this country better.” —Jennifer Walker Photo credit: Developed by Cincinnati Museum Center and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. National tour made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund.
For more information, call 443-263-1800 or go to www.africanamericanculture.org.
everything we can and reflect it back—in a way that is funny. We don’t want people rolling their eyes like we just don’t get it.” After their time in Baltimore, Grano and Shanoff went home—to Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively—and sifted through the pages of notes and the pile of books they’d accumulated here. The next step, says Shanoff, was to “Skype for about a thousand hours and try to come up with something.” The two came with few preconceived notions—and jokes—about the city. “The Wire? Is that like Frasier?” jokes Shanoff. He says he’s also curious about the loyalty to Natty Boh, a brand that, like the Colts, abandoned Baltimore. But what will make it into the final cut at Center Stage is anybody’s guess. “Some people,” Grano says, “tell us, ‘You’ve got to do hons.’ Others say, ‘Whatever you do, don’t mention hons.’” As for The Wire? “We’re thinking of turning it into a musical comedy,” Shanoff says. —Martha Thomas
For tickets, call 410-332-0033 or go to www.centerstage.org.
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Become a member and see it free! · thewalters.org
Baltimore, MD · 600 N. Charles St. · open Wed.–Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
WHAT WILL YOU DISCOVER?
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I SPY books & creator of the C AN YOU SEE W Co-creator of the
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2010–Jan uary 2, 2011 September 19,
The exhibition at the Walters Art Museum is made possible through the generosity of The Wieler Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Women’s Committee of the Walters Art Museum, the CANUSA Corporation Charitable Fund, The David and Barbara B. Hirschhorn Foundation, The Nancy Patz Reading Fund, The Van Dyke Family Foundation, The Linehan Family Foundation/The Ivy Bookstore, Meredith and Adam Borden/The London Foundation, Lynn and Philip Rauch, Mr. and Mrs. Austin George, The Susan Katzenberg Fund and Kate and David Powell. Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic is organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut.
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THE SCEnE: DECEMBER MUSIC
On Dec. 7, the Contemporary Museum’s new-music series, Mobtown Modern, presents Agitated Histories–Ueno at 40, a tribute to composer/vocalist Ken 40 Ueno, whose music “fuses the culture of Japanese underground electronica with European modernism.” Dec. 11 is the fifth annual Unsilent night, an outdoor caroling procession that performs the Phil Kline composition for which the event is named. (http://mobtownmodern.com/) In Earth and Sky Sky, the Columbia Orchestra performs Gustav Holst’s early 20th-century suite The Planets Planets, among other pieces. Dec. 4 at the Jim Rouse Theatre (5460 Trumpeter Rd., Columbia; 410-465-8777; www.columbiaorchestra.org) The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s annual Holiday Spectacular (Dec. 10–19) features showgirls, dancing dogs, and seasonal tunes. (1212 Cathedral St.; 410783-8000; www.bsomusic.org) Punk/indie rock group ted Leo and the Pharmacists, with Heks Orkest (whose members are formerly of such bands as Avail, Engine Down, and Denali), play a show that’s presented by the Ottobar at the Gspot on Dec. 7. (2980 Falls Rd.; 410662-0069; www.theottobar.com) Supafunkrock: It’s what troy “trombone Shorty” Andrews calls his blend of jazz, funk, soul, rock, and hip-hop. He performs with his band, Orleans Avenue, at Rams Head Live on Dec. 30. (20 Market Place; 410-244-1131; www.ramsheadlive.com)
La Bohème, Puccini’s tragic 1896 work that inspired the musical Rent Rent. Both performances, on Dec. 3 and 5, include a pre-performance lecture and dinner. (11 W. Mt. Vernon Place; 443-844-3496; www. baltimoreconcertopera.com) THEaTE r
At Chesapeake Arts Center, Blue Sky Puppet Theatre puts on Pigs at the Pole, a comic, family-friendly show about the Three Not-So-Little Pigs who try to help Santa prepare for Christmas. Dec. 4. (194 Hammonds Lane, Brooklyn Park; 410-6366597; www.chesapeakearts.org) A Peppermint Patty Christmas Christmas, by local playwright Kate Bishop, revolves around Patty’s coming clean to her family about her lesbian partner. At the Strand Theater Dec. 2–18. (1823 N. Charles St.; 443-8744917; www.strandtheatercompany.org) CCBC-Essex Academic Theater puts on Millennium Approaches Approaches, the first half of Angels in America America, Tony Kushner’s 1990 play about gay men who lived and died in New York City during the ’80s AIDS epidemic. Dec. 2–4, 6–7. (443-840-ARTS; www.ccbcmd.edu/performingarts/actheatre.html) Trixie and Monkey’s Holiday Spectacu-thon at the Creative Alliance puts the burlesque back into the holidays. Their four shows, two each on Dec. 17 and 18, will feature trapeze and acrobatic stunts, psychedelic stripteases, and lots of special guests. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410276-1651; www.creativealliance.org)
oPE r a
DaNCE
At the historic Garrett Jacobs Mansion, Baltimore Concert Opera puts on
It’s Nutcracker season! Baltimore School for the Arts puts on its twenty-seventh
production featuring student dancers Dec. 3–5, 9, and 11–12 (712 Cathedral St.; 443642-5167; www.bsfa.org). On Dec. 4, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra pairs up with Baltimore Ballet for a family-friendly, narrated performance of the ballet’s second act (1212 Cathedral St.; 410-783-8000; www.bsomusic.org). And the Hippodrome hosts the Moscow Ballet’s Great Russian Nutcracker Nutcracker, accompanied by a live orchestra, on Dec. 11 and 12. (12 N. Eutaw St.; 410-547-SEAT; www.francemerrickpac.com) Also at the Hippodrome: In The Magnificent Mazowsze, ninety dancers, musicians, and singers perform in traditional Polish costumes to folk melodies, classical music, and other tunes beloved by the Poles. Dec. 9. PE r for M a NCE
O Little Town of Baltimore is the Stoop’s biggest live radio show extravaganza to date: eight shows, forty different storytellers relating true personal tales, with music by artists from singer-songwriter Ellen Cherry to R&B trio West Ave. to Persian classical musician Ahmad Borhani. Dec. 9–12 and 16–19 at Center Stage. (700 N. Calvert St.; 410-332-0033; www. stoopstorytelling.com) LITE r aTUrE
On Dec. 4 at Minás Gallery, local novelist Jessica Anya Blau and poet gerry LaFemina read from their work at a preview event for the “Spring Into Writing” retreat in Western Maryland, scheduled for March 31–April 3. For more information on the retreat, go to www.citylitproject.org. (815 W. 36th St.; 410-732-4258; www.minasgalleryand boutique.com)
art/culture At the cabaret at Germano’s Trattoria on Dec. 17, local director Donald Hicken reads A Child’s Christmas in Wales Wales, Dylan Thomas’s 1954 tale of a memorable childhood holiday. (300 S. High St.; 410752-4515; www.germanostrattoria.com) v ISUa L a rT
While traveling through Europe in the 1860s, the Walters family patriarch William was attracted to the precise draftsmanship and storytelling he saw in German art. Some of the pieces that he collected are exhibited in German Drawings from the Walters’ Collection, through Feb. 13. (600 N. Charles St.; 410547-9000; www.thewalters.org) Who knew that a lifetime collector of art jewelry lived in Highlandtown? Items from her collection, with an emphasis on pieces made from unlikely materials, are displayed at the Creative Alliance Dec. 2–Jan 8—from a brooch made of pencils to a bracelet made of measuring tape and rulers. Opening reception Dec. 2. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www. creativealliance.org) f I LM
There’s a new film series in town: gunky’s Basement. Curated and hosted by local artists Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche and sponsored by the Maryland Film Festival, the series features 35 mm prints of action, cult, horror, and sci-fi movies at the Charles Theatre 1711 N. Charles St.). On Dec. 9 is 1984’s Repo Man. Silkscreened posters created specially by local artists for each screening will be available. For more info, call 410752-8083 or go to http://whamcity.com/ wordpress/gunkys-basement/.
courtesy of Stephen Marc
For more arts and culture events, along with directories of local theaters, galleries, and literary venues, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.
The Narcissism of Minor Differences explores intolerance as seen through the eyes of seventeen artists, including Francisco de goya, Sam Durant, and Stephen Marc, whose Untitled (from Passage on the Underground Railroad) is pictured. the exhibit, at Maryland Institute College of Art Dec. 9–March 13, includes more than forty objects and installations; the opening reception takes place Dec. 9 from 5 to 7 p.m. (1303 W. Mt. Royal Ave.; 410-669-9200; www.mica.edu) Compiled by Marianne Amoss
Celebrating 20 extraordinary African American women who fought for freedom and changed the course of history
October 23, 2010 - January 17, 2011 For more information and for programs and events listing, go to www.AfricanAmericanCulture.org
Reginald F. Lewis Museum
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(443) 263-1800
Smithsonian Ford Motor Company Fund Institution Developed by Cincinnati Museum Center and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. National tour made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund.
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The God that Fails continued from page 43 What’s more, studies show that about 84 percent of the human race believes in a religious being or beings. Scholars point to this as evidence that religion is hardwired into the neural systems of most of us. Psychologists, such as Paul Bloom at Yale, and religious leaders embrace science that says that praying and meditating activate pleasure centers in our brains. Paul is having none of it. Using language and seeking food and belongings are truly “universal” traits people share—religion is a mere option, not something necessary to survival. He points to small groups, like the Hadza, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania that doesn’t observe a God or religious rituals, as well as larger groups. The majority of the Chinese believe in Confucianism, more of a philosophy than a religion. “It shows you that cultures can run without religion,” he says. Despite religion’s claims to the contrary, nonbelief is already on the march, while religion is in retreat, Paul says. Several polls suggest that, despite its woeful showing in several successful societies categories, the United States in the midst of “going material,” as Paul puts it. His defenders add that Paul is doing more than recycling old ideas—he is shaking up debate about the value of religion. “It takes courage and insight to buck the received opinion,” says Dennett, noting that many commentators blithely link religion with wellbeing. “Not many academics do anything as valuable as that.” A frequent collaborator, Phil Zuckerman, author of Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, adds that Paul “makes an argument you don’t see
Taking on major depression one step at a time. Are you struggling with depression? Have you taken an antidepressant but still feel low, lack interest in life, sleep badly, and feel tired every day?
in Dawkins’ or Hitchens’ books. Instead of wasting time debunk debunking the Bible, he’s marshaled so much socioeconomic data that he makes it clear that religious societies don’t do all that well. It’s a completely new line of argument.” While he waits for the world to catch up with that argument—he says major media have so far ignored him—Paul will keep himself busy. He wants to create a dinosaur app for the iPhone. And there’s the pressing question of where humanity, which is running through the Earth’s resources at an astonishing rate, will end up. Paul doesn’t speak of Judgment Day or heaven and hell, but his answer captures the imagination in a way those other ostensibly man-made constructs don’t. What he envisions is a kind of anti-rapture.
“Human life is kind of boring,” Paul says. “And it’s bad for the Earth. The best solution would be to upload our minds to technology and just get off the planet and on toward a cyber, 3-D world. “When I talk to people, they say this is weird,” he says, pausing to let that thought sink in. “But Christianity is a lot weirder. And so is the secular answer: They think people will be here forever, but that flies in the face of what we know about evolution.” Another pause. “We might as well make plans now.” ■ —Michael Anft is senior writer at Hopkins Magazine, where he covers science and medicine. During his twenty years in the business, he has written for the Chronicle of Philanthropy Philanthropy, City Paper Paper, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Washington Post, and others.
On the Air: Gregory Paul on The Marc Steiner Show Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on December 29
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September 11 is a marker in our lives. In two very large hangars at John F. Kennedy International Airport, much of the structural remains of the World Trade Center is being processed, catalogued, and prepared for display in the new 9/11 Memorial being constructed at ground zero. Many of the artifacts will find their homes throughout the country as part of monuments to the heroism of those who were lost in the horrific event. Baltimore is fortunate to be one of those destinations. In November, the twisted columns shown above were delivered to a holding area in the city in preparation for a commemoration at our own World Trade Center. Overseen by the Maryland State Arts Council, a competition for the design of the monument is under way; the design team is to be selected in January, with formal dedication of the monument set for the same day as the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial at ground zero—ten years to the day—September 11, 2011. —Alex Castro
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Structural columns World Trade Center, New York City Steel