January 2011

BALTIMORE ART STUDIOS · INVENTOR SAUL GRIFFITH · MY MIDLIFE ART CAR-ISIS jan uar y 2 011 i s s u e n o. 7 9

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contents

january 2011 issue no. 79

features 28

keynote: the maker

inventor and entrepreneur saul griffith on the roots of creativity, the power of kites, and why he cancelled his newspaper subscription inter view by marc steiner

32

locally grown

ten game-changing innovations for 2011

departments

23

7 editor’s note future talk

9 11 15 19 57

23

41

on the air:

jan 6: the full interview with saul griffith this month: a conversation with gregg bernstein (see urbanite’s website for date)

the goods: look out below! plus: a sleek salon, a beatles-themed inn, and coffee in a flower shop baltimore observed

space

studio visit a glimpse into the creative spaces of four local artists by marianne amoss | photography by j.m. giordano

47

radio: urbanite on the marc steiner show, weaa 88.9 fm

corkboard

this month: martin luther king day parade, polar bear plunge, and toothy toys

by m i ch a e l c o r b i n

truffle recipes from local chef cindy wolf

what you’re writing

out with the old: clotheslines, house keys, and uncle david’s camaro

crime and punishment baltimore’s new tough-on-crime state’s attorney stands at the center of a national debate over criminal justice.

this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: epiphanies, inventions, and scientific breakthroughs from 2010

what you’re saying

for and against prisoners’ rights

eat/drink

money tree could root-dwelling truffles be the next fungus among us? by maren tarro

51

reviewed: miguel’s cocina y cantina and mama rosa rotisserie & grill

53

wine & sprits: what to do with leftovers

55

the feed: this month in eating

57

art/culture

paint by number a fiftieth birthday celebration sees the family car transformed into a moving work of art by martha thomas

on the cover: illustration by ae-hyun shin

plus: gunky’s basement, philip glass, and this month’s cultural highlights

66

eye to eye

a look at work produced by mica students for this month’s cover

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issue 79: january 2011 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 food/drink: Tracey Middlekauff Tracey@urbanitebaltimore.com arts/culture: Cara Ober Cara@urbanitebaltimore.com proofreader Robin T. Reid

Discover The Freedom to a New You Join in January and get 2011 free hours/84 free days 12-months Membership Only. Some restrictions may apply.

Call 410-484-6800 and ask for a Membership Advisor.

contributing writers Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Michael Corbin, Heather Dewar, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Michelle Gienow, Brennen Jensen, 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

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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 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 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 2011, 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.

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contributor s

editor’s note

photo by Rachel Verhaaren

photo by Rachel Verhaaren

Eamonn Donnelly, who illustrated “Crime and Punishment” (p.

23), is a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art and a freelance illustrator living in Chicago. The native Washingtonian draws inspiration from playing and writing music. Lately, orange is his go-to hue. See more of his work at eamonndonnelly.com.

Editorial intern Juliette Eisner is a senior at Johns Hopkins University, where she is majoring in International Studies.

A native New Yorker, she spent last summer working in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for VBS.tv on their up-and-coming documentary series.

Eisner is half French and spent her junior year living in Paris, attending Sciences Po university and traveling throughout Europe.

Urbanite’s art director, Kim Michalov, has worked in graphic design and marketing for more than twelve years. She has led the advertising art department at the Baltimore Sun and designed for Trader Publishing’s four weekly publications. Michalov is an avid runner and has completed several half marathons and other races. She lives in Hampden with her 13-yearold son, Zach, and organizes clothing drives for those in need in her spare time.

We are a people enamored with our gadgets. We crave the Next Big Thing.

(Oh pulease, I’m thinking as I write this, SOMEBODY get me an iPad for Christmas. Want one.

Want want want.) So perhaps it is not surprising that we seem to have boundless faith in our ability to invent ourselves out of—or into—just about any situation.

I remember a conversation I had with a buddy when I was in college. I’d been reading Bill McKibben’s 1989 book, The End of Nature, about how humans had fundamentally altered the Earth’s ecological processes, and I was feeling downright gloomy about humanity’s chances for long-term survival. “Oh come on, Hanscom, we’ll figure it out,” said my friend, who was on his way to a career in high tech. “People have been doomsaying about this crisis or that one forever.

We’ve always found a way around it.”

At the time, I remember thinking he was pretty naïve. But looking back, I believe he was at least partly right. Many times, we have used our technology to, if not avoid crisis, at least forestall it. (Industrial agriculture comes to mind.) On the other hand, we’ve displayed a stubborn tendency to carry on with the kinds of activities that McKibben was sounding the alarm about back in 1989. (Um, industrial agriculture comes to mind …)

In the end, it will be a combination of inventiveness and discretion that will save the day—or so says inventor Saul Griffith in this month’s keynote interview (“The Maker,” p. 28).

Griffith, an entrepreneur and winner of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” who is designing high-altitude wind mills that are tethered to the Earth like kites, has recently turned his microscope on himself, asking how he can reduce his personal ecological impact while still enjoying the good life that, for many, this country affords. Rather than putting his faith in some dreamed-up Super Machine (and if anyone could dream one up, it would be Griffith), he says he’s betting on the collective impact of a thousand smaller innovations—and on our ability to make sensible changes in our everyday lives.

It’s a fitting opening for this issue, Urbanite’s annual ode to big ideas writ small: ideas that we believe could create positive changes for the Baltimore region and the world at large, but that are being carried out on a very human scale. In “Locally Grown” (p. 32), you’ll read about art students working with community groups, businesses that are committing some of their bottom line to social change, and a group of local technophiles who are spinning out nifty new creations by rewiring discarded gadgets. These are not new ideas, by and large, but they are ideas that we think will take flight this year in dramatic ways.

Elsewhere in this issue, writer and educator Michael Corbin kicks off a year-long series on criminal justice with “Crime and Punishment” (p. 23), a story about Baltimore’s new toughon-crime state’s attorney. In “Paint by Number” (p. 57), Martha Thomas writes about a fiftieth birthday celebration that included a radical overhaul of the family minivan. Urbanite staff photographer J.M. Giordano gives us a look inside the work spaces of four Baltimore artists in “Studio Visit” (p. 41). And in “Money Tree” (p. 47), Maren Tarro writes about a new crop that could mean big bucks for enterprising Maryland orchardists: truffles. (And she’s not talking about the chocolate kind.)

We’re looking forward to a new year filled with fresh ideas—ideas that translate into action. Bill McKibben, the guy who so depressed me with The End of Nature, has since broken out of the bounds of his magazine articles and books. Working with a pack of Web-savvy recent college grads, he’s launched a nonprofit that has organized protests and actions around the world to raise awareness of climate change. (You can read more about the group, 350.org, in the feature story.) Faced with an incomprehensibly huge problem, McKibben has put his stock in our ability to create change from the bottom up. This, combined with a whole sleigh full of great new gadgets, may be the most powerful tool we’ve got.

—Greg Hanscom

CAN A NEW TRICK SAVE AN OLD DOG? Coming Next Month: Behind the scenes at the new Twitter-happy Baltimore Sun www.urbanitebaltimore.com w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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Make an

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what you’re saying atheism is the path to destruction Responding to the article “The God That Fails” (December), I am reminded of a collection of essays published in 1949 titled “The God That Failed.” The essays were written by disillusioned ex-communist sympathizers that came to realize the brutal truths about life under collectivist totalitarianism. Communist ideology sought to eliminate belief in God, elevating mankind as the highest form of existence. Communist societies were not economically successful.

The subject of the Urbanite article, Gregory S. Paul, contends that socioeconomic success and widespread religious faith are incompatible and that no nation has experienced both simultaneously. I must question Mr. Paul’s definition of socioeconomic success. If he defines this success as greater equality of income amongst the citizens, I think he is very wrong. The Northern European nations he cites as examples owe their existence to the military might of the United States, which prevented their absorption into the economically dysfunctional and godless communist regimes. I know, I served in NATO during those post-World War II years.

I contend that socioeconomic success and belief in God go hand-in-hand. When a society is emptied of belief in God, it is also emptied of time-honored standards of collective morality and individual behavior, leading to a denial of individual responsibility and a collective descent into hedonism, then debauchery, and ending in ubiquitous violence.

Mr. Paul, next time you are sitting at the bar, look out the door and observe the physical decay and human denigration. Unfortunately, the same scene can now be observed in many once pristine European cities.

Whatever atheism touches, it destroys.

—Clifton Bunin, Mount Vernon a life needlessly taken On June 2, 1993, my sister was murdered by Rodney Stokes, the “lifer” on work release mentioned in “The Unreleased” (December).

Whereas I will eternally be very grateful to then-governor William Schaefer and especially his successor, Parris Glendening, for their immediate action taken following my sister’s death, I’ve often wondered what would have happened to the “lifer” had he not taken a life for the third time—his own.

The story makes me recall how my sister also believed in second chances, in proving one’s worth, that people make mistakes. It cost her her life to find out that she was wrong. It may well cost the state a lot of money to house these individuals, but to have my sister back with her family would

be worth millions. She’s already paid a price, and so has our family, by losing her to a “lifer.” It’s a tragedy I wouldn’t want anyone to experience.

—Jovita Harris Okonkwo, Baltimore punish the real criminals Mary Joel Davis (“The Unreleased,” December) and other “do-gooders” should be given positions like head of the parole board. She understands the issues like few others. A person like Mary Joel is in the trenches when most do nothing on this issue.

On this issue, the Democrats in Maryland want to appear harsh, the Republicans can cut the inmates some slack. Still, neither party helps much. Ehrlich and Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Mary Ann Saar may have appeared a bit better on pardons in terms of proposals, but they did not get passed. Of course, the cuts began a long time ago, when Pell grants for inmates were cut and when prison libraries and work release programs were de-funded.

A division of correctional services in any state of the union gives scant nod to the “corrections” part. Nothing substantial will be done to help inmates. And why? Because this constituency, the inmates, has no clout. Capitalism maintains an underclass and a punitive criminal justice system to fool the populace into thinking something is being done about crime, when the truly big criminals—be it Wall Street or war criminals like Bush and Obama—go Scot-free.

from the web good nog Re: “Nog Heaven” (November), in which wine and spirits columnist Clinton Macsherry discussed homemade eggnog: My eggnog recipe has been handed down on my mother’s side from our ancestors in South Carolina. Evidently it originally called for rum OR brandy OR bourbon. Well, family legend has it that my great-great-grandfather changed that to rum AND brandy AND bourbon! That’s how we’ve always made it, along with egg whites, egg yolks, cream, milk, sugar, and freshly ground nutmeg. (It sounds like my family may be related to the Somervilles!)

—posted by M.R. Whitney love makes the difference Re: “Finding a Home” (November), about Casey Family Service’s foster care program for pregnant or parenting teens: Very powerful article. I believe this program can expand in Baltimore and can be effective as long as everyone has the same goal of selfsufficiency for the teen. I do agree that we need to strengthen the current social service programs so that the need for foster parents is lessened. I commend the couple and the teen for being pioneers with this program.

Being a teen mom isn’t easy, but being a teen mom with the proper guidance and love can mean the difference in becoming another Baltimore statistic.

—posted by Angie

—David Eberhardt, Guilford. He retired in October after thirty-three years of social work in the jail and is an ex-offender for an antiwar protest. library brings back memories I grew up in the Perkins Projects from 1946 until June 1956, when we then moved to “the ’burbs.” The Enoch Pratt Free Library on Central Avenue (“Second Edition,” December) was a very big part of my childhood, almost a sacred place for me. I read all of the “Little House on the Prairie” books, Ellery Queen Jr. mysteries, Nancy Drew, and so many others, all available to me because of that library. I loved it, and seeing the picture of it made me feel very nostalgic. I once got in a big fistfight right there in front of the library, trying to protect a much smaller girl from a hefty boy.

If he is alive today I bet he still remembers the skinny girl who gave him a fat lip in front of that library!

—Sandy Spivey, Fork

corrections In “Healthy by Design” (November), we stated that Baltimore Medical System was “hoping to receive LEED Platinum” certification for its new Highlandtown clinic. The clinic had already received the certification.

“This makes us the first community health center in the country and the first health facility in Maryland to achieve this coveted status,” writes BMS President and CEO Jay Wolvosky. And a thousand apologies to Karen Yasinsky, creator of the cover artwork for the December issue, for misspelling her name in the credit.

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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what you’re writing

OUT WITH THE

illustration by Ed Gallagher

as she hauls butt down the highway toward something unknown.

in 1956, mom bought her first automatic clothes dryer. Its utility on rainy days did nothing to diminish that woman’s relationship with sun and air.

Most days included passage from dim basement to an open-sky backyard with four clotheslines stretched between two galvanized-pipe Ts. Mom hefted her creaking wicker basket filled with wet dresses, shirts, socks, undies, or sheets and pillowcases topped by the bag of clackity wood pins. Hot or cold weather didn’t matter. If the sun was even barely visible, the laundry went out to the line. I marveled at the frozen clothes that came into the house “stiff as a board” to thaw and finish drying on the inside line.

I loved my world when Mom would enter the kitchen with a basket full of fluffy dry sheets and say: “Just put your face in this.

Doesn’t it smell like sunshine!”

Now, at my house, there is no clothesline.

Clothes come out of the dryer smelling like a bought fragrance. Something old and terribly important has been set aside.

­—John Ciekot is a project director at Civic Works, Baltimore’s community service corps.

He is involved with Real Food Farm and res toration at Clifton Mansion, both in Clifton Park. He invites readers to visit both.

Everything of mine was old when I was a kid. My bed frame, mattress, box spring, sheets, those itchy wool blankets; my second-hand clothes; the scratchy, low pile carpet in my room. But it wasn’t just my stuff—everything was old: our TV, the furniture, my grandparents, the fans, the trees, the house.

I lived in the “historic” area of a Baltimore suburb. But to me, it was just plain old.

I wanted to live in one of those places in the county like my friend Jenny. The streets were

lined with brick houses, and the sidewalks were nearly wide enough for two Big Wheels to ride side-by-side. Jenny’s floors were covered with soft, plush carpet, and she had new curtains and a matching comforter for her bedroom.

Jenny’s brothers and my uncle David were friends, and they liked old cars. Her brothers would come to our house and help David work on his cars. My favorite was the ’67 or ’68 white convertible Camaro SS. It was the most beautiful vehicle I’d ever known. Of all the oldness around me, it was the only old thing I felt I understood.

It glistened freedom.

By 1980, the Camaro and my uncle had lived through a garage fire, an off-road crash into a barn while David changed the dial on the radio, and a few other calamities. When the doorbell rang in January 1981, even though I was only 9, I knew what had happened. My father told me David had hit a patch of ice. The Camaro had collided with a telephone pole, just a few miles from our house. David went through the plate glass windshield; his head hit the telephone pole. My 22-year-old uncle made it to shock trauma, where he died. The Camaro, Dad later told me, could never be repaired.

I got new curtains and a new comforter and nifty pillow cover later that year. I’d gotten some of David’s stuff too. As I lay in my old bed with my new comforter at night, I’d hear the sounds of cars in the distance, their engines pulling them toward something, somewhere. Sometimes, I’d imagine I was hearing David out there, in the old Camaro.

—Alicia Gabriel lives in Baltimore and works for Chase Brexton Health Services. Her current car is unremarkable and new. She dreams of sitting in the blue bucket seat of a white ’68 Chevy Camaro, listening to Primus,

We packed up the Mazda in the alley behind my mother’s apartment, the same place I’d once passed idle hours playing solo tennis against a brick wall. In the car’s rear window my friend had propped a Frisbee on which his brother had written “Palo Alto or bust.” I wept as I said goodbye to my mother.

There was no getting around that.

We were Thelma and Lou, moving west, the ink still drying on our college diplomas.

We had plans for the drive: to use up a Big Gulp full of coins, change drivers every two hours, and listen once to every cassette tape we’d packed. Longer term, he was going to grad school. I would look for a job. What kind, I didn’t know. My future was an evasive, nebulous thing. Plans seemed to come into view far down the road then disappear on closer inspection, like a mirage.

In Pennsylvania, we listened to the Sundays and compared notes on the Margaret Atwood novels we’d read. There was a lot to say. Her books were big with us then— thoughtful but not inscrutable. We ate up their symbolism.

Three hundred miles and several hours west, we stopped at a gas station in rural Ohio. He pumped gas, and I walked to the bathroom, past a black oil drum that served as a trash can. I took my ring of Baltimore keys, deposited them in the oil drum, and walked away.

In the car, I told him about the keys. “I feel like I shed a skin,” I said.

“You’ve been reading too much Margaret Atwood,” he said.

—Elisabeth Dahl is a writer and editor. In 2003, after a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, she moved back to Baltimore. She has a new and bigger key ring now but still thinks of the one in the oil drum.

I awoke one April morning to a panicked call from my mother. “There’s been a fire at the house—the garage, and in the attic.” My mind immediately raced to the boxes of Christmas ornaments my family had been collecting for years, each one with its own story. “I’ll be right over.”

I arrived to find my childhood home in far worse shape than I had imagined. What hadn’t been burned was flooded by the fire department or covered in a thick smoky film. “Everything has to go,” they told us. The smoke was too hazardous, and the nauseating smell had permeated the entire house.

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In order for the insurance company to approve the claim, we had to take inventory. That meant cataloging every one of our belongings and then tossing them into a giant Dumpster. “It’s just stuff,” we’d say, and heave over a television, my mom’s wedding dress, my dad’s favorite chair.

As my family rediscovered pieces of our past, items were recorded and occasionally photographed, and then we’d part again.

This process was truly a test of will, and I found myself having second thoughts about letting some “things” go. I became skilled at the Art of Dumpster Diving, jumping in for my Beatles White Album on vinyl (still plays perfectly) or my backpacking frame pack (reeks of smoke when wet). Call me sentimental, but some things are just worth diving for.

In a matter of months, the house was stripped, and the rebuilding began. My grandfather, a skilled carpenter, had built our home in the 1954 at his wife’s request.

My parents did a fine job of restoring the original architecture. Family and friends were a tremendous support, even starting a new collection of Christmas ornaments for my folks. Now I bring one back every time I travel; each trinket preserves a new memory and story for us to share.

—Baltimore resident Meredith Wehrle works to provide telephone access to the deaf. She enjoys traveling, spending time in nature, and writing when inspired. She dedicates this essay to her mom and dad.

“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 @urbanitebaltimore.com. Submissions should be shorter than four hundred words.

Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned.

Topic Problem Solved Bedtime Story Growing Pains

Deadline Jan 5, 2011 Feb 7, 2011 March 7,2011

Publication March 2011 April 2011 May 2011

Downtown and Around Town...

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Resolution Run

Jan. 1

Start 2011 off right at the annual Resolution Run, benefiting Earl’s Place, which provides housing and support services to formerly homeless men. Participants in the 5K run/walk and 1-mile walk through Patterson Park receive commemorative long-sleeve T-shirts and can chow down on chili and cornbread at the after-party at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church Hall, 2638 E. Baltimore Street.

Patterson Park $30 race day registration 410-522-0225 www.earlsplace.org/Events.htm

Día de los Tres Reyes Magos

Jan. 8

Education Based Latino Outreach (EBLO) and the Walters Art Museum co-host a celebration of Día de los Tres Reyes Magos, also known as the Day of the Three Kings or the Epiphany. The day celebrates the Bible story about the three kings who offer gifts to the infant Jesus; in Hispanic communities, it’s just as important as Christmas. The day will include performances, art activities, a visit from the Three Kings, and traditional king cake.

The Walters Art Museum 600 N. Charles St. Free 410-547-9000 www.thewalters.org

Martin Luther King Jr. Parade

Jan. 17

Baltimore City commemorates the legacy of nonviolent civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the national holiday with its eleventh annual parade. Stepping off from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Eutaw Street, the parade will proceed south to Baltimore Street and will feature marching bands, floats, and more.

Parade begins at Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Eutaw St. 410-752-8632 www.promotionandarts.com

Home Building and Remodeling Show

Jan. 21–23

Learn about the latest innovations and trends at the thirteenth annual Home Building and Remodeling Show. Attendees can peruse displays and information on kitchen and bath remodeling, roofing, flooring, home security, water conditioning, insulation, windows, landscaping, and more, as well as talk directly to experts from area companies. See website for discount ticket information.

Baltimore Convention Center 1 W. Pratt St. $6; children younger than 18 free www.homeshowcenter.com

Polar Bear Plunge

Jan. 29

At the fifteenth annual Polar Bear Plunge, about 25,000 brave souls (including such local celebrities as Raven Joe Flacco) will take a dip in the frigid Chesapeake Bay to raise funds for Special Olympics Maryland. For spectators, there’s live music, activities, and games in the heated festival tent.

Sandy Point State Park 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis 410-789-6677 www.plungemd.com

Open Wide!

Through Jan. 30

Travel back into tooth history with Open Wide! Toothy Toys that Made Us Smile, an exhibit at the National Museum of Dentistry. The fifty-plus items include an Evel Knievel battery-operated toothbrush, complete with launching ramp; a Tooth Invaders video game from 1981; and the wind-up Yakity-Yak chattering teeth from the 1940s.

National Museum of Dentistry 31 S. Greene St. $7 adults; $5 seniors & students; $3 children 3–12; children 2 and younger free 410-706-0600 www.smile-experience.org

Photo credits from top to bottom: © David Alary | Dreamstime.com; courtesy of the Walters Art Museum; courtesy of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts; © Yauheni Krasnaok | Dreamstime.com; courtesy of Special Olympics Maryland; courtesy of the National Museum of Dentistry

For more goings-on about town, get thee to Urbanite’s newfangled website: www.urbanite baltimore.com. w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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photo by David Rehor

special advertising section

It’s Always Academic Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Keeps Minds Sharp b y r o b i n t. r e i d

Above: In Dr. Susan McCarter’s class “New Discoveries in Prehistory,” Osher members learn about prehistoric people and their daily lives.

F

or some students, the start of a new semester is a dreaded thing. It means waking up early, sitting in class, and even worse—the professor calling on you to participate in class discussions. While this might not be the case for all undergraduate students, it is how many of us remember our college days.

Tuesday, February 22, marks the first day of the Spring 2011 semester for the members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Johns Hopkins University (Osher at JHU). The participants in these classes come not because they have to, but because they want to and couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the day.

Osher at JHU provides an opportunity for seniors who want to devote some of their retirement (or semi-retirement) to learning.

The members, as Osher students are called, have the ability to choose from 25 different courses each semester at each location. Some of the courses offered this spring are “East is East: The Uniqueness of Chinese Philosophy,” “The Birth of Civilization in the Ancient Near East,” “The Circus: Rings Around the World,” and “Critical Issues in U.S. Urban Transportation,” to name a few.

Osher’s three campuses are in Rockville, Columbia, and Baltimore. The membership fee in Rockville is $495 a year for up to four twelve-week courses per semester; the fee in Baltimore and Columbia is $450 for up to six 12-week courses per semester. Scholarships

photo by David Rehor

are available; Director Kathy Porsella said, “Nobody add online courses so members who are no longer has ever been turned away since I started in 1986.” able to get to a campus can stay connected.

This spring will also bring change to the Osher’s educational benefits are obvious: leadership of Osher at JHU because Porsella retires stimulating courses taught by experts in their field this month. She knows just what she’s going to and some of the best minds in American academia. do: return to Osher where she worked for the past Yet, the more subtle benefits might be just as twenty-four years, this time as a member. important, if not more so.

“The first two classes I want to take are films “Members come initially for the classes, but with Stan Levin and music with Saul Lilienstein,” they stay for the community,” said Director Melissa Porsella said.

Hilbish of the Center for Liberal Arts, of which She was initially hired to test the feasibility Osher is a part. “They’ve become friends; some of offering a program within the community for have organized a food drive, and others started a learning opportunities for retired people. The walking group.” Osher is also responsible for three Evergreen Society opened its doors first in Columbia weddings—so far. at the Columbia Center in 1986. Five years later For Alan Coxhead, a Baltimore/Columbia it started in Baltimore at Grace United Methodist member, Osher has helped ease the transition Church in Homeland. In 1995, Evergreen expanded from forty years of working to retirement. “The southwest to Rockville, settling into Hopkins’ course offerings and the academic resources of this Montgomery County Campus. world-class university are truly an enhancement of What is now Osher at JHU started as the what otherwise might be just too much leisure,” he Evergreen Society. “The thinking behind the name said. “From art, music, history, or the classes in was that the evergreen tree is forever flourishing,” world events, I know I have done a lot for my own Porsella explained. “This fit into the idea of a knowledge and well-being.” program for people who wanted to keep learning.

Members can get as involved with the program We saw a void. Johns Hopkins had programs for as they like. They can serve on Osher advisory many ages, from young children to working adults, boards and committees. They’re active contributors but nothing was available during the day for retirees. to the Osher at JHU biannual journal. Some serve as We wanted to create something for them.” classroom assistants.

The Evergreen Society received an initial “This is a community. The faculty love grant of $50,000 in 2007; a second $50,000 teaching in the program,” Hilbish said. “The grant in 2008; and a $1 million endowment grant members bring their life experiences to the in 2010 from the Bernard Osher Foundation, a classroom. They are here because they want to be San Francisco-based organization that helps fund here. Their questions are very targeted, they do educational programs for older adults. As a result, the readings and enjoy participating in the class the name changed to reflect the affiliation, and discussions. It’s the opposite of the bored undergrad Hopkins became one of more than 120 programs in who’s falling asleep.” the country to have “Each time I The leaders of Johns Hopkins’ Center for Liberal Arts, Brian an Osher Institute. walk up the path Fitzek (left) and Melissa Hilbish (right) work with Osher program That grant, in to my classes, I coordinator Wafa Sturdivant (center) to create mind-expanding addition to donations feel five-and-a-half opportunities for the members in Baltimore and Columbia. from members and again,” says Jackie their families, has Morris, who has been helped pay for a member of Osher new equipment in for fourteen years Baltimore, reduced at the Montgomery membership fees, County campus. and helped the “That is quite an institute add more accomplishment for courses and days. anyone to be able to The Baltimore/ claim. And sharing Columbia campus these feelings with added classes my grandchildren on Mondays this will, I hope, instill in past year, which them that same joy permitted them to as they incorporate add more students education into their and course offerings. lives, no matter Osher also hopes to the age.”

Locations Baltimore Classes are held Tuesdays and Thursdays

Grace United Methodist Church 5407 N. Charles Street Located on the corner of North Charles Street and Northern Parkway 410-516-9719 Columbia Classes are held Mondays and Wednesdays

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Stylish Salon

photo by Rachel Verhaaren

Local stylist Bethany Magliacane struck out on her own at the end of 2010, opening up Laboratorie: A Salon in Roland Park (735 Deepdene Rd.; 410-435-0805; www.laboratorie hair.com). Magliacane and stylist Rebecca Goodman (both formerly of Balance the Salon in Evergreen) adhere to a philosophy of sustainable beauty, doing cuts, color, highlights, styling, and conditioning treatments with products from the eco-friendly Davines and MoroccanOil lines. “They have set the standard for what we live up to: luxury and sustainable products that have a beautiful result,” Magliacane says.

And in keeping with its eco-friendly ethos, the sleek salon is outfitted with low-voltage lighting throughout and an ondemand water heater.

—Juliette Eisner

Warm Up

Working out in the winter isn’t quite so daunting with the Run:Swiftly Tech long sleeve top, made by Lululemon Athletica, the beloved purveyor of yoga-inspired athletic apparel that recently opened a showroom in Fells Point (1724 Aliceanna St.; 410-537-5120; www. lululemon.com). Made from a fabric that wicks away moisture, the lightweight top boasts mesh vents in sweat-prone areas, has flat seams to reduce chafing, and is promised to fit like a favorite T-shirt.

—Jennifer Walker

courtesy of lululemon athletica

photo by Robert Hakalski for MIO

Splash of Color

Think everything is dreary in January? Your home or workspace doesn’t have to be. Brighten things up with a vibrantly colored Beehive SoftBowl, great for plants, pens, or other odds and ends. Made of 100 percent wool in a Philadelphia millinery, the SoftBowl is environmentally friendly: It eats up just one-tenth of the energy required to make ceramic bowls. Available from Mount Washington-based Working Wonders (866457-5886; www.workingwondersus.com).

—J.W. w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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sHoP at Home

In 2008, T Garland and Zan Wilson were touring an 1838 house in historic Ellicott City, looking for some sign that they should buy the place. They found it in the attic: a shiny penny that reminded them of Penny Lane and the eponymous Beatles song. The Obladi (8060 Main St.; 410-480-1968)—named for the Fab Four tune and its “life goes on” message—opened last fall, with four rooms dubbed John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

The hotel is clean and modern, with gas fireplaces, private bathrooms, and flatscreen TVs in each room, as well as a shared kitchen and garden; there’s also decor that harks back to the Beatles 1960s interest in the Indian spiritual figure Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. For rates and reservations, go to www. theobladi.com.

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—J.W.

photo by Jeremy “Kipp” Clark, Ellicott City Graphic Arts

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Slip-Sliding Away

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When it comes to sleds, let’s face it, folks: If you’re paying more than twenty bucks for something that you could easily replace with a trash can lid, well, it might as well be a pair of skis. Besides, as this connoisseur of the slip and slide can attest (yes, I’ve made snowy descents aboard everything from a dining hall tray to a fiberglass canoe—the latter is not recommended if you care about your canoe), the best sleds are the cheap plastic kind. In north Baltimore, Ayd Hardware (6801 York Rd.; 410-377-0220) carries plastic toboggans (pictured) and blow-up inner tubes from Flexible Flyer. Falkenhan’s in Hampden usually has some good cheapo options (3401 Chestnut Ave.; 410-235-7771). And Sports Authority in Glen Burnie (595 E. Ordinance Rd.; 410-7611151) carries a variety of sleds by Pelican. Don’t be caught in a blizzard without one.

—Greg Hanscom

—J.W.

photo by J.M. Giordano

Stop and Smell the Coffee

“What’s nicer than having a cup of coffee with flowers around you?” says Paula Dobbe-Maher, owner of the flower shop the Dutch Connection. On October 1, her Harbor East location (1008 Fleet St.; 410-528-7296; www.thedutchconnection.us) opened an in-store coffee shop to serve caffeinated favorites like espresso and lattes, pastries from Patisserie Poupon, and fresh-baked chocolate chip walnut cookies. Lunch— quiches, sandwiches, and soups—is also available. And if you come from Whole Foods across the street, take a tip from a recent customer: He stashed his groceries underneath the flowers in the large walk-in cooler, then ate his cheese Danish outside.

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This Is What 50 Looks Like...

The Jewish Museum of Maryland: Celebrating 50 Years of Fabulous!

The Jewish Museum of Maryland at the Herbert Bearman Campus 15 Lloyd Street · Baltimore · MD · 21202 410.732.6400 · www.jewishmuseummd.org Open Sunday, Tuesday - Thursday / 12 - 4

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Image courtesy of Will Kirk

baltimore observed

crime — and —

Punishment Baltimore’s new toughon-crime state’s attorney stands at the center of a national debate over criminal justice.

By michael corbin illustration by eamonn donnelly

“Stephen Pitcairn’s murder, like

so many others in Baltimore, was not just senseless, but preventable.” Gregg Bernstein, Baltimore’s new state’s attorney, offered up this analysis last summer from the still-blood-stained St. Paul Street sidewalk where a 23-year-old Johns Hopkins research technician was stabbed to death by a man with an extensive criminal record.

A former federal prosecutor and defense attorney, Bernstein cast his 2010 campaign against Baltimore’s long-serving lead prosecutor, Patricia Jessamy, in stark terms: The incumbent was soft on crime, coddling criminals, he said, essentially allowing the murder of Stephen Pitcairn and other innocents. Bernstein fashioned himself as the new sheriff who would round up the “violent, repeat offenders” and see justice done.

The tough talk worked: Bernstein upset Jessamy in the Democratic primary, which decided the race. (Berstein ran unopposed in November.) But he won by a less than 2 percent margin. And in that electoral division, one can see a public at crosspurposes when it comes to meting out justice.

Behind the sensational crimes and the campaign caricatures, two striking characteristics w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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of crime and punishment in contemporary America have led to a national debate among both prosecutors and the public that elects them. The first is that, both nationally and locally, crime is in significant decline. The second: Americans lock up and monitor more people than we ever have in our history—and more than any other place in the world.

One could be forgiven for seeing in these numbers cause and effect: Lock up more criminals, and crime rates go down. Yet there is little correlation between the two. Criminologists, sociologists, and politicians debate the precise social symmetry of crime and punishment. But over the last generation in America, incarceration has increased regardless of whether crime has risen or dropped.

As a country, we punish more, despite the actual number of crimes committed.

That number is dramatically down. Nationally, 2009 saw the lowest rates of violent crime since 1973, when the federal government first started tracking them closely, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Crimes against property have also shown a long-term decline. The city of Baltimore has seen marked improvement too. Of the country’s twenty most populated cities, and the ten most violent U.S. cities with a population greater than 500,000, Baltimore has achieved some of the most significant reductions in total, violent, and property crime over the last decade, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.

Yet such accountings can’t compete with bloody sidewalks. “I’m afraid it will take more than a sustained crime decline to break the hold of crime fear on the political imagination,” says Jonathan Simon, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear.

“Crime continues to operate as the privileged social problem through which the needs of the public are interpreted and the fitness of political leaders is assessed.”

Two and a half million Americans are now incarcerated. On any given day 7.3 million adults are under federal, state, or local correctional control. That’s one in thirty-one adults. And in Baltimore that number is even higher. On an average day more than 4,000 Baltimoreans are in jail—which doesn’t include those in prison, on probation or parole, or in the juvenile justice system. Of the country’s twenty largest jail jurisdictions, this city has the “distinction of holding the highest percentage of its population in jail,” according to Baltimore Behind Bars: How to Reduce the Jail Population, Save Money and Improve Public Safety, a report issued in June by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor who is now an associate dean and professor at George Washington University Law School, says our culture of fear has made a prosecutor’s duty to be fair and just largely impossible. The job, he says, has been reduced to making only some communities feel safe. “Good people shouldn’t be prosecutors,” he says. “My job as a federal prosecutor was to lock up black people, Latino people, and poor people.”

Butler, author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, says that a new generation of prosecutors is emerging who are attempting to rebalance the justice system. Locally, he points to Prince George’s County’s retiring state’s attorney Glenn Ivey and his newly elected replacement, Angela Alsobrooks. Alsobrooks campaigned on increasing convictions but also alternatives to incarceration such as job training and placement combined with stiff sanctions for noncompliance—an approach that, nationally, has reduced recidivism and the significant costs of incarceration.

Kamala Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney who won a contentious race for California state attorney general last fall, has been a national model of this new breed of prosecutor. Harris writes in her book, Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer, that the reality that prosecutors like Bernstein deal with “has little to do with the sensational violent cases that make the headlines or become the nightly news or the basis of fictional television crime shows …

Those of us battling crime on the front lines know that some of the crucial policies and approaches to these crimes are outdated, ineffective, and astronomically expensive.”

So what is a new state’s attorney to do?

Butler argues that rather than speaking to the emotions of sensational crimes, a prosecutor must speak to all communities. If both public safety and justice are to be done, he says, “a prosecutor must work to have everyone have faith in the criminal justice system.”

In her fifteen years in the office, Jessamy apparently failed in this endeavor. For Bernstein to be successful he must create that faith. And in the politics of the present, it will take more than tough talk to do so.

—Michael Corbin is a former city school teacher and prison educator and presently a teacher of adjudicated youth. This is the first in a series of stories Corbin will write for Urbanite in 2011 about the criminal justice system.

On the Air: A conversation with Gregg Bernstein on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, this month; date to be posted on www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

When Time Is of the Essence B y R o b i n T. R e i d

How Gateway School’s Early Intervention Techniques Can Ensure a Better Future

photo by David Rehor

Ebony Martin

Connor Martin, 5, plays at the Gateway School.

watched her toddler, Connor, flick the TV off and on repeatedly. He did the same with the light switches. He’d jump almost nonstop. And he stopped talking and began uttering small sounds instead of the few words he’d been using.

All of these were behaviors she had not observed in his three older siblings. So Martin took Connor to his pediatrician.

The doctor referred her to Baltimore City’s Infants and Toddlers Program, which then sent her to the Hearing and Speech Agency (HASA) to test Connor for deafness.

“His hearing was OK,” Martin recalled. “They gave him speech services twice a week.

But his behavior was still a little weird, so I knew it was more than just a speech problem.”

HASA’s team concurred and sent a doctor to observe Connor at home. The diagnosis: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which the National Institutes of Health describes as “a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders, characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.” ASD afflicts three to six children out of every 1,000 in the United States, according to federal statistics, and boys are four times more

likely to have it than girls. There is no cure for ASD, but it can be treated through medication and special education—the earlier, the better.

Thanks to his mother’s keen observation skills, Connor has benefited mightily from early intervention. Martin started the Individual Education Plan process (IEP) with Baltimore City to ensure that her son got into the most appropriate school as soon as he turned 3 (the earliest age possible). And that was how she found the Gateway School— housed in the same building as HASA, where he first got help.

Gateway is a private school for children with special needs whose primary barrier to development is difficulty communicating. Each student has a team comprised of a special education teacher, speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and audiologist.

“It’s amazing to see how far Connor has come in two years,” Martin said. “He can let me know what he wants. He can make eye contact. He’ll even read a book to his 2-year-old brother.”

Ritika Kochar

was one of Connor’s first teachers at Gateway.

“Children on the Autism spectrum like Connor lack skills in pragmatic language—eye

contact, reading nonverbal language, understanding what nonverbal language is being used, etc.,” she said. “When these children are targeted at the earliest sign of delay in developmental milestones, intensive therapy can give them techniques that eventually become second nature.

“Intensive therapy six hours in school each day helps 3- to 5-year-olds develop socially and gives them the basic skills necessary to function in a classroom,” she added, “such as listening to teachers, staying with a group, and paying attention to tasks for longer and longer periods of time.”

This year, Connor is in Amanda Dougherty’s class at Gateway. By using a variety of special education techniques, such as verbal and visual prompting, repetitive and visual directions, small group and individual instruction, Ms. Dougherty is helping her six kindergarten/first-graders reach their highest potential. “Once they have learned basic skills, their language skills tend to improve.”

Dougherty and Kochar stress the urgency of monitoring a child’s developmental growth almost from birth. Parents ultimately must be the first line of defense, since pediatricians typically see children for checkups or emergencies only.

“The Maryland State Department of Education offers milestone charts that provide an age range by which children should have reached particular milestones,” Kochar said. “If parents notice a significant gap between what their child should be doing at a certain age, and what they can do, then they should call Maryland Child Find [800-5350182] to have the child evaluated.”

After all of the help and services Martin secured for Connor, she is hopeful now that he will be able to transfer into a regular classroom within two years.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better placement for Connor than Gateway,” Martin said. “If Connor had gone to any other school, I don’t think he would be the person he is today. He’s been reaching all of his goals. I think he’s going to be my genius child.”

The IEP Process Getting a child with special-

needs the “free and appropriate public education” guaranteed by federal law sounds perfectly justified on paper. But making it happen can be complicated. And that’s where the Maryland Association of Nonpublic Special Education Facilities can help. Dorie Flynn, MANSEF’s executive director, explained the law and how it’s changed, and gave advice on how to ensure that it’s carried out to a child’s best advantage.

Q: Explain the federal laws that led to the IEP concept.

A: The Individual with Disabilities Educa-

tion Act (IDEA) is our nation’s special education law. The IDEA guides how states, school districts, and public agencies provide early intervention, special education, and related services to more than 6.5 million eligible children with disabilities.

Congress originally enacted IDEA in 1975 to ensure that children with disabilities have the opportunity to receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) just like other children. Each child who requires special education services must have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The IEP dictates the type of services the child needs to obtain educational benefit. In addition, the IDEA mandates that there be a continuum of placement options for children with special needs.

Q: How does the IEP process start?

A: Parents can start the process by asking— the request should be in writing—for a team meeting to review their child’s educational needs. The school system can also start the process.

Q: What sort of assessment does one

request for a child? Who does the assessing and what does it include? Who pays for it?

How much does it cost?

A: The types of assessments can include a

psychological evaluation, a social history, and any other evaluation that the school system recommends and parents agree to. The assessments are conducted by qualified and/or licensed professionals, many of whom are employed by the schools. In addition, the school system can contract out for the assessments and evaluations. It is responsible for identifying children with special needs and therefore pays for the assessments. However, parents

can also obtain independent assessments on their own and at their own expense.

Q: Does the IEP dictate where the child goes to school?

A: No. The school system and the parent

need to look at all the options when providing services to children with special needs.

It is important to place children in the least restrictive environment before seeking more intensive services.

The IDEA mandates that children with disabilities be educated with their nondisabled peers. The school may have many programs within their system that serve children with special needs that would necessitate a child not being served in their zoned school. When the public school system does not have the internal resources to implement the IEP, then it makes a referral to a nonpublic special education school. The intent is for the child to obtain educational benefit regardless of where the service is delivered.

Q: How much does the public school system pay the private school?

A: Since the public school system is obli-

gated to provide a free and appropriate public education, they then place the student in a nonpublic special education school approved and accredited by the Maryland State Department of Education. The cost of the tuition is based on a formula established by state law.

The local school system shares in the cost of educating students in nonpublic special education placements. The intensity of the program and the services it provides have a direct impact on cost, because some children require more intense support and service.

Q: Where can folks find advocates (lawyers, etc.) if they don’t have the money to pay for help in the process?

A: Each county in Maryland now has a

hotline to reach a “family navigator”; these individuals will provide assistance over the phone. The list can be obtained from the Maryland Coalition of Families for Children’s Mental Health (www.mdcoalition.org). In addition, there is the Parent’s Place of Maryland (www.ppmd.org).

Parents can also visit the MANSEF Web site (www.mansef.org), and click on the section “Download Membership Directory.”

Gateway School 5900 Metro Drive Baltimore, MD 21215 410-318-6780 | www.hasa.org/school Ages: 3 to 12

The Maker Inventor and entrepreneur Saul Griffith on the nature of innovation, the power of kites, and why he cancelled his newspaper subscription interview by marc steiner photo by timothy archibald

keynote “I’m really not a believer in genius.”

So says Saul Griffith, a man who won a MacArthur “genius grant” after developing a revolutionary new technique for manufacturing low-cost eyeglasses for people in the developing world—this, when he was supposed to be working on his PhD at M.I.T. He did finally get the PhD for research into machines that could assemble and replicate themselves.

Griffith has had a hand in developing everything from electronic ink (the stuff that powers your Kindle) to streets paved with solar panels.

Today, this 36-year-old Silicon Valley icon is hard at work solving the climate crisis.

So if it’s not genius, what is it?

Q A

You’ve said that your growth as an inventor wasn’t as much about school as it was about the environment you grew up in.

Yeah. My father was an engineer and a professor, and my mother was an artist. Both of them engendered in my sister and myself this [sense that] the world is understandable, and you can create things.

My father would be like, “Well, we don’t know how this machine works; let’s take it apart, and there’s some chance that we’ll put it back together and it will still work and we’ll know more.” And my mother, every day she would wake up excited to make some beautiful piece of art. In our household we were encouraged to understand and create.

Q

Among all the creations that you’ve been involved in, what are the ones that are most promising in terms of changing the human condition and affecting issues like climate change?

A

The answer to that is always, what I’m working on tomorrow.

If you expected that every single thing you ever did would affect the human condition, a) you’d be arrogant and no one would ask you to a dinner party, and b) you’d be wrong. In some sense, I think the job of creatives, whether they’re artists or musicians or engineers or inventors, is to just create a whole lot of new options. Let the world figure out which ones are going to be useful and which ones aren’t.

The second answer to your question is that at the moment I’m working on a lot of other energy projects, and I think they’re all important. What you call the climate change problem, I really look at as an energy problem. Climate change is the odd effect of the way we produce and use energy, and we need hundreds upon thousands of little solutions—everything from making diapers in a way that uses less energy to making wind-powered electricity cheaper to making cheaper solar cells and electric cars.

So tomorrow and every day after tomorrow, I’m going to be working on one of those things.

Q A

Describe your company, Makani, and this incredible idea about how to generate wind power.

Wind power—after solar power, it’s the second largest source of renewable energy in the natural environment. Existing wind turbines are fabulous machines, [but] it’s pretty hard to imagine how you make them radically cheaper than we do today. The reality is we need to

make radically cheap wind power if you want to get it to [be] economically comparable with coal. And so I and a few of my friends, we were all avid amateur aerodynamicists and energy geeks, and we realized that you could potentially use kites—something that flies on the end of a piece of string—to reach the wind that’s higher up in the sky. The wind, as you get higher and higher, it blows stronger and more often, so there is more power available. And so the idea is to fly very large kites—we’re talking 50-foot wingspans and larger—and to fly them at high speeds at a couple of thousand feet, and to generate the electricity on those wings and then bring the electricity back down to the ground. So far it’s all going very well. It really does look like that’s a pathway to make wind-powered electricity cost half of what it does today, or do even better than that.

Q A

Is it possible to do on a large scale?

It’s absolutely possible. We’re already doing it on small scales, flying [kites with] 10- to 15-foot wingspans, and generating kilowatts of power—enough to power multiple houses. The real scale you want to do it on is more like the size of the smaller industrial aircraft. At that scale you start to produce megawatts of electricity, or enough to power thousands of houses with each machine. And there’s no real technical barrier to doing it. It’s really a question of will the economics prove out, and then will society accept these machines?

We pretty much have all the technology we need. A lot of the issues are political and social and economic more than they are technical. I don’t know any engineer that doesn’t believe [that we can solve the energy problem]. There are more engineers wanting to work on this problem than money to pay them to work on it. And they all believe they can do it, and they all want to get it done, fast. Among the engineers I know, it’s like, “When can we get started? This is going to be the best century ever; there are so many exciting things to build and get started, and we’re going to make a better future.” The [challenge] is getting in the resources to be able to do that job.

Q A

How do you put your hands around that—the engineering battle and technical struggles to address the energy problem?

What really helped me get my head around it was navel-gazing.

I decided to measure how much energy every single aspect of my life used and look at where that energy came from. And so I measured all the energy of all the flying I did, all the driving I did, even the energy of all the eating—where all my food comes from—the energy it took to make all the products that I buy. And when I looked at that entire energy picture of my life, it shocked me. I found out I used close to double the amount of energy of the average American.

So here I was, claiming I was an environmentalist working on wind power and saving the world, but I was just like, “Wow, I am the hypocrite. I am the problem.” It really made me start to think there’s two sides to the problem. You’ve got to completely transform the way we generate energy today—switch all the coal and the natural gas and the oil to some other, renewable form or nuclear form. But then also, if everyone in the world used as much energy as I, Saul Griffith, use, we’d have to produce close to seven or eight times the amount of energy that we do today. And if you look at the numbers, it’s actually pretty unlikely that we’re going to be able to do that. So that made w w w . u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o r e . c o m j a n u a r y 11

29

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u r b a n i t e j a n u a r y 11

keynote

me start to think a lot more about how we use energy and to question, “How do I keep living a lifestyle that I really want to live, but reduce my personal energy consumption by a factor of five or more?”

Q A

That’s part of your project, WattzOn, correct?

Yeah. We started a project, WattzOn, that was based on the initial calculation that I did for myself, and then we generalized it and made it into a tool on the Web. It’s analogous to a carbon calculator, except instead of measuring carbon, we measure your energy or your power consumption. And lots of people have used that to get a sense of their energy use. That’s really just a public education kind of awareness tool. Now it’s really about how do we actually make the real changes to our own lives to make a difference? That’s where I spend a lot of my time today: looking at all the places I use too much energy and figuring out how to do the things that I want but do [them] using a lot less energy.

Q A

When you measured your energy use, were there any real surprises?

You find out some real crazy stuff, like, there’s this emphasis on switching your light bulbs to compact fluorescents or LED lighting.

That’s a fabulous thing to do, but my newspaper subscriptions were using more energy than all the light in my life. So in some significant sense, canceling my subscription to the New York Times was more important than changing all my light bulbs.

Q A

So where do you get your news?

I get it on a Kindle or an iPad or on my computer. That’s an example where the Internet enables you to—in the sustainability community they call it “dematerialization.”

Q A

That’ll be a struggle for me, to give up my New York Times subscription. I’d have to wrestle with that one.

That brings up a great point. We used to get the New York Times four days a week, and then I showed my wife this, and it’s like, “Look, we could really make a big difference here.” And we negotiated down to just one day a week. So we get it on Sundays. She’s like, “Over my dead body. I’ll give up nearly everything else. I’ll turn the thermostat down. Don’t take my Sunday Times away.”

Q A

I’m with your wife. I’m sorry, but—[laughs].

Yeah, but I think that’s a really illustrative and really important story. I guess I’m on the cutting edge of this because I’ve been doing all these numbers and looking at it, and what you start to realize is this energy and climate change game is really a quality of life issue.

If you think about it correctly, you’re like, “If I’m going to prioritize the things that I do, I’m gonna make decisions in a very different way about how to lower my energy consumption.” I think in some respects, that’s what we’re facing globally—that same question. It’s not

whether we all get the New York Times, but it’s like, what do we want the future to look like—and what do we want our lifestyles to look like, and what do we want our quality of life to be? And the quality of life includes what temperature do we want the planet to be at.

Q A

It seems to me that you’re saying we’re not going to invent our way out of this environmental and energy dilemma.

Yeah, I think this is the crux of the issue. You know, you can’t do it without technology. We’re going to have to use a whole bunch of new technology—some you’ve already heard of: the solar panels, wind turbines, and everything—and that’s just to change the existing energy infrastructure. But look at the numbers globally and the big social picture, right? The average American uses more than five times the amount of energy that the average Chinese person does and close to ten times the energy of the average Indian person. Then you remember that there’s three hundred million Americans and there’s about a billion each of those Chinese and Indians. They want a lifestyle that looks more like ours. And it’s going to be pretty hard to convince them that they don’t get to have a better lifestyle than they have today. And that really forces you to think about, “How do we all get that lifestyle that’s better than the one we do today, but lower the amount of energy it takes us all to do it?”

Q A

I’m curious what you think about where we’re going and whether you’ve become more optimistic or pessimistic.

If you really looked at the numbers, you’d be depressed. We’ve got a huge amount of work to do, and we’re nowhere near on track, and there’s no indication that we’ll get on track. In my dark moments, that’s my perspective.

But I had my first child eight months ago. And when he wakes me up in the morning, I look at him and I think about the future and it’s like, “There’s no way we’re not going to solve this problem. We have to solve this problem. It might be hard, but we’re actually all going to have a ball solving this problem. It’s gonna be one of the most engaged centuries humanity has ever participated in, collectively.”

And you know, I think there’s a lot of reasons to believe the future could be way more beautiful than the past. To give you an idea, I went to school on a dirty old school bus. It would be much more efficient to catch a roller coaster to school or a zip line to school. Roller coasters and zip lines are two of the most efficient forms of transportation we’ve ever invented. And you know what? I’m pretty sure I can convince every 8-year-old that a future where we’re catching roller coasters and zip lines to school, that future is way better than today. [laughs] And I think that’s how we gotta look at it. Look at all the opportunities here to actually make the world cooler and better. And we’re going to have more market gardens and there’s going to be more parks in cities and we’re going to do better urban design and there’ll be better transportation systems. We’ve got to keep that vision in mind, otherwise we’re just all going to get depressed and sit on our hands.

I like the engineers’ optimistic approach. You know, “We’ll do it.

We’ll fix it. Let’s just get started.”

On the Air: The full interview with Saul Griffith on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on January 6. w w w . u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o r e . c o m j a n u a r y 11

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Locally

Grown

Ten bright ideas that will bear fruit in Baltimore in 2011 To mark the new year, Urbanite singles out ten innovations — but you won’t find any iPAD apps or flying car-bikes here. Instead, these are ideas that were in the groundwater in 2010 and, we believe, will play a large role Baltimore in the coming year. Talk is cheap: Here’s a good helping of ideas in action. writ ten by marianne amoss, greg hanscom, jennifer walker, and andrew zaleski illustrations by david plunkert

transportation

the arts

Make Way for the Two-Wheelers

Arts for the People

the big idea :

the big idea :

Cities the world round are making way for an old (but elegant!) technology: the bicycle. On the other side of the pond, Copenhagen has built a system of segregated bike highways connecting suburbs to the city center. Nearly 40 percent of its residents commute by bike, foul weather be damned. “Only when there’s half a meter of snow outside would I consider using the underground,” a 24-year old student told Reuters. Portland, Oregon, where about 6 percent of local residents told the Census Bureau they biked to work in 2008, is tops in the United States.

And closer to home, New York City has recently retooled for bikes, adding 250 miles of new bike lanes. The pedal-power revolution is well underway, and if you believe what local cyclists say, Baltimore is next in line. the buzz :

Momentum has been building to make Baltimore more bikefriendly since 2006, when the city produced its first bicycle master plan.

As of December, we have 32 miles of bike lanes, 38 miles of trails, and another 43 miles of “sharrows”—those white street-painted bike icons that signal to drivers that they should share the road.

We’re still a long way from being Copenhagen, or even Portland. Less than one percent of Baltimoreans biked to work in 2008. But numbers are on the rise. Nate Evans, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, says a 2010 bike commuter survey found that ridership was up 35 percent over the previous year, and he expects a new “cyclist’s bill of rights” passed by the city council in November, as well as several bike-related improvements and events planned for 2011, to nudge the number higher still.

If all goes as planned, this year will see the opening of Baltimore’s first “bike boulevard,” connecting Charles Village and Mount Royal along Guilford Avenue. Cyclists won’t have the street all to themselves, explains Evans, but a string of speed humps and “mini-circles,” to replace four-way stops, will make for slower going for cars and smoother cruising by bike.

Bike sharing should also make its debut this year, meaning you’ll be able to rent a ride by the hour with a simple swipe of a credit card. And May will be bike month—a four-week celebration of twowheeled transportation. buzzkill : Boulevards aside, turning Baltimore into a true bike town will require creating a cycling culture in a car-centric region.

But there, too, the momentum seems to be building. Carol Silldorff, executive director of the nonprofit Bike Maryland, points out that while the recession has shuttered scads of businesses, four new bike shops have opened in Baltimore in the past two years. Her group is about to launch a new bike ambassador program to improve bike safety, increase the number of cyclists, including those who don’t traditionally ride, and teach commuting skills to anyone who wants to learn. In a city where roughly a third of the population has no access to an automobile, this kind of initiative could have wheels.

Epiphanies, inventions, and scientific breakthroughs from 2010, at www.urbanitebaltimore.com

The world of art can sometimes feel aloof. But there’s a movement afoot to reconnect it to everyday life and people, to create art that serves a purpose greater than just being pretty. Artists—and a growing number of art schools—have been setting up satellite studios from Detroit to Hale, Alabama, and working directly with residents on projects that provide some needed service or product to the community. the buzz :

In mid-September, Maryland Institute College of Art opened the doors of MICA PLACE, a hub for “programs linking art, culture, and education.” The building, the former St. Wenceslaus School on North Collington Avenue in East Baltimore, was once, along with the associated church, the epicenter of the neighborhood’s Czech, Polish, and Lithuanian immigrants. It fell into disrepair during the 1960s when residents fled for the suburbs and was recently low-income apartments.

After a summer of renovations, the building was reborn as the permanent home of several of MICA’s graduate programs, including the MFA in community arts and the new MA in social design, set to launch in this fall. It’s a brick-and-mortar representation of a direction MICA has increasingly taken for the last decade, says Ray Allen, vice president for academic affairs and provost. The movement was propelled in part by students, many of whom had developed a strong social consciousness while doing required community service in high school, and by MICA’s board of trustees, who years ago made revitalizing the city a priority.

Now, Allen says almost every department at MICA has a course that focuses on community. The painting department, for instance, offers a mural class. The school has also struck up partnerships with East Baltimore community groups and institutions such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

MICA PLACE includes space for other programs and classes that are doing work that relates to East Baltimore; two floors contain apartments for grad students from any school who are doing community-oriented projects. “It was not so long ago that a student could come to MICA and be in a bubble for four years,” Allen says. “If we’re committed to working in community, we need to be physically in the community.” buzzkill : These kinds of communitycentered artist initiatives have been a topic of much debate recently. Bruce Nussbaum summed it up in a July 2010 article on Fast Company’s website, titled, “Is humanitarian design the new imperialism?” In response, Emily Pilloton, founder and executive director of the design nonprofit Project H, admitted that there is potential for error when “Designers (with a capital D) swoop in with their capes and [start] ‘design thinking’ to save the poor folks.” She points out that one of the keys to success is longterm commitment. Says MICA’s Allen, “The last thing we want to be seen as is missionaries or colonists.”

food

technology

Down on the Urban Farm

A New Breed of Hackers

the big idea :

the big idea :

Those quaint little urban garden plots of yore? Fuggetabout ‘em.

Full-blown urban farms are sprouting on empty plots across Baltimore these days. The concept is easy enough: refuse to see unused open spaces in cities as intractable or unsightly and instead use them for dual “greening” and food-producing purposes. There’s been talk of an agricultural renaissance for several years now, but 2011 is going to see the idea bear serious fruit. the buzz : Baltimore has long been a city with a green thumb. The city Recreation and Parks department has run a program called City Farms since 1978; the program currently provides more than 600 garden plots for city residents in seven parks, including Carroll, Druid Hill, and Patterson. Last year saw Real Food Farm, a project of the workforce training nonprofit Civic Works, rise on 6 acres of grass behind the Lake Clifton High School football field. And this year, Big City Farms, a new for-profit venture, promises to “create citywide networks of urban farms … in cities across the United States,” beginning with Baltimore, according to its website.

Big City Farms CEO R. Cheis Garrus is cagey about the company’s plans, but he’s more than happy to preach the gospel of urban agriculture.

Citywide agricultural efforts are a means to provide “vulnerable segments of the population with high-nutrition food,” Garrus says, adding that “to turn unproductive and destructive land, because it’s abandoned and vacant, to productive land—that’s significant in and of itself.”

Urban farmers in Baltimore have also grown savvier over the years, employing plastic-shelled “hoop houses” instead of traditional greenhouses to decrease start-up costs. And the Baltimore City government has been promoting the trend: a proposed revision to the zoning code would allow for farming in some of the city’s business districts. (See “Farm City,” November 2010 Urbanite.) buzzkill : Garrus worries that city regulations will stifle the growth of urban farming. “Right now, the zoning and permit process is either not there, or overly complicated and expensive,” he says. Of concern, too, are property taxes, especially for the for-profit farming enterprises within the city. A new “dollar lot” program allows community groups to take over vacant city land for farming, but for-profit businesses don’t enjoy the same benefits. “There are significant property taxes that are generated and become a liability to farm organizations,” Garrus says. “That’s going to be a deterrent and slow growth, if not deter it completely.”

Some say they’re a futuristic version of the artist collectives of the 1960s and ’70s. Nick Bilton of Brooklyn, New York, has called his “a Fight Club for nerds.” They are “hacker spaces”—and that’s not hacker in the sense of kids on their laptops ripping off credit card numbers in their basements. Upstanding (often professional) hardware designers and programmers have taken on the moniker. They gather in shared spaces in old warehouses and storefronts to exchange ideas, rewire electronic gadgets, and launch businesses with other kindred spirits. The website Hackerspace.org counts more than three hundred of them worldwide, from Germany, where they pioneered the idea, to New Zealand. the buzz : Local hackers have opened three new shared spaces in the Baltimore area in the past few years, providing meetups, workshops, and around-the-clock access to computer gadgetry, soldering equipment, and other tools. “If you want to just use the space to come out and have fun, you can do that. If you want to work on your start-up, that’s OK as well,” says Mark Huson, a database analyst who co-founded the Baltimore Node, a hacker space in the Station North arts district.

Thus far, the Node has been mostly about having fun. Thursday nights are “open hacks,” when members (who are voted in and pay a $50 monthly membership fee) and nonmembers alike tinker with homemade robots and get advice on their latest programming projects.

But the hacker community is branching out. The Node sponsored a rocket-building booth for kids at last summer’s Robot Fest, an annual event sponsored by the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, and Betascape, which highlights local technological innovation at the annual Artscape festival. The group has an ongoing collaboration with art students from the Maryland Institute College of Art. And a “hackathon” in November drew a decent sized crowd and spun out, among other things, a smartphone app that could someday be used to create tools for the disabled.

The Node is currently working toward nonprofit status so that it can be the sponsoring organization of Betascape. The group has just moved into a larger space, where it can host more meetings and events. And down the road, the Node’s president, Web developer Matthew Forr, sees the organization as a growing force for the greater good. “The big thing is bringing technology and those skills to people who don’t have them,” he says. “Ideally, I would love to see almost a Kiwanis Club for techies.” buzzkill : The jury is still out on whether hacker spaces will spin off any truly world-rocking inventions. (Some of the products to emerge from various spaces thus far include an experimental musical instrument housed in an Altoids box and a lamp that changes color with the weather.) But Forr insists that Baltimore’s proximity to the headquarters of such tech titans as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin make it rich turf for technology that’s good for more than just gaming and geeks.

“We’re trying to build a stronger community that’s more active,” he says.

“Everybody has that desire to go out and do good. It’s just a matter of organizing people.”

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urbanite

j a n u a r y 11

media

business

A Path Through the Maelstrom

Corporations with a Cause

the big idea :

the big idea :

We are up to our eyeballs in information. Our inboxes runneth over. Our RSS readers are swamped. Our Twitter feeds are never-ending rivers of chitchat. Writing recently in the Boston Globe, Harvard history professor Ann Blair called it “the digital deluge.” Our challenge: To find a smart way to manage and filter this information that allows us to discover the riches that are bobbing along in this flood—and to do so using not just Google’s latest algorithm or the type of unfiltered mob-sourcing you find on sites like Digg (Digg’s big stories of the day as we write this include “Top 5 Most Brutal Sports FAILs of 2010” and “Man kills bride, best man, self at wedding party”), but smartly crafted social networks and old-fashioned human expertise.

Businesses should be able to do more than just make money, or so say a growing number of entrepreneurs nationwide. Since 2007, the nonprofit B Lab, based outside of Philadelphia, has bestowed official B Corporation status on some 350 companies that are committed to advancing the greater good in areas such as health, the environment, and education. On October 1, Maryland became the first state to make these good deeds official: Businesses can now incorporate as benefit corporations, a legal classification that gives owners the power to invest in socially conscious causes, even if they detract from the company’s bottom line. the buzz :

the buzz :

The news about the news business has been unrelentingly gloomy. But there is a surprisingly rich new crop of media enterprises in this town. Former Evening Sun and Washington Post reporter Fern Shen’s Baltimore Brew, for example, provides solid and insightful community news. Investigative Voice, the brainchild of longtime Examiner staffers Regina Holmes and Stephen Janis, has broken important stories about government corruption. Even the much diminished Sun seems to have gotten some of its mojo back.

To help highlight this good work, and to train people to become smarter news consumers, the New York-based Open Society Foundations are funding a pilot project called NewsTrust Baltimore. The project, which goes live January 31 at Baltimore.newstrust.net, will work like this: Participants post what they think are the best news stories the city has to offer, then rate them based on core principles of journalism, such as accuracy and the number of sources cited. To quell the bedlam that can ensue with this type of citizen-driven project, the site will be overseen by a small group of professional journalists who will highlight the best work of the day, compare coverage of the same story among different news outlets—and rate users according to the quality of their posts and comments. Those who offer the best analysis get a higher standing on the site; their ratings and comments are more heavily weighted.

The idea, says NewsTrust founder and executive director Fabrice Florin, is to highlight the good work that is being done both by the mainstream media and “on the fringes,” and to “build market demand for good journalism.” buzzkill : The success of this undertaking rests on the ability to rally a crowd of thoughtful participants, and, let’s face it, geeking out on local news doesn’t have the fast appeal of, for example, the “Top 5 Most Brutal Sports FAILs of 2010.” But NewsTrust is partnering with local high schools and universities to get students involved. And while Florin knows that only a small fraction of site visitors will actually review articles, he insists that the site will be valuable, and sometimes challenging, for mere passers-through. “We all have a tendency, when we look at the news, to look for stories that reinforce our beliefs,” he says. “We would like to help people think it is possible that they might be mistaken.”

Sean Smeeton’s Taharka Brothers ice cream company isn’t really about dessert. “The ice cream is really just a vehicle. We’re in the business of social change,” he says. Since 1999, Smeeton has employed young people from underserved Baltimore City neighborhoods and given them stock in the company; he also provides his employees with educational and leadership training through the nonprofit Sylvan Beach Foundation.

But before Taharka became a benefit corporation, Smeeton’s business model was a risky one. To understand why, look at another enlightened ice cream company, Ben & Jerry’s. After receiving a buy-out offer from the conglomerate Unilever in 2000, Ben, Jerry, and a group of investors put in a smaller counteroffer in an effort to maintain ownership and hold onto their socially conscious business model. Shareholders sued, and the owners were forced to sell.

Now that Taharka is a B Corporation, Smeeton is free to spend his money on job training—or to throw a green roof on top of the shop, for that matter. The new benefit corporation law, sponsored by State Senator Jamie Raskin of Montgomery County, protects Smeeton from being sued for actions that benefit society. At present, there are no tax breaks for B corporations, but advocates hope those will come—along with socially conscious investors. “This whole industry of social enterprise really had a hard time growing,” says Smeeton, “but this type of corporation gives [us] that access [to capital].”

As of mid-November, Senator Raskin’s office estimated that there were between twelve and twenty B corporations in Maryland. And the idea is spreading: In Ben & Jerry’s home state, Vermont, companies can begin incorporating as B corporations this year, while at least four other states have introduced similar legislation. buzzkill : The requirements to become a benefit corporation are incredibly lax.

The amount companies spend on social causes is completely up to them, posing the risk that the designation could become just another meaningless label, like Earth-friendly or heart-healthy.

Senator Raskin says there are checks against abuse, including certification by an independent third party like B Lab. Still, he adds, “I can foresee a time when perhaps more stringent criteria would have to be employed.”

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social change

environment

Let’s Have a Contest

Grassroots Action

the big idea : Big

the big idea :

institutions and government agencies don’t have all the answers. In fact, some of the best ideas come from the people on the streets—individuals who understand their communities and have ideas that could change them, if only they had the resources to make their dreams reality.

Enter new programs like Kickstarter, a website where users can pitch in to fund artists, entrepreneurs, and writers, and the Awesome Foundation, which gives out monthly, no-strings-attached, $1,000 “micro-genius grants.” Baltimore has been a pioneer in the funding of social entrepreneurship (think of the OSI Baltimore Community Fellowships and the Baker Artist Awards), and the movement is growing.

Climate scientists say we may have just lived through the hottest year on record—and that’s probably going to have to pass for good news. By the end of the century, those same scientists expect melting glaciers to raise sea level between 3 and 6 feet. Combine that with storms of increasing intensity and frequency, and Baltimore could be a hot and soggy place. And while the recent United Nations conference in Cancun helped kick-start climate treaty negotiations that ended disastrously in December 2009 in Copenhagen, it was thanks, at least in part, to organizing at the grassroots. Eager whippersnappers here and abroad are giving the powers that be a serious gut-check. the buzz :

the buzz :

The city’s latest foray into this style of philanthropy is the Ignition Grants. Heather Sarkissian says the grants were inspired by a project she did as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, where she worked with a maternal health care nonprofit. The Peace Corps gave her a few thousand dollars to make a film that showed youth the realities of parenthood—an effort to reduce teen pregnancy and foster “a conscious approach to parenthood,” she says.

Fast forward a few years, and Sarkissian, the founder of the high tech company MP3Car, was co-organizing Ignite Baltimore, a series of brainstorming sessions where participants take turns presenting their bright ideas to a crowd. Ignite was a runaway success, quickly outgrowing its original home at the Windup Space in Station North. To assure that everyone who wanted to come could get in, Sarkissian and her coorganizers began to charge a small cover fee. And what better thing to do with the proceeds but turn someone’s inspired idea into reality?

The Ignition Grants are designed to minimize overhead. Applicants fill out a two-page form that goes to the Baltimore Community Foundation, where a small committee selects the winners. The only reporting requirement is to make an appearance at Ignite, which is now held at the Walters Art Museum, six months after reciving the grant. The grants, launched last winter, have funded a blog documenting homelessness in the city and a series of videos exploring paths in local parks.

“People have fabulous ideas but often don’t have the capital to legitimize those ideas or get people involved,” Sarkissian says. “Fifteen hundred dollars is enough to get something small started that can then lead to something much bigger.” Sarkissian has created a website to help other groups give similar grants, and three other cities have jumped in. buzzkill : Idea fests such as Ignite and TED have been criticized as all talk, no action. Writing in Mother Jones last year, Virginia Heffernan quipped, “What are these conferences, actually, but a relic of the boom days of branding and tipping points and other nifty PowerPointisms? Maybe they even caused the recession.” And funding mechanisms that allow the public to vote for winners can quickly devolve into popularity contests, as a recent one sponsored by Pepsi did. But Sarkissian, for one, is determined to bring bright minds to bear on the world; she has started a peer group for social entrepreneurs called BMoreSmart. And in the Ignition Grant, we see at least a small spark of brainpower put into motion.

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Awareness and visibility is the name of the game at 350.org, a nonprofit founded by author Bill McKibben, who sounded an early alarm over global warming in his 1989 book, The End of Nature, and run by a pack of climate-conscious recent college grads.

The 350 stands for the safe upper limit, in parts per million, of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.

After organizing what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history” to spur action at the international climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, these young guns were at it again this past October, hosting a Global Work Party where communities installed solar panels and planted community gardens. In November, 350.org launched 350 Earth, billed as the first-ever art exhibit visible from space.

(Who might be out there looking, they didn’t say …)

“We think there’s still a role for these mass symbolic actions around the world,” says Phil Aroneanu, the 27-year-old U.S. Field Director for 350. org. “Working to capture public imagination through these symbolic days of action and projects can really let the world see that there is a movement to fight [climate change].”

Here in Maryland, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network organized a climate rally in Malcolm X Park in Washington, D.C., prior to the Copenhagen conference, and is now working to pass a bill through Maryland’s legislature that would allow the construction of a wind farm off the coast of Ocean City. “[We’re] doing what we have to do to build power,” says Keith Harrington, 28, the group’s Maryland/D.C. Field Organizer.

“We really need a movement that’s on the scale of this crisis. That’s what 350’s been about: getting new people engaged and inspired to take action.” buzzkill : The barriers to progress on climate change can be daunting. While international negotiations are moving again, House Republicans have promised to disband the global warming committee. Many incoming freshmen were floated to Capitol Hill with substantial oil money, thanks to a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court that allows corporations to make unlimited campaign contributions. “The cards are stacked against us,” says Aroneanu. But he remains optimistic. “Political change is always in fits and starts,” he says. “But I think that there’s an opportunity for our movement.

Volunteer organizers around the country are pulling in new people, changing minds, and inspiring people.”

money/philanthropy

health/education

Only Time to Give

Mending the Safety Net

the big idea :

the big idea :

With the economy in shambles, nonprofits that are helping people survive the hard times are struggling to survive themselves.

Nationally, nonprofits received $12 billion dollars less in donations in 2009 than they did the previous year, according to a 2010 report from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. But while people have less money to offer, they are giving more of their time; 1.6 million more people volunteered in 2009 than 2008, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service. Baltimore was ranked 16th for the percentage of residents who do some volunteering (29.4 percent) and third for the amount of time volunteers give (48.3 hours per year). the buzz : Andrew Rose always asks work acquaintances one question: Where do you volunteer? “That means something to me—what they do in the community,” says Rose, director of marketing and business development for CPA firm Naden/Lean LLC in Timonium. He discovered, over the years, that many people want to volunteer, but don’t know how to get involved. So in 2010, Rose started Getting Involved in Volunteer Experiences (GIVE), a 10-month program that prepares eager professionals to volunteer with, sit on the boards of, or donate to local nonprofits.

Rose says that GIVE isn’t the only leadership program that funnels professionals into the nonprofit world, but others cost thousands of dollars and are geared towards upper management. GIVE costs $650 and targets young professionals like Emily Alt, 33, a lawyer and one of thirty graduates in the inaugural 2010 class. “There’s something to be said obviously for serving in a soup kitchen and doing food drives,” Alt says. “But something where you can actually use some of the skills you have professionally and give back to the community–I always thought that was the way to go.”

Alt and other classmates attended seminars organized around themes like child abuse, human services, and the environment; after learning about these issues, they met with nonprofit staff working to address them. Alt will serve on the GIVE advisory board with other graduates, helping chart the organization’s future. buzzkill : Because of small budgets and limited resources, nonprofit employees can be stretched too thin to use volunteers effectively, says Kelly Hodge-Williams, executive director of Business Volunteers Unlimited, which manages the GIVE program and connects volunteers and businesses with nonprofits. But having a staff person or a volunteer leader whose job is to recruit, train, and manage volunteers is a huge asset.

The local HIV/AIDS nonprofit Moveable Feast has this infrastructure at its weekly baking night. “They actually have a volunteer who is a lead coordinator,” Hodge-Williams says. “If you have a system in place…there can be tremendous value [in volunteering].”

Lower-class children are bombarded with obstacles to success, not the least of which are higher rates of asthma, poorer nutrition, and less than adequate access to medical care. “Kids aren’t going to learn and succeed in school if they aren’t feeling well,” says Dr. Gena O’Keefe, a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Still, successful programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone suggest that these children can flourish if they’re surrounded with a safety net of services. the buzz :

Last year, inspired by the Harlem project, the federal government issued grants to nonprofits and higher education institutions in twenty-one cities to fund “cradle to career” services for underserved kids.

Baltimore didn’t receive any of this Promise Neighborhood funding, but the competition helped spur related efforts under way across the city.

In East Baltimore, the nonprofit Elev8 offers an array of health services and programs for middle schoolers at four East Baltimore elementary/middle schools. The program, a partnership among East Baltimore Development Inc., Baltimore Medical System, the Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, targets middle schoolers because they “tend not to go to the doctor as much because they don’t need immunizations,” says Dr. Karen Donaldson, who makes weekly visits to three of the schools. “There can be medical problems that are often undetected.”

This health component is anchored by on-site health centers and suites, which are available to all students. At Collington Square School, for example, the one-room nurse’s office was expanded into a three-room health center with a full-time nurse. A doctor visits weekly to give physicals, immunizations, and hearing and vision tests and to help manage chronic conditions. In classrooms at Collington, a nurse and mental health specialist lead workshops on hygiene, obesity, anger management, and goal-setting. This year, reproductive and sexual health education will be added to the curriculum. Children can also enroll in after-school, summer, and mentoring programs.

Elsewhere in the city, the University of Maryland works closely with the Furman L. Templeton Elementary School to offer a parent education program, a learning center for young children, weekly visits from a Breath Mobile for students with asthma, and soon, medical services. The Center for Urban Families and Living Classrooms Foundation also offer similar services at public and charter schools. buzzkill : While Elev8 and other groups have received funding and attention for their recent efforts, many schools have already been offering wraparound services with fewer resources. “Every school should have a full-time school nurse at a minimum,” says Nicole Johnson, executive director of the East Baltimore Education Initiative. “[Elev8] definitely feels like it needs to make that case … [so] it’s proven on a local track record that these strategies work.”

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Painter Amy Sherald occupies one of two spaces in Sub-Basement Artist Studios, located in the 11,000-square-foot subbasement (hence the name) of the former Hecht’s department store on North Howard Street.

The space gets no natural light, which works for Sherald, a Georgia native who earned a graduate painting degree from Maryland Institute College of Art and now specializes in portraits that examine African American

identity and self-perception. “As much as windows are great in a studio, for me they’re oftentimes distracting. I feel like I’m in detention when everyone else is out for recess,” she says. Sherald likes being underground, hearing and feeling the Amtrak trains traveling through the tunnel on the other side of the wall. “There’s the sense of being submerged, but you feel safe, too. It’s like the secret Batman cave.”

A glimpse into the creative spaces of four local artists

text by marianne amoss | photography by j.m. giordano w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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Scott Rink’s favorite time in his studio is late afternoon, when the sunlight streams through the windows and makes long shadows on the dance floor. The choreographer and director, an Ellicott City native, searched long and hard for a wide-open place like this.

The 45-by-95-foot room is big enough for the needs of his danceRINK company, which combines elements of dance, theater, and/ or film into productions such as Dracula, which grew out of a 1939 radio play by Orson Welles and premiered at Theatre Project last

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year. The studio, a former printing house in Hampden’s Clipper Mill Industrial Park, gives Rink the room to construct large set pieces, conduct rehearsals, and make plans for upcoming productions, like the new version of The Little Mermaid that is set to premiere this spring. “This kind of space you can’t have in New York anymore,” says Rink, who splits his time between Baltimore and the Big Apple. “If you can make [a space like this] work, it’s really quite ideal.”

space

In her 150-square-foot studio—part of Open Space, an artist-run exhibition space and living quarters in the Baltimore Body Shop building in Remington—Marian April Glebes carries out a blend of art and research.

She creates labor-intensive processes to explore urban and suburban infrastructure issues, usually with the end result of sculptures or installations. Recently she’s been translating complaints on a Greenbelt community listserv about roads and public transit into a kind of absurdist sign language, using torches that are raised and lowered

according to a series of counts. It’s a symbolic nod to the fact that some cell phone towers built in Greenbelt office parks cannot be accessed for repairs, making communication difficult.

“I could not make work without being in this studio,” says Glebes, who has an MFA from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in imaging and digital arts. “It has wireless that I can use for research, walls that I can use for installations, a floor that I can work on. It’s the one place that’s mine that I can actually go and separate and think.”

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tools. “I like having my tools out as much to look at them as to use them,” says Page, a native of South Africa. At Oliver Street, he has the space to work on larger pieces, but the building isn’t heated or cooled—and it’s not literally steps away. “You can’t just have an idea, roll out of bed, grab a hammer, and start whacking away,” he says.

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This month in eating

Money Tree Could root-dwelling truffles be the next fungus among us? by maren tarro

photography by rachel verhaaren

I

t’s hard to imagine why the piece of North Carolina property I’m standing on warrants surveillance cameras, as a nearby sign informs me. There’s nothing obviously special about this home, tucked into the countryside a few miles west of Raleigh, or its residents, Franklin and Betty Garland. Betty welcomes me with the quintessential Southern genteel manners and thick-as-honey accent; Franklin is busy with preparing for the workshop that has drawn me and four other people.

But these are no ordinary farmers. The overwhelming aroma in the air reveals their extraordinary crop: truffles.

Before your mind conjures up images of cocoadusted confections, let’s be clear that we’re talking about that elusive subterranean mushroom, the über

tuber: the gastronomic equivalent to the mingling of cocaine and lust. While some say they smell like sex, truffles’ flavor, like many of their aspects, defies description. To demonstrate, the Garlands have laid out a sampling of black Périgord and Italian white truffles. The Italian truffles are unanimously declared to have a strong garlicky taste, but the black varietal leaves the group stumped. “And that’s why I prefer the Périgords,” Garland explains. “If you can describe a flavor using other flavors, you can reproduce it. The black Périgord tastes only like a black Périgord.”

This is only one of many grand statements to come from the slight-of-build, dark-haired man who in 1992 made a discovery that would rock the truffle world.

While conducting a tour of his first experimental truffle orchard in North Carolina, which he’d written off as a failure, Garland demonstrated to a group of mycology students how to find wild, indigenous cinnamon

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photo © Kelly Cline | istockphoto.com

eat/ drink truffles. One student asked why he wasn’t hunting for the black Périgord truffles he had hoped to grow. Garland shrugged and said, “Because I don’t have any, but if you find any, I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”

He then bent over to show the students how to feel for truffles beneath the soil’s surface and planted his hand right on top of a Périgord truffle. “Not only did I discover that I did have truffles, but I got to keep my hundred dollars,” laughs Garland, who has been involved in farming fungus—from shiitakes to truffles—since 1979.

Garland’s became the first commercial truffle orchard in the United States. It was a significant moment: For centuries, truffles were Mother Nature’s mysterious gift to only the woods of Europe—at least those truffles prized by chefs and diners. While there are hundreds of truffle varieties throughout the world, only a few are prized for their flavor and aroma: the black Périgord, named after the region of France in which it’s grown; the white Italian; and the fall burgundy black, so-called because it is harvested in autumn.

A few truffles native to North America have been recognized as having some culinary value, such as the Oregon white and pecan truffles, but they lack the intensity and complexity of the European kinds.

Traditionally truffles were hunted in the wild by boars, which are attracted to the truffle’s scent. As with many fungi, truffles long resisted cultivation, because they were so little understood. Eventually, a few enterprising souls figured out that the roots of certain trees, namely oaks and European filberts, provided fertile growing environments for the truffles.

In the last few decades, folks attracted by truffles’ market price—ranging from the hundreds to the thousands per pound—have been attempting cultivation in areas never before considered, from Spain and Australia to New Zealand and Chile. In the United States, the Mid-Atlantic has proven to be an ideal location for growing European truffles, with the truffles tasting identical to those produced in France. Garland describes the prime geographical area for growing truffles as a “tear-drop-shaped area” starting in Delaware; encompassing Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and the top of Tennessee; and extending to Georgia and Kentucky.

Virginia Truffles, located in Rixeyville, was established in 2007. The company inoculates its own seedlings and expects its first crop in 2012. “We don’t have our own truffles yet, but we’re confident and excited,” says co-owner Pat Martin. Several local chefs are excited, too, she says. “Just think what locally grown truffles will mean for the locavore movement.”

Black diamonds: Truffles, which can sell for thousands of dollars per pound, are treasured by foodies and chefs for their indescribably seductive flavor and aroma.

In the United States, the Mid-Atlantic has proven to be an ideal location for growing European truffles, with the truffles produced tasting identical to those produced in France.

Momentum is building, across the U.S., with several truffle-enthusiast gatherings set for 2011: the Oregon Truffle Festival, taking place this month, and the National Truffle Fest in North Carolina, set for March.

Charles Lefevre, the Oregon festival founder, says four Baltimoreans are planning to attend.

But growing truffles isn’t as simple as growing tomatoes. “It’s not for everybody,” Lefevre explains. “It’s quite expensive to establish.” Once a farmer owns land, he says, installing an orchard can cost about $10,000 per acre. Once land is secured, the soil’s pH often has to be amended through the application of copious amounts of lime, near-constant irrigation, and rigorous tilling.

And, after all that, it can take five to fifteen years for those precious black diamonds to make an appearance—if they do at all. This uncertainty is one reason that the number of people planting truffles is small; Garland says of the three hundred to four hundred orchards he’s aware of, only 15 percent have been maintained. “Some simply lose interest after a couple years and give up,” he says.

Lefevre, who holds a PhD in mycology and is also president and founder of Oregon’s New World Truffieres, which inoculates seedlings with European truffle spores, says the slow growth of America’s truffle industry is to be expected. “While truffles are a domesticated crop, we’re still in the very beginnings,” he says. “We’re still in the innovation stage; we’re just moving into the growth stage.” Lefevre’s company has provided trees to hundreds of farmers since 2001. Currently three of his customers are producing truffles in California, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and he’s sold trees to five people in Maryland (none of whom responded to requests for interviews). Lefevre describes the ideal area to grow black truffles as anywhere red wine grapes grow. “In Maryland the closer to the coast you plant, the more likely you are to succeed at growing truffles,” he says.

Like Lefevre, the Garlands have also sold trees to Maryland growers. In addition to operating their other orchards in North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee and selling to restaurants and individuals through their website, the Garlands are also cultivating the next generation of truffle farmers and fans, offering introductory workshops like the one I am attending today, which costs $150 and includes a tour of the nursery and one of the Garlands’ producing orchards. A former tobacco farm, the place now sprouts a strategically planted mix of filberts and oaks. It’s initially unimpressive; the trees are crowded and stunted. But radiating out from nearly every tree is the telltale sign of the truffles’ presence: brûlée. French for “burned,” it is the death of vegetation surrounding truffleinfected trees. (There are two theories about why this happens: Some say it is because the truffles suck up water and nutrients from the soil for themselves; others say that they release a chemical compound into the soil that causes surrounding vegetation to die.)

Garland says that whereas a farmer can generally expect 75 pounds of truffles per acre per year, one of his farms in Tennessee produces 300 pounds per acre. If what he says is true, that 1.5-acre orchard makes around $360,000 annually.

For Garland, growing truffles isn’t the hard part. “You’ll spend a lot of time trying to convince your neighbors and family that you’re not crazy,” he says. But somebody’s got to grow them. “It may as well be you.”

—Maren Tarro has spent more than half her life exploring all aspects of the culinary world and the last five trying to explain it to others.

Truffle recipes from chef Cindy Wolf at www.urbanitebaltimore.com

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is also featured in the Oaxaca quesadilla with corn, mild white asadero cheese, and a sharp green tomatillo salsa. On the sweeter side, there’s seared shrimp with a tamarind and ancho sauce, tempered with a crunchy jicama salad.

The menu’s small plates section provides ample opportunity for grazing, and dishes are large enough to share. And the list of main courses has its own delights: pork slow-roasted in Coca-Cola, for example, served with refried beans, cilantro, and soft tortillas. Or pumpkin seed-crusted salmon with mole. Or mahi-mahi with charred pineapple-jalapeno sauce and red chard.

Start the meal with a frozen margarita sampler: four shot glasses filled with swallows of Jamaica (hibiscus), pomegranate, mango, and classic Sauza Gold. But don’t bother with an after-dinner drink: Have the grilled banana split (which easily satisfies four) instead. It’s tequila-soaked, with cinnamon and vanilla ice cream, dark chocolate sauce, crunchy toasted almonds, and pumpkin seeds, and a shot of Patron coffee tequila to douse it with. (Dinner Mon; lunch and dinner Tues–Sun; brunch Sun. 1200 Steuart St.; 443-438-3139; www.miguelsbaltimore.com.)

—Martha Thomas

Mama Rosa Rotisserie & Grill

I

t would be easy to mistake Mama Rosa as just another strip-mall chicken and rib joint beckoning with a neon sign. But this particular joint serves chicken inasal, the Filipino version of barbecued poultry that gets its special flavor from a marinade of vinegar, garlic, atsuete, and a tart citrus fruit called calamansi. Owners Leocadia and Alvino Lim have relatives back home who own a popular chicken inasal restaurant in Bacolod City, where the dish is so loved that it’s celebrated with its own festival. Leocadia says she uses her family recipe but with a secret twist. The result is juicy, tender pieces of savory (but not too salty) chicken, served fresh from a charcoal grill.

The Lims opened their sixty-seat casual dine-in/carry-out a little over a year ago to fill the void of Pinoy restaurants in Baltimore County. At peak times, expect lines as long as fifteen people, mostly Filipino, stopping in for a family meal. For those who have never had Philippine cuisine, chicken inasal is a deliciously accessible dish. But a visit to Mama Rosa would be wasted without trying some of the eatery’s authentically prepared dishes.

The lechon kawali is made of thick slabs of pork belly, wok-fried and cut into bite-

size chunks. The crunchy skin is attached to tender meat with a layer of melt-in-your-mouth fat in between. The dipping sauce, made with pork, is a tangy, cool accompaniment to the meat’s richness.

For those who want something lower in cholesterol, the inihaw na baboy special consists of thin cuts of pork marinated in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic, then seared.

Or try the fried tilapia, which is Home cooking: Mama Rosa serves up traditional Filipino food like lechon served whole, complete with head kawali, or fried pork. and spiny dorsal fin. It’s “fishy” but tasty, with crispy skin on the wrapper and pan-fried in a glaze of carameloutside and steamy, moist flesh inside. ized sugar. Other dessert options include Not every dish elicits declarations of leche flan, a milky egg custard that is not dis“Masarap!” (“Delicious!”). The lumpiang similar to the classic French crème caramel, sariwa can be skipped. While it appears to and pitchi pitchi, a soft, sticky cassava cake be an exemplary model of the traditional rolled in shredded coconut and cheese. thin egg crepe wrapped around fresh vegIn addition to its regular menu items, etables, the sauce is sweeter than it should be.

Mama Rosa offers a selection of weekly speEntrees are served with a choice of white cials; see the restaurant’s Facebook page for or garlic rice and sides ranging from corn more information. (Lunch and dinner daily. on the cob to fried plaintains. Speaking of 836 Middle River Rd.; 443-559-5900.) plaintains, Mama Rosa puts forth a most excellent turon: plump slices of ripe plaintain —Dina Gan and syrupy jackfruit, enrobed in a spring roll w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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photo by Rachel Verhaaren

photo by J.M. Giordano

a wall painted to look like a street in Juarez, complete with cerveza ads and a second-floor balcony.

It’s also the food, which caters to palates that know cactus and huitlacoche and can recognize the mealy texture of a good tortilla, while at the same time appreciating a nod to the seasons.

Chef Michael Marx, who grew up in San Diego and spent lots of time eating in Mexico before opening Federal Hill’s Blue Agave (which he no longer owns) and Rub (which he does), has created a menu that veers sharply Authentic eats: Mariscos veracruzana at Miguel’s Cocina y Cantina from melted cheese and sour cream expectations. Even the puffy, house-made chips and dark, f you don’t live in Silo Point, Miguel’s smoky, chipotle-spiked salsa are a notch or Cocina y Cantina, located on the bottom two above the usual. floor of the condominium building, is what Miguel’s generally starts with an auyou might call a destination restaurant. But thentic dish—tacos al pastor, for example— once you walk through the door, there’s no and dresses it up for a night on the town (in mistake: You’re in Baltimore. It’s not just the this case, a slather of sweet and tart pineview across the inky bay, past the container apple salsa on the tender chunks of pork). ships parked at the point to the orange wink The chayote empanadas are crusty packets of Mr. Boh. It’s the eclectic style of the place: stuffed with grilled squash, corn, and black the Day of the Dead figures on the wall, beans, served with a dark and earthy huitkitschy and colorful shrines here and there, lacoche. The mushroom-like corn fungus

reviewed

eat/ drink

Miguel’s Cocina y Cantina

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Voted Best Bagels in Baltimore, August 2010 16 allegheny ave, towson, Md 21204 | 410-337-0006 3301 boston st, ste 106, baltimore Md 21224 | 410-732-9090

Remains of the Day

What to do with leftover holiday wine

By Clinton Macsherry

33 photo © Raptorcaptor | Dreamstime.com

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’m probably the wrong person to ask what to do with leftover wine—I try my level best to make sure there isn’t any.

Nonetheless, January often finds me with half-empty party remainders, uncorked gifts of plonk, and other partially consumed bottles that I have little capacity or appetite for finishing. Time works against the wine: Once exposed to oxygen, it usually turns tinny or sherry-like within a few days. Vacuum pumps, nitrogen displacement gizmos, and other specialized storage devices can forestall oxidation, but not for long.

Yes, of course you can pour leftover wine down the drain. And if you’re nursing a New Year’s hangover, you might enjoy a momentary Temperance Society sort of smugness while doing so. Personally, that kind of waste insults my sensibilities (and my stinginess). Finding alternate uses for wine that I don’t care to drink gives me a greater degree of selfsatisfaction than I get from recycling the bottle.

We can take a simple cue from nature: Bacteria in the atmosphere will eventually convert wine to vinegar. But that process can prove lengthy and the results unpredictable without deliberate intervention. Bacterial vinegar starters—often called “mothers”—as well as specialty crocks and fermentation vessels are sold over the Internet and sometimes at home-brewing or DIY wine shops.

However, leftover wine can help compose

a salad dressing without undergoing the steps of vinegar-making. For a simple mockvinaigrette, mix the wine (white or sparkling works best) with some lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a dash of sugar, then slowly whisk in a comparable volume of olive oil.

Similarly, leftover wine can readily combine with other common ingredients in a marinade or braising liquid. By all means use red if you choose, with the caveat that it adds coloration to many foods. That sometimes works advantageously, as with risotto or a side dish of long pasta cooked halfway in water, drained, and then finished in red wine.

Top it with grated cheese, black pepper, and other herbs or spices to your taste.

My wife makes a rustic, winey supper from a recipe she clipped from the magazine Real Simple. In a buttered skillet or baking dish, place half a baguette that’s cut or torn into 2-inch pieces. Scatter thin slices from half an onion and some ham (my wife prefers prosciutto; I like pancetta) over the bread.

Pour three-quarters of a cup of wine—RS recommends white, but we’ve enjoyed red too— over these ingredients and grate black pepper and 6 ounces of Gruyère or similar cheese on top. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about twenty minutes, until the cheese has melted and started to brown at the edges.

If you haven’t sworn off desserts for the month, try a syrup recipe I first saw on www. seriouseats.com. Bring half a bottle of red and half a cup of sugar to a boil with a cinnamon stick and some cloves. Dial back the heat and simmer for about twenty minutes, until the liquid reduces by about two-thirds. Chill and drizzle over fruit, ice cream, or pancakes.

Poaching peeled pears in a similar liquid may feel a bit more virtuous, at least until you top them with walnuts and a soft blue cheese like gorgonzola dolce.

Wineaux dogma dictates that you shouldn’t cook with wine you wouldn’t see fit to drink due to its flavor, its quality, or both.

That’s never rung true for me—I’m not fond of sherry as an aperitif, for example, but it makes a savory accent for soups, stews, and sauces. In 2007, New York Times writer Julia Moskin experimented with low-grade and fancy wines in several recipes and found that “cooking is a great equalizer.” Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, Moskin’s experience suggests a contrarian conclusion: Cooking with very fine wine may be a futile extravagance. On the other hand, futile extravagance provides a fitting coda to the holidays. It sure beats pouring wine down the drain.

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w i n e & s p i r i t s

eat/ drink

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the feed

eat / drink

This Month in Eating Compiled by Juliette Eisner

we are what we eat

jan. 14–15

Future Harvest-Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture holds its twelfth annual conference on food, farming, and sustainability in the Chesapeake Bay watershed this month. “We Are What We Eat: Community Health Through Sustainable Farming” will draw hundreds of farmers, food advocates, and agricultural experts to learn about and discuss topics ranging from urban ag to starting a farm with unconventional financing; locally sourced, sustainable meals are promised all weekend. Pre-register online.

Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center 5425 Mt. Gilead Rd., Reisterstown 410-549-7878 www.futureharvestcasa.org

Final Wine Dinner

Jan. 16

The Dogwood isn’t saying goodbye to 2010 just yet. The Hampden restaurant’s Final 2010 Wine Dinner will include five to six courses of seasonal dishes from chef Galen Sampson, paired with wines from the Champagne, Alsace, and Languedoc-Roussillon regions of France. 6:30 p.m. Call for price.

The Dogwood 911 W. 36th St. 410-889-0952 www.dogwoodbaltimore.com

Whole Foods Workshop

Jan. 20

The Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel regularly offers free wellness programs that are open to the public. On January 20, instructor James Snow will speak about how healthy nutrition can nourish both mind and body and create balance among plants, animals, humans, and the planet. 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m.

Tai Sophia Institute 7750 Montpelier Rd., Laurel 410-888-9048 www.tai.edu

Winter Restaurant Week

Jan. 21–30

In honor of the new decade—and to pry hibernating eaters from their dens—local restaurants will offer prix fixe dinner menus at $35.11 and prix fixe lunch menus at $20.11 for Winter Restaurant Week, which actually lasts ten days.

www.baltimorerestaurantweek. com

Fresh Thoughts Sustainable Seafood Dining Series

Jan. 25

As part of the National Aquarium’s Fresh Thoughts Sustainable Seafood Dining Series, Jason Ambrose, executive chef and co-owner of acclaimed Butchers Hill restaurant Salt Tavern, will plan a three-course menu centering on Arctic char.

Also planned is a cocktail reception and after-hours strolls of the Aquarium. 6:30 p.m.–9 p.m. $79 aquarium members; $89 nonmembers.

National Aquarium in Baltimore 501 E. Pratt St. 410-576-3800 www.aqua.org/freshthoughts/

For more food-related events or to read restaurant reviews, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

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How did four blue-collar kids become one of the greatest successes in pop music history?

Hippodrome Theatre • February 2–27

410.547.SEAT • BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com Photo: Chris Callis

Broadway Across America Box Office; 12 N. Eutaw Street (Mon-Sat 11am-3pm) Groups: 866.577.7469 JerseyBoysInfo.com Due to the nature of live entertainment; dates, times, performers and prices are subject to change.

No exchanges or refunds. All patrons, regardless of age, must have a ticket.

Tickets are subject to additional service charges and handling fees.

Original Cast Recording On

art/culture

59 theater

A Streetcar Named Desire

61 music

Icarus at the Edge of Time

61 film

Gunky’s Basement

63 the scene

This month’s cultural highlights

On top of the world: Joan Freedman marked a big birthday with a cheerful makeover of her minivan.

Paint by Number A fiftieth birthday celebration sees the family car transformed into a moving work of art by martha thomas

photography by christopher myers

T

o celebrate her fiftieth birthday, Joan Freedman and her husband, Richard Lamson, had considered taking a trip to Paris or hiking the length of the C&O Canal. But the more she thought about it, says Freedman, director of the Digital Media Center at Johns Hopkins University, the more she wanted this milestone birthday to reflect how she sees herself. She wanted to engineer a happening, one that would involve as many friends and family members as possible.

So she decided to cover her dark blue 2000 Honda Odyssey in colorful scraps of cloth. “I had this epiphany that I’m finally mature enough to drive an art car,” she says. “At 50, I don’t care what people think.”

Fifty is a point of no turning back. Aging experts say we get more like ourselves as we get older, and it’s true. Personality traits writ large are also known as eccentricities, and for some, the badge of eccentricity is worn with pride. Why not drive around in it? w w w.u r b a ni te b a l tim o re.c o m

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CCTA PERFORMING ARTS CAMPS June 20 – August 5, 2011 (3 sessions) Where excitement and fun never end! Co-ed day camps – ages 4 – 13: traditional, technology, drama, or sports. Swimming, lunch and snack included!

Extended hours available 7:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

June 13 – August 12, 2011 Friends School of Baltimore 5114 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210 410-649-3218 or 410-649-3209 www.fscamp.org summercamp@friendsbalt.org

SUMMERTIME AT ROLAND PARK COUNTRY SCHOOL June 13 – August 26, 2011

Day Camp, Creative Drama and Arts Camps, Doll Camp, Circus Camp and more! For information or to receive a catalog call: 410.323.5500 x3091

5204 Roland Ave., Baltimore, MD 21210 www.rpcs.org

Sports, music, dance, crafts, creative science, imaginative play, junior chefs and more. For boys & girls, ages 3 – 17. Free extended day.

Lunch & snacks. Lots of new camps!

Bryn Mawr & Summer: June 20 – August 19 109 W. Melrose Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21210 www.brynmawrschool.org/summer Vicky Burns - 410.323.1118 x1268

Musical theater for ages 6-18.

Each session culminates in a full production. Announcing our Summer 2011 shows: Camp Rock, Mulan Jr. and Back to the 80’s!

Registration begins January 2011.

Two locations - Howard County, MD www.CCTArts.com 410-381-0700

June 20-July 29, 2011 Enrichment and skill building programs for boys and girls grades 1-12. Courses include extensive art program, music, outdoor education, SAT prep, science, math, foreign language and sports camps.

St. Timothy's Summer Riding Camp offers a full day with the horses. Includes riding lessons, demonstrations, field trips, on-site swimming, crafts, and much more. Spend some time with us in the countryside. Ages 8 - 14.

Contact Maryann Wegloski, 410-323-3800 ext. 279.

Camp Dates: June 13 - June 24 • June 27 - July 8 • July 11 - July 22 • July 25 - August 5

5407 Roland Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21210 www.gilman.edu

8400 Greenspring Avenue, Stevenson MD 21153 410.486.5483 • www.stt.org

SUMMER CAMP! 2011 Serving Children with Dyslexia and Related Language-based Learning Differences Make the MOST of your Child’s Summer!

June 27-July 29, 2011

Featuring daily language skills tutoring & writing and math instruction utilizing creative, multisensory research-based techniques, AND an exciting, enjoyable social and activity-based camp experience. Co-ed day camp, ages 6-12.

11 Celadon Road, Owings Mills, MD 21117 410-753-8032 www.jemicyschool.org/camps

An unforgettable summer for kids 3 1/2 to 17.

Programs for preschoolers, clay art, sports, science, leadership camps, and more.

Open House is Sat., January 29 from 11-1pm.

June 20 – August 19 2425 Old Court Road, Baltimore, MD 21208 410-339-4120 www.parkcamps.com

Whether your children want to learn more about the fine & performing arts, hone their athletic skills or bolster their writing skills, our campus provides the resources for success.

Dates vary by camp Towson University 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252 410-704-KIDS • www.towson.edu/kidscampus

Programs for children ages 2 to 12 include recreational sports, nature, music, arts, science, Toddler Preschool & Summer Montessori. Session 1: June 13-24; Session 2: June 27-July 8; Session 3: July 11-22 Corner of Falls & Greenspring Valley Roads Lutherville, MD 21093 410-321-8555 www.montessorischool.net

Art cars—deliberately embellished vehicles, often affixed with pop culture kitsch like Barbie dolls and bobbleheads, encrusted with plastic gemstones, or painted in landscape scenes—are part outsider art, part a reflection of America’s passion for the automobile. But they are not unique to the United States. Harrod Blank, the author of the book Art Cars and several documentary films about the medium, built his first art car after being inspired by vehicles in Mexico that were painted and decorated with blinking lights. Oh My God! is a multicolored Volkswagen Beetle adorned with horns, flowers, and rubber chickens, so-named to reflect the viewer’s response upon encountering it. (His second car was Camera Van, covered with cameras—some of which actually work, recording the expressions of those on its route.)

The best art cars, says Blank, are personal. He points to California-based artist Rebecca Caldwell’s Carthedral, a massive vehicle she created a decade ago by welding a VW Super Beetle to the top of an extravagantly finned hearse, decked with spires, rose windows, and flying buttresses to resemble a Gothic cathedral. Blank has written about how Carthedral’s creation was part cartharsis (get it?), helping her to overcome depression. “She decided to express her angst and sorrow in a car,” says Blank, who is also the founder of the Art Car World museum in Arizona, which currently exhibits nineteen cars.

Baltimore, says Blank, is one of a handful of cities in the United States in which art cars thrive, due in part to the support of the annual public arts festival Artscape and the American Visionary Art Museum. Artscape put on its first art car exhibition in 1994 and its first parade in 1998, although the wackily decorated vehicles were seen in the region long before that. Daniel Van Allen, who restores furniture for a living, drove his marbled VW microbus as part of the Artscape alternative Ad Hoc Fiasco, a gathering held in Wyman Park in the ’80s. He points out that decorated, drivable vehicles can be traced back to wagons painted and ornamented by their owners to attract attention: “Just look at the Arabbers.”

“Art cars are a form of self-expression,” says Doug Retzler, a local environmental artist who curated the Artscape Autoturnatives parade in 2006. “They’re a commentary on traditional uses of vehicles and their value.”

Even so, today’s art cars can include tasteful, and earnest, works of art. The co-curator for this year’s Artscape parade, Daniel Stuelpnagel, drove The Cloud in last year’s event, a Toyota sedan that he covered in a colorful and undulating checkerboard

pattern, using a technique similar to the one that he uses on the canvases he sells for people to hang on their walls.

Some art cars may be “the ultimate in guerilla theater,” according to Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director of the American Visionary Art Museum. The museum—which sponsors the annual ART CARavan, held before the Artscape parade, and has screened Blank’s films—is no stranger to the art form.

(The museum even has two art cars in its permanent collection: David Best’s Baltimore Blues in the Jim Rouse Visionary Center, and Nancy Josephson’s mosaic bus, stationed outside.) But there’s room for everyone.

Hoffberger was thrilled to hear of Joan Freedman’s plan for her fiftieth. “Biblically, every fifty years is a time for rebirth,” she notes. An art car at 50, says Hoffberger, who is 58, is “a perfect way to say, ‘This is who I am,’ out loud and for the world to see.”

For her art car, Freedman solicited suggestions through a blog she set up, joans-art-car.blogspot.com, and finally settled on the idea of Carzy Quilt (so named as the result of a typo), with textile scraps in cool shades of blue, lavender, and green that move from light to dark up the sides of the vehicle. “I didn’t want to glue action figures all over my car, because that didn’t seem meaningful in any way,” she says. Around the bottom, a message appears in seven “languages,” including Yiddish, Gregg shorthand, American sign language, and a rebus. Freedman says the languages all have personal meaning; her father, for instance, used shorthand at his job as a court stenographer.

About seventy friends, family members, and acquaintances stopped in over the weekend at Freedman’s Roland Park home to affix a piece of cloth to her Odyssey. Guests were also asked to decorate a quilt square to be used as seat upholstery, a ritual that harkened to the wedding quilt some of the same crowd made for Freedman and Lamson’s marriage in 1987. As Freedman, standing heroically on top of her minivan, affixed the last piece of cloth, the small group that remained formed a circle and held hands to sing the Hebrew blessing Shehekianu.

While her car may be complete, Freedman’s art car experience is just beginning.

“There’s a big difference between making an art car and driving it around,” warns Blank.

“Once you start driving it around, you’re part of the performance.”

Welcome to 50.

—Martha Thomas has been thinking a lot lately about turning 50 and isn’t sure if she’s mature enough to drive an art car.

illustration by Sherrionne Brown

art/culture

T he at er

Based on a True Story A Streetcar Named Desire at Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre, Jan. 7–Feb. 6

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hen she traveled home to Texas recently, Sherrionne Brown made a detour to the New Orleans neighborhood where Tennessee Williams lived when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire. “There is a house on Elysian Fields, a little clapboard house just like he described,” she says. “I took a picture of it.”

Brown, who is directing this month’s Spotlighters Theatre production, also visited the site in Mississippi where Blanche’s tragic descent began: the Moon Lake Casino, now a bed and breakfast.

Those who have seen the 1948 Pulitzer Prize-winning play—or maybe read it in high school—may recall these place names as poetic allegories in the troubled lives of Blanche DuBois, her sister, Stella, and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, who themselves seem to be archetypes that symbolize the changing South. But seeing these locations and knowing they are not just symbolic references dreamed up by the playwright, says Brown, confirmed for her “how real the characters and their situations are.”

Blanche is a fallen Southern belle who arrives by streetcar—on the line known as Desire—to live with Stella and Stanley in New Orleans, where she hopes to be embraced and treated as a delicate lady. But the tensions— sexual, familial, and class—ignited by her presence destroy her all over again.

Brown’s production, staged on the intimate Spotlighters stage surrounded by seventy audience members, will attempt to find truth in Williams’ characters and dialogue, which can sometimes seem larger-than-life.

Even the minor characters, says Brown—the Mexican Woman, the Negro Woman—are more than just symbolic stand-ins. “The appeal of the play is you can identify with these people, not as symbols, but as real people.”

—Martha Thomas For tickets, call 410-752-1225 or go to www.spotlighters.org.

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music

Into the Void

The BSO performs Philip Glass’s Icarus at the Edge of Time at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Jan. 14 and 16

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ou know what kids love? Space! You know what kids don’t love? Putting on a scratchy suit and listening to some dude play piano for three hours. Solution: space music!

The crowd-pleasing masterminds inside the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra mother ship know their business, as this mid-month conjunction of astronomically correct new

poster by Chris Day of Lost Ghosts Printing

© 2010 Al + Al. Courtesy of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

art/culture

FILM

Favorite Flicks

The Gunky’s Basement film series

W

hen the Maryland Film Festival invited local musician Dan Deacon to guesthost a film at the 2010 festival, his selection may have surprised some: Total Recall, the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger action film. “I figured, it doesn’t get shown on film in a theater, especially in a festival/art film context,” Deacon says. “It’s a really underappreciated film. It went really well.”

music proves. First up is British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Ceres, which was commissioned as a complement to Gustav Holst’s oft-performed The Planets. It’s named for a giant asteroid, it’s six minutes long, and when it premiered in 2006 the Boston Globe noted admiringly that it “succeeds in conjuring a mounting sense of anarchy.”

Bring it on!

Then we get John Williams’ Star Wars suite, with which you may already be familiar. But the real star of the show is Icarus at the Edge of Time, a multimedia extravaganza co-commissioned by the BSO and based on the children’s book

by Columbia physicist/pop-science impresario Brian Greene. Inspired by the Greek myth of the boy who flew too close to the sun, Greene’s book recasts the tale with an intrepid teenager who pilots a homemade spacecraft around a black hole; weird spacetime irregularities ensue. Onstage, Icarus takes flight via a phantasmagoric digital film (directed by British video artists Al + Al) and a forty-minute score from Philip Glass.

Afterward, he and Jimmy Joe Roche, a fellow member of the Wham City arts collective, talked to MFF’s director of programming, Eric Hatch, about starting a revival series of movies like Total Recall—“movies that were really groundbreaking and cuttingedge for their time,” Deacon says. Hatch, who for two years hosted a popular free series at the Baltimore Museum of Art that focused on visionary international films of the 1960s and ’70s, was game, and the resulting series, dubbed Gunky’s Basement, launched in November. Hatch got MFF on board; as series co-creator, he’s in charge of securing the 35mm prints of the films and handling promotion.

For the inaugural screening, Roche and Deacon selected The Thing, the 1982 horror film about an alien that wreaks havoc among a group of scientists stationed on Antarctica with its ability to take on the human form. “About half the crowd had never seen it, and half the crowd knew every single line,” Deacon says. “Seeing a film in that setting changes the energy of the room. With people watching movies on their iPhones these days, it’s great to see a film on actual film, projected huge, sounding great.”

And what about the name? Wham City members originally came up with “Gunky’s” when they were looking for a title for a new space. (Deacon says they were looking for the

Glass, the Baltimore-born minimalist, has been busy with the soundtrack work these days, and his icy precision seems an apt match for Icarus, whose central drama is driven by its poignant illustration of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Instead of plummeting into the sea, the spacefaring Icarus circumnavigates the supermassive astral body only to find that (spoiler alert!) the black hole’s gravitational time dilation has stranded him thousands of years in the future; his world has vanished. Glass’s hypnotic score is accompanied by narration written by Greene and dramatist David Henry Hwang and performed live by NPR’s Scott Simon.

The science is sound, if Einstein was right.

Take the kids and prepare for blown minds.

Bonus Glass for the grown-ups: The Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern series offers the composer’s Glassworks on January 12, part of its new “Synchronicity” partnership with BSO musicians. (For more information, see page 63.)

—David Dudley For tickets, call 410-783-8000 or go to www.bsomusic.org.

“grossest, stupidest” name they could think of.) Roche resurrected it and tacked “Basement” on to the end. It’s aptly reminiscent of a musty club basement with cardboard boxes of VHS tapes stashed in the corner.

Each monthly screening costs a doable $5, which Hatch says is important. “That’s one of the ways the Baltimore music scene started to thrive—by keeping costs low and being inclusive. As a result, there’s a wide variety of things happening, and there’s something for everyone. The film scene needs to head in that direction.” There’s also the added bonus of an original screenprinted poster to go along with each film. Post Typography is slated to create the poster for the January 27 screening of the 1979 Ridley Scott horror film, Alien. (The poster for the first screening, by Chris Day, is pictured at left.)

Deacon and Roche are working on lining up the rest of the films in the series, which has no set end date. They’re looking hard for a 35mm print of Excalibur, the 1981 film that retells the King Arthur tale. “If an Urbanite reader happens to have it in their basement,” Deacon says, “we’d love to get it.”

—Marianne Amoss For more information, call 410-752-8083 or go to http://whamcity.com/wordpress/ gunkys-basement/.

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Highlighting Local Talent

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Join AIABaltimore (The American Institute of Architects, Baltimore Chapter) to hear from the winners of the 2010 AIABaltimore Excellence in Design Awards program as they discuss their architecture firm’s design aesthetic and vision.

Alexander Design Studio

Charles Alexander, AIA

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Jim Suttner, AIA Tuesday, January 11, 2011 Reception at 5:30 p.m. | Lecture at 6 p.m.

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the scene : januar y MUSIC

Musicians appearing at International Guitar Night include Italy’s Pino Forastiere, famous for his two-handed steel string guitar technique, and Brian Gore, founder of the traveling event. At the Gordon Center for Performing Arts on Jan. 15.

(3506 Gwynnbrook Ave.; 410-356-SHOW; www.gordoncenter.com)

Dragons Battling (detail), Book of Hours, Rouen, ca. 1480, parchment, ink, paint and gold, the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

In the Shriver Hall Concert Series’ Mity Clarke Gann Memorial Concert, the award-winning 30-year-old pianist Jonathan Biss performs works by Schumann, Beethoven, and Janacek, as well as the Baltimore premiere of a new work by acclaimed British composer Bernard Rands.

Jan. 23. (Shriver Hall at Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St.; 410-5167164; www.shriverconcerts.org)

Mash-up artist Girl Talk, a.k.a. Greg Gillis, performs an all-ages show at Rams Head Live on Jan. 31. (20 Market Place; 410244-1131; www.ramsheadlive.com) theate r

Single Carrot Theatre presents The Other Shore, a play about the individual search for enlightenment and meaning written

by China’s only Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Gao Xingjian. Through Jan. 16.

(120 W. North Ave.; 443-844-9253; www. singlecarrot.com) At Theatre Project, local actress Susan Mele performs her one-woman improv show, RU4Real!?!?, which skewers reality television. Jan 14, 15, and 22. (45 W. Preston St.; 410-752-8558; www.theatre project.org)

Jan. 15 at Minas Gallery. (815 W. 36th St.; http://510readings.blogspot.com) This year, the Pratt Library’s Booklovers’ Breakfast hosts Victoria Rowell, the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir The Women Who Raised Me, an advocate for foster children, and a longtime actress on the soap opera The Young and the Restless. Jan. 29 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

(700 Aliceanna St.; 410-396-5494; www. prattlibrary.org) v isua l a rt

Clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich, a native of Belarus who is the most recent winner of the Yale Gordoncompetition at the Peabody Institute, performs in the Music in the Great Hall series on Jan. 16. (Towson Unitarian Universalist Church, 1710 Dulaney Valley Rd.; 410-813-4255; www. migh.org)

Baltimorean Sara Glancy sings tunes

by Marvin Hamlish, Stephen Sondheim, and other greats in Confessions of a College Theatre Dork, about musical theater’s less glamorous side. Jan. 14 at the Cabaret at Germano’s Trattoria. (300 S. High St.; 410-752-4515; www.germanos trattoria.com)

Drag out those looseleaf-paper drawings of yourself as a rock star from middle school (or just the other day), complete with shaggy hair, tight jeans, and electric guitar, for Current Gallery’s Self-Portrait as Rock Star. “Rock star” is defined loosely here: According to the call for submissions, “We’re happy to include recording artists who may not fit the most explicit definition of ‘rock,’ so Britney, Tim McGraw, Whitney Houston, etc. are welcome.” Jan. 21–Feb. 13; opening reception Jan. 21. (421 N. Howard St.; www.currentspace.com)

The Contemporary Museum’s new-music series, Mobtown Modern, launches a collaboration with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with a performance of Glassworks, a 1981 composition of Baltimore native Phillip Glass that is shorter and more pop-oriented than his other works.

It’s a companion concert to the BSO’s performance of Glass’s Icarus at the Edge of Time on Jan 14-16 (see p. 61 for details).

Advance tickets recommended. Jan. 12 at the Windup Space. (12 W. North Ave.; www.mobtownmodern.com)

Center Stage presents Harold Pinter’s Tony Award-winning 1965 play, The Homecoming, about a couple visiting the husband’s British family with unexpected consequences. Jan. 26-Feb. 20. (700 N. Calvert St.; 410-332-0033; www. centerstage.org)

Learn to oil paint at School 33 Art Center.

This six-week course covers such basic principles and techniques as color mixing and composition. Jan 3–Feb 7. Call 443-263-4350 or e-mail william.pace@ promotionandarts.com to register. (1427 Light St.; www.school33.org)

LITER ature

The four artists/curators of Richmond, Virginia’s Reference Gallery take over Nudashank Gallery for Reference @ Nudashank. In March, Nudashank curator Alex Ebstein will put together a show

The 510 Readings, Baltimore’s only dedicated fiction reading series, kicks off 2011 with Ken Sparling, Shya Scanlon, Megan McShea, and Robin Black on

art/culture for at Reference. Jan. 14-Feb. 4; opening reception Jan. 14. (405 W. Franklin St.; www.nudashank.com) FI LM

On Jan. 6, Mondo Baltimore presents its monthly “horrible and bizarre” cult film at the Windup Space. According to series co-organizer Armando Valle, For Your Height Only is a “delightfully politically incorrect action-farce film made in the ‘70s in the Philippines, starring a tiny man named Weng-Weng as a James Bond type.” (12 W. North Ave.; www.mondo baltimore.com) Jan. 24 is the deadline for the Baltimore Screenwriters Competition. Winners receive $1,500 and an all-access pass to the 2011 Maryland Film Festival; they will be announced at MFF in May. For more information, call 410-752-8632 or go to www.baltimorefilm.com.

E X H I BIT

At Towson University’s Center for the Arts Holtzman MFA Gallery is a retrospective of the costumes of Georgia O’Daniel Baker, a professor emeritus at the school for thirty years and a costume designer for television, as well as local, regional, and off-Broadway theater, dance, and opera productions. Jan 9-17. (8000 York Rd.; 410-704-ARTS; www.towson.edu/ artscalendar/)

For more arts and culture events, along with directories of local theaters, galleries, and literary venues, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

Beasts on Parchment: Picturing Animals in Medieval Manuscripts highlights medieval people’s contradictory views of animals as both field labor and spiritual beings. In the pictured image, detail from the 15thcentury Book of Hours, fighting dragons are rendered in gold, ink, and paint. Through Feb. 6. (600 N. Charles St.; 410-547-9000; www. thewalters.org) Compiled by Marianne Amoss

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eye to e y e

Nothing is more vexing to magazine publishers than what to put on the cover.

So why not enlist a pack of young, talented designers to work on that question?

To create this month’s cover, Urbanite’s creative director, Alex Castro, and art director, Kim Michalov, put the challenge to the students in a third-year illustration concepts class at the Maryland Institute College of Art, taught by professor, illustrator, and longtime Urbanite contributor Cornel Rubino. Over the course of several months, the students honed their ideas, presenting their final designs to Rubino and Urbanite staff in early December. Their work, pictured above, inspired the image that actually appears on the cover, the creation of student Ae-Hyun Shin. Our thanks to all of the artists who participated and to Rubino for the second such collaboration. (The first produced the cover for our January 2007 issue, about civility.)

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MICA students from left to right, top to bottom: Matthew Carignan, Jessica Dikdan, Danielle Drankwalter, Allison Fritsch, Arthur Haywood, Joshua Jack, Jordon Jones, Lara Kaminoff, Ida Elisabet Liffner, Stacey Montebello, Colin Schappi, Ae-Hyun Shin, Chelsea Soisson, Jordan Sondler, Zach Urtes, Meg Vazquez