January 2008 Issue

january 2008 issue no. 43

F O R

B A L T I M O R E ’ S

C U R I O U S

city rites

memory, meaning, and the rituals that shape our lives

Wine and Dine: Uncork Our Expanded Food Section Inside a Doublewide: Are Two Rowhouses Better Than One?

Brandon Gaines Bob Merbler Cindy Conklin Michael Yerman Georgeanna Garceau Marc Witman

Homes of Distinction. Agents of Integrity.

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From 545,000

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These 3BR, 3.5BA homes feature hardwood floors, granite counters and stainless steel appliances, tray ceilings in BR’s, FR in the finished LL, water views from large rooftop decks, garage plus parking pad.

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LOCUST POINT HULL STREET MEWS

From the high $500’s

10 stunning & elegant new town homes offering up to 3450 sq ft of living space.

3 finished levels, 3BR’s, 3.5BA’s, FR on 3rd level & a view of the water & downtown from the roof terrace. 2 car parking pad leads to kitchen w/Bosch stainless appliances and granite countertops.

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Gorgeous new townhome w/parking pad & over 3,000 sq. ft of living space. Rooftop deck w/water & downtown skyline views! Designer kitchen w/ marble island & wine cooler. Tigerwood hardwood flooring throughout. Open steel staircase leading up to 3 bedrooms, all w/full bath.

10 foot ceilings. Lower level office/den.

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899,000

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339,900

$

349,900

C ANTON

S OUTH H IGHLAND AVENUE

Amazing North Shore 4 level waterfront home!

Incredible views from 3 decks. LR w/ gas FP. Gourmet kitchen w/ granite counters, SS appliances & wine refrigerator. Open FR, full-flr MBR suite. BR w/ sitting/ desk alcove, huge marble BA w/ jetted soaking tub & 6'x5' shower & 2 walk-in closets. Two additional BR's & BA’s. 2 car garage. Loaded with upgrades.

TED STEWART 443.632.0780 $

WAVERLY

631 GORSUCH AVENUE WAVERLY

Incredible attention to detail in this totally renovated 4BR, 3.5BA Victorian with center hall, 9.5 ft ceilings & wood floors. Dream kitchen w/ granite, stainless, cooking island & 1st flr FR & study.

Fabulous master suite w/ super bath.

JANE BARTON 410.299.0200

750,000

633 GORSUCH AVENUE

Another amazing renovation. 4BR, 3.5BA Farm House style home w/ spectacular master suite w/ super BA, huge walk-in closet. Fabulous kitchen w/ granite & stainless. Wd flrs & 1st flr FR. Feels brand new! 2 car garage.

REBECCA PERLOW 410.916.2888

R ESERVOIR H ILL

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f e a t u r e s

44

keynote: the unconventionalist interview by david dudley

after surviving a hard-partying youth and a turbulent marriage, memoirist and npr commentator marion winik found she was the perfect person to offer rules for the unruly. she insists that reverence for life and its passage must not be limited to the devout and offers her take on the art of observing nontraditional traditions.

january 2008 issue no. 43

50

rites of the city by lionel foster

in baltimore, the community rituals that emerged as the city grew were forged in its founding: from mob violence to monuments, a look at the traditions that sustained and channeled the often chaotic passions of its people.

44

56

a new leaf by lalita noronha

two years after her divorce, a writer looks to nature—and a small but resourceful flower—to ease the pain.

50

60

compost in peace by sharon tregaskis

now that we are more aware of the impact that human life has on the planet, how do we ensure that death doesn’t pose yet another environmental hazard?

62

dust to dust by richard o’mara

56

the strange but true accounts of a few unsettled remains

this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: a conversation with dan fesperman, author of the amateur spy video: the last days of polka at blob’s park food: more bread recipes from dale dugan

60

on the cover: in 1945, photographer a. aubrey bodine captured this scene of baltimoreans engaged in the now-vanishing ritual of scrubbing their white marble rowhouse steps. copyright © jennifer b. bodine. image courtesy of www.aaubreybodine.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

7

It had to be stylish... and a comfortable place to relax.

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17

what you’re saying

19

what you’re seeing

21

what you’re writing

27

corkboard

29

have you heard

35

baltimore observed

departments january 2008 issue no. 43

35

choosing sides

my true self

first times: farewells, confessions, and the wonders of television

this month: a cold plunge, heartwarming music from johannesburg, and how to be a hip-hop tycoon

under armour’s high-concept store. plus: wintry pursuits, tlc from a local b&b, and cocktail cinema

after-school special

can a long-defunct factory provide affordable housing for teachers? by greg hanscom

39

last dance after more than sixty years, a polka palace has a date with the wrecking ball by joab jackson

41

little house on the bayou how did that emergency shelter become your next vacation home? by wayne curtis

39

43

impossible dream health care advocate vinnie demarco has a way with lawmakers in annapolis by c. fraser smith

65

fiction

66

space

a chapter from dan fesperman’s forthcoming novel, the amateur spy

double feature the architectural innovation that might shape the next wave of community development in patterson park and beyond by mat edelson

69 65

eat/drink

upper crust the man who loved bread by martha thomas

69

75

reviewed: the himalayan house and tersiguel’s french country restaurant

77

wine & spirits: look before you pour—wine’s alcohol content has been creeping up

81

recommended

91

resources

94

eye to eye

literary resolutions. plus: ellsworth kelly, the turn of the screw, and the hunk of shriver hall

further reading on german roots, tiny houses, and green burials

urbanite’s creative director alex castro on artist larry scott w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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The Neighborhood Corradetti Glass Cynthia Padgett Gutierrez Studios InfoCulture, LLC Linda Bills MudPies Studio | Madonna Hitchcock Mandala Creations | Chris Gavin Marketing Initiative, LLC Norma Wallis Gallery G @ The Beveled Edge Artisan Interiors Harry Campbell jordan faye contemporary Lisa Egeli Patrick O’Brien Paul Daniel Amaranthine Museum Woodberry Kitchen Artifact Coffee 4Thought, Inc. Urbanite Avalon Wellness People Encouraging People Havens by Hessen Williams Jackson Ewing The Law Offices of Arnold M. Weiner Fisher & Winner, LLP Gabrielli Design Studio, LLC Benchmark Asset Managers Castro/Arts THE HOT LIST » Art on Purpose BioHabitats JRS Architects G1440

Developed and Managed by Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse.

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Gutierrez Studios is a company of dedicated artisans specializing in the design and fabrication of contemporary furniture, lighting and architectural metalwork.

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Issue 43 January 2008 Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com Creative Director Alex Castro General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Executive Editor David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com Managing Editor Marianne Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Editor Greg Hanscom Greg@urbanitebaltimore.com Copy Editor Angela Davids Editorial Assistant Lionel Foster Lionel@urbanitebaltimore.com Contributing Editors Karen Houppert, Susan McCallum-Smith Editorial Intern Harrison Brazier Design/Production Manager Lisa Macfarlane Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com Traffi c/Production Coordinator Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com Designer Jason Okutake Staff Photographers La Kaye Mbah, Jason Okutake Production Interns April Osmanof, Stephanie Spinks Web Coordinator/Videographer Chris Rebbert Senior Account Executives Janet Brown Janet@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com Marcella Rosati Marcella@urbanitebaltimore.com Account Executives Michele Holcombe Michele@urbanitebaltimore.com Bill Sierra Bill@urbanitebaltimore.com Maureen Wilson Maureen@urbanitebaltimore.com Sales/Accounting Assistant Iris Goldstein Iris@urbanitebaltimore.com Marketing Kathleen Dragovich Kathleen@urbanitebaltimore.com Marketing/Administrative Assistant La Kaye Mbah Administrative Assistant Lindsay Hanson Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business OfďŹ ces P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial inquiries: Send queries to editor@urbanitebaltimore.com (no phone calls, please). The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050.

Subscription price: $18 per year.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2008, Urbanite LLC. All rights reserved.

Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at 410243-2050.

Postmaster: Send address changes to Urbanite Subscriptions, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211.

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urbanite january 08

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brunton family law divorce? custody? alimony?

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talk to a lawyer Judith R. Brunton, ESQ.

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urbanite january 08

a

editor’s note

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Harrison Brazier Editorial intern Harrison Brazier graduated in May 2007 from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a bachelor of arts in English language and literature. In addition to writing, Brazier sings, plays guitar, and pens lyrics for local eclectic rock outfit the Rez. Having lived his entire life in suburban Reisterstown, he considers the city his second home and looks forward to one day having his own place downtown. He wrote about two sporting gear stores for this month’s “Have You Heard” department (p. 29).

courtesy of Wayne Curtis

Wayne Curtis Wayne Curtis has written about travel, history, cocktails, architecture, historic preservation, and other subjects for the Atlantic Monthly, Preservation, American Heritage, Canadian Geographic, American Scholar, Smithsonian, and the New York Times. He’s written guidebooks to New England and Eastern Canada for Frommer’s and Globe-Pequot. More recently, he took up drinking in earnest to write And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (Crown 2006), a cultural, economic, and political history of America’s most reviled spirit. He lives in New Orleans and Grand Lake Stream, Maine. His take on the Katrina Cottage appears in this month’s “Baltimore Observed” department (p. 41).

courtesy of Clinton Macsherry

Clinton Macsherry Baltimore native Clinton Macsherry has written extensively about community issues and local politics. During the late 1980s and early ’90s, he reviewed restaurants for City Paper, among other assignments. After several years serving as a legislative staffer in City Hall and the State House, he traveled widely in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Macsherry currently lobbies for a children’s advocacy organization. His new column, “Wine & Spirits,” debuts in this month’s Eat/Drink section (p.

77). He and his wife live in Canton, where he researches wine and spirits on an empirical basis.

We were calling this “The Death Issue” for a while—there’s a newsstand grabber, eh? Wiser heads eventually prevailed, and we settled for a theme with a bit less finality. Still, the notion of exploring endings and beginnings—and the ways we mark them— endured. Hence, “Rituals.”

It’s not that Baltimore lacks for material: As we go to press in early December, the city is on pace to exceed last year’s homicide totals and perhaps crack the dread 300 mark for the first time since 1999. This end-of-year tallying of the city’s murder numbers has itself become a civic ritual of sorts, a grim metric that, like many statistics, is both coolly precise and completely arbitrary. Is 350 that much worse? Is 250 so much more acceptable?

It isn’t the number that has meaning—it’s the act of counting itself, which seems to be the primary public means of bearing witness to ongoing catastrophe. And when the counting ends on December 31, there’s that brief respite when the slate is wiped mercifully clean, before the first murder of the new year.

Such is the strange and mysterious power of rituals, which, as writer and commentator Marion Winik declares in this month’s “Keynote” conversation (“The Unconventionalist,” p.

44), always offer participants “a new chance to get things right.” Lionel Foster uses one such institutional rite of passage—the Baltimore City College ring ceremony that officially marks the journey of that high school’s junior class into the ranks of the upperclassmen—to ponder the history of Baltimore’s penchant for public observances (“Rites of the City,” p. 50). Fiction writer Lalita Noronha roams further afield in her efforts to find solace on a bittersweet personal anniversary (“A New Leaf,” p. 56). And yes, we do get around to talking about death, and the curious ways that the living confront the Big One. Sharon Tregaskis reports from the last frontier of the green movement—eco-friendly deathcare (“Compost in Peace,” p.

60)—while Richard O’Mara mulls the rising popularity of cremation among the baby boomer generation (“Dust to Dust,” p. 62).

On a less macabre note, the new year offers some other beginnings and endings here at the Urbanite offices. We officially welcome new senior editor Greg Hanscom, who arrives in Baltimore fresh from his lengthy tenure as editor of High Country News, a much-honored biweekly magazine that covers environmental and public lands issues in the eleven western states. (HCN is a fellow nominee in the 2007 Utne Independent Press Awards.) Greg’s first piece (“After-School Special,” p. 35) leads off this month’s “Baltimore Observed” section. This issue also boasts the debut of “Eat/Drink,” our snazzily refreshed food and dining section, which now features a monthly column on wine and spirits penned by Clinton Macsherry, a man whose name alone suggests he was born to write about fermented beverages (“Wine & Spirits,” p. 77). Gentlemen, cheers, and welcome to 2008. Here’s to being alive.

—David Dudley

photo by La Kaye Mbah

April Osmanof Production intern April Osmanof always had a talent for art, but until two years ago, she never thought she’d work for a magazine. After earning a bachelor of fine arts in general sculptural studies at Maryland Institute College of Art, Osmanof decided to go in a different direction and apply for the MFA in graphic design program, which she is set to complete this May. A children’s book that she wrote and illustrated, What Do You Look Like When Only Your Bones Are Showing?, has been available since December on www.aprilosmanof.com, and her new website dedicated to socially conscious art, www.hungup.org, will go live this spring.

Who do you love?

Coming Next Month: Exploring the rules of attraction.

www.urbanitebaltimore.com

F O R

B A LT I M O R E ’ S

C U R I O U S

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Serenity Now. These extraordinary downtown residences feature everything that’s special about city living.

These classic townhomes in the historic neighborhood of Ridgely’s Delight are next door to the University of Maryland medical campus and Camden Yards.

Featuring two-car garages, three bedrooms, three and a half baths, spacious California closets, and luxurious amenities such as Whirlpool baths and granite countertops—these homes have all the charm you want in a retreat, while the conveniences of Charm City remain at your doorstep.

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Tranquil. Modern. Spacious. Breco condominiums gleam with contemporary, Asian-influenced urban flair among seven stories of dramatic historical architecture. These luxury lofts, blocks from City Hall, the Inner Harbor and Harbor East, are part of the new pulse of awesome downtown living. A special place to retreat and re-energize.

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Ridgely’s Corner and Breco are A&R Companies residential communities.

what you’re saying

No Choice, No Voice

photo by Jason Okutake

I thought the series of education articles in November’s issue were—for the most part—very effective at giving readers a broad view of the many complex elements that go into educating our city’s children.

However, I think that the effect of “choice” on real and perceived parental responsibility for a child’s education was an idea left underdeveloped. And although writer Molly Rath rightfully acknowledges how lucky she feels to be part of the “subset of city residents” who have this choice (“Why We Stayed”), neither she, nor any other article in the issue, addresses the effect of having a choice on a family’s state of mind.

Having a choice embodies a certain degree of power, and with that comes a sense of responsibility for the choice that you have made. But without

Grounds for Concern Mitro Hood’s photo essay of learning environments (“Grounds,” November) brought to mind the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The first words that come to my mind are “shameful gross inequities.”

It is no secret that Baltimore City schools are woefully underfunded. The State Constitution requires that the state provide a “thorough and efficient” system of free public schools. The ACLU of Maryland has long contended that this requirement includes ensuring that students are taught in school environments that are conducive to learning.

Studies have shown that students in school buildings rated to be in “poor” condition score 5 to 15 percentile points lower on student measurements, even after controlling for other factors.

Recently, the city school system engaged in a citywide facilities planning process involving parents, community, and school staff. Through that process it was determined that city schools need an investment of nearly $3 billion to provide every student with up-to-date, clean, safe, and engaging learning environments.

Over the past ten years, city schools have only received, on average, $12 million from the city and $22 million from the state each year to renovate their school buildings. At this rate, it will take eighty-eight years to fix Baltimore City schools.

Clearly, the state needs to take into account the additional challenge the city school system faces as a result of the age of its school buildings. City leaders also should step up the current investment of $17 million a year to a much more meaningful amount.

They could look to the example set by nearby counties—and even Washington, D.C.—that invest close to $100 million a year in their school buildings.

A business-as-usual approach to decrepit school buildings will thwart the city school renaissance we all hope for. And without that renaissance, tens of thousands of children will continue to endure the shameful gross inequities so poignantly exposed by Mr. Hood’s photo essay.

—Sue Fothergill is an education advocate for the ACLU of Maryland.

High Marks for NCLB “The Principal Cause” (November) is a great piece on an extremely important and innovative initiative. However, it’s a disappointment that the editors felt it necessary to hype the piece with a disparaging comment about No Child Left Behind in the table of contents. Contrary to the table of contents blurb, Mr. Schnur never suggests that NCLB is not working. Rather, he states specifically that the goals and the core approach of using testing to provide accountability are all exactly what is needed. He suggests that the flaw in the legislation is that some states (not Maryland) are using test standards that are too low. He completely debunks the commonly heard arguments about teaching to the test that opponents of accountability use to discredit NCLB. I know it’s politically correct to discredit anything done by the current administration in Washington (and there’s plenty to criticize), but please don’t fall prey to the tendency to paint all issues with the same brush.

—Jamie Rice lives in Hunt Valley and works in the city at Carton Donofrio Partners.

choice, there are potential (though not automatic) feelings of powerlessness—acceptance that you are not responsible for making change and resignation to the fact that you cannot change things even if you want to.

I do not seek to absolve parents of responsibility for insisting that their children be well educated.

As Jon Schnur says in his interview (“The Principal Cause”), parents are one of the critical partners in improving our school system. I wish only that the duo of “Why We Stayed/Why We Left” articles had included a third, written by a parent with no choice at all.

—Lisa Goldstein is a former AmeriCorps VISTA member who worked in three Baltimore public middle schools.

“Eviction” Notice What a wonderful story by Willie Davis (“Eviction,” November). I hope we see more from this fine writer.

The short story is alive, well, and safe in the hands of Mr. Davis. Thank you for publishing such fine work.

—Nick Stump is a musician and writer living in Louisville, Kentucky.

Clarifi cation In “Why We Left” (November), Michael Anft’s essay about his decision to leave the city in search of quality public education, the writer referenced a conversation with well-known local lawyer Stephen L. Miles in which Miles explained why his own children attended public schools in Baltimore County rather than private schools. That conversation took place nine years ago, when Miles’ older children were adults. Miles’ two younger children later did, in fact, attend private school; they are presently both students at Park School, and, Miles reports, very happy there. “Sending them there was one of the best decisions in my life,” he says.

We want to hear what you’re saying.

E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. You can also comment on our website (www.urbanitebaltimore.com/forum).

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what you’re seeing Starting in the April 2008 issue, the “What You’re Seeing” department will no longer use monthly themes; rather, this will be the place for photography that captures the true spirit of Baltimore. Urbanite staffers will choose our favorites to publish in the magazine and on our website.

Along with your photograph, please include a brief description of the image and your contact information. For more information on how to submit your photograph,

Show us …

Deadline

Publication Date

Urban Animals

Jan 18, 2008

Mar 2008

Go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com/wyseeing for more information on how to submit your photograph. Photos can be e-mailed to wyseeing@urbanitebaltimore.com.

please go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com/wyseeing.

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My True Self

by S. Burke

This image is based on the guy who used me time and time again to cheat on his girlfriend. That’s how I see myself—used like a marionette and a toy.

—S. Burke

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what you’re writing “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 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. Due to libel and invasion-ofprivacy issues, we reserve the right to print the piece under your initials. Submissions should be typed (and if you cannot type, please print clearly). Only one submission per topic, please.

Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211or e-mail your story to What YoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com. Please keep submissions under four hundred words; longer submissions may not be read due to time constraints. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned.

Deadline

Publication

Secrets Guns Keeping Score

Feb 1, 2008 Mar 7, 2008 Apr 4, 2008

Apr 2008 May 2008 Jun 2008

photo by Andrew Nagl

Topic

Surges of guilt mixed with fear wash through my body as I step out of my car into the swirling October air: guilt because I was the one who didn’t let him kill himself, fear because I haven’t seen him since he was committed. The secure psychiatric ward at Sheppard Pratt is hushed and stifled as I make my way up to his floor, and my nerves jackrabbit as a nurse answers the buzzer—“Who are you here to see?” A few minutes later a jaunty orderly swings through one set of doors, walks down a muffled white hall, and opens the second set. Behind us, each set of doors buzzes and locks.

“Go sign in over there.” He points to a clipboard hung near a woman who rocks convulsively in a plastic chair. Past that a bit, I see my boy, fingers laced, eyebrows raised, smiling inanely.

Trying not to look at anyone, trying not to look like I’m shaking, I sign my name and walk, hands

in pockets, to sit with a chair between us. He pats the empty seat with his paw-like hand—Come sit here—and I reluctantly move closer, a band of awkwardness stretching tighter between us as he puts his hand on my knee.

“This morning they found me balled up in the corner of my room, crying. They had to sedate me,” he says with a touch of shame, a touch of pride. “But two days ago was a good day.” I nod, remembering his severely enthusiastic phone call.

We speak haltingly for a bit. He wants to know what the weather’s like; he smells my hair for fresh air; he wants to know what time I went to bed last night, why I didn’t answer his phone call. I think: Don’t shrink away. I think: Remember he was the first boy who kissed me so that it didn’t feel like two damp caterpillars pressing against my lips. I think: Remember he was the first boy to whisper he loved me. I think: I can’t.

The visiting time is an hour and a half, but after forty minutes, I say, “Just came to say hi. Too much homework to stay.” Jerkily, we both rise; I stand still and let him bear-hug me. For the first time, I don’t hug him back: I escape out into the cold air.

—Angela Horner is a creative nonfiction writer living in Anne Arundel County with her pet rat and working as a publishing assistant in Towson. She is a recent graduate of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

The first time I was on television, a steady rain had fallen all day. I was 5 years old and I was going to my first Orioles game. My Uncle Kelly was taking me. Kelly was the youngest of my father’s siblings and still lived in my grandparents’ w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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house on East 33rd Street. This house was about as across the street from Memorial Stadium as a house could get.

As I stepped off the curb, I had to make sure I avoided the torrents of water that created a wave, and I imagined myself a tiny surfer riding that curling water into the Baltimore sewer.

We made our way to the upper deck, and a slender black man in a uniform who reminded me of a police officer, complete with cornered cap, led us to our seats and did his best to dry them with a wadded piece of tissue. I remember thinking that he would need a lot more that day.

The game didn’t last too long, and the diamond was soon being scurried over by the grounds crew, tugging the tarp into place.

I cannot recall exactly how it went down, but in a stadium that was nearly empty to begin with, no one seemed to notice or care when we started running the upper deck. Memorial Stadium was shaped like a horseshoe and we ran from one end of it to the other.

At some point we tired of this and made our way back to my grandparents’ house. We burst through the door, breathless and soaking. Our family was breathless too. “You were on TV!” they squealed.

I guess in 1971, when a ballgame got rained out, local television didn’t have a rerun to “throw it to.” The cameras just followed us, letting Baltimore just watch us run like foolish kids in the rain.

—Scott Carberry is a native of Baltimore City currently residing in Charles Village. He is a former Marine, a part-time actor, and a restaurant professional. He has published poems and articles in local magazines and has just started writing short stories.

My daughter died on a warm day in July.

I’m not sure exactly which day, or even that “she” was a “she” at all, if you want to be really specific.

At nine and a half weeks, the organs that determined these things weren’t fully formed, much less detectable by sonogram. And even though I had seen pictures on the Internet of nine-and-ahalf-week-old fetuses, the doctor refused to speak in any concrete terms. We did not say the word baby. Instead, she referred to the painful night of bleeding, cramps, and tears as the “passing of cells and tissues.”

I suppose these words, cells and tissues, were what made it easier for people to say things like “You can have more” and “Things happen for a reason.” They did not know that in my imagination she had dark hair and porcelain skin dotted with freckles like her dad. We made up silly songs together, and she danced around the house in pink tutus and patent leather shoes. She drew pictures of bright yellow suns and green grass that I had already hung up on my fridge. She would fall asleep on the giant paws of my Saint Bernard, her loyal guardian who lovingly endured all manner of

bows and barrettes fastened to his reddish brown fur. She was an athlete; she was an artist; she was my first child. She had yet to draw her first breath in this world, but she was very much alive. She even had a name.

There was no funeral, no memorial marking a gravesite, because there was no burial. Barely anyone acknowledged that she was even gone.

It felt strange mourning for someone whom no one else seemed to know existed, much less felt their absence when they were gone. Someone who changed the direction of my life so profoundly without ever uttering a single word had left this world as unremarkably as she had entered it.

I often wonder the purpose of a life that lived for only nine weeks, just long enough to make me sick at the smell of chicken and want to lie on the couch all day. I grapple daily with the notion that all things have a purpose in a divine plan, when things feel anything but carefully designed. But I do know that this baby made me a mom for the first time, if only briefly. And no amount of time will change that.

—Sarah Schaffner is a freelance writer and editor living in Baltimore.

I committed my first theft while walking home from school. I was 8 or 9. It was spring; I remember a lot of rain. My walk home took me past a construction shack on Glenmore Avenue, across Burdick Park, through a neighbor’s yard to my house on the other side of Alta Avenue. The construction shack had wooden steps in front of it and a metal mailbox fastened to the side of the shack next to the door.

Coming home from school one day, walking along Glenmore Avenue, I saw that a piece of mail had somehow missed getting into that mailbox. It was lying there on the sidewalk, in my path, inviting me to do something. I walked up next to it, stopped, looked around and, with my foot, pushed the white envelope under the wooden steps. I continued home. No one had seen me. I really hadn’t stolen anything.

I thought about that hidden mail for a week and finally made my big move. On the way home one day, I paused at the step, reached my hand under, slid the letter out, and shoved it in my pocket. I had stolen the mail. I had stolen U.S. government mail.

After getting home, I went to my room in the finished attic I shared with my older brother. I was alone there. I sat at my desk and laid the letter on it and studied it. It had an address visible through a cellophane window. I opened it and unfolded the paper inside. It was some kind of bill for a refrigerator. It was mail that never got to where it was going.

I hid the letter away in one of the drawers of the desk. I never told anyone about that stolen mail hidden in my desk. I often wondered what

harm my act had caused. What did I mess up by taking that mail?

I have since become a student of philosophy.

I secretly toil away at my work and squirrel away my writings in a password-protected account on my laptop. I still wonder what harm I am doing to others as my fingers push on the keyboard of this laptop made somewhere in China by someone with small hands.

—Ed Hopkins lives in Remington and grew up in Hamilton. One of his current projects is a website dedicated to the proposed Charles Street trolley, www.trolleytrouble.org.

The first time somebody important to me died, I was in first grade. It was my dog, Ronnie.

He was always in pain from severe arthritis, and he could hardly walk on his own without limping. I think my mother knew for a long time that we would have to put him to sleep. Ronnie was an old dog, but we loved him so much that we didn’t want to let him go.

I remember hiding behind a sofa in my living room one evening, listening to my mother talk to Ronnie: “I don’t know what to do, boy. I don’t want to let you go, but I don’t think you can hang on …”

She cried for hours that night.

At first, I didn’t know why, but I cried too; it did not take long for the reason to come to me. No matter how hard I tried to deny it, I too knew that Ronnie would have to leave us soon.

I don’t recall ever seeing my parents talk about the decision they had to face; I suppose they simply knew the end of Ronnie’s lifeline was drawing close. When my father and mother finally decided it was time that they told my sisters and me about the plan to put Ronnie down, the news hit us hard.

We sat there begging my parents for what felt like an eternity, trying to convince them that Ronnie did not have to leave us so soon. We pounded our fists on the floor, we screamed at the top of our lungs, we clung to my father’s knees, but the only response we received were tears from my mother’s eyes and my father rushing to hold her.

A week later, we were at the vet, watching the assistants put Ronnie up on the table. At that moment, I came to understand the term “deathbed.”

My mother and I couldn’t watch them stick the needle into him, so we ran back to the car, shaking from sobs. The car ride home was silent.

Several years have passed since then, and still, I think about Ronnie. I even wrote a memory poem about him for my literary arts class last year.

I guess that’s one of the ways that God relieves us of the burden of death: He gives us memories that last forever.

—Randallstown resident Patrice Matthews is in tenth grade at Carver Center for Arts and Technology. She has owned two dogs since Ronnie;

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currently, she has a Labrador/Pit Bull mix named Hazel.

As a child growing up in Rodgers Forge, my life was less than the norm. A broken family and a deadbeat dad left my family struggling to make ends meet. Although my mother did her best to insulate us from what was lacking, we were aware of how different our lives were from the neighbors’ lives.

We would spend the summers at my grandparents’ house, while mom worked to save for her three kids’ new school year. We would also have most of our holiday dinners at my grandparents’ home; it was too much to have a turkey and such.

One Thanksgiving, we returned home to find boxes of canned goods in our living room. I did not understand. That same year it happened again when we returned after Christmas.

In the spring of that year, my school had a food drive for the needy in our community. It was the first time I was old enough to comprehend thoughts of charity. I pleaded with my mom, telling her how important it was to help those in need. I did not understand why we could not go to the store and get some canned goods to help.

In tears, my mom told me I could go down to the basement and pick two cans from what was left of the goods we had received at Christmas. I

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was mad that I had to give stuff that we did not use ourselves. As I reluctantly searched through the few cans left on the shelves—I think I was holding a can of yams—it hit me, and I broke into tears. We were the recipients of the food drive I so much wanted to participate in.

Now, as a parent of a first-grader, I find myself involved in a wonderful school community with their own program to help those in need. It is called First Tuesdays. The school sends home a list of both highly needed items and a wish list of things that, by the grace of God, my son is not lacking.

On October 2, 2007, I was able to give for the first time. I went to Sam’s Club and had to restrain myself from buying the whole list. I will continue to participate heavily and challenge you to do the same. I don’t think anyone knows how good it made me feel to do this for the first time.

—Name withheld

The very first time I saw a television show was at the opening of the Crest Theatre on February 26, 1949. The Crest was one of the most attractive movie theaters in Baltimore, awarded the Exhibitor Merit Plaque for outstanding design.

The theater was designed by Julius Myerberg and was located in the Hilltop Shopping Center across from the Hilltop Diner, made famous in the movie

Diner. The shopping center included the first Eddie’s Market, Holzman’s Bakery, and the MandellBallow’s Deli.

That night, the theater featured The Adventures of Don Juan, starring Errol Flynn and Viveca Lindfors. While Don Juan was playing downstairs, we kids ran upstairs to the television lounge. (Admission to the movie downstairs was twenty-five cents for matinees and forty cents for evenings and weekends. Television upstairs was free.) A huge screen showing a stationary image, “Test Pattern,” greeted us. I had considerably more patience at 15 than I have now at 72: We gaped at “Test Pattern” for about an hour.

My friend and I were about to run off when Lucky Pup, a live puppet show, appeared on the screen. (Later the show was called Foodini the Great.) It was followed by an amateur show, live of course, of children singing and dancing.

Influenced by the show, I decided to be a professional opera singer. I sang in many amateur shows around town, but I made my living in another art; I became an art director.

Never will I forget the open-mouth wonder my friend and I experienced upon seeing our first television show. ■ —Jerry Shargel, now retired, was art director for the Carroll County Times. An amateur actor and singer, Shargel’s hobby is spoiling his grandchildren.

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CORKBOARD CORK Charm City TV: Sixty Years of WMAR

Through Spring 2008

Chronicling the dawn of television in America in the 1930s through the technology’s post-WWII boom, the Baltimore Museum of Industry celebrates Maryland’s first TV station, WMAR TV Channel 2 in Baltimore, established in 1947. The exhibition includes vintage footage, images, and artifacts from the city’s first encounter with the small screen.

1415 Key Hwy. $10 adults, $6 students and seniors 410-727-4808 www.thebmi.org

115 Years of the Afro-American

Through Feb. 29

In 1892, a former slave named John H. Murphy Sr. merged his and two other church publications into the Afro-American Newspaper, the oldest continuously published family-owned African American newspaper in the country. This exhibit includes photographs, business journals, and other artifacts from the newspaper’s history.

Enoch Pratt Free Library Central Branch 400 Cathedral St. Free 410-396-5430 www.prattlibrary.org

The Business of Hip-Hop

Jan. 10, 4 p.m.

With artists like Kanye West and Jay-Z equally at home on the cover of Vibe or Fortune, hip-hop’s position within mainstream culture seems secure, but it also means that anyone looking to make it big should add a bit of publishing and contract know-how to his or her repertoire. Mark Carey, CEO of Baltimore-based Street Legal Entertainment, offers a primer on the dollars and sense behind the music at the North Point Library.

1716 Merritt Blvd.

Free 410-887-7255 www.co.ba.md.us/MeetingsandEvents

Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Concert

Jan. 23, 7:30 p.m.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s hushed style of a capella harmony is part of a musical tradition that began in the coal mines of apartheid-era South Africa, where workers tried to entertain themselves with song without rousing nearby guards. Since forming in 1964, the eight-piece vocal ensemble has traveled around the world performing for kings, presidents, and millions of other fans.

Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall 1212 Cathedral St. Tickets $23–$53 410-783-8000 www.bsomusic.org

Polar Bear Plunge

Jan. 26

Members of the Maryland State Police lead laughing, shivering hordes into the cold winter waters of the Chesapeake during this annual fundraiser for Special Olympics Maryland. Those wishing to take the plunge can sign up in advance or on-site, while spectators onshore can enjoy live music, vendors, and crafters under a heated tent.

9 a.m. registration; plunges at noon and 3 p.m.

Sandy Point State Park 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis Free for spectators, $50 pledge minimum for participants 410-789-6677 www.plungemd.com

Chamber Music by Candlelight

Jan. 27, 7:30 p.m.

Instrumentalists from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra perform in small, intimate ensembles during these monthly performances, part of Second Presbyterian Church’s Community Concerts at Second series. This month’s candlelit performance features works by Brahms, Hungarian composer Miklós Rózsa, American Stephen Funk Pearson, and Czech-born Leoš Janácek. ˇ

Second Presbyterian Church 4200 St. Paul St. Free 410-744-4034 www.communityconcertsatsecond.org

Photo credits from top to bottom: courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Industry; no credit; photo by Ruth Schaefer; courtesy of Ladysmith Black Mambazo; courtesy of Governor’s Press Offi ce; photo by Nancy K. Holder

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h a v e y o u h e a r d

compiled by lionel foster

Room at the Inn have gas fireplaces, two have two-person whirlpool tubs, two have private entrances, and all have private baths. To help guests enjoy the city properly, Werner and Finlay put together Baltimore getaway packages for just about every lifestyle, from spa enthusiasts to sports fans, and with some advance notice, they’re happy to craft a custom weekend. Go to www.scarboroughfairbandb.com.

—Shannon Dunn

Breaking the Ice Ice hockey isn’t usually the first thing that leaps to mind when you think about inner-city recreation.

Aside from the sport’s necessary (and expensive) equipment, our climate makes for a noticeable lack of perpetually frozen ponds and lakes. But for the past ten years, Baltimore Youth Hockey has worked to give kids access to the sport with their Patterson Park Stars program. Through grants and private donations, the all-volunteer organization provides almost seventy underprivileged Baltimore City boys and girls, ages 7 to 13, with sticks, pads, jerseys, and a hot breakfast, and teaches them the

rules of the game at the Patterson Park Ice Rink.

A donation of $150 sponsors one child for the entire program. Baltimore Youth Hockey president and proud hockey mom Donna Brust sees the seventeen-week program as an integral part of the forty-year-old organization. “It’s very important to the membership to give back to the community,” she says. “It’s a critical part of who we are.” For more information, call 410-426-4242 or go to www. byhstars.org.

photo by Don Chen | www.dreamstime.com

photo by La Kaye Mbah

When innkeepers Barry Werner and Jeff Finlay purchased their Federal Hill bed and breakfast Scarborough Fair (1 E. Montgomery St.; 410-8370010) in June 2007, they were determined to deliver old-fashioned charm to modern Charm City. In each of the six rooms, guests will find antiques and cozy touches that you’d expect in boutique accommodations, like home-baked goodies for afternoon tea prepared by chef Claudette McDonald and handcrafted chocolates at bedtime. Four of the rooms

—S.D.

Chairman of the Board

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Whether you get your kicks on the vert ramp, double-black-diamond slopes, or more pedestrian terrain, 3Rideshop (5918 York Rd.; 443-552-0006) has something for virtually every skateboard or winter sport enthusiast. Owner Carrington Sydnor opened his first store in Timonium in 2001, but after his lease expired he wanted a spot with greater foot traffic. In early November, he celebrated his grand re-opening in Belvedere Square, where he has found a home among a vibrant group of independent businesses. “We’re really excited to be here,” says Sydnor.

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In addition to stocking popular brands like Burton and Volcom, 3Rideshop is especially proud to carry hard-to-find, up-and-coming manufacturers like Capita Snowboards and Spacecraft Clothing. There’s also a full-service tune-up shop, with a staff ready to help you customize and repair your gear. Open Mon–Fri 10 a.m.–8 p.m., Sat 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Sun 12 p.m.–5 p.m. Go to www.3rideshop.com.

—Harrison Brazier

Have you heard of something new and interesting happening in your neighborhood? E-mail your news to editorial assistant Lionel Foster at Lionel@urbanitebaltimore.com, and you may see it in a future issue.

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Put Me In, Coach!

photo by Paul Aresu

A visit to Baltimore-based sports outfitter Under Armour ’s first-ever retail store, in Annapolis’ Westfield Mall (410-571-9331), might feel more like taking the field before an NFL game than going shopping for a T-shirt. CEO Kevin Plank says he wants shoppers to “experience what it feels like to be in an Under Armour commercial.” Visitors are met with a stylized “stadium tunnel” entryway, a 120-inch HD

television, a touch-screen interactive display full of product information, and a rather menacing bronze statue of former Terrapin defensive end (and Under Armour ambassador) Eric “Big E” Ogbogu. Open Mon–Sat 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Go to www.underarmour.com.

—H.B.

Natives of harsher climes know well that lip-chapping is no joke: Once the arid chill gets its claws into your cracked, fissured maw, you’re in a world of pain.

For Mid-Atlantic types who are used to marinating in a steambath of atmospheric humidity, winter’s uncharacteristic dryness means reaching for the ol’ stick of lip balm. Unlike commercial balms, which use petroleum jelly as a main ingredient, Clarksville’s own Shelissa’s Lip Balm Company relies on olive oil to get the soothing job done. Founded by model and Howard County native Shelissa Kemplin Kear-

photo by Scott Shaw of Third Row Design

Lip Service ney, the firm produces a line of natural, eco-friendly vegan lipsticks, from fruit-flavored “Little Lips” for kids to the he-manly “Lip Bomb,” all fossil-fuel-free and fully equipped with SPF 15 sun protection to ward off the dreaded lip burn after a day on the sledding hill. How do they feel? Well, like lip balm: creamy and grease-free, with a little extra-virgin kick. Go to www.shelissa.com.

—David Dudley

Dream Screen

photo by Jeffrey Snyder

If you like your movies big and beautiful and accompanied by an alcoholic beverage, then you’ll love the new Landmark Theatres Harbor East (645 S. President St.; 410-624-2622). One of the most recent additions to the fifty-eight-theater Landmark chain, the seven-screen moviehouse features fauxleather seats with retractable armrests (good for cuddling) and ample legroom, plus a full bar (you can watch, say, the new director’s cut of Blade Runner with whiskey in hand). Focusing on high-quality

architecture

1208 Light Street Baltimore, Maryland

commercial and independent films like No Country for Old Men, Landmark might not have the scruffy arthouse charm of hometown favorite the Charles Theatre, but it does boast the most advanced digital projection system on the East Coast, and parking in nearby garages is only $3 with a validated ticket. Go to www.landmarktheatres.com.

—Marianne Amoss

interior design

CL Design Studio LLC 410-244-0360

planning

www.CLDesignStudio.com w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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Some things are meant to be seen

Still Life fine art-design-museum framing New York-Berlin-Ellicott City

8173 main street, ellicott city, md www.stilllifegallery.net 410-461-1616

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urbanite january 08

photo by Jason Okutake

baltimore observed

Consensus builders: Developer duo Donald and Thibault Manekin, with partner Tom Wahl (right) of Hamel Builders, plan to create affordable housing for teachers in a long-dormant Charles Village factory that has resisted all previous redevelopment efforts.

development

After-School Special It’s an unlikely spot for a meeting. I’m sitting in the corner of a vast unlit warehouse in a bleak section of Charles Village. The chairs are of the beige, metal folding variety. The “conference table” is foldable too, like one you might find in a church basement, only this one looks like it has been through a flood. (It probably has, but more on that later.)

I’m talking with Donald and Thibault Manekin, the father-son team behind Seawall Development Company. This is the same Donald Manekin whose father and uncle created the Manekin Corporation, which has thrown down millions of square feet of office space in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. You’d think they could find a better table. And they could, of course, but they’re proud of this one. It’s a standin for this derelict factory: Where others see decay, the Manekins see opportunity.

Most people in the neighborhood call this hulking brick structure on North Howard Street the “Census Building,” because the U.S. Census Bureau used it as its Baltimore headquarters in 1990. The bureau was only here for a short time, but the name stuck. (“It might as well be called

the Baltimore Opera Company Building, since they stored their stuff there for a while,” quips Remington Neighborhood Alliance President Joan Floyd, who lives up the street.) The structure was originally built in the 1890s by the H.F. Miller & Son Company, which made tin cans for Baltimore food processors, tobacco producers, and druggists. The plant closed in 1953, and aside from the Census Bureau and a few other short-term tenants, the building has sat empty ever since.

Even on this sunny October day, the air inside is cold and damp. Here on the first floor of the warehouse, the wood floors have buckled. Locals say that a pipe broke a few years back, flooding the building and sending water gurgling out of the sewer grates outside. Floyd says windy days have sent glass shards and wood fragments flying out of the windows of the four-story structure. At one point, neighbors complained so vociferously about the building’s condition that the city threatened to haul longtime owner Bernard Kapiloff, a local doctor, into court.

Thibault Manekin, apparently oblivious to the chill, sits with his sleeves rolled up, cheerfully pointing out how much light filters in through the cracks in the plywood covering the arched windows. “We

think we have what it takes to make this work,” he says. If the Manekins have their way, the warehouse will become open, sunny office space for the nonprofit organizations that buoy Baltimore’s public school system—outfits like Teach for America, the Baltimore Urban Debate League, and New Leaders for New Schools.

“Right now, these organizations are spread around the city,” says Donald Manekin, who sits on the board of Teach for America Baltimore. The plans call for 35,000 square feet of offices, plus shared conference rooms and meeting areas that would allow the groups to mingle and exchange ideas. The rest of the building would house forty-two one- and twobedroom apartments for teachers, renting for $700 to $1200 a month.

The plan is audacious. Not only do the Manekins want to create offices and apartments that rent for below-market rates, but they want to do it in an environmentally friendly way. Using local and recycled materials, along with energy-efficient appliances and water-saving fixtures, they are gunning for a gold LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. “Most important, we’re not hauling the building away to the landfill,” says Tom Wahl, execuw w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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baltimore observed

Widely known as the “Census Building,” the hulking brick factory on North Howard has been largely vacant since 1953.

tive vice president of Hamel Builders, a partner in the project.

Oh, and the Manekins want to make a buck on the project as well. Says Donald, “There’s nothing wrong with making money.”

The concept is a marriage of two ideas that are catching on nationally: shared working space for nonprofit organizations and affordable housing for teachers. Putting nonprofits into one building where they can share meeting rooms and other facilities saves precious dollars, says China Brotsky, managing director of Tides Shared Spaces, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps groups create these kinds of offices.

Many of these buildings are themselves owned and operated by charitable foundations or nonprofits that hold the rent down, protecting tenants from spikes in local real estate markets. The Interchurch Center in Manhattan, for one, has been providing office space for nonprofits for nearly forty years; rents are roughly a quarter of those for commercial spaces. A handful of developers have built such centers for profit, says Brotsky, but the whole idea is to keep rents stable and below market value, so developers have to be creative with their financing.

Creating affordable, desirable housing options for new teachers requires no small amount of ingenuity either. High-rent cities such as New York and San Francisco are wrestling with the issue, but there’s a good example just a few blocks northeast of the Census Building. At Astor Court on St. Paul Street, local developer Michael Rock teamed up with the Abell Foundation to create a combination of business spaces and teacher apartments. Renovating the building, which had sat vacant for more than a decade, ultimately involved eleven differ-

ent funding sources, according to Beth Harber, the foundation’s senior program officer for community development. A side agreement with the developer guarantees that the apartments will remain below market rates. They currently rent for $650 to roughly $1100 a month, and every one has been full since the building re-opened in summer 2005.

The Manekins’ plan for the Census Building includes $5.25 million in historic tax credits from the state and federal governments, and another

Thibault Manekin, apparently oblivious to the chill, sits with his sleeves rolled up, cheerfully pointing out how much light filters in through the cracks in the plywood covering the arched windows. “We think we have what it takes to make this work,” he says. $5.25 million from the federal New Market tax credit program, which encourages investment in lowincome communities. They estimate that the project will ultimately cost $19 million. Donald says their projections are about to run up against reality as they finalize plans, but he doesn’t anticipate any big surprises. “Unlike a lot of historic buildings, this one is wide open inside,” he says. “I don’t think there are a lot of ghosts in the closets.”

Still, many a developer has eyed the Census Building in the past two decades, and most have

walked away. The two redevelopment efforts that did get off the ground ended badly. The first attempt crashed and burned in 2003 when developer Louis Salomonsky landed in prison for bribing a city councilwoman in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Salomonsky’s proposal to turn the building into ninety-six apartments had drawn opposition from neighbors, including Joan Floyd, who said there weren’t enough parking spaces. A second attempt to carve the building into apartments ran aground in 2006 when D.C.-based Georgetown Restoration ran out of money.

The Manekins still have hurdles to clear if they hope to avoid a similar fate. They will need to clean up lead paint and a leaky underground fuel oil tank.

And there are the requisite city permits. Nonetheless, they hope to have crews working in early 2008, with apartments ready for incoming teachers in the spring of 2009.

The optimism seems to be catching. Floyd says the Remington Neighborhood Alliance doesn’t have an official position yet, but “there’s been good, clear communication from the developer, which is a breath of fresh air.” (The building technically sits within Charles Village, but Remington is right across the street.) Her group has been working to build a public grade school in the neighborhood, which has seen little of the revival that has swept through much of Charles Village in recent years.

“To have this education-centered development come in at the same time is very exciting,” she says.

“Remington has lots and lots of kids, but it’s never been a neighborhood where education was at the center.”

Beyond that, the building could bring new life to a long-neglected corner of Baltimore, says Alfred Barry, a former city planner who provided consulting to the first two would-be redevelopers. “Any time you invest a substantial amount in a building that is that prominent, you reinforce people’s opinions that there’s something going on in that area. Homebuyers are more willing to invest there. New investors think the area will ultimately be better,” he says. “More people on the street will be a good thing for that part of Charles Village.”

Just up North Howard Street from the Census Building, a new sign hangs above the door of the Two Sisters Bar and Grille. Cathy Carter and Debbie Crum, who grew up in Hampden, bought the place a year ago. At the time it was a Korean karaoke bar. “It was a mess,” says Carter. “Everything was black. There were holes in the bathroom walls.” A good scrubbing and a couple fresh coats of paint (much of it Ravens purple) have improved the mood significantly.

“The neighborhood seems to have picked up since we got here,” says Carter. Renovating the Census Building will be “good for business, nice for the neighborhood,” she says. She gestures across the street to an abandoned storefront. The downstairs windows are boarded up. The upstairs windows are empty sockets. “You know, you could make something of that place,” she says. “You could put in a little shop or something. You can fix up the neighborhood if you just put some effort into it.” ■ —Greg Hanscom w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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baltimore observed

Feeling the squeeze: Leon Umberger leads his Rheinlanders at Blob’s Park, Anne Arundel County’s doomed polka palace.

encounter

Last Dance Blob’s Park doesn’t get many accidental visitors.

To get there, you drive to Jessup and turn off Route 175 at the flashing yellow light by the volunteer fire station, itself obscured by trees, and travel along what looks to be a private lane. Only as you approach the first bend do you see a decrepit sign marking the way to “Blobs Pa,” the “r” and “k” long fallen to the ravages of time.

Soon the famed German dance hall—a gingerbread building unevenly seated on the higher end of a field—will probably succumb to a more immediate sort of threat: the wrecking ball. After more than sixty years, Blob’s Park closes for good this winter. The Eggerl family, which owns and runs the place, isn’t saying exactly when, but speculation among the regulars has pegged the final night as New Year’s Eve. Although Blob’s Park has been touted as the Baltimore area’s only Bavarian Biergarten, taxonomically, it really is closer to a GastHaus: a voluminous hall for drinking and dancing. Blob’s is awash in such endearing inconsistencies. The large painting behind the bandstand appears to be of the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague (a city the Germans bombed in World War II). And although the facility was dubbed “one of the East Coast’s great polka meccas” on the accordion blog Let’s Polka (www.letspolka.com), the house band, the Rheinlanders, doesn’t always play the irresistibly bouncy Central European dance music—they also pump out some rockabilly, some slow waltzes, and various Germanic oom-pah numbers. Anything that will get people dancing.

It’s a quiet November night, and the rain outside is the kind that would make most stay home with a DVD. The lone waitress on duty, Janice Lochner, rolls her stainless-steel food cart by the rows of banquet tables pushed together for family-style dining and socializing. Pitchers of Spaten Oktoberfest are flowing, recalling the

spirited celebration of that holiday that was held here recently, and the kitchen is serving up schnitzel and dumplings and other specialties from the Old Country. On the parquet-tiled dance floor, burly dance instructor Butch Kotowski instructs a busload of Catholic University students how to polka. They circle Kotowski under the disco ball, gawkily halfstepping with smiling determination.

“Just relax and lean forward on the ball of your foot and flex your knees,” he instructs.

Behind the bar, 69-year-old John Eggerl pours me the house ale but declines further discussion.

“Too busy,” he mumbles, marching off to move trays of freshly washed glasses. The fate of Blob’s Park is something of sensitive subject for the Eggerls, in a way that only family matters can be. Despite this evening’s sparse patronage, failing attendance isn’t why Blob’s Park must close: Weekend nights and Sunday afternoons can still fill the place. Instead, it’s the steady march of suburban development that has doomed the dance hall.

Blob’s Park grew from regular social gatherings held by Eggerl’s great uncle, Max Blob, who settled on this site in 1933. Soon he built a bowling alley and opened up the farm to the public for weekly dancing and sauerbraten-eating. In 1942, Max’s niece, Katherine Blob Eggerl, and her husband, John, started helping out with the operations, raising five children in the farmhouse next door. She died this April at age 89, but before she passed she arranged to have the remaining land sold, her son John later tells me.

Outside the GastHaus, farmland stretches out in all directions. This is the Gold Coast, as Anne Arundel County executives like to call this area. Within a few years, according to proposals, these fields will be transformed into a mixed-use development called Parkside. A site plan presented to the county in 2005 by the owners of the land surrounding Blob’s, Bethesda-based developers Classic Group LLC, showed just over 1,000 residential units, plus 400,000 square feet of offices and a shopping center. Office space near Baltimore-Washington International airport goes for a premium, and a few miles up Jessup Road, Fort Meade is bracing for the arrival of more than 5,000

military and civilian personnel over the next two years as part of the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program.

Later in the evening, a senior but spry brunette snakes across the floor and asks for a dance. I have two left feet, but I find a simple footwork, and she falls in step. Her name is Joan Willette, and afterward the 75-year-old introduces me to what seems like her entire family. Her 64-year-old sister Brenda McCoy is here, in a sparkly dress. Nearby sit Willette’s daughter, Peggy, and her husband, Dave Rice, both regulars since 1989. Peggy’s daughter and sonin-law are in attendance as well.

Many patrons have been stepping out to Blob’s for decades, and they are a faithful group. Steel-eyed Bill Miller, doorman for the last sixteen years, first heard of Blob’s Park when he was a soldier in Germany in the mid-1970s. “When you get to Fort Meade,” fellow soldiers instructed, “track down this place.”

He and his wife settled in Maryland after retirement, he tells me, in part to be near Blob’s Park. Leon Umberger, the accordionist and vocalist for the Rheinlanders, estimates there are about fifty people who show up pretty much every weekend. Umberger, who first picked up the accordion when he was 6, started going to Blob’s Park in 1974. In 2005, when he retired from General Motors’ East Baltimore plant, he took on the job of bandleader as a second career.

Blob’s Park has served as a polka-related business incubator for others as well. Lochner and her husband Jay run an Internet polka radio station (www.familypolka.com). Butch Kotowski and his wife, Mary, who got their start teaching polka at Blob’s in 1976 (they later married here), have appeared on Good Morning America and alongside Bobby Vinton in his theater in Branson, Missouri.

With closing only weeks away, the regulars are preparing in different ways for life after Blob’s. Umberger has started inquiring about other venues to book his new band, the Keepsakes. (The Rheinlanders will disband after the park closes.) He figures he can promise any club owner a strong turnout of Blob’s Park refugees. Mary Kotowski’s social club, the Spice of Life Dance Club, offers a newsletter listing of other polka nights around the region. Peggy Rice and family have searched out a few other places to dance, like the Polish Home Club on Broadway in Fells Point.

But it won’t be the same, Peggy says. People have forged friendships and built lives within these woodpaneled walls. Where will they go now? “There’s just been a lot of heartbroken people who have been asking that question.”

Like many, she doesn’t seem to have quite accepted that Blob’s Park will close. Not in her heart.

Perhaps the new owners will preserve the building?

Perhaps it could be listed in the National Register of Historic Places? “It won’t be over,” Peggy says, “until the bulldozer hits the building.” ■ —Joab Jackson Web extra: Watch a video of Blob’s Park’s last hurrah on New Year’s Eve at www.urbanitebaltimore.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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baltimore observed

Big idea: Designed as post-hurricane emergency housing, the tiny Katrina Cottage has found fans far beyond New Orleans.

out there

Little House on the Bayou They kept coming. They paused on the porch, they stepped inside, they marveled. They were builders, developers, architects, and everyday people shopping for homes. And almost everyone who walked into the tiny 308-square-foot house said the same thing: “I could live here.”

This was all very strange.

The first Katrina Cottage—a prototype emergency shelter—was hurriedly constructed in January 2006, just four months after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast and three weeks after the cottage designers had been notified that display space had opened up at the International Building Show in Orlando. The cottage was designed as a “FEMA trailer with dignity,” something to replace the dreary white box that has come to symbolize government ineptitude. Yet in Orlando, people who lived in homes ten times its size swooned. It was as if Condé Nast Traveler had rhapsodized over the thread count of the bedding at a Red Cross shelter.

Marianne Cusato, the 33-year-old New York architect who designed the prototype as part of a design challenge by New Urbanist patriarch Andrés Duany, said her initial reaction to these potential buyers was, “Go away! This is affordable housing,” she recalled recently. But then she and the other designers had a second thought: “Wait, come back!”

And they did. Orders were placed, and within months, several architects were sketching new variations on the cottages for an upscale market.

The house is now available in eleven versions (with eight more on the way), ranging from 300 square feet to 1,800 square feet, and last summer, national building supply retailer Lowe’s started offering Katrina Cottage packages that can be ordered at stores, online, or by calling a toll-free number (866-714-5916). The house is delivered to

the building site on a half-dozen or so flatbeds. Blueprints cost $700, and prices for materials packages average $55 per square foot (not including foundation, HVAC, land, and labor). Lowe’s won’t release sales figures, but a spokesperson says “people have really been interested in them for mountain homes and beach homes, and many baby boomers are looking for second homes and mother-in-law apartments.”

When Cusato and the other designers realized they had stumbled upon a hot market for small, well-built houses—small is apparently the new huge—they chose to chase it for practical as well as philosophical reasons. “If people are choosing to live in this because they really like it, it means the disaster housing and affordable housing is no longer the leftovers,” Cusato told a group of traditional builders in New Orleans last fall. “It’s actually something desirable. It’s something that can be loved.”

What happened to the original idea of emergency housing? It’s still there, insist the designers. The cottages make sense as replacements for the standard FEMA trailers, which, as a GAO report noted, cost an average of $30,000 to install on private land. While the Katrina Cottages cost slightly more at the outset, taxpayers get more for their dollar, including structures that can protect occupants from subsequent storms: They’re built to withstand 140 mph winds.

A few theories can explain the unexpected popularity of the Katrina Cottage. To start with, it’s cute. Very cute. New Urbanist architect Stephen Mouzon explained to the same builders that making houses smaller also means changing proportions— the windows and porch grow larger relative to the house. And we are genetically programmed to find such forms appealing: Think puppies or infants with saucer-like eyes. “[This] makes kids charming so you don’t abandon them after a night of colic,” said Mouzon, who designed a 523-square-foot cottage

that USA WEEKEND magazine sponsored for a Silver Spring, Maryland, resident in October 2006. “The exact same thing happens with houses. It’s the teddybear effect.”

The first cottages also mimicked Gulf Coast architectural vernacular. It would be possible to drop a Katrina Cottage into a New Orleans neighborhood and not notice it as you drove by. (Walking up on the porch, however, might tip you off: Everything’s too level and too free of humidity- and termite-induced rot.) Like many regional homes, the cottages have heat-reflecting metal roofs and nine-foot ceilings to help keep interiors cool during Gulf Coast summers.

What’s more, the cottages are exceedingly wellwrought, with the sort of thoughtful details you’d expect in a Japanese puzzle box. An alcove above the bed eliminates the need for bedside tables, and windowsills expand to double as shelves. No square inch is overlooked.

Cusato said the only thing revolutionary about her approach is that she’s bringing back an old idea: Most cottages have been designed with “sprouting spots”—locations where wings and additions can be added on in the future. “We’re doing the same thing Sears used to do,” she said. “We used to build small houses that would grow over time. Today, the default setting is that you live in this size house at this stage of your life, then move to a whole other place. Perhaps that can go back to something earlier.”

The shift from creating emergency housing to upmarket getaways was also made for practical reasons: Relying on government programs historically hasn’t been the best way to get things done, and little in the Katrina relief effort has convinced anyone otherwise.

“We did everything with the private sector because nothing was happening in the public sector,” Cusato said.

Indeed, not a stick of lumber has gone up yet on FEMA’s $75 million Louisiana pilot project that calls for creating Katrina Cottage neighborhoods. Nearly five hundred FEMA-funded cottages have been built and occupied in Mississippi, but at the moment just about the only Katrina Cottage in New Orleans is the one on display in the parking lot at Lowe’s.

With money from Louisiana’s Road Home housing recovery program finally starting to trickle into area bank accounts, private homesteaders may be able to put Katrina Cottages on the ground faster than the FEMA-funded state program. “To say the program is mired in bureaucracy would be an understatement,” Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco recently wrote to the program overseers.

So while Katrina Cottages now sprout up in second-home lots and backyards around the nation— think of them as thank-you gifts from the victims of Katrina to a country that donated generously—it will take another natural disaster before anyone knows if emergency housing has been effectively reinvented.

Plenty hope so.

“If what we build is inferior to what we had before, the hurricane will be an even greater disaster,” said Mouzon.

Cusato agreed: “There had to be something in the rebuilding that has made life better.” ■ —Wayne Curtis w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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The ever-smiling Vinnie DeMarco slid into one of the cramped balcony seats above the Maryland Senate chamber in November, carrying his usual cargo—an armload of official papers and high hopes. DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative, was there, he thought, to watch forty-seven weary senators approve a bill extending health insurance to 120,000 workingpoor Marylanders. But he wouldn’t be confident until the votes were posted on the electronic scoreboard. Along with many successes, he’d seen done deals go to ashes before.

The bill’s prospects for passage were remarkably good under the circumstances. Legislators had convened in Annapolis at Governor Martin O’Malley’s command to deal with a deficit created by tax cuts paired with big spending on public education. The senators might well have been wary of approving yet another expensive social program in the midst of such a crisis. DeMarco’s bill was the kind of Democratic government initiative that gives radio talk show hosts fits. Just a few weeks earlier in Washington, President Bush had turned back increased spending for the popular and successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. And here was Maryland, with one of the most generous SCHIP programs in the nation, talking about extending it to these children’s parents.

In the days before the vote, DeMarco asked Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton about the bill’s prospects. “Don’t worry,” the senator said, “this is low-hanging fruit.” Amid bills that asked lawmakers to approve $1.4 billion in tax increases, this one was relatively easy.

A battered statue of Don Quixote sits in DeMarco’s office on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. The image, and music from Man of La Mancha, are part of a long-running office joke. Since the 1980s, the affable and, to some, maddeningly persistent organizer and lobbyist has been the spear point of a series of long-shot public health advances.

His statewide coalition of churches, community groups, and public health advocates began by launching a successful campaign to limit the availability of handguns. In 1999, they won a higher tax on cigarettes to curtail teen smoking. In 2005, they championed the bill that forced big employers to provide a minimum of health insurance coverage for their workers. (The courts found the so-called Wal-Mart bill unconstitutional, but the company itself improved its benefits as other states passed similar legislation.)

In each instance, the broadening statewide coalition worked with a formula of DeMarco’s devising. First, it conducted opinion polls on its objectives: less teenage smoking, fewer guns, better health care. Then it made the results public and urged lawmakers to pledge support. Finally, it turned its causes into political campaign issues.

The DeMarco chemistry has worked year after

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Impossible Dream

year. He has found a way to get ahead of lobbyists intent on the interests of their corporate clients. He has created a vehicle for the unrepresented to influence policy and performance. And he has become something like the conscience of the assembly. It’s a characterization that some lawmakers resent (suggesting as it does a certain lack of conscience in them), but DeMarco presses on, unapologetic and undeterred.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. wanted the program to be dependent on slot machine revenue. DeMarco’s ministers wanted nothing to do with slots. Instead, he proposed a $1 increase in the cost of a package of cigarettes, and as usual, he was armed with a public opinion poll.

On health care, DeMarco had a strong case.

While Maryland has been progressive in its coverage of children, very few states have a less generous program for parents. To be eligible for Medicaid, a working adult supporting a family of three must make less than about $6,600 a year. “It is unconscionable that the richest state in the nation has one of the lowest Medicaid eligibility levels in the nation,”

said DeMarco. “We all pay for this in higher insurance premiums.”

In the natural order of things in Annapolis, the bill’s prospects improved dramatically when House Speaker Michael E. Busch made it his personal priority. Governor O’Malley saw it as a perfect fit with his campaign promise of help for Maryland’s working families. The legislative architect was Delegate Peter A. Hammen, chairman of the House Health and Government Relations Committee. Still, with the $1.5-billion consequences of big spending in front of them, legislators were unlikely to approve a new program unless DeMarco and his allies could find a way to pay for it.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. wanted the program to be dependent on slot machine revenue—another way he hoped to corral votes for his favorite interest, a bill that could lead to legalized slot machine gambling in Maryland. DeMarco’s ministers wanted nothing to do with slots. Instead, they supported another $1 increase in the cost of a package of cigarettes, and as usual, DeMarco was armed with a public opinion poll—this one showing that 70 percent of Marylanders approved of the buck-a-pack increase.

As the session moved toward conclusion, some delicate negotiations were necessary. O’Malley administration troubleshooters convinced Miller that it was unnecessary to tie the increased coverage to any single funding source. If it passed, the cigarette tax increase would underwrite insurance coverage for 50,000 more parents of SCHIP children beginning in July. Another 70,000 working poor Marylanders who are not parents would be phased into coverage with funds drawn from various other sources.

That night in the Senate chamber balcony, DeMarco watched as Miller kept the final pieces of special legislative business moving toward passage.

Miller’s wavy snow-white hair, the chamber’s regal red carpets, and the yellow-veined marble walls provided the usual air of pomp and high purpose to the unfolding drama. Then, at 2:05 a.m. on November 19, the Senate voted to commit $280 million to the expansion of the state’s health care system. The final vote: 30 in favor of the expansion, 14 opposed. As the measure passed through the narrowing needle’s eye, DeMarco and those he has not offended with his unstinting, good-guy energy gave themselves a hand.

DeMarco’s detractors, some of them in his own organization, believe he is just nibbling around the edges of the health insurance problem. There are, after all, 700,000 people living without insurance in this state. DeMarco says these critics want an all-ornothing approach. “If your position is all or nothing,” he says, “you will get nothing.”

What giant will DeMarco set out to slay next? He won’t say. His campaign will go into a period of creative hibernation and strategizing, he claims. Whatever he does, it will likely have the familiar DeMarco outlines: patient organizing, accurate polling, and persistent consensus-building among legislators.

Given his track record, it is unlikely anyone will bet against him. ■ —C. Fraser Smith w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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The Unconventionalist Memoirist Marion Winik on the rites of domesticity and the art of inventing a nontraditional life I n ter v ie w P h oto g rap h

b y by

W

riter Marion Winik has lived what many would call a fiercely unconventional life. In her mid-twenties, addicted to heroin and a hard-partying lifestyle, Winik visited New Orleans during Mardi Gras and met Tony Heubach, a gay, HIV-positive former ice skater who was tending bar in a French Quarter club. They quickly fell in love and got married. Although the relationship made little sense to family and friends, Winik embarked with characteristic passion on building a family with him. They spent a tumultuous ten years together, filled with drugs, betrayal, love, birth, and death.

Winik’s 1996 memoir, First Comes Love (“I wanted to call it I Married a Junkie Faggot with AIDS,” Winik says) relates the improbable saga of that relationship, from their first meeting to the day an emotionally and physically depleted Tony committed suicide with Winik at his side. Her next book, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, detailed her life as a single mom and was named a parenting book of the year by Child Magazine. A regular columnist and NPR commentator, Winik has also penned an advice book for young adult readers called Rules for the Unruly, along with the 2005 essay collection Above Us Only Sky. Her latest project is The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, a series of brief essaypoems about people whose deaths affected her. In the afterword, she ruminates on ways that the dead are remembered. “In Mexico, they acknowledge something like this on Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which comes on November 1 every year. On this day, people build altars to their loved ones with pictures and flowers and candles, with their old favorite sodas and books and T-shirts and cigarettes. Then they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing … They celebrate and mourn at once.”

The Glen Rock Book of the Dead is scheduled to be published on October 31, 2008. Now remarried and the mother of five children, Winik lives in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, and teaches nonfiction at the University of Baltimore.

Q

In your books, you describe a number of personal observances, whether it’s for the death of your first husband or for other, more mundane anniversaries. Regardless of whether a person is raised in a certain religion or belief system, there seems to be this universal need to say, This isn’t just something that happened—I have to memorialize this, or interpret it with some sort of public display that helps make sense of it.

D a v id

M ars h all

What’s really going to be funny is if they start observing 9/11 on the closest Monday. Perhaps the date becomes less important. It’s like how my sons and I have dropped the big deal on August 20, the day that their father died in 1994.

When Tony died, they were 4 and 6 years old. I’m an atheist Jew, and I wasn’t raising them in any religion. So I had to make up a way to deal with his death; I had to make up a ritual, right then and there. It turned out to be gathering on a local “mountaintop”—this was Texas—and it involved people talking and releasing helium balloons. And then every year, on Tony’s death date, we’d go back.

But we don’t need that now. I think we needed it a lot, for about That’s the thing about ten years. It’s not like we don’t talk about their dad, and I’m certainly rituals: They are always a still writing about him. But I’m not chance to brush your hair sitting around thinking, Oh my God, we skipped August 20. I think we and show up on time, not need to lift this whole obligation and just in parenting but in possibility of failure around these things. They exist because we need the whole society. They’re them, not because we’re supposed to a new chance to do do something. It should be exactly as big a deal as you need it to be. something right—meet The name “ritual” seems to imyour own expectations, ply that it’s eternal. But just like the rituals of childhood are outgrown, act like the person you socially we can outgrow rituals. Right want to act like. now, I think we still need something for 9/11. We’re at a point where people’s sense of what happened on that day is changing; it’s still not certain what happened to the United States on September 11. If we’re talking about parades and pomp and circumstance, no, but I think there’s some way to consecrate a date.

A

Q

Q A

What do you think of that? This year, it seemed like there was I N T Eabout R V Ithe EW B Y AofNallNthe E various H A D memorial DAD some public skepticism magnitude observances.

C lar k e

A

Q A

It’s because of all the emotions that build up in you. You have ongoing emotions, say, of grief. You’re not done expressing this grief the day you leave the funeral. So over the next decades of your life you’re going to be thinking of ways to externalize this emotion. Rituals play a role, because a lot of people feel these emotions most strongly on anniversaries. Look at our whole 9/11 production now.

D udle y

I suspect you have some unorthodox annual observances in your life.

In romances, I’m always bigger on celebrating the day we met. In the story of your life, the day you met someone is the day you took that fork in the road ... I have an empty pack of Salem cigarettes with the date written on them from the day I lost my virginity.

Where would one keep an item like that?

a good is that?

P H O T That’s OGR A P question.

H Y B Where Y CR A I GI’veCseen H IitNrecently. It’s somewhere in the house. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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Q

You’ve started writing a parenting column for Ladies’ Home Journal.

Has this gig changed your perspective on the merits of more traditional parenting norms?

A

I never thought of myself as super-orderly, but when you’re raising children, it becomes obvious to a lot of us that what we’re doing is seeking order. In my family now, I’m like the ritual-transmitting parent, and my husband is like the entropy-transmitting parent—he’s the one who doesn’t care about eating dinner at the same time, or doesn’t think you really need to do your homework right away.

He’s very anti-authoritarian. But I can really see the comfort that children take in ritual: There’s a comfort to knowing what you do when you wake up in the morning. I associate the forming of ritual with actual hands-on caring—combing your little girl’s hair. It sounds like an abstract thing, but rituals are actually a series of physical actions. They’re a place where ideas become real.

the word “party” has all these decadent, self-indulgent sorts of connotations.

New Orleans has all that, of course, but they also have this sense of a community, of people feeling great goodwill towards other people. When you’re uptown on St. Charles watching a parade, you really feel the spirit of that city pass by. It’s not just this depraved thing.

I don’t know. I’m always the person who thinks there’s something more to a party.

Q A

But rituals and parties are closely related. And, of course, death rituals often have parties related to them.

Q

Q

A

A

It’s true that in First Comes Love, even while you’re indulging in all these suspect behaviors—there’s a lot of partying and drug use after bedtime—it seems like the kids were still getting to bed on time and going to school in the morning.

That’s the thing about rituals: They are always a chance to brush your hair and show up on time, not just in parenting but in the whole society. They’re a new chance to do something right—meet your own expectations, act like the person you want to act like. It’s funny, because I don’t think of myself as systematic. But as much as I don’t feel religious, I do feel like I’m into some sort of domestic religion.

When my kids were little, I used to say grace before dinner every night. I was dealing with some very difficult forces when they were that age, so maybe that’s why that was so important to me. Regardless of what your religious feelings are, you want to instill reverence; whether you’re a Catholic or an atheist, some reverence is required or we won’t be living among others in this world much longer. These things like reverence and gratitude and public service—these things are not the property of religion. They’re the property of all people, and they’re the property of family life. That’s why you see all these alternative rituals that people evolve, as a way to express these values.

Q

Do you think these alternative, community-based rituals can be as effective as the religious and ethnic ones that still dominate the calendar?

A

That’s an understatement.

You talk about this in the book you’re working on now, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. As one reads this collection of essays about people in your life who’ve passed on, one wonders if you’ve learned anything about the grieving process along the way.

What I’ve found is that creativity is an endlessly useful way of dealing with grief. I don’t think you can sew too many quilts, or plant too many gardens, or write too many poems. There’s no solace like making something. In a way, I wanted this book to recommend that. Anyone can read this and go, Hey, I could write this.

Q A Q

It’s true—everyone’s got that list of people they knew who are dead.

Though most people don’t think their list is as long as mine.

What did you learn from having to tell your sons about their father’s death?

A

The thing is, children have a lot to teach grownups about how to deal with death. They’re resilient beyond what you can possibly imagine, and they have this incredible forward momentum in life. It was my kids who helped me. And the boys turned out great; I’m having the best time of my parenting life right now.

You know, ritual has two sides to it. It has this side where it’s expressive and it’s channeling these feelings. But it’s also deadening. A lot of people experience it as rote. That’s why so many shrug off our childhood religions. They didn’t experience reverence from saying grace before dinner; they experienced aggravation. I tend to think of rituals as completely positive because I’m sort of immune to these deadening rituals. I don’t have any, and no one’s trying to make me do anything. The most deadening ritual I have to participate in is going to the annual PTA open house, and everyone has to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance, and I think, Wow.

Oh, I’m already there. I’m already the mother of a punk-rock party animal. It’s good for me.

Q

Q

A

A

You lived in New Orleans for a time and seemed to make a habit of returning to that city for Mardi Gras every year.

What I love about the city of New Orleans is that Mardi Gras is only the tip of the iceberg. You know that thing I said about how rituals always give you a new chance to get things right? They’ve really got that going in New Orleans. It’s always some new season or new holiday, and whatever embarrassing debacle you just participated in will soon be forgotten.

I went to the first Mardi Gras after Katrina, and it was unbelievably powerful.

It was the most beautiful thing you ever saw—a pure outpouring of love. You know,

Q

Given your own misspent youth, are you dreading watching your kids enter their twenties?

A

I’d imagine that at least you can speak from a position of total authority about certain behaviors.

Sure, but on the other hand, who gives a shit what their mother has to say, whether she’s a Baptist minister or a recovered junkie? Teenagers don’t operate on useful information from adults. No one’s more aware of that than I am.

What’s good about me is that everyone, including my own children, knows that they can pretty much tell me anything. I have an obvious complete lack of high moral ground. Part of the idea behind my advice column, I think, is that I’ve always been willing to set the low bar. I mean, I’ve f---ed up so bad—you are fine! ■

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la ne

From mobs to monuments: Behind the rituals that define life in Baltimore On November 10, 2007, shortly after the 119th annual high school football match between Baltimore City College and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, twenty-two students, all young women, were arrested for fighting. One required medical treatment. Another was charged with second-degree assault.

Three weeks later I delivered the keynote address during the annual ring ceremony at my alma mater, City College. As almost any City graduate can explain, our school has a long and unique history. Founded in 1839, it is the third-oldest public high school in the country, and many take City and its role in Baltimore’s civic life extremely seriously. The last time I’d visited the school, in September 2006, I noticed a sign propped up on an easel near the main entrance. It read, “Welcome to the public education landmark Baltimore City College, Castle on the Hill, sheltering civilization from the vandals since 1928.

Baltimore City College Alumni Association. Founded 1866.” (The school’s present building dates to 1928.)

The sign offered a glimpse of the rather extreme version of the loyalty invested in City alum. This self-image of the school as an institution above the fray is one that our graduates and students hold dear. It’s why so many of us publicize our institutional affiliation by wearing the official school ring, a notso-subtle chunk of ten-karat gold featuring a miniaturized version of our collegiate Gothic castle set atop a thick slab of onyx. (My own ring, a size 11, weighs six-tenths of an ounce.) Entering freshmen do not become eligible to purchase the ring until their junior year, so the November ceremony that officially recognizes their right to wear the ring is one of the most eagerly awaited events of their high school careers.

At least that’s how I remembered it. This year’s ceremony was a less solemn affair. The program, scheduled for 1:30 p.m., began late as the juniors, dressed in black and white, trickled into the half-full auditorium, waving and shouting to each other across the room. The sophomores, who’d been forced to provide an audience and fill the remaining seats, did the same. Parents and other family members are encouraged to attend, but I don’t recall seeing more than a few knots of adults in the seats. Early on, Donna Givens, the school’s head guidance counselor, warned the students that there was to be no “singing along or church clapping” during the program, but one woman, a guest, burst into dancing and shouting anyway. She received a standing ovation.

It was almost 2 p.m. before the room was quiet enough for Givens to explain the purpose of this rite of passage. “Baltimore City College,” she said, “has a number of great traditions ... Today we acknowledge for all time and perpetuity that you are no longer the children who entered ninth grade. You are, after the conclusion of this ceremony, upperclassmen.”

The class president, John David Merrill, delivered a defiant opening address in which he acknowledged the class of 2009’s brash reputation. (Each class gives itself a nickname: Theirs is “The Divine O-Nine.”) My speech about the responsibility that comes with daring to wear such a conspicuous ring received,

Memory box: A shrine to the city’s saints, sinners, and sacred icons, created by South Baltimore artist J. Kelly Lane.

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Rite of spring: The annual Mount Vernon Flower Mart, seen here in 1927, has been a reliable fixture of midtown life since 1911.

at best, a mixed reaction. The highlight of the afternoon, when one-by-one each student grasped his or her neighbor’s hand and rotated the ring one full turn counterclockwise—toward the pinky—happened hurriedly and with a great deal of confusion. A large part of the crowd had been noticeably restless throughout the ceremony, and many headed noisily for the exit while Principal Timothy Dawson was only midway through his closing remarks.

Not long afterward, it occurred to me that two of my alma mater’s defining rituals, the City-Poly game and the ring ceremony, were in danger. If the “vandals” that the BCC Alumni Association once feared had indeed infiltrated their citadel of civilization—what many consider one of the few gems in a troubled public education system—what would become of the rest of Baltimore? The rites and ceremonies that bind City students to each other are mirrored in the multitude of personal and institutional rituals that are part of the city’s homegrown culture. How long, and for what reason, should they endure?

Inherent in the language of that not-sowelcoming alumni association sign is a fundamental truth: Baltimoreans have often needed protection, often from themselves. Our rituals, when they work well, serve as outlets for the collective action that has defined our civic life, lending meaning to daily routines and—sometimes—keeping our violent nature in check.

More recently, after trombonist Glen David Andrews was arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the peace during the jazz funeral he performed to memorialize his cousin, Spitzer wrote that the processions, “with their roots in West Africa, medieval Europe and Christian America, pre-date our city’s police department and certainly the permits the police want marchers to have ... In a city where serious crime often goes unprosecuted and unpunished, jazz funerals make the streets momentarily sacred and safer.”

Spitzer’s views lend a greater sense of significance to Baltimore’s native rituals, from communal public events such as the Flower Mart, the city’s annual rite of spring in Mount Vernon Square, to such eccentric personal observances as the annual appearance of the Poe Toaster, the shrouded and still-anonymous figure who has brought three roses and a bottle of cognac to the grave of Edgar Allen Poe on the author’s birthday every year since 1949.

(He—or she—is due to strike again this month, on January 19.) Such traditions are more than quaint regional customs—they are critical ingredients in the city’s sense of identity.

Like New Orleans, Baltimore has a strong Catholic tradition, and the religious dynamics that set the stage for Baltimore’s particular brand of street theater can be found in Maryland’s earliest years. In 1649 the leaders of the young British colony passed the Toleration Act, guaranteeing religious freedom for anyone who professed a faith in God, regardless of denomination. Though it only protected Christians, the act was a forerunner for the expanded religious freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It was also an extremely pragmatic law: Maryland’s Catholic founders were a minority that feared persecution during a wave of Protestant immigration.

Their strategy was a huge success. In 1808 Baltimore became the home of the first Catholic archbishop in the United States, and thirteen years later, the site of the Baltimore Basilica, America’s first cathedral. By the time Archbishop John Carroll’s eighth successor, James Cardinal Gibbons, died in 1921, the head of the archdiocese of Baltimore was the single most powerful proponent of a particularly American brand of Catholicism, governing from a city full of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Quakers, Jews, and a number of secret societies, each marked by its own beliefs and rituals.

Cardinal Gibbons’ four-day-long funeral demonstrates the power of the role he inhabited: The memorial observance may have been the longest and largest in the city’s history. In the space of twelve hours, 36,000 people streamed past the entrance to the Basilica, where his body lay in state. According to the New York Times, which covered the event in nine separate dispatches, on March 31 at 10 a.m., as the final rites began, most traffic in the city stopped while residents throughout the state observed a minute of silence.

Thirty years later, in the 1951 book The Amiable Baltimoreans, former Baltimore Sun editor Francis F. Beirne noted the enduring strength of the city’s religious institutions.

“In modern Baltimore, churches of whatever denomination are as much a part of every neighborhood as the drugstore, the market and the filling station,” he wrote. But other Sunday rituals were beginning to take root: “Only in recent years has the strict religious observance of Sunday been relieved by the movies and professional football and baseball games.”

The years Beirne mentions coincide perfectly with the 1950 opening of Memorial Stadium, home of the two professional franchises that Baltimore landed in the 1950s, the Orioles and the Colts. The building dubbed “The World’s Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum” was like a larger, rowdier, more ecumenical cathedral, one that spawned a constellation of rituals, from the horse that galloped around the field after Colts touchdowns to the Oriole fan habit of stretching out the final “Oh!” in the national anthem. The stadium, and its two modern downtown replacements, also created a host of sainted figures: Cal Ripken, the Iron Man whose perfect attendance record became a point of civic pride, and Johnny Unitas, the Hall of Fame quarterback whose statue

The stadium was like a rowdier, more ecumenical cathedral, one that spawned a constellation of rituals and sainted figures.

By way of illustration, it may be useful to look at New Orleans, another old waterfront city with deep-seated community culture and a persistent homicide problem. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, residents like University of New Orleans anthropologist and folklorist Nick Spitzer are fighting hard to ensure that the traditions that are organic to the area—such as the neighborhood jazz funerals and second-line parades that enliven the streets of the hard-hit Ninth Ward—are allowed to flourish again as part of the city’s recovery. “Without these expressions and the individuals and intact neighborhoods central to their realization,” Spitzer argued in a 2006 presentation at Emory University, “it would be difficult for the city to find cultural continuity essential not only to family and community life but to the future of the economy.”

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United we stand: On the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore, 6,500 local schoolchildren assembled into a vast “human flag” during Defender’s Day observances at Fort McHenry.

now stands outside M&T Bank Stadium. As with the statue of St. Peter in the Vatican, the faithful rub his foot as they file in.

As one watches the orchestrated pandemonium of a football crowd, it’s interesting to note that there was a time when even rioting mobs had rules, rules which, one historian argues, were first broken in Baltimore. In his 1980 paper “The Baltimore Riots of 1812 and the Breakdown of the Anglo-American Mob Tradition,” University of Oklahoma historian Paul Gilje examines the riots that swept the city during the tense summer of 1812 (events that anticipated one of the city’s more colorful monikers, “Mobtown”). “Telescoped into a month and a half of rioting was a range of activity revealing the breakdown of the AngloAmerican mob tradition,” he writes. “This tradition allowed for a certain amount of limited popular disorder. The tumultuous crowd was viewed as a ‘quasi-legitimate’ or ‘extra-institutional’ part of the political system and was to be tolerated in certain situations as long as its action was circumscribed to an immediate goal with a minimum of violence to persons and property.” Quite often the roles and routines of the traditional riot were understood so well and so implicitly that, after the community had been granted its opportunity to vent, a single magistrate, sometimes unaccompanied and unarmed, could read the Riot Act and disperse the crowd.

But the summer of 1812 was different. What started as a protest against a publisher critical of the war with Britain exploded as the mob, possibly as large as one thousand people at times, burned buildings, stormed a jail, and beat newspaper editor James M. Lingan to death. For the first time, the divided loyalties of this port city poised between North and South meant the authorities, in attempting to quell the violence, could not address any single audience. As Gilje concludes, “Rioting ... became a major social problem by the Jacksonian era and was an important impetus behind the formation of urban police forces.”

Of course, only two years later, however, the hawkish Baltimore citizenry channeled their energies into helping defeat the most powerful navy in the world. On September 12, 1814, the British attacked the city with thousands of ground troops and a twenty-five-hour naval bombardment of Fort McHenry. Driven back by bad planning, bad weather, and unexpectedly fierce guerrilla resistance, the assault failed. And, in typical fashion, Baltimore wasted little time enshrining the event in civic memory. In 1815, on the first anniversary of the event, Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead, the commander at Fort McHenry, laid the cornerstone of the Battle Monument on Calvert Street, commemorating the victory.

The construction of commemorative sites became such a fixture of city life—Baltimore also erected the first memorial to George Washington—that a visiting John Quincy Adams coined the nickname “The Monumental City” in 1827. In 1908 the General Assembly of Maryland designated September 12—Defender’s Day—a state holiday.

Defender’s Day observances have steadily declined in significance of late—it is a ritual that appears to be dying out, despite the fervent efforts of dedicated War of 1812 re-enactors. State workers haven’t had the day off on September 12 since 1996. If such an epochal event in city history could fade from public memory, it isn’t hard to imagine that the Flower Mart and even my beloved City-Poly game could someday go the way of those forgotten soldiers. And if so, would something irretrievable be lost in the process?

As a city, Baltimoreans have always shown a talent for public demonstration, for conducting our collective business in the streets. Religious observances, memorials, and sports may have pacified our worst instincts for more than 200 years, but, as the melee at the most recent City-Poly football game proves, they haven’t always been enough. We are the Vandals that we fear, and we may need new rituals to keep us from becoming just another mob. ■

It isn’t hard to imagine that the Flower Mart and even my beloved City-Poly football game could someday go the way of those forgotten soldiers.

—Lionel Foster is Urbanite’s editorial assistant. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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A New Leaf B y L a l ita N o r on h a PH O T O G RA P HY BY A L AN GIL BE RT

It’s rare, it’s critically endangered, and it blooms only one day a year. What better symbol for a bittersweet anniversary?

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n a Sunday evening in June 1973, the skies broke open above St. Peter’s Church in Bombay, India, declaring the start of the monsoon season. Black umbrellas formed a tent over my head as I stepped out of the car, the pleats of my white-and-silver sari bunched in my hand. At the altar, my bridegroom from Baltimore waited.

Tucked in the best man’s pocket was a copy of our vows, should we need prompting. But with the rolling thunder, the splatter of rain, the honking of rickshaws, the churn of ceiling fans, and the sweet voices of my family echoing in the half-empty church, we barely heard ourselves speak.

We met in graduate school in St. Louis. The first time I noticed him, he was sprawled diagonally across from me in class, half-listening to the drone of our biochemistry professor. He wore a beard and hair not quite long enough for a ponytail. We began studying together in the library. I lived two bus rides away in the home of an American family with four young children, where, in exchange for room and board, I cleaned the kitchen and gave up most of my weekends. It seemed only natural that I would fall in love with a yellow Volkswagen Beetle that was handsomely equipped with a chauffeur.

That June in 1972, at the close of the semester, he transferred back to his hometown of Baltimore to pursue a medical degree, and I remained in St. Louis to complete my doctorate in microbiology. One Saturday in late August he returned. That crisp afternoon, we drove to Babler State Park, a rich forest of tall white oaks, walnut trees, and sugar maples nestled in west St. Louis.

We walked under a lush canopy of bright yellow and orange trees and, as twilight fell, climbed up an embankment overlooking the stream in which we’d set Cokes to chill. We leaned against a tree listening to the gurgling stream, the silky rustle of wind in the trees and the evening songs of the birds. Beyond that, there was only the sweetness of silence. It was then that he reached into his pocket and pulled out my engagement ring.

O

ur marriage bloomed for thirty-two years before it folded. Two years after our divorce, on what would have been my thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, I cast about for something extraordinary to do. I could not let the day pass in mundane obscurity. So, on this Sunday afternoon, I set forth on a wildflower hike at Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area in Baltimore County. Once home to a mine supplying much of the world’s

Cl assi fi cati on K i ngdom: Pl antae Di vi si on : Magnoli oph yta Cl ass: Magnoli opsi da chromium, Soldiers Delight is now a refuge for more than thirty-nine species of rare plants, as well as uncommon insects, rocks, and minerals.

It is the largest serpentine barren (from the Latin serpentinus, meaning serpent rock) in the state, some two thousand geologically unique acres.

An extremely rare plant—Agalinis acuta, commonly called the sandplain gerardia, grew in the barrens. I’d seen pictures of this humble little annual, some five to fifteen inches tall, with its beautiful pink cone-shaped flowers, barely a halfinch long, and its long, thin green leaves growing sparsely on pale green stems. Tiny colonies of this species exist only in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and in Soldiers Delight. It’s been on Maryland’s list of Threatened and Endangered Species since 1987. Each plant blooms for merely one day between the months of August and September.

On this, my wedding anniversary, only one solitary gentleman and I showed up for the hike.

Our sprightly 78-year-old guide, Emily Durkee, tapped her sturdy staff on the iron-speckled serpentine rocks, and we fell in behind her along the gentle slopes of Serpentine Trail. We paused often to see pixie-cup lichens and reindeer lichens, already-bloomed pussy toes, and sassafras that, as Emily said, looked like a mitten. Lyre-leaved rock cress, hair cap mosses, and serpentine chickweed hugged the trails. Yellow sun drops and Deptford pinks wove flowery patchwork quilts.

The area’s name, I learned, may have come from patrolling soldiers in the early 1700s, who were said to be delighted by the sparse terrain because it provided no protective underbrush for hostile Indians. Others claim that Civil War soldiers liked camping there because local ladies brought them cake. What is certain is that Berry Hill in Soldiers Delight, the site of the first hanging in Maryland, is named for John Berry, who in 1751 was executed for murder on the highest point near the scene of his crime.

Despite a Recovery Plan initiated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1988 and the restoration efforts of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, attempts to save the fragile environment of Soldiers Delight have been thwarted, ironically, by its own popularity: Visitors have picked or trampled upon endangered wildflowers to the extent that conservationists now downplay their very existence. Also to blame are urbanization of the Eastern Seaboard and the rampant growth of invasive shrubs and trees. Left to grow unchecked, Virginia pines, for example,

Or der : L ami ales Fami ly: Scr oph ul ar i aceae G enus: Ag al inis Speci es: Acuta

form a stifling, sun-blocking canopy over the tender plants beneath. At Soldiers Delight, managers have brought back periodic low-intensity burnings to simulate natural conditions. On our walk we saw charred areas of carefully marked ground; I could imagine the crawl of fiery red waves where a few blackened tree stumps still stood.

We didn’t find any sandplain gerardia. Its absence was conspicuous, and although I hadn’t expected to see the plant in bloom, I wanted a glimpse of the promise of things to come.

“It’s just been so dry,” Emily said, sensing disappointment. I grew wistful as our walk ended.

Still, I consoled myself, I’d conversed with a stranger, peered into the mouth of a old chromium mine, and listened to Emily’s girl-like excitement each time we found a patch of modest moss or some unassuming lichen. The noon sun was pouring down as I drove home. It occurred to me that despite our best efforts, in time, much of life— youth, health, love, even memory—is endangered by outside forces for which we have no names, or at best, inadequate ones.

W me on class trips with his college students.

hen I was growing up in India, my father took

A professor of botany, he loved the natural world, and I inherited that trait and chose this subject as my university major. Perhaps that’s why, in difficult moments in my life, I tend to seek solace in the company of green things.

Late one winter evening in 1979, I got into my car and drove off. Tears lurked around the corner of my eyes. I can’t even recall what triggered this meltdown: I was a new mother and a full-time research scientist; my husband worked long hours; my parents from India were living with us, and it was a few days before our son’s first Christmas. I ended up at Garlands Garden Center in Catonsville. Just a ten minute drive from my home, it had evolved from a pile of brick and concrete blocks into a haven for plants. That night, the garden center was ablaze. Christmas trees laden with tinsel and lights, baskets dripping with blooming Christmas cacti, and pots of red, pink, and cream Poinsettia filled every corner. I turned away from the festivity and walked out into the rear parking lot. A few balsam firs and Scotch pines stood along the fence. I looked up at the sky; it felt like impending snow. Turning, I walked back inside when all of a sudden there they were—my father and my husband, their eyes sweeping the aisles; my mother carw w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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rying my bundled-up son. My heart turned cartwheels inside its cage.

Back home my mother took me to task.

“What happened? You didn’t tell anyone you were going out?”

I shook my head, no.

“Why? I was worried.”

But my husband hadn’t worried. He’d gathered up the family and driven straight to the garden center. When I asked him how he knew, he said, “I just did.”

T

he summer passed, and still I was haunted by the memory of my little frugal flower at Soldiers Delight, and by a feeling that something important had been left undone. So on a Sunday in September, I joined Emily for the second wildflower hike of the season. This time there were nine of us, including photographer Alan Gilbert and his wife, Nancy. Emily had called me the day before our hike to assure me she’d seen a field of pink.

After starting along Serpentine Trail, we veered away on a route different from the one I’d taken in June. An hour into the walk, however, I was still trudging in the heat. No sign of the elusive sandplain gerardia. Grateful for patches of shade, we walked in twos or threes, pausing to photograph moss or chickweed, adjust hats or backpacks, refer to wildflower guides, or just tilt back our heads for long, cool drinks. Several spe-

cies of grasses waved in the occasional breeze. Up ahead, Alan, Nancy, and a little posse of hikers climbed a hill. I fell in line with a guy in an orange hat. As we moved up onto wide, flat terrain, Emily shaded her eyes with her palm, looking left and right. “I must have missed a turn,” she said. “I thought they were here.”

My heart sank; it was as if we were on a tour of Northern India and this little bell-shaped flower was the Taj Mahal. “You mean we won’t see any sandplains?” I asked.

“There’s a stream; we’ll find some there.”

Promises, promises.

Stubbornly, my mind’s eye clung to an image of rolling acres of pink fields. But then we reached the stream, and, finally, there they were: Sprays of blushing cotton-candy pinks and regal purples cascaded down the embankment—not as many as in my imagination, but real. A few sandplain blooms, severed from their stems, floated on the water. Balancing on flattened stones, I tiptoed a few feet up and down the stream, picking up the fallen floating flowers. In my palm, they were soft and tender, more delicate than any picture I’d seen.

Alan crouched to photograph the flowers, his knees and shins buried in damp earth. I turned to Nancy. “Do you always go with him?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t, most often. But today is our twenty-third wedding anniversary. And it’s the only way we could spend time together.”

I felt something fold, and something open, within me. I looked around. There was life everywhere here—among the mosses, lichens, wildflowers, and insects, within the thirsty streams and hard chromite rocks and charred, burnt clearings, and in the skies above us. And there was love, too, just as there was love on the wet Sunday in Bombay that had ushered in an extraordinary blossoming of my family. I lingered by the stream, counting sandplain blooms.

This ancient annual preceded man on this Earth by an incomprehensible span of time—some fifty to a hundred million years. It has persevered against incredible odds, living in tiny pockets of barren soil, opening its blooms for a single day in late summer so that its few remaining natural pollinators can help it reseed for another year. Time, it seems, is inconsequential, almost peripheral, to this little plant’s sweet existence on Earth.

As temperatures drop this winter, sandplain will fold into the landscape again. How blessed we’d be if, like sandplain gerardia, we too might live in grace for one or as many seasons as we are given.

Reluctantly, I walked away from the stream, hoping I would return, perhaps next year. ■ —Lalita Noronha’s short story collection, Where Monsoons Cry, was published in 2004. She is a science teacher and the science department chair at St. Paul’s School for Girls.

Sponsored by The Dresher Center for the Humanities, The Friends of the Library & Gallery, and The Ivy Bookshop

Following the debut of his award-winning novel, The Death of Vishnu, UMBC math professor and celebrated novelist Manil Suri will read from his mesmerizing new work about modern India, The Age of Shiva.

Photo by Jose Villarrubia

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February 5, 7 – 9 p.m.

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compost in peace An eco-friendly, personal approach to death b y S h aro n T re g as k is illustratio n b y w arre n L i n n

Under leaden mid-October skies, 150 mourners trek into a verdant hollow in upstate New York, sheltered by evergreens and a host of maples in their fall finery. No shiny black hearse idles nearby.

No wreath of hothouse flowers lends its sickly sweet scent. No regiment of marble monuments marches across this green. Even so, there’s no mistaking what’s to come—a squat mound of earth rises beside a freshly dug grave.

A friend of the departed offers a eulogy; a pastor reads a psalm and sends up a prayer. The wind rises, but the rain holds off. Then, as an Algerian lullaby plays from a boombox, eight men step forward. Each takes the end of one of four stout grapevines that snake beneath the unfinished wood casket, etched with fingers raised in a peace sign and the words, “beloved son, brother, uncle.” Slowly, they lower the box into the ground. Before they leave, the mourners each drop a spruce bough atop the coffin.

Welcome to the latest frontier of the green movement, a light-on-theland approach to disposing of our last remains. Green deathcare, which has its roots in Europe, is relatively new to the United States. It promises to catch on, however, as people seek to return to a more simple, personal, and ecofriendly approach to laying loved ones to rest.

The movement is most visible in the green cemeteries that are beginning to pop up nationwide. Most of these facilities ban embalming fluids and the concrete vaults that keep the ground above graves from settling. Some ban headstones altogether; others allow only those made of local stone, set level with the ground. Few permit metal caskets, and some bar even wood coffins if they’ve been joined with nails or toxic glues.

Consider the chemicals that keep the turf blanketing most cemeteries preternaturally perfect—herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers—and the fossil fuel burned trimming all that grass. But the seriously scary stuff lurks below ground. For every ten acres, the soil under your average cemetery boasts enough formalin (a standard embalming ingredient and known carcinogen) to fill a small swimming pool, according to author Mark Harris, whose book Grave Matters documents the modern funeral industry and the natural burial movement. “Enough metal is diverted into coffins and burial vaults in the U.S. each year to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge,” he says, “and enough concrete is diverted to build a two-lane highway running from New York to Detroit.”

Green cemeteries have another purpose: slowing the spread of sprawl through conservation easements and deed restrictions. The 100-acre Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve in upstate New York, the site of that spruce-adorned October burial, links two 4,000-acre nature preserves. South Carolina’s Ramsey Creek Memorial Nature Preserve, the nation’s first green cemetery, has protected seventy acres since it opened in 1998. And at the soon-to-open Honey Creek Woodlands near Atlanta, a Trappist monastery aims to protect its grounds by selling burial plots and coffins crafted by the monks from locally harvested wood. The proceeds will also cover the aging monks’ health care costs.

Increasingly, even conventional cemeteries are getting hip to the trend.

Many have set aside a back corner where concrete vaults aren’t required. In most states, including Maryland, embalming fluids are optional, and while each funeral home sets its own policies, many funeral directors will skip that step if asked.

The Historic Congressional Cemetery in Southeast Washington, D.C., has initiated low-impact grounds maintenance, with Bay-friendly native shrubs and flowers, and a tree-planting campaign. The thirty-two-acre cemetery is the largest privately held green space on the Anacostia River

watershed, critical for migrating birds, according to volunteer board member Linda Harper, the executive director of Cultural Tourism, D.C. Turns out there’s a financial incentive, too: “We can go after historic preservation money all day long,” says Harper, “but where there’s significant new fundraising dollars is on the green side.” Last year, the cemetery won a grant to teach local schoolchildren about the watershed, and the board is investigating collaborations with birdwatchers and the local butterfly society.

But for some folks, burial in any form just doesn’t fit the bill. A solid majority of the nation’s seventy-five million baby boomers plan to be cremated instead. Greensprings discourages cremation. “You have to burn a body at 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours,” says Greensprings Ecological Insight Committee member Andy Hillman, “so you create a carbon debt at the point in your life where you really can’t pay it back.” And for those with old dental fillings, cremation looses another genie from the bottle in the form of volatized mercury, a neurotoxin. Even so, Greensprings has set aside a place for cremains, nestled among a stand of Norway Spruce whose roots prevent digging grave-sized holes.

Coastal enterprises in Florida, Georgia, and California have sprung up to accommodate the boomers’ eco-sensibilities by working cremains into artificial coral reefs. Baltimore paralegal Carol Fox had her son’s ashes mixed into a concrete reef placed off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. As a teen, Jamie had said he wanted to be buried at sea. He was a senior at Salisbury University when he drowned near the family’s vacation home. “The reef will last five hundred years, and there will always be something in the ocean for him, in his memory,” says Fox, who hopes eventually to dive near the reef.

Meanwhile, green cemeteries have developed the same issues that have afflicted organic farming and green building. “What’s to stop a green cemetery today from looking totally different thirty years from now?” asks Joe Sehee, executive director of the nonprofit Green Burial Council. In response to such concerns, Sehee’s group now certifies green cemeteries, much the same way that the Green Building Council provides LEED certification for buildings. “Certification and standards distinguish you from those who may not be doing it with the same level of transparency and accountability,” he says.

Ultimately, however, the movement’s appeal extends beyond saving the planet. Nationwide, funerals cost an average of $7,000, not including the cemetery plot. At Greensprings, a family could spend less than $1,000, including the $500 plot fee. That savings suggests a deeper truth, says author Mark Harris: “Green burial has been seen as an environmental phenomenon, but in the end, it’s about simplicity, a return to tradition.” For burials at Greensprings, families have washed their dead, stitched ribbons to shrouds, built coffins, collected the flowers, even helped dig and fill graves.

That intimacy with death may be the most compelling element of green burial—a raw honesty that helps families and loved ones face the reality of their loss. “Going through the motions of the post-death activity by taking care of the person’s body, having a graveside service, helps a great deal,” says third-generation funeral home director Bob Prout, who powers his New Jersey operation with solar panels and takes his cues from the Leave No Trace tradition of outdoor aficionados. “The green burial movement comes back to some of those stark realities. You’re stripping away the trappings and returning to some of the basics, celebrating that particular life.” n —Sharon Tregaskis covered the Solar Decathlon in the December Urbanite. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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dust to dust

Why do so many of us want to go up in smoke?

B y R ic h ard O ’ M ara illustratio n b y w arre n

li n n

Anatole France published a satirical novel in 1908

it even managed to dust a few couples sunning on the pebble beach. about a myopic old priest who encounters a flock of penguins, mistakes “I had my father in my hair!” Michele screamed quietly, shivering before them for a tribe of very little people, and baptizes them, turning them into my desk as she related her experience. “We finally got the rest of him into the Christians. Soon he comes to realize his flock is running around naked, unwaves off the end of the pier.”

Christian-like, so he covers one of the females with a skirt. Suddenly she is of Of course, cremation doesn’t always lead to this sort of macabre disintense interest to all the male penguins; before long every female penguin in comfort. The cremated remains of a well-known Baltimore attorney of my sight is wearing a little piece of cloth over her lower parts. acquaintance had a more interesting, if unexpected, journey. Freddy D. (not That’s fashion, the frivolous but puissant cousin of ritual. his real name) died of a heart attack some years back only hours after catchThe book? Penguin Island. The author? French, wouldn’t you know. ing a big fish.

Fashion’s influences are universal: They reveal themselves in new designs He had wanted to be buried in a box “with a big granite tombstone” of clothing, automobiles, gadgets like BlackBerrys, quilted toilet paper, water above, and said as much on various occasions. But before the funeral, while purchased and carried about in small bottles. Fashion also manipulates beFreddy D. lay in state, so to speak, Mrs. Freddy D. (not her real name either) havior, in the ceremonies of life—and also of death. gathered her many children around her and proposed to them a different fate The desire to go out with panache is only human, and it for their father’s remains: cremation. is driven in part by the same impulse a sluttish penguin might They all agreed. have for a shorter skirt: to be current, to be stylish. Alternative “It was a family decision,” she said. “I was mad at him for “I had my father in choices are being made these days by people preparing perleaving, and I wanted to get back at him.” sonal statements for their departures, choices at odds with the This, I thought, was uttered with tongue in cheek: Mrs. my hair!” Michele old body-in-the-box-and-box-in-the-ground routine. One such Freddy D. loved her husband deeply and felt that what rescreamed quietly, option on the rise is cremation, which, if not yet a fad, might mained of him deserved something better than bedding down be edging close. with worms. So, they divided Freddy D.’s remains, many times, shivering before my Of course, there is nothing new about cremation. Most almost like the loaves and fishes, and set out for those places desk as she related her he always liked and frequently visited, like New York City.

Christian sects no longer oppose it. It is traditional among Vikings, Hindus, Buddhists, if not penguins. Many cultures They threw his ashes from the Statue of Liberty (Freddy experience. between here and the antipodes encourage it. Modern cremaD. was patriotic). They secretly spread him around in the pottionists say that going out in a blaze of glory is the green thing ted plants in Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel (Freddy D. was an to do, the next best thing on fashion’s horizon. (See “Compost intellectual, loved the New Yorker and the Round Table gein Peace,” p. 61.) niuses associated with that magazine who frequently assembled there). They At least the Cremation Association of North America hopes so. This is surreptitiously slipped him into an obscure cranny at Central Park’s Tavern an organization that advocates for the “safe and hygienic” way of passing on the Green (Freddy D. was a gourmand), where they were certain he would on. CANA records the growth through the years of the numbers choosing remain undiscovered forever. the fiery exit after life. During the year the organization was founded, 1913, Freddy D. also ranged farther afield: They planted part of him beneath less than 15 percent of the dying cohort within the population of the United a tree in Ocean City and returned him to the Sinepuxent Inlet, where he had States went up in smoke, so to speak. By the year 2005, more than 32 percent caught his final fish. They even flew with him to New Mexico and cast him did, and if things keep going the way they are now, CANA predicts, about 50 out over the Gorge River from a bridge in Taos he always feared crossing. And percent will by 2025. then part of him was floated out over the lights of nighttime Santa Fe, and on So what’s the appeal? It’s cheaper, it has a whiff of the exotic about it, and to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. those who engage in this ritual remain a minority in this country. That is, they Freddy D. has even been deposited on the Great Wall of China. stand on the cutting edge; they are chic, they are fashionable. At least for now.

With all that, there was still plenty of Freddy D. left to go around: If he My first experience of the process was secondary. It occurred when I was was anything, he was a man of many particles. working in London as the Baltimore Sun’s correspondent there, back when “Of course I still keep some of him in an urn at home,” said Mrs. Freddy there was such a post on our local paper. I had a congenial secretary named D. “So does every one of his [five] children. And he got his wish, too: Part of Michele who came to work one day with a long face and told me her father him is buried in Long Green Cemetery, though without a granite tombstone.” had died and was cremated. After the funeral service she asked for a few days Long pause. “One day I’m going to get him one of those.” off: Seems the deceased, who loved boats and salt water, requested his ashes Before saying goodbye to the widow, there was something I had to know. be chucked into the sea.

“So where did you deposit your spouse in the Tavern on the Green?”

Determined to carry out his last wish, Michele and her sister headed “That’s a secret,” she said, then held her silence for a while. But a secret down to England’s famous beach resort at Brighton, bearing the urn containgrows heavier and heavier the longer it is held, until it is finally too heavy to ing the remnants of their parent, about ten pounds of ash, dust, and more carry any more. lumpy remains. They marched fifty yards out on Brighton’s steel pier and ofIn a very low voice, she said, “He’s in the grand piano.” ■ fered him to the wind and the sea.

—Richard O’Mara’s newsroom satire “The Front Page” appeared in the But the elements were unreceptive that day: The wind seized the ashes beAugust issue. fore they could settle on the water below and returned them to the two sisters; w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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urbanite january 08

fiction

The Amateur Spy Chapter 13

By

D a n

I ll u s t r a t io n

Author and journalist Dan Fesperman lives in Baltimore with his wife, Sun reporter Liz Bowie, and their two children. Over his twenty-two-year career in journalism, Fesperman held the position of general assignment and projects reporter, feature writer, and Berlin bureau chief, among other posts, at the Sun before retiring in March 2007. His travels for the newspaper allowed him to visit thirty countries, including Jordan, Israel, and Eastern Europe.

Fesperman’s first novel, Lie in the Dark, was inspired by a Sun assignment that sent him to Sarajevo in 1994. His other novels include The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, which won the 2003 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for contemporary thriller writing, and The Prisoner of Guantánamo, recipient of the International Association of Crime Writer’s 2006 Dashiell Hammett Award.

His eagerly awaited fifth novel, The Amateur Spy, will be released March 4; it unfolds within the maelstrom of the current Middle East conflict.

Burned out by years of humanitarian aid work, Freeman and Mila Lockhart retreat to a tranquil Greek island. But on the first night of their new life, they are surprised by three intruders who seem to know everything about Freeman—including a terrible secret he has kept from Mila, which they use to recruit him to spy on one of his old Palestinian friends.

In the following excerpt, set in Jordan, Freeman tries on his new persona as amateur spy, but his naive enthusiasm proves to be short-lived, and he soon finds himself in over his head.

—Susan McCallum-Smith

by

F espe r ma n Okan

A r abaciogl u

I awakened with a sense of excitement. Was this the allure of spying, then, this sense of starring on your own private stage before an audience of shadows? Fresh from a shower and a quick shave, I bounded down the stairway.

The gloom of the hotel dining room wouldn’t do this morning, so I headed for Prince Zahran Street and the pricey but sunlit Hotel InterContinental, where one could unroll a starched linen napkin and order eggs, bacon, and Turkish coffee.

I had stayed there during the Gulf War, when it was a hub for media and aid workers. In those days the American embassy was right across the street. Some sort of loud demonstration had almost always been in progress then, usually a small but vocal crowd chanting for Saddam. If you went back farther, to the chaos of 1970 that Sami had talked about, the InterCon had been strafed by gunfire.

For my purposes, its several bars and restaurants offered a secular refuge during Ramadan, and the breakfast further fueled my upbeat mood. I finished with two hours still to kill before meeting the rental agent, so I set out for downtown.

Few people were out this early, due to the altered rhythms imposed by the holiday. As a result, even the merchants seemed behind schedule. Fruit vendors were still rolling their carts into place. A luggage merchant was setting up an old treadle-powered sewing machine on the sidewalk in front of his shop. The center of the action was the checkerboard marble plaza outside the Husseini Mosque, at the end of King Faysal Street. Lottery salesmen already lay in wait, continued on page 86 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

65

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courtesy of traceArchitects

photo by Ja

Double Feature

Can a different kind of rowhouse build a different kind of neighborhood?

B Y M AT E D E L S O N

There was a time not so long ago—let’s say post-William Donald Schaefer and pre-Ravens, for argument’s sake—when telling someone you were considering buying a home in the blocks above Patterson Park would have prompted some raised eyebrows and perhaps words of concern. Something like, “So ... have you filed a will?”

The park and its immediate environs had become a horrible space to be. Between the hookers and the heroin, the neglect was palpable; the eroding pagoda served as a sixty-foothigh symbol of the dry rot infesting many of the neighborhood’s homes. Slumlords had taken over the area and plywood sheets replaced front doors. This was stage-III urban cancer, threatening to become terminal.

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urbanite january 08

That Patterson Park has gone on to thrive instead of die in the ensuing years is really a tale of reinventing space, of making usable—heck, desirable—that which was on the verge of being discarded. Two formidable nonprofits sprang up and performed an extreme makeover on the neighborhood and the park. Their targets were different but obviously synergistic: The Friends of Patterson Park, founded in 1999, raised millions of dollars and spent more than 40,000 volunteer hours improving the park’s 155 acres and its infrastructure. The Patterson Park Community Development Corporation (PPCDC), which started in 1996, swooped in with a plan to purchase derelict properties and create the types of rowhouses young urbanites would appreciate and buy.

Simply put, these potential owners didn’t want their parent’s rowhouse, nor did they want some cookie-cutter pre-fab unit that looked like it dropped from space. They sought the best of both worlds: historic brickwork on the outside, modern floor plan on the inside.

This was information the PPCDC learned both osmotically—after rehabbing almost four hundred homes, the corporation certainly understood the market—and also through focus groups in which couples could make their housing preferences known, with their ideas reflected in future architectural designs.

The project at 25 North Port Street represents the culmination of that design evolution.

Right now, the properties are in many ways a reminder of what Patterson Park was at the height

space

of its urban malaise: two burnt-out, boarded-up shells on an alley street that dead-ends at the north end of the park. What these shells will become can be seen by glancing toward the park,

But there’s a deeper value in the doublewide model: Creating houses that offer the living space of a suburban townhouse but conform to the neighboring homes onspacea historic working-class crawl block might offer hope for the city’s forbidding acres of vacant housing stock. elec pnl.

A/C

1 car parking w/ private yard

deck

kitchen patio

sump pump

D

powder room

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where a half-dozen adjacent homes have been flexroom combined into impressive 2,000-plus-squareutility/storage foot single units dubbed “doublewides.”

For a developer solely interested in making money, doublewides can be hard on the bottom line: More profit could be extracted from the two properties if they were developed and sold separately. PPCDC’s goals are different, however. clubroom bathstyles 3 It is interested in home that will keep residents in the neighborhood even as their families grow. To get this kind of square-footage in a normal single-family city rowhouse—the sort of open living space that would keep a family from looking to Lutherville after the second baby— one would otherwise have to expand upwards.

“Typically, in rowhome construction, to obtain 2,200 to 2,500 square feet in a space only sixteen feet wide, you would need four floors,” says Eric Basement Plan 1 Jones, PPCDC’s sales and marketing manager.

SD1“Living Scale: 1/8" =and 1'-0"bedrooms become so far spaces apart that you can feel the disconnect. That won’t be the case here.”

PPCDC’s other doublewides on the block were gut rehabs, but the fire damage sustained at 25 North Port will require the razing of both structures. That presented architect Todd Connelly of traceArchitects, a firm made up of former in-house PPCDC design staff members, with some unique opportunities. “The renovated doublewides that the PPCDC developed sewage ejector

dining room

coats

furnace

GAS

entry

living room courtesy of traceArchitects

H20

This expanded space is also more economical and efficient to build, as it takes advantage of standard-sized lumber and building materials, as opposed to the custom-cut boards that city rowhouses often require. It’s the sort of user-friendly open floor plan that mimics newconstruction interiors, allowing people to congregate in numbers in the kitchen, living room, or patio. (One planned feature is a screened-in patio, a way to bring Patterson Park indoors.)

But there’s a deeper value in the doublewide model: Creating houses that offer the living space of a suburban townhouse but conbedroomhomes 2 bedroom 3 form to the neighboring on a historic working-class block might offer hope for the city’s forbidding acres of vacant housing stock.

By appealing to young families and encouraging them to live, raise kids, and retire in the same place, such designs could promote the stability laundry that hearkens back to Baltimore’s city-of-neighbath 2 when home-ownership borhoods roots—a time was measured not in years, but in generations.

In many ways, 25 Port Street represents master closet the grand finale of the development corporation’s neighborhood transformation.

Home nursery/office prices for single PPCDC rowhouses have jumped from $50,000 to more than $300,000 in the last ten years (the doublewides price out master bedroom closer to $500,000). The huge $60 million inventory of PPCDC homes has shrunk to almost nothing, and the vacancy rate is nil. In a few months, PPCDC founder and president Ed Rutmaster bath kowski will step down and move to the group’s board, with a new goal of expanding his revitalization vision into other parts of the city he calls “disinvested.”

And therein lies the larger question: Was the resurrection of Patterson Park a one-trick pony, or are there lessons for struggling neighSecond Floor Plan borhoods that might3 not have a natural geoSD1 Scale: 1/8"Watch = 1'-0"this graphic nexus? As the saying goes, space. ■

porch

2 SD1

First Floor Plan Scale: 1/8" = 1'-0"

in the past used existing structures, so they had a load-bearing brick party wall in the middle.

It was always a barrier to really connecting spaces,” says Connelly. In his new-construction doublewide, the bearing wall could be offset to one side. “The result is smaller service spaces such as closets and powder rooms on one side and larger open living spaces on the other.”

W

wh

Writer Mat Edelson will be chronicling the construction of 25 North Port Street for Urbanite Home (www.urbanitehome.com), the magazine’s new home renovation website.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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eat/drink Rumble in the cellar: Clinton Macsherry picks a fight over wine’s rising alcohol levels in the debut of his column, “Wine & Spirits” (p. 77).

71

Upper Crust The man who loved bread

by Ma rt h a T h om a s

73 Recipe

Dale Dugan’s Pane di Mato (Bread of the Dead)

The Himalayan House and Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant

77

Wine & Spirits

photo by Jason Okutake

75 Reviewed

2005 Sobon Estate Zinfandel “Old Vines”

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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Fire in the hole: Dugan at work before Pazo’s wood-burning oven. He bakes about six hundred loaves each weekend day.

Upper

Crust

Baker extraordinaire Dale Dugan on the power of good bread by martha thomas

Dale Dugan has a fantasy. “I’d like to be in a place where I can stand out in front, after baking for eight hours a day, and hand warm bread out to people,” he says.

Not one to deny an honest man’s dream if I’m in a position to fulfill it, I offer to stop by and hold out my arms.

Dugan is the baker for the four Charleston Group restaurants. Each restaurant gets an array of different bread—baguettes for Petit Louis, semolina with fennel and golden raisins for Charleston, pugliese for Pazo, ciabbatta for Cinghiale. And they are all baked fresh every day at Pazo, on the four-byfive-foot stone surface of a wood-burning oven that will later crank out pizzas for the evening dinner crowd. On a weekend day, the 46-year-old Dugan bakes about six hundred loaves, a volume that rivals many small commercial bakeries.

On most days, Dugan starts baking at 5 a.m.

When I arrive at Pazo early one fall morning, I quickly recognize his tidy, military-style Mohawk at the far end of the restaurant, his back to me as he faces the oven’s fiery mouth.

I know better than to bang on the glass and interrupt him. He has warned me that he can “intensify pretty quickly,” especially if he’s disturbed while he’s spinning bread. “Everyone knows not to poke at the bear when he’s got his back to the restaurant,” he says. So instead, I go around to the side and enter through the kitchen, where Dugan’s assistant, Carrie

Goltra, is cutting long French loaves from a lump of glossy dough while trays of boules, encased in zippered plastic covers Dugan calls condoms, continue their second rise.

Dugan doesn’t stop moving while the bread is in the oven. It only takes about six minutes for a loaf to bake, and each has to brown evenly on all sides. The little light spots drive Dugan crazy. He slides in the long wooden peel—a paddle that resembles a flattened cricket bat—to pull out loaves and turn them, or move them closer to the oven walls. Hence the term “spinning.”

He wears a pair of leather work gloves—the deck inside the oven is around five hundred degrees, he says, but the air bouncing around in there is “two or three times that.” The knotted satin buttons on his white chef ’s jacket are shiny from the heat. Dugan says he has a collection of objects that have melted in his pockets while he has worked: pens, knives, and the indispensable cutting tool called a lam.

Baking bread is an activity comfortable with metaphor. It’s the cook’s equivalent to baseball: deceptively simple, with its four ingredients—flour, water, salt, and yeast—but rich with nuance, different every time. It’s also the ultimate in slow food.

The best bread is allowed to rise for twenty-four hours and is often made with centuries-old starters.

There is no element of bread baking that causes passions to rise like the starter, also called a “biga.” Some bakers swear by their personal lump of dough passed from generation to generation.

Others make their own with flour and water, capturing yeast that runs rampant in the air. Dugan received his first biga from a baker he’d met at a cooking competition. “He had done an externship in Italy and smuggled it home in his pants,” Dugan says. “It was a sacred gift.”

Italian bigas are often made with grapes, which makes sense if you think about it. “In Pompeii, bakers would wade out into the wine vats and scoop out the sludge” to use as a fermenting agent, Dugan says. When he heard rumors that Charleston Group owners Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf were planning a new Italian restaurant a few years ago, soon after he was hired as the Pazo baker in 2004, he immediately tore out the rosebushes in the backyard of his Howard County home (leaving the climbing tri-colored Jacob’s ladder, his wife’s favorite) and planted Concord grapes instead.

He uses this homegrown biga to bake what he calls Pane di Mato, or “bread of the dead.” He created the recipe based on a description he found in Julius Caesar’s memoirs. (Why was he reading Julius Caesar’s memoirs? “I was interested in Druids,” Dugan says.) Caesar described this bread, made with pecorino cheese and roasted red peppers, as the “color of dawn,” says Dugan. Sure enough, it has a pinkish-orange color and tastes cheesy and sweet.

Dugan says it’s just like those little goldfish crackers, but it’s better, though no less addictive.

This morning he’s also baking Pain Michelle, a bread named for a Pazo employee. It’s a wholewheat loaf with red onion, poppy seed, and the ends of applewood-smoked bacon, which he grinds w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

f e at u r e

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EAT/DRINK

Dugan received his first biga from a baker he’d met at a cooking competition. “He had done an externship in Italy and smuggled it home in his pants,” he says. “It was a sacred gift.”

Dugan has a spiritual bent: He has visited sweat lodges with Hopi Indians and has studied Huna, Buddhism, and Celtic Fairy-Faith. “I’m essentially an animist,” he says. “Everything I see possesses the same divine spirit that is within me, be it a rock or a tree.” Dugan’s hero—the one who inspired his fantasy of handing out bread—is former monk Peter Reinhart, founder of the Haight-Ashbury restaurant Brother Juniper’s, which fed indigent hippies in 1960s San Francisco. There’s a contradiction here, perhaps: Dugan now distributes loaves to some of the least needy diners in the mid-Atlantic. “Contradiction and balance are a fine line,” he admits.

Bread has been a staple in every culture, rich or poor, so I guess those Cinghiale diners have just as much right to good bread as the Italian peasants who inspired it.

After our hours of baking, Dugan and I sit down on a soft Pazo sofa to sample the outcome. One of the house specialties is rosemary fougasse, known to diners here as “pretzel bread.” It’s meant to look like an ear of wheat. I rip off a chunk and swirl it in the dish of olive oil that Dugan has snagged from the kitchen. The crust is flecked with bits of salt. The inside is chewy and rich with rosemary, but I can also taste the smoke of the fire.

“What I live for is to see someone take a bite of something right out of the oven,” Dugan tells me.

“They’ll take a bite with their eyes closed. When you close your eyes, the rest of your senses open up.” He flicks his fingers outward, palms wide. “When you bite into a piece of bread, a lot of things happen.

The crunch, the warmth, the aroma the minute you break the crust.”

Bread, says Dugan, “is love made visible.” ■

Pane di Mato (Bread of the Dead)

photo by Michael Northrup

up and renders down, putting aside the fat for something else. The chewy bread is rich and smoky, flecked with the onion and dark bits of pork.

We take a break to go behind the restaurant to get more wood. “I think this is apple,” Dugan says.

He mixes dry and fresh wood for the fire: Some will burn fast and other sticks will add aroma to the restaurant and to the bread. He also reveals the story behind his military-style haircut. Dugan spent four years with the Army’s 101st Airborne division, culminating with the U.S. invasion of Grenada. He wears his hair shorn, as many Airborne veterans do, in tribute to friends killed in action.

The interest in cooking came from Dugan’s grandmother, a Mennonite of Czech and Hungarian descent. As a kid, he would sneak up and unfasten her apron ties and steal noodles that she’d hung to dry on the backs of the dining room chairs. She baked bread in an oversized enamel oven, producing giant loaves that would sit in the center of the table at Sunday dinner. They were so crusty, Dugan says, “you had to get one of the older guys in the family to make the first grab.”

Creative loafing: Dugan based this rustic bread, made with roasted red peppers, on a recipe he found in Julius Caesar’s memoirs.

A few notes on baking bread at home First, a KitchenAid mixer is a tremendous timesaver and worth every penny. To give your bread a more hearth-baked flavor, go to a home-supply store and buy several red quarry tiles. Place them in the floor of your oven (season them by slowly increasing the temperature to 450 degrees). Now you can bake directly on the tiles, instead of on a cookie sheet or tray. Also, place a small stainless-steel sauce pan on the bottom oven rack prior to pre-heating. When you load your bread, pour a small amount of water into the pan to make steam. This helps create a crust and releases the surface tension somewhat to allow for the “oven spring” (a burst of final expansion). Finally, use a good sharp knife with a serrated edge to slice the fresh bread. Enjoy yourself, and watch the eyes light up when you hand somebody a slice of warm bread. True magic is created here.

—Dale Dugan

Biga 2½ cups unbleached flour 1 cup room-temperature water ½ teaspoon instant yeast

Stir the yeast into the water and allow to sit until foamy.

Add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon or the paddle on your mixer for approximately 18 minutes.

Allow to rest at room temperature for 12 hours.

Store the biga in the refrigerator. Each time you use some, save yourself a couple of ounces to “seed” your next batch.

To seed a new batch, follow the above directions but include the old biga after adding the flour.

Pane di Mato 7 cups King Arthur Sir Galahad flour 5 cups fine semolina flour 4 cups durum flour ¼ cup polenta-grade cornmeal (very coarse cornmeal) 1 cup biga 4 cups cold water

½ tablespoon instant yeast ¼ cup salt ¾ cups (roughly one whole) roasted, peeled red pepper 2 cups coarse grated Pecorino Romano cheese Splash of Tabasco sauce

Combine the water and biga in the mixing bowl.

Add all flours and mix on low speed for 3 minutes.

Add the yeast and continue mixing for 3 minutes, then allow dough to rest for 5 minutes.

Add your salt, then mix on low speed for 3 minutes.

Add the Tabasco, red peppers, and cheese and mix just long enough to combine the cheese and dough. The finished dough should be slightly orange in color.

Remove from the mixer and shape into a rough ball, or boule, then cover with a lightly oiled plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator overnight. You can freeze the dough for future use after allowing the dough to rise once by dividing the dough into separate portions and individually wrapping each portion in plastic wrap (with air removed) and then aluminum foil and placing it in the freezer immediately.

The next day, remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Then shape the dough into a boule and place it seam side down onto a lightly oiled and floured cookie sheet and cover with plastic wrap sprayed with non-stick baking spray. Put it in a warm, moist place until it doubles in size.

Score this bread ¼-inch deep across the center of the bread and place it directly on stones or a cookie sheet in the center of a 450-degree oven.

Bake for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to 425 degrees and bake for approximately 8 minutes more. The bread should be light brown and make a hollow thunk when you thwack it on the bottom. Cooking times will vary with different ovens.

Web extra: Read more home baking tips from Dale Dugan at www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

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The Himalayan House

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Every confluence of busy professionals calls for a serviceable Indian carryout, and the Himalayan House, tucked in the back of a Fort Avenue convenience store, is just what Locust Point needs—or soon will, as the neighborhood braces for the arrival of the upscale Silo Point condominium project. The avenue is fast becoming South Baltimore’s restaurant row, and this modest Nepalese/Indian storefront is in good company: The Wine Market and Nasu Blanca are down the street and Pazza Luna is right around the corner.

The Himalayan House boasts zero atmosphere (unless you favor cardboard boxes of Utz chips) and there’s only one plastic table, better employed to wait for the food than to consume it. Still, the location doesn’t lack charm, especially if you chat with owner Prem Raja Mahat, a folk singer famous in Nepal, who will greet you like an old friend.

(While Prem is off on gigs, Ratna Shahi holds down the store.) They may offer you a cup of home-brewed tea made with ground ginger and cloves after you order from a menu that

includes both carryout staples (pizza, subs, fries) and such Nepalese offerings as momos—chewy tufted dumplings stuffed with savory ground lamb or minced vegetables laced with mustard seed.

Compared to their Indian neighbors’ fare, Tibetan and Nepalese dishes are generally less spicy and more dependent on meat.

The menu’s other East Asian selections are more familiar: tandooris, masalas, biryanis, and naans. There’s fish curry in a mild tomato sauce sprinkled with cilantro and strands of fresh ginger, and alu tikki, a samosa-like packet of potato fried in chickpea batter. If you want to modify anything, the obliging proprietors will add garlic or kick up the chiles, and if you’re craving something from the Western side of the menu, try a crusty pizza baked in the clay tandoori oven. (Open Mon–Thur 11 a.m.–10 p.m., Fri–Sat 11 a.m.– 11 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.–9 p.m. 1522 E. Fort Ave.; 410-528-1271; www.thehimalayanhouse.com)

reVIeWeD

EAT/DRINK

—Martha Thomas

On the lamb: The Himalayan House serves up Indian and Nepalese fare.

Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant much of the cooking, from the ramekin of pork rillettes that arrives gratis upon arrival to the homemade Alsacian sausages, an appetizer that could make a budget-friendly dinner with a salad of fresh-picked greens.

Duck two-ways (lush confit and seared rare breast slices) is likewise coupled with hearty Germanic flavors—sweet-sour red cabbage and big pillowy squiggles of spaetzle. Other menu stalwarts are chapter-and-verse country French: simple sautéed trout, a meaty roasted salmon fillet, sweetbreads (a bit overdone) and chanterelles in brown butter.

But Michel lobs a few pan-Asian curveballs: citrusy lobster salad with fresh cilantro, mussels in coconut broth. His coquille St. Jacques isn’t the monochromatic béchamel-soaked original but a colorized remake: a red hillock of earthy beet risotto circled by seared scallops in bright passionfruit sauce. Desserts tend to the simple and shockingly good: textbook crème caramel, ultra-rich homemade ice creams (dramatically served in carved-ice bowls), and a knockout tarte tatin nested in pastry as delicate as hot buttered angel’s wings. (Lunch and dinner daily. 8293 Main St., Ellicott City; 410-465-4004; www. tersiguels.com)

photo by La Kaye Mbah

No one’s about to accuse Tersiguel’s, the sturdy French restaurant at the top of Ellicott City’s Main Street, of being cutting-edge. Its roots are sunk deep in the 1970s, when Fernand and Odette Tersiguel opened an earlier restaurant, Chez Fernand, down the road, and today there’s still something vaguely Ford Administration about the place. Waitstaff push carts equipped for tableside crepe flambéing, and the menu suggests that there’s a dog-eared Julia Child hardback somewhere in the kitchen. But Tersiguel’s was emphasizing farm-to-table eating long before the present local-foods insurgency (many greens and vegetables are sourced from their nearby farm), and with son Michel now as executive chef, the family business feels utterly au courant.

Despite luxurious prices and black-tie service, a come-as-you-are approachableness is one of Tersiguel’s great assets: One doesn’t prosper for two decades selling snails to Howard Countians without learning how to be accommodating. With a rambling warren of small dining rooms scattered throughout a creaky 19th century townhome, sounds of Big Night Out jollity leak from nearby rooms on busy nights. In colder months, few restaurants offer a welcome as warm as Tersiguel’s.

The food, too, is well suited for winter.

Fernand and Odette hail from blustery Brittany, and there’s a rib-sticking rusticity to

—David Dudley Rising son: Chef Michel Tersiguel has taken his father’s place in the kitchen. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

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At the corner of Boston and Conkling Streets

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

BALTIMORE’S Located in the heart of Baltimore’s dynamic Canton neighborhood, historic Brewers Hill

dogma-life with your pet.

5 Guys Burgers and Fries Dunkin Donuts Baskin-Robbins Pasta Mista PNC Bank Development Design Group, Inc. Bravo Health Met Life RE/MAX Sails Keystone Realty Company Exit 10 RM Sovich Architects Ontology Works Congruent Media Friday’s Child “K” Line Shipping Petards, Inc. Countrywide Home Loans Occupational Medical Services Canton Self Storage Obrecht Commercial Real Estate Kettler Cooperative Services, Inc

has sweeping views of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and city skyline.

Brewers hill offers Class-A offices, retail shops and restaurants — ushering in a new, vibrant lifestyle option for Baltimore.

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urbanite january 08

DDg is an international architecture, planning and graphics firm specializing in award winning retail, entertainment, graphics, planning, town centers, residential and mixed-use projects.

Development Design group, inc.

3700 O’Donnell Street, Baltimore, MD 21224 USA tel | 410 962 0505 fax | 410 783 0816 www.ddg-usa.com | web

What’s the Buzz?

You never hear about brawls at wine bars.

Why is that? Are peaceable people more likely to make wine their drink of choice? Or is wine’s effect on mind and body inherently different than that of other alcoholic beverages?

Some wine fanciers like to believe that the distinction lies in the drink: The high induced by beer or liquor seems boorish or downright rowdy, compared to wine’s warm, world-embracing buzz. But the grape hasn’t always unlocked the door to peace, love, and understanding. Myth has it that Dionysus himself was a pretty mean drunk. Wine (or more precisely, the wine trade) helped spark the Hundred

“Setting will color the nature of the intoxication you experience. Wine is often consumed with food, which in itself will moderate the effect of alcohol. But if it’s good food and there’s convivial conversation, the buzz is also going to feel substantially different.”

One thing’s certain: Getting drunk on wine, if that’s your goal, is a lot easier now. Alcohol levels have been edging upward for several years, the result of riper grapes (elevated sugar content gives yeast more material to convert into alcohol) turbocharged by new yeast strains that push alcohol to the limit. It’s a trend that has champions as well as detractors: Some argue that this beats the heck out of the often green and weedy wines of the not-so-distant past, when 12 percent was the norm; naysayers contend that nowcommon alcohol levels of 14 or 15 percent throw a wine out of whack. On the palate, this can manifest it-

Years’ War, which culminated in 1453’s Battle of Bordeaux. A century later, Spanish forces sailed into the Battle of Lepanto, bolstered by strong Sardinian wine, so the story goes. In the aftermath, reveling seamen displayed the head of the vanquished Turkish admiral on a pike.

Sometime between the 16th century and the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, wine lost all association with belligerence. Memorial Stadium fans minted the epithet “Chardonnay sippers” to describe the new ballpark’s more docile crowds. Rest in peace, Will Bill Hagy.

Science supports (sort of) the notion that wine can create a differently altered state. “There’s not just one type of buzz,” notes Stephen Braun, an Amherst, Massachusetts-based medical writer and the author of Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine. “But not because the alcohol is different— it’s all ethanol. It depends to large extent on how quickly it’s absorbed into your system.” The more concentrated alcohol in a shot of whiskey gets to your brain faster than the alcohol in a glass of wine, with recognizable consequences.

Just as important, however, are “what a psychologist would call ‘set and setting,’” Braun adds.

self in unctuously sweet fruit, a sappy mouthfeel, and sometimes a hot finish. The culprit isn’t the grapes, exactly. It’s profit-seeking vintners pandering to the big-wine tastes of influential American critics (Maryland’s Robert Parker chief among them).

Publicly, both camps have struck an imperfect compromise: Alcohol per se is neither friend nor foe—it’s all about “balance.” Let’s leave aside the fact that “balance” is itself a highly subjective perception. Pour another glass. I mean, who wants to fight about it?

The potency of Zinfandel predates the alcohol spike of recent years. Even so, Zins can range stylistically from the gobsmacking to the elegant. The 2005 Sobon Estate Zinfandel “Old Vines” ($14, 14.9 percent alcohol) hails from California’s Amador County, where the grape’s history dates back to the 1850s. Dark purple, nearly opaque, it offers a heady noseful of menthol, iron, caramel, and brambles. Ripe and dense on the palate, its dark berry flavors teeter toward the raisiny, with shadings of spice and black pepper and a slightly scratchy finish. A little streak of acidity doesn’t quite manage to keep the portiness in check. If you prefer, look to the Dry Creek Valley appellation for lither versions.

By Clinton Macsherry

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

WINE & SPIRITS

EAT/DRINK

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AIABALTIMORE 78

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Highlighting Local Talent Join AIABaltimore (The American Institute of Architects, Baltimore Chapter) to hear from the main winners of the 2007 AIABaltimore Excellence in Design Awards program as they discuss their architecture firm’s design aesthetic and vision.

Ayers/Saint/Gross – Adam Gross, FAIA

Grand Design Award Winner 2007

Institute for Scientific Research, Grant Architects PC

Beck Powell & Parsons – Mark Beck, AIA Cho Benn Holback + Associates – David Benn, AIA Design Collective – Rich Burns, AIA Grant Architects – Gordon Ingerson, AIA

Tuesday, January 8, 2008 The Johns Hopkins Downtown Center Auditorium Charles and Fayette Streets

Design Award The Crescent at Fells Point, Design Collective, Inc.

Reception at 5:30 p.m.

Lecture at 6 p.m.

FREE 1 AIA/CES (HSW) credit with registration.

Design Award Vedanta University Master Plan, Ayers/Saint/Gross, Inc., Unbuilt

Honorable Mention Charles Commons, The Johns Hopkins University, Design Collective, Inc.

AIABaltimore 11 ½ W. Chase St. Baltimore, MD 21201 www.aiabalt.com info@aiabalt.com 410.625.2585 fax 410.727.4620

Honorable Mention Killens Pond State Park Nature Center, GWWO, Inc. /Architects, Unbuilt

Design Award

Design Award Art Academy of Cincinnati, Design Collective, Inc.

Michael F. Trostel FAIA Award for Excellence in a Historic Preservation Project Assembly Building at Clipper Mill, Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc.

Design Award School of Nursing, Duke University, Ayers/SaintGross, Inc.

Design Award Painting Studio & Guest House, Beck, Powell & Parsons, Inc.

#

Honorable Mention -

9

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-9

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Honorable Mention Catholic Relief Services, Design Collective, Inc. Century Engineering Headquarters, Hord Coplan Macht, Inc.

Honorable Mention

Honorable Mention

Childcare Center, Towson University, Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc.

The Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center, GWWO, Inc. /Architects

Honorable Mention

Honorable Mention

Our Daily Bread Employment Center, CSD Architects

Residence and Studio, Kroiz Architecture

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

79

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urbanite january 08

ART

By Marianne Amoss

Several times a year, the rotating Front Room exhibit brings something fresh to the Baltimore Museum of Art. “Contemporary art is all about change,” says Darsie Alexander, senior curator of contemporary art. “Finding an environment where our ideas, as well as curatorial formats, could change was an important means of extending this idea into our actual practice.”

Through February 17, the contemporary art wing’s front room (hence the name) is devoted to paintings and other works by Ellsworth Kelly, an influential American artist noted for his use of monochromatic color. The deceptively simple works, culled from the permanent collection of the BMA and those of private collectors, emanate a quiet intensity. “Kelly is an enormously complicated, hardto-pin-down artist,” says Alexander. “His work looks ‘Minimal,’ but his colors are lush, almost sensual. His work is incredibly spare, but bold and often emotionally powerful.”

The first image visitors will see, Green Red Yellow Blue, might prompt that oft-heard comment “I could have painted that.” Consider this arrangement of colored rectangles for a few moments longer, however, and you’ll notice something more—for all its apparent flat simplicity,

Green Red Yellow Blue takes on depth because of its arrangement: four distinct canvases with an identical expanse of wall in between each one. As Alexander says, “Kelly’s investigation of physical space as a part of painting attracted me; the works are simultaneously painting and sculpture.”

MUSIC

By Steve Wigler The trend in opera to hire singers who actually look like the characters they portray has forced many singers to take off pounds. All baritone Nathan Gunn needs to do is take off his shirt: He’s an exceptionally handsome man with a physique to match. According to New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, “stage directors search for any excuse to make his character bare-chested.” But as anyone attending his song recital on

Janury 13 in the Shriver Hall Concert Series will hear, Gunn—shirt on or off—can sing. His voice is warm, flexible, and resonant, and his program will display the versatility and intelligence that’s made him one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation: two arias from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, six great Schubert songs, and an impressive selection of American songs, ranging from Charles Ives to Tom Waits.

THEATER

By Martha Thomas

This month at Everyman Theatre, Donald Hicken directs company members Megan Anderson (recently seen as city councilman Tommy Carcetti’s wife, Jennifer, on The Wire) and Bruce R. Nelson in a boiled-down version of the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw. The play is a two-person whodunit that James’ psychologist/philosopher brother William (and William’s colleague Sigmund Freud) would love. In this spare ninety-minute stage adaptation by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher,

one man plays all the characters except the governess, from the housekeeper to the young boy in her charge. The age and gender ambiguity may enhance James’ tale of Victorian sexual repression, and Anderson’s intense stage presence and Nelson’s strength as a character actor should prove an apt pairing. Do the ghosts exist? The audience won’t see them, but as in the novella, that doesn’t mean we won’t be touched.

photo by Stan Baruch

Ellsworth Kelly, Green Red Yellow Blue, 1966. Private Collection, Baltimore: Promised Gift to the Baltimore Museum of Art. EK361 © Ellsworth Kelly

recommended

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j a n u a r y 0 8

81

Boutiques. Antiques.

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the Queen’s ink— Classes and supplies for stamp and collage art www.queensink.com 301-497-9449

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rams Head tavern— Great food, Fordham beer, live music every weekend www.ramsheadtavern.com/savage 301-604-3454 ..................................

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Go antiquing, boutiquing and treasure seeking in Maryland’s most unique shopping destination, Savage Mill. Browse hundreds of original fashion, jewelry, antique, contemporary art, collectibles, craft and home shops as distinctive and unique as you are.

And top off the shopping with lunch, dinner or drinks at the ram’s head tavern. It’s all less than a half hour south of Baltimore, just off I-95 and route 32.

Meet You there.

Find more shops in the directory at: www.savagemill.com/directory.html 8600 Foundry street | savage, MD 20763 1-800-788-Mill | www.savagemill.com

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urbanite january 08

Family game store — The best in gaming for all ages 301-776-5980

Bonaparte Breads— Authentic French bread and pastries; open daily 410-880-0858

lucy & ethel’s— Cottage chic home accessories and gifts 301-317-9040 ....................................

artcraft— Unique American crafts and furniture www.artcraftonline.com 301-604-6518 .......................

and sew it goes— Quilting fabrics, books, kits and classes 301-725-5548

recommended

literature

By Susan McCallum-Smith

The New Year provides a legitimate opportunity for me to succumb to my compulsion to write lists.

My first resolution: I shall read no more miserable Irish books. They pander to my pessimism.

The winner of the 2007 Booker Prize, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, has all the morbid symptoms: a funeral, Catholicism, a dysfunctional clan, alcoholism, abuse, and really bad weather.

Nine siblings gather in Dublin to mourn the suicide of their brother, while refusing to reflect on what drove him to such an act. The diverse personalities are recognizable to everyone lumbered with a family: the emigrant, the loser, the priest, the homemaking martyr, the weirdo, the favorite, and the sensible sister, Veronica, who holds everything together as their mother slips into dotage, occasionally forgetting her children’s names. And as the wake deteriorates into a slanging match over ancient grievances, Veronica notes that this is how families function: “We default to the oldest scar.” The Gathering is deliciously mordant, but I must and will resist.

My second resolution: I shall not judge a book by its cover. The American edition of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox eschews its haunting British counterpart, a photograph of a 1930s bright young thing with downcast eyes, in favor of a turquoise and raspberry splatter of the chick-lit variety. Go on, risk being seen picking it up, you manly men out there; this is a marvelous book.

Independent-minded Iris Lockhart owns a vintage clothing store and enjoys a life unencumbered by family ties. After the closure of a hospital for the mentally ill, Iris is stunned to discover she has a great aunt, Esme Lennox. Seventy-six-yearold Esme has been incarcerated for sixty years and now needs a home.

Like many young women of her time, it appears that Esme was put away for behavior that, to modern eyes, may indicate nothing more than adolescent petulance—her unwillingness to wear gloves, a desire to stay on at school, and “dancing before a mirror, dressed in her mother’s clothes.”

Through Esme’s fragmented memories, the reader relives the traumatic events of her youth, and together with Iris we marvel at Esme’s fortitude and apparent sanity. Reluctantly, Iris recognizes herself in her newfound relative and begins to accept the bonds and responsibility of family. “We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on.”

O’Farrell’s novel calls to mind Wilkie Collins’ suspense classic from 1860, The Woman in White, in which a young bride is locked up in an asylum so that her husband may secure her

fortune. Collins’ genius lies not in his cardboard hero and wimpy blonde heroine, but in his invention of the heroine’s half-sister, Marian Halcombe, and her arch-enemy, the corpulent Italian Count Fosco, with his “cockatoo, two canary-birds and a whole family of white mice.”

“The lady is ugly!” declares the hero on first meeting Marian. She is “almost swarthy,” with an expression that is “bright, frank, and intelligent,” and therefore “altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability.”

Marian’s ballsiness denies her a romantic life but allows her to express some radical views: “Men!” she cries. “They take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel.” You said it, sister. The depth of her love for her half-sister is such that “writing of her marriage” was “like writing of her death.” Oh, how the lesbian feminist literary revisionists swoon over that line.

Only a villain as shrewd as Count Fosco would be a worthy opponent for Marian. He is “immensely fat” yet his “movements are astonishingly light and easy”—think Sydney Greenstreet on casters. He dresses like the Barber of Seville in nankeen trousers, scarlet belt, and purple Morocco slippers, and has a fondness for fondant.

The cliff-hanging fun of The Woman in White exhorts me to my third resolve: I shall read more classics! To mine some lesser known gems, I recommend you turn to Michael Dirda’s new collection of essays, Classics For Pleasure, which illuminates the spiky delights of Ivy ComptonBurnett, who once said, “There are far too many books about sex and far too few about money,” and the incredible oeuvre created by the “naughtiest girl of Pushkin’s town,” Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

The Washington Post’s Dirda is a critic’s critic; he wears his intelligence lightly and recommends books for their imaginative use of language and entertainment value. “Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because people have found them worth reading, generation after generation,” he writes in his introduction, before proceeding to convince his readers to spend time with Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov from 1858, the tale of a man “who fundamentally never wants to get out of bed,” or rediscover Jean Toomer’s Cane from 1923, “arguably the first great classic of African-American fiction.”

Nevertheless, despite my admiration for Dirda, here is my final resolution: I shall not be swayed by book reviews. A lot of nonsense is sometimes written by people like me. When a critic in Publishers Weekly (who will remain unnamed) described Adrian Tomine’s new graphic

novel, Shortcomings, as “a gripping kick-ass story” in an advance review, I pestered the publisher to send me a copy, only to find that between its (admittedly attractive) cover was a leaden treatise on race and sexual politics presented with the subtlety of a linebacker’s tackle.

Ben Tanaka’s relationship with his girlfriend Miko Hayashi is going from bumpy to dire. After Miko takes a job in New York, Ben stays behind in San Francisco and turns to his friend Alice for relationship advice, although the reason behind their troubles is easy to diagnose: Ben is a pain in the ass.

Tomine “keeps the ‘issues’ secondary to his characters’ messy humanity,” wrote the critic about dialogue that includes such veiled references to race as, “Is your attraction to white women a sublimated form of assimilation?” If this is Tomine keeping issues secondary, I’d hate to see him pushing them to the fore.

In the best graphic novels, the visuals “say” everything the dialogue cannot, and are therefore responsible for at least fifty percent of the story’s weight. Tomine, the critic wrote, “accomplishes in one panel of this graphic novel what so many writers have failed to do in entire books.” Really? I extrapolated nothing more from an individual panel of Tomine’s book beyond the recognition that he is an expert if unimaginative draftsman.

Perhaps the best advice is to forget resolutions altogether. Simply read a little bit of everything and make up your own mind. (Have I just written myself out of a job?) ■

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The Amateur Spy continued from page 65

with stapled tickets fluttering from propped signboards.

The only other early birds seemed to be the beggars. On virtually every corner there was a woman dressed in black, sitting cross-legged in hopes of selling from a meager assortment of toothpaste, cigarettes, and playing cards arrayed on sheets and towels. Most had wiry infants at their feet, as if this were part of the standard equipment.

Sami’s salon was nearby, but it was too early to drop in, so I stopped at a clothing store where the proprietor was unrolling his awning. It specialized in the colorfully embroidered blouses traditionally favored by Palestinian women, and the alert shopkeeper began his pitch with the line I had heard hundreds of times in Middle East bazaars.

“You are first customer,” he said in English.

“That is lucky, so I make good price.”

“These are nice,” I replied in Arabic. “You must sell a lot.”

I considered buying one for Mila, imagining she might wear it as an exotic nightshirt. That and nothing else, with the hem reaching just below the waist, her bush visible in brief glimpses as she stepped toward me.

An erotic waltz in our great room, on a brisk night when the stars were hanging high in a black sky. A smile on her face as she handed me a smoky glass of port, then curled up next to me on the couch and tucked her toes beneath my thigh.

“For you, I make very special price,” the proprietor said, which broke my reverie.

“No, thank you. Not today.”

Stepping around the corner I saw a sign across the street for the Shatt-al-Arab Coffee House, upstairs. Sami had recommended it as a great spot for listening in on political discussions, but during Ramadan it would be dead until sunset.

No sooner had I laid eyes on the place than a familiar face bobbed into view. It was Nabil Mustafa, unsmiling and in a hurry. I backed beneath the nearest awning and saw him check his watch.

He paused on the threshold of the doorway that led upstairs to the Shatt-al-Arab.

He was well off his turf, and considering that he managed to take his beloved daughter into the city only once per month, this visit must have required a special effort. When he disappeared up the stairway I crossed the street, reaching the doorway just in time to hear his footsteps on the second-floor landing. There was a loud knock,

followed by the opening of a door and muttered voices. Then the door shut. Silence.

I stepped back into the street and looked up at the windows. The coffeehouse looked closed.

The blades of its ceiling fans were still, and the lights were out. I stole up the stairway. Pausing on the landing, I again heard voices, but they were coming from the doorway opposite the coffeehouse entrance. At least three different men were talking, although the words were too muffled to comprehend. I crept back downstairs to check the name on the mailbox.

Walid Khammar.

I wrote it down, congratulating myself for bringing along a notepad. Then I crossed the street and took up a concealed position to watch for Nabil. To avoid attracting attention to my loitering, I bought one of the embroidered blouses from the eager proprietor, which earned me the right to browse without being bothered. When Nabil emerged I set off behind him, leaving half a block between us. He turned into an alley toward a steep, narrow stairway leading up the stony hillside. There were only a few other people around, so I lagged further, not picking up the pace until I saw him disappear to the left around the corner of a house.

Huffing and puffing, I quickly rounded the corner.

He stood there as if he had been waiting, and I nearly ran him over. The heat rose in my face.

“Following me, Freeman Lockhart? Or do you just happen to be going my way?”

The odd thing was that he didn’t sound angry or affronted.

“I, uh, saw you up ahead and was going to say hello.”

He smiled wearily, then glanced over my shoulder as if others might also be in pursuit.

“In that case, hello. It is a fine morning. Why don’t we walk together for a while?”

I made a show of checking my watch.

“Just a few blocks. I have an appointment to see an apartment. That’s why I was hurrying.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Jebel Amman.”

“A nice neighborhood. Very comfortable.” Especially compared to Bakaa, I supposed he meant.

“You think I should choose a more humble location?”

“I make no such judgments. That is for others. And for God, of course.”

“Wise decision.”

“One we could all live by.”

I got the hint, but said nothing. After a pause he continued.

When Nabil emerged I set off behind him, leaving half a block between us. He turned into an alley toward a steep, narrow stairway leading up the stony hillside.

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“I know you are curious about me, but you should know that you are not the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are others, that is all. And they may not think kindly of you trying to do their jobs for them.”

“Look, if you think I was following you—” “It was only an observation.” Still no hint of malice. “I am merely saying there are others who have an interest in me, and you should be aware of this. If only for your safety.”

“Who?” “It would do neither of us good for me to say.” He glanced behind us again, and this time I couldn’t help but look also. Nothing back there but a few boys, arguing over a soccer ball. “Just pay attention. That is my advice. Pay attention to those around you, and do your work for Omar as best you can. Stick to that and you should have no trouble with anyone.”

“Like Dr. Hassan, you mean?”

He shrugged.

“I do not always understand Dr. Hassan. Too often he wishes to make a rivalry where there is none.”

“Maybe because he is Fatah and you are Hamas?”

If my remark caught him by surprise, he didn’t show it.

“I am not affiliated in this way that you say.

I have friends who are Hamas, and sometimes I work with them. That is as far as it goes.”

“Friends who blow themselves up?”

“Friends who run feeding stations and health clinics. Who work just as hard as Dr. Hassan and expect less in return. I do not believe in killing in the name of God. The Prophet Muhammad, his name be praised, did not believe in it, either.”

“What about your friends? Do they believe that?”

For the first time he seemed uncomfortable.

“You will have to ask them.”

He stopped. We had reached another set of stairs, and it was obvious he preferred to continue alone. But he was still in the mood to talk, and his next question was a big one.

“Tell me, Mr. Lockhart. What do you believe?”

“What is my faith, you mean?”

“If that defines what you believe, then yes.”

I had been asked this question in one form or another many times during my travels. Oddly, it was one of the first things Mila wanted to know.

At the time she was wary of anyone with deep religious or nationalist convictions, having seen such passions tear her country apart. The warmed-over Presbyterian faith of my childhood was hardly worth mentioning, and from there I had drifted into halfhearted agnosticism. Mila found that re-

assuring, and the very nature of my job convinced her I wasn’t blinded by patriotism.

Nabil’s inquiry seemed more like those I had fielded from devout recipients of aid. They wanted to know what fueled my sense of mission, and whether it involved spirituality. When I was younger, and freshly launched on the world’s beaten path, I tended to say, “I believe in salvation.”

Christians often took this to mean that I was on their side. Muslims, Hindus, and others took it as reassurance that I was devout but wasn’t going to pit my god against theirs. Nabil would probably see right through such vagueness, so I chose levity as a fallback.

“Sometimes I believe in nothing. Other times I believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, although not necessarily in that order.”

“So you make light of your faith?”

“I thought that faith was the light.”

He shook his head slowly, with a doleful expression. I felt strangely disappointed that I hadn’t measured up.

“You should have more faith in your maker, if only for the protection it offers body and soul. Not just for you, but for everyone you love.”

I suppose that comment reads like a lecture when I state it here, but he said it in the gentlest of tones.

“I’ll think about it.”

He nodded.

“Tell me, Freeman Lockhart. In your work for Omar, will you be spending much time in Bakaa?”

“I should think so.”

“Then you should go carefully, and carry a weapon with you. A firearm.”

It was about the last thing I expected him to say, and it threw me enough that I again resorted to glibness.

“You mean like the one your friend Hakim carries?”

“A small one. One you can conceal.”

Was this some sort of veiled threat? A way of scaring me off his trail?

Or was it simply more of his advice, an offshoot of his plainspoken piety.

First God, then a gun. A Palestinian version of “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” I was intrigued, but not convinced. Everyone here was treating me as if I would run at the first sign of danger.

“I’m not so sure Omar wants me walking around armed. Might send the wrong message.”

“Then maybe Omar is as naive as you about what goes on in Bakaa.”

“Maybe. But it would also irritate the authorities. They’re not too thrilled about foreigners buying guns.”

“There are ways to avoid their interest.”

He slipped me a well-worn card, someone’s name

I imagined her bags lined up by the door, the house shuttered, appliances unplugged.

If I had called tomorrow would she still have been there?

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urbanite january 08

and cell phone number next to an address in Bakaa.

“You should see this man. Even if you buy nothing, he may teach you something.”

“About what?”

“Just go and see him. I will tell him in advance of your interest.”

I was on the verge of another question, but Nabil preempted me. “Good luck in finding an apartment.”

He turned to go. Still puzzling over his remarks and his motives, I watched him ascend another set of stairs until he disappeared.

“Sorry. But they probably already know about that.”

“Probably.”

“When are you leaving?

Or do you not want to say?”

“They’ll know when it happens, but I’m not sure.

Maybe today. I’m already packed.”

I imagined her bags lined up by the door, the house shuttered, appliances unplugged. If I had called tomorrow would she still have been there? I knew she didn’t want a confrontation now, with our new audience, but I had to ask.

“Were you planning on telling me sometime?”

“Of course.”

I envisioned the color rising in her cheeks, a Balkan cloudburst brewing behind dilating pupils.

“Nice to know,” I said, and immediately regretted my sarcasm.

“You’re one to talk when it comes to hiding things.”

For a second or two I wondered if she had somehow discovered my biggest secret. Then I realized she was only referring to my current assignment.

“Mila, please.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t spill your secrets. How can I when I don’t know them?”

“It’s for your own good. Trust me.”

“I want to trust you. But it’s not easy. Not when I know nothing.”

“I know. I’m sorry. When I’m done I’ll tell you everything.”

Or almost everything. There would always be one item to hold back.

I wondered how I could have been stupid enough to believe this would go easily, with no cost to either Mila or me. Just look at what had already happened. Karos was to have been our refuge. I had promised her a castle, and then lured the enemy through the gates.

We said good-bye, and I sagged onto the bed.

The professionals would call what I was doing the double game. But it wasn’t a game at all. It was a dangerous trial, a test requiring balance, skill, and artful deception among people who were all too real. No matter what course of action I took, the consequences would also be real. For all of us.

Oddly, the encounter did little to dampen my spirits. If anything, it raised the stakes with a frisson of danger.

Oddly, the encounter did little to dampen my spirits. If anything, it raised the stakes with a frisson of danger. Who were these other pursuers Nabil had referred to? Who was Walid Khammar?

And what was I supposed to learn from some black-market gun dealer, other than the street price of an AK-47? Plenty to keep me busy, in any event. Any contact of Nabil’s seemed worth following up if only because, by extension, it was also a contact of Omar’s.

I flagged down a taxi and found myself checking to see if anyone was following. There was only the usual traffic, faces hidden behind the glare of windshields, although at moments like this my shortcomings as an amateur seemed painfully apparent.

With some time to kill before my appointment, I dropped off the shopping bag at the hotel and phoned Mila, hoping to reassure her with my upbeat mood.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Greetings from Amman! How are you holding up?”

“Not so well. They came back.”

My spirits crashed back to earth.

“Black, White, and Gray?”

“Someone they sent. To work on the phone.”

“The one we’re speaking on?”

“Yes. Improvements to the line, he said. He told me not to touch any of his work. Not that I could see any difference after he left.”

“So they’re listening to us right now. Somewhere.”

“Everything we say.”

I had already assumed a need for discretion whenever I called home.

But it seemed worse that they had made a point of letting us know. The international line hissed with malevolent potential.

“I can’t stay here,” she said suddenly. “I’m leaving for Athens.”

“To your aunt’s?”

Mila sighed. Perhaps because I’d just revealed her destination.

Excerpted from THE AMATEUR SPY by Dan Fesperman. Copyright © 2007 by Dan Fesperman. To be published by Alfred A. Knopf in March 2008.

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resources

Baltimore Observed 39 Last Dance The Polish Home Club is located at 512 S. Broadway (410-276-0636; www.polishcommunity.com/polish homeclub2). For more about the history of Blob’s Park, go to www.blobspark.com. And anyone interested in learning more about Baltimore’s German roots will find the following organizations useful.

Since 1783, the German Society of Maryland (www. germansociety-md.com) has been promoting German language, culture, and traditions throughout the state. The century-old German-American Citizens Association of Maryland (www.md-germans. org) hosts events throughout the year, including the annual Maryland German Festival in July.

41 Little House on the Bayou Information on the history of the Katrina Cottage, different models already built around the country, and a list of suppliers is available at www.katrina cottagehousing.org.

Mitford’s 1963 bestseller The American Way of Death is a classic exposé of the American funeral industry.

It is now out of print, but the 1998 revised edition, The American Way of Death Revisited, is more readily available.

66 Double Feature To find out more about the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, visit www.ppcdc.org.

Follow the progress of the 25 N. Port St. renovation at www.urbanitehome.com.

81 Recommended Art: Front Room: Ellsworth Kelly can be viewed at the Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Dr.; 443-573-1700; www.artbma.org) through Feb. 17.

Admission to the museum is free.

Music: Nathan Gunn performs at the Shriver Hall Concert Series on Jan. 13 at 5:30 p.m. For tickets ($33, students $17), contact Shriver Hall by phone (410516-7164) or order online (www.shriverconcerts.org).

60 Compost in Peace For more information on the work of the Green Burial Council and its efforts to promote and standardize environmentally conscious deathcare practices, visit www.greenburialcouncil.org. Jessica

Theater: The Turn of the Screw plays at Everyman Theatre (1727 N. Charles St.; 410-752-2208; www. everymantheatre.org) Jan. 16–Feb. 24. Tickets cost $16–$35.

To read about the Census Building renovation, go to page 35.

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eye to eye

Ask anyone who knew him and you will hear that Larry Scott was friend, inspiration, and just one of the finest people you could know. His personal influence wrapped much of this city like a warm blanket.

Although he was a former world karate champion who won every championship he entered, he found his ultimate expression in music and, more importantly, in visual art. From his father, Scott first learned the delights of line and color, painting most often on brown paper bags. One can only imagine what these early works were like, but they would certainly have shown a developing eye and the love of straightforward expression that is the signature of all of his work. His painting, although seemingly raw and at times uncertain, was, at its heart, as probing as it was exuberant. Simply, his work was pure spirit—a kind of free, dance-like work that throbbed with complex rhythms.

Scott’s death in November was as significant a loss for Baltimore as it was for his family. As his work so fully shows, he was vital. Our good fortune is that Scott was prolific. We can hope that his work will surround us for years to come.

—Alex Castro

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Larry Scott Three Men with Hats and Reaching Hands on Green 2007 Ink and acrylic on paper 22 x 30 inches

Pella — Recognized for Outstanding Products and Service • Pella is the J.D. Power and Associates award recipient for “Highest in Customer Satisfaction Among Window and Door Manufacturers.”

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• Pella makes replacement easy. You relax — we install.

150

$

off

each installed Pella® replacement window 2 plus

No payments and no interest for 6 months!

Hurry, sale ends soon!

Call, stop by or visit www.kc-pella.com to request your free consultation.

P E L L A W I N D O W & D O O R S H O W R O O M S — K . C . C O M PA N Y, I N C .

Annapolis • Beltsville • Bethesda • Easton • Falls Church • Frederick • Lewes • Salisbury • Timonium

866-211-3781

window and door replacement 1 Pella received the highest numerical score among window and door manufacturers in the proprietary J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Windows and Patio Doors Satisfaction StudySM. Study based on responses from 3,039 consumers measuring 9 brands and opinions of consumers who purchased new windows or patio doors in the previous 12 months. Proprietary study results are based on experiences and perceptions of consumers surveyed in April – July 2007. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com.

2 Does not apply to Pella Impervia®, ThermaStar by Pella® or ProLine® products. Other restrictions may apply. See store for details. Must be installed by Pella professionals. Not valid with any other offer or promotion. Valid for replacement projects only. Offer available on minimum of 4 windows.

Financing available to qualified customers only. Prior sales excluded. Financing valid on $4,000 minimum purchase of Pella windows and doors purchased through K.C. Company, Inc. Subject to approval by GE Money Bank. Offer ends 2/29/08. © 2008 Pella Corporation MHIC #38731

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