July 2010 Issue

A COOL NEW POOL • HOT DOG TASTE-OFF • SUMMER SHAKESPEARE july 2010 issue no. 73

WHO YOU CALLIN’ CHICKEN? do We haVe What it takes to finally saVe the chesapeake Bay?

FREEDOM TO JUGGLE 3 KIDS AND 2 MAJORS.

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urbanite july 10

contents

july 2010 issue no. 73

feature 28

now or never

with fresh commitment from federal and state leaders, it’s time for citizens to pitch in and try—again—to save the chesapeake bay. by heather dewar

departments 9 28

editor’s note

urbanite’s multimedia explosion

11

what you’re saying

15

what you’re writing

19

up, up, and away

burned out: house fires, a father’s love, and a working woman’s blues

corkboard

this month: outdoor films, motorcycle racing, and fourth of july around town

21

the goods: baby clothes with attitude. plus: bawlmer brews, foldable bikes,

25

baltimore observed hard to swallow

and gourmet doggie dinners

mixed reviews for outgoing city schools food guru tony geraci by michael anft

49 37

scope the good fight

get guidance from a new breed of patient navigators. by mat edelson

this month online at www.urbanitebaltimore.com: resources for cancer patients and caregivers

49

hampden’s roosevelt park pool gets a facelift. by marianne amoss

55

on the air:

July 8: Author Wes Moore on the road not taken July 21: Outgoing city schools food and nutrition chief Tony Geraci

eat/drink good dog

america’s love-hate relationship with the frankfurter

food: david dudley’s secret hot dog topping

space pool party

by david dudley

59

reviewed: the dizz and centro tapas bar

61

wine & sprits: rosé-colored glasses

63

the feed: this month in eating

65

art/culture where paths diverge

the other wes moore and the nature-versus-nurture question by lionel foster

July 22: New directions in cancer care

plus: the sondheim prize, artscape, and this month’s cultural highlights

78

eye to eye

urbanite’s creative director, alex castro, on painter ed harris

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

7

Taste and Experience Downtown Baltimore.

is su e 73 : ju ly 2 0 10 p ub lish er Tracy Ward Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com c r e ativ e d ir ec tor Alex Castro gener al m anager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com e d i t o r -i n -c h i e f Greg Hanscom Greg@urbanitebaltimore.com

Enjoy Downtown Baltimore’s rich and diverse

m a naging ed ito r Marianne K. Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com

restaurant scene. Whatever your preference,

e d i t o r -a t -l a r g e David Dudley David@urbanitebaltimore.com o n lin e ed ito r s green/sustainable: Heather Dewar Heather@urbanitebaltimore.com style/shopping: Jada Fletcher Jada@urbanitebaltimore.com home/design: Brennen Jensen Brennen@urbanitebaltimore.com food/drink: Tracey Middlekauff Tracey@urbanitebaltimore.com arts/culture: Cara Ober Cara@urbanitebaltimore.com

the dining possibilities Downtown are endless.

Visit DineDowntownBaltimore.com

liter a r y ed ito r Susan McCallum-Smith literaryeditor@urbanitebaltimore.com

for restaurants, specials, menus and more.

proofr eader Robin T. Reid c o n tr ib uting w r iter s Michael Anft, Scott Carlson, Charles Cohen, Michael Corbin, Mat Edelson, Lionel Foster, Clinton Macsherry, Richard O’Mara, Andrew Reiner, Martha Thomas, Michael Yockel, Mary K. Zajac ed ito r ia l in ter ns Amelia Blevins, Simon Pollock

CITY CENTER

d e s i g n /p r o d u c t i o n m a n a g e r Lisa Van Horn Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com

MOUNT VERNON

t r a f fi c p r o d u c t i o n c o o r d i n a t o r Belle Gossett Belle@urbanitebaltimore.com

FEDERAL HILL

d e sig n e r Kristian Bjørnard Kristian@urbanitebaltimore.com

FELLS POINT HARBOR EAST

p r o d uc t io n in t e r n s Jenna Kaminsky, Karly Kolaja, Megan Pennington

INNER HARBOR

v i d e o g r a p h e r /w e b s i t e c o o r d i n a t o r Chris Rebbert website@urbanitebaltimore.com

WESTSIDE

se n io r a c c o u n t e x e c u t iv e s Catherine Bowen Catherine@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan Econ Econsusan@urbanitebaltimore.com Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com account ex ecutiv e Rachel Bloom Rachel@urbanitebaltimore.com a d v e r t i s i n g s a l e s /e v e n t s c o o r d i n a t o r Erin Albright Erin@urbanitebaltimore.com b o o k k e e p i n g /m a r k e t i n g a s s i s t a n t Iris Goldstein Iris@urbanitebaltimore.com m a r k eting inter ns Madeline Miller, Megan Pennington, Maria Satyshur on lin e a ssista n t Shantez Evans founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050 ; Fax: 410-243-2115 w w w.urbanitebaltimore.com

BISTRO 300

An Initiative of Downtown Partnership of Baltimore

8

urbanite july 10

THE PRIME RIB

THE RESERVE

Find convenient and low cost parking at many Baltimore City garages on evenings and weekends, at www.DowntownBaltMap.com

Editorial inquiries: Send 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 for assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2010, Urbanite LLC. All rights reserved.

Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. To suggest a drop location for the magazine, please contact us at 410-243-2050. Postmaster: Send address changes to Urbanite Subscriptions, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211.

Urbanite is a certified Minority Business Enterprise.

editor’s note

photo by Karly Kolaja

Urbanite’s editorial team: front: Greg Hanscom (editor-in-chief), Tracey Middlekauff (food/drink online editor), Marianne Amoss (managing editor), Brennen Jensen (home/design online editor) back: Cara Ober (arts/culture online editor), Heather Dewar (green/sustainable online editor), Jada Fletcher (style/shopping online editor)

Let’s face it. Urbanite has always been an odd duck. Never

mind that it’s a full-color, glossy magazine that costs readers not a cent while steering clear of the “Top Docs” fluff that is the bread and butter of many city magazines. The thing that has always set Urbanite apart is the way that it opens its pages to readers, most notably in the monthly “What You’re Writing” column, which features short nonfiction written by you, and in the annual Urbanite Project issue, where we turn over the better part of the magazine to non-journalists who cook up and present crazy great ideas for the city.

We think of you all not just as readers, but as members of a community of thoughtful citizens who want to understand what makes this city tick and how you can engage with it. And now we’re taking that one step further.

In the next few months you will see some dramatic changes at Urbanite, both online and on paper. For starters, the day this issue hits the streets we will launch a new website, the product of close to a year of thought and work. The site, www.urbanitebaltimore.com, is now a gathering place—and a springboard for action. It is broken down into six sections, each focusing on a different aspect of urban life: news/ features, arts/culture, food/drink, home/design, style/shopping, and green living/sustainability. Each section features articles from the magazine, original news updates and profiles, product reviews and guides to local businesses, restaurants, and services—and plenty of opportunities for you to join in. Sign up for a membership (not to worry: there are no fees, no filters, no flaming hoops to jump through), and you can comment on stories or send in your own, submit photographs for publication, and, through a new service called Ask Baltimore, network and share information with other urbanites.

To keep the conversation lively and the sections of the website buzzing, we’ve hired a crack team of online editors. Heather Dewar, an environment writer who has done time (and won awards) at the Miami Herald and the Baltimore Sun, will head up the green/sustainable channel. (Heather wrote the feature story for this issue, “Now or Never,” starting on page 28, about the latest efforts to clean up the Chesapeake

Bay.) Serial shopper and the erstwhile writer of the Baltimore Brew website’s “Shoestring Files” Jada Fletcher will be our guide to the world of style/shopping. Brennen Jensen, who explored every forgotten nook and cranny of Baltimore as a City Paper staffer, will cover the home/design beat. Writer and culinary student Tracey Middlekauff, known in the blogosphere as “Tasty Trix,” will dish out fresh stories about food/drink. And heading up arts/culture coverage is award-winning painter, writer, curator, and art professor Cara Ober, who also masterminds the BmoreArt blog.

These online editors will provide windows into their sides of the city with free weekly e-mail magazines, keeping subscribers up to date on the most hopping events, art openings, new restaurants, and more, as well as featuring reader-generated stories, questions, and photos. In addition to these “e-zines,” we will continue to produce our weekly events e-blast, which features a selection of must-attend happenings around town. We invite you to subscribe to all six of these weekly services—or just one or two if you prefer. Look for the “Weekly E-zines” sign-up box on the homepage. You can also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. (Our Twitter IDs are @urbanitemd, @urbanitemdgreen, @urbanitemdstyle, @urbanitemdesign, @urbanitemdfood, and @urbanitemdarts.) Whatever you do, we hope you will dive in and become a part of the community.

We would be remiss in talking about all this if we didn’t mention David Dudley, former Urbanite editor-in-chief, who stepped out in May to take a job with the vaunted AARP magazine in Washington, D.C. It was David’s prodding, starting shortly after he arrived at Urbanite in the summer of 2007, that ultimately motivated the website redesign. He also poured many precious hours into the thinking behind a redesign of the print publication, which we will unveil this fall. In many ways these changes are the culmination of David’s work here, a time when the magazine crystallized its focus, beefed up its coverage—and not only survived but thrived through what we can only hope was the worst of the Great Recession.

So hats off and thanks to David. We wish him well with his new endeavor and look forward to his input as our new “editor-at-large.”

Thanks, too, to the folks at the Planit agency, who designed the “We Have Issues” campaign promoting our new e-zines. And finally, welcome aboard to all of you. We’ll see you around.

—Greg Hanscom

HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Coming Next Month: Tales of summer 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 u l y 1 0

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u2393urbanite.indd r b a n i t e j u l1y 1 0

5/26/10 9:40 AM

illustration by Chris Rebbert

what you’re saying

good read I picked up a copy of the June issue at my gym. Great hard-hitting articles, from the bully story in “What You’re Writing” to the New York photographer in Sowebo who doesn’t feel safe in Baltimore (“Shot Through the Heart”) to “Summer in the City.” Then, reviving abandoned parks. Every story is on target, on time.

I spent all last evening and this morning reading most every page. Thanks for a virtual hot air balloon ride (with grit and feeling) over the city.

—John Behle, Owings Mills baltimore 1, new york 0 While doing volunteer work in Honduras, my son became a big fan of the baleada, the “sandwich” described in Martha Thomas’s June article “Run for the Border.” Returning to his home in Queens, New York, he searched in vain for baleadas. Finally he thought he’d found a place in Brooklyn, but after a long subway ride, discovered that it had closed. When he visited Baltimore last summer, we got off the water taxi at Thames Street, heading up Broadway in search of baleadas. Just as we were about to give up, we found them in a restaurant just east of Broadway. Continuing our walk to downtown, we passed another place that had baleadas, on Lombard just west of Broadway.

Take that, Big Apple!

—Bob Jacobson, Pikesville

the cost of good food As a volunteer at Great Kids Farm and an active foodie at University of Maryland Baltimore County, I was very excited to read your recent article on where restaurants get their food (“Field Report,” May). This semester, I took on a big project: organizing a farmer’s market on campus. I learned how challenging it can be to work with the local government, not to mention the bureaucracy on campus. I also found out that although people are willing to pay high prices to eat out, students still like to save a few bucks and will choose chips over carrots.

I see it every day at the dining hall when my friend will choose a dinner of French fries, garlic bread, and sugary cereal over a mix of curry chicken, asparagus, and roast potatoes. And since these students usually outnumber the locally oriented, it’s almost impossible to convince the food bosses that we need to serve more local, organic, and sustainable food.

In spite of these obstacles, I was inspired by your article and continue to be optimistic about the potential for real food change in Baltimore universities. Kudos!

restaurants, pharmacies, convenience stores, ALL make a profit just as galleries do. What makes it acceptable to haggle in a gallery but unthinkable to haggle in the other establishments?

In my world, art is priced by the artist.

The gallery adds on a percentage, or, as the gallery I belong to does, keeps 30 percent of the retail price the artist has put on it. That 30 percent pays the rent.

Regardless of what money galleries keep, the price is on the painting, and that is the price, in most cases, that the artist and the gallery have agreed on. We allow galleries to tack on extra or give them a percentage because they are giving us exposure and selling for us. If a client wants to avoid the gallery percentage, then a meeting at the artist’s studio might be the answer, but it could be very embarrassing to both the client and the artist. Who enjoys being told their work is worth less than what they feel it is worth?

Please remember we are not selling cabbages or couches. Our creative endeavors should not be purchased because “the price is right.” They should be purchased because the client loves and wants them.

—Maddy Hall, Baltimore

—Maria Cavacos, Fells Point

a fair price I was very disappointed when I read the article by Marion Winik (“Still Life with Price Tag”) in the May issue. Your magazine normally supports the arts, and that article didn’t. Doctors’ offices, hospitals,

We want to hear what you’re saying.

E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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The concerts are free to all and run from 7:30 to 9 p.m. every Friday. Enjoy the outdoor concerts, have a snack, grab a drink and pull up a chair courtesy of Greetings & Readings.

Thanks to our Concert Series sponsors Greenspring Energy and St. Joseph Medical Center.

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what you’re writing of the room. There were piles of sheet music, smoky but otherwise preserved. Tyler was getting bored. I shook off the sordid feeling that clung to me like soot, and we rushed off to shoot marbles at the alley cats.

—Asa Church is currently sailing on the Chesapeake. He teaches eighth grade but dreams in poetry and prose.

Burned Out “High-tech engineering firm seeks Technical Writer to produce hardware and software documentation according to MIL-STD and DoD specifications. Writing sample required.”

It was 1989, and I had just completed my master’s thesis, a study of nature imagery in Keats, Yeats, and Wordsworth. I considered submitting it as a writing sample, but feared all those nightingales, swans, and daffodils might prove insufficiently MIL-STDcompliant.

I pulled on a navy skirt and jacket with padded shoulders, slipped into pantyhose, pumps, and a gold-plated necklace from Hecht’s, and tottered off to the interview, leaving the dancing daffodils behind.

That was more than twenty years ago.

The other morning, my business partner and I sat drinking coffee and playing a financial version of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He opened his 401(k) portfolio, I opened mine, and we compared size, asset mix, and risk-to-reward ratio. We reviewed company earnings and cash flow and discussed strategies to increase direct labor and reduce overhead. We synched our calendars and drained our Styrofoam cups.

At 8 o’clock I got in my SUV and drove to the government client site, passing razorwire fencing, concrete barricades, and smiling security guards carrying M4 carbines.

I swiped an ID badge, pushed through the turnstile, and entered a world of cipher locks, cubicles, and long gray corridors.

That same morning, my mother stumbled across a twisted bundle of fabric and fur nestled in her garden. It was a raccoon, tangled in a pair of men’s dress pants, its teeth embedded in the flannel like sewing needles. Poisoned, or rabid, the creature must have bit down hard and held on until everything else faded away—the lilac bushes, the dogwoods, the periwinkles—its whole

world collapsing into a few feet of gray cloth, and that, too, fading away, as the light in those wild eyes slowly burned out.

—Jenny Martin is a student in the MA in writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

When not earning a living, she rides horses with equal parts enthusiasm and ineptitude.

Visiting my friend Tyler and his family in South Philly was an adventure for me, being young, naïve, and thoroughly suburban. On the drive there, I stayed glued to the windows. The homeless, the hookers, and the glass-strewn parking lots glittering under the streetlights were a mysterious carnival; the city lights above and beyond danced. I wondered what secrets were hiding behind the boarded-up windows.

Tyler’s parents were the hipster types, so we kids ran wild. We stampeded from room to room, firing rubber bands at each other and barricading the doors against Tyler’s sister. From his bedroom window Tyler pointed out the rooftop where a woman sunbathed topless. Below us, the alley provided ample targets for his wrist rocket. Sirens wailed, and I thought they must be coming for us, but he just laughed.

“The house two doors down caught fire,” Tyler informed me, “and the guy died.

Want to see it?” His dad led the way into the burned-out house. The fire chief, they said, had found the asphyxiated violinist with the stub of a cigarette still in his hand.

Within hours after the last fire truck had left, scavengers ransacked the house for anything of worth. Tyler’s dad finally boarded up the house, giving what dignity he could to his deceased neighbor.

I kept thinking about the elderly musician asleep on the couch as flames engulfed the pile of newspapers at his feet. An old upright piano stood blackened in one corner

I was 14 years old in 1997, wore the same pair of skater jeans every day, had threequarters of my head shaved, and painted my bangs with different colors of Kool-Aid paste daily. The town where I grew up was small, a factory place that told its young, “You can’t do much else besides this.” With my dad—a truck driver, a motorcycle rider, an animal lover, and an artist—gone for long stretches at a time, my teenage angst was mostly directed toward my mom and myself.

One spring afternoon, I sat on our front steps smelling the fresh farm air and hating everything. I wore a yellow T-shirt I’d made just days before: “I’m a loser,” it said. Returning from a week on the road, my dad rolled all eighteen wheels over our gravel driveway and walked up the sidewalk carrying his duffel bag of dirty laundry. I barely glanced up.

“Take off that shirt and bring it back out here,” he greeted me sternly.

If it’d been my mom, I would’ve told her to go to hell, but I didn’t have enough practice doing so with him. I grudgingly obeyed, slamming the door open hard on my way into the house.

Back outside, I sat down on the steps again and held my homemade shirt in my hands, curiosity mounting to match my animosity. My tired, bearded father walked toward me with a can of gasoline. “Put it on the ground,” he said. He saturated my shirt, walked in the house, and came back a minute later. “You’re not a loser, Bran,” he told me, as the match flew through the air and landed on my statement. And a funny thing happened as I sat there and watched it blaze: I began to consider the possibility.

—Brandi Dawn Henderson is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, pursuing an MA in creative nonfiction. She recently took a Greyhound bus across the country without stopping, during which time she learned about the futility of first impressions.

That morning, my mother was preparing breakfast for her brood of children. My father was at church, having taken me to serve as altar boy at the early weekday Mass. I was 8 years old.

About 7:15 a.m., Mrs. Dixon, a neighbor whose backyard faced ours, appeared at the w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

15

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kitchen door, shouting that smoke was pouring from one of the rear bedroom windows of our house. My mother raced upstairs to grab my 3-month-old sister from her crib in a front bedroom. Firefighters snatched my naked 2-year-old brother from the first-floor toilet and carried him outside wrapped in only a towel. The other siblings fled the house unassisted.

Dad had a habit of following fire engines when he heard them in the neighborhood to see where the fi re was. That morning, driving home from church, he fell in behind a truck that led him to his own blazing house.

Afterward, the five older kids were scattered among friends and neighbors. Within days, Father Farina had found a house in the neighborhood for us, which we occupied for two months during repairs to our house. Furniture and clothes appeared as if by magic at our temporary lodging, all without cost.

Shortly before Christmas we returned home. Waiting for us was box of handcrafted Christmas tree ornaments from Mrs. Dixon and a Cub Scout troop she den-mothered.

Our ornaments had been destroyed in the fi re. The new pieces were colorful and well crafted, and for the next thirty years they were the fi rst things hung on my parents’ Christmas tree. The generosity of friends and neighbors has never been forgotten. ■ —Stephen Pohl is a former Baltimore City police officer who now works as an insurance claims adjuster. His essays, articles, poetry, and fiction have appeared in regional and national publications and on the Web.

WarmWelcome Glorious Music TiffanyWindowsHistoricmt.Vernon Sunday School Book Group interesting speakers Christmas Tower Recitals Wine & cHeese Opera Vivente Pancakes classes Duchess of Windsor Iron Crow Theatre soaring spaces Community Grants Insightful, ThoughtProvoking Preaching moVie group Beautiful Weddings Good Coffee “12 at 12” - Brief pipe organ concert and highlights tour of the historic sanctuary, Wednesdays at noon.

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Baltimore City Community College

We Did It. You Can Too!

“What You’re Writing” is the place

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

Send your essay to Urbanite, 2002 Clipper Park Road, Fourth Floor, Baltimore, MD 21211, or e-mail it to WhatYoureWriting@urbanite baltimore.com. Submissions should be shorter than four hundred words. Because of the number of essays we receive, we cannot respond individually to each writer. Please do not send originals; submissions cannot be returned. topic Harvest Sunrise, Sunset Sibling Rivalry

deadline July 5, 2010 Aug 9, 2010 Sept 6, 2010

publication Sept 2010 Oct 2010 Nov 2010

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urbanite july 10

PrattAdJuly2010.indd 1

6/2/10 4:18:20 PM

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Outdoor Movies

Monthlong

When it’s hot as Hades out, few things are better than a free outdoor movie. A few highlights from around town: The American Visionary Art Museum’s Flicks from the Hill runs Thursdays starting July 1 with Singin’ in the Rain—plus, admission to the museum is free beforehand.

Little Italy’s Friday-night version opens July 2 with Moonstruck and includes free popcorn. And Johns Hopkins University’s series continues from June with The Princess Bride on July 9, preceded by live music.

Museum: 800 Key Hwy.; 410244-1900; www.avam.org Little Italy: corner of High and Stiles sts.; www.littleitalymd.com JHU: Wyman Quadrangle, 3400 N. Charles St.; 410-516-4548; www.jhu.edu/summer/fi lms

Harborplace 30th Anniversary Celebration

July 2–4

Harborplace throws itself a thirtieth birthday party with street performers, a lecture on Maryland crabs, a walking tour of the historic neighborhoods near the Inner Harbor, and more. A Reagan-era costume contest and fashion show hark back to Harborplace’s grand opening in 1980.

410-332-4191 www.harborplace.com

4th of July Celebrations

July 4

The Inner Harbor once again welcomes the sweaty masses for a patriotic fireworks display on Independence Day. If fighting for a parking spot isn’t on your must-do list, there are some less-crowded options: the July 4 American Visionary Art Museum’s Visionary Pets on Parade (410-244-1900; www.avam.org); the Dundalk Heritage Fair July 2–4, complete with pig races, a parade, fireworks, and a beer garden (410-284-4022; www.dundalkheritagefair.com); and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Star-Spangled Spectacular at Oregon Ridge July 3 and 4 (410-783-8000; www.bsomusic.org).

Inner Harbor entertainment starts at 2 p.m.; fi reworks begin at 9:30 p.m.

1-877-BALTIMORE www.promotionandarts.com

36th Annual PowWow

July 17–18

This ain’t your average dance contest. Native American dancers of all ages from the Baltimore area compete for a variety of cash prizes in their finest dress. For spectators, there’s also traditional cuisine and plenty of crafts tents to browse.

Maryland State Fairgrounds 2200 York Rd. Daily admission $5; children 3 and younger free 410-675-3535 www.baic.org

Short-Track Motorcycle Racing

July 23 & 30

The dirt will fly at the Baltimore County Trail Riders Association’s short-track racing series in Timonium, held annually since the early 1970s. Six to ten motorcyclists at a time race multiple laps, elbow to elbow, around the fairgrounds’ pony ring, about a tenth of a mile in length. Trail Riders President Brett Friedel compares it to a smallerscale Nascar. Proceeds benefit cystic fibrosis research and the Cockeysville Optimist Club, which sells food at the track.

Maryland State Fairgrounds 2200 York Rd. $10; children 8 and younger free www.bctra.com

Otakon

July 30–Aug 1

Calling all fanboys and girls: Grab your cat-ear hats and plush mascots for the seventeenth annual Otakon convention. This massive all-things-Asian-pop-culture appreciation event includes a costume contest, fan-produced media screenings, concerts, gaming, the Otaku Idol competition, and much more.

Baltimore Convention Center 1 W. Pratt St. $65 until July 3; $75 thereafter 610-577-6136 www.otakon.com

Photo credits from top to bottom: courtesy of AVAM/Alain Jaramillo; no credit; photo by Jody Wissing | Dreamstime.com; photo by Geroge Hagegeorge; photo by Ryan Henderson; photo by Ted D’Ottavio, Otakorp Inc.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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Thrifty Threads

photo by John Miskimon

Ben Abdallah and Anna Dickerson want you to know you don’t have to don hemp tunics and recycled tire sandals to be in with the eco-crowd. The husband and wife duo opened Hill Fashion Consignment (1201 Light St.; 410294-8892) in April with both the environment and the economy in mind. Filling a gap in the otherwise high-end shopping options in Federal Hill, the shop carries highquality secondhand women’s clothes and accessories.

With racks and shelves boasting labels such as Coach, Betsey Johnson, and BCBG, Abdallah says, “A woman can put together a stylish outfit for less than $100.”

—Maren Tarro

Stowaways

courtesy of Dahon

Your vehicle for the summer commute can now fit under your desk or in the hallway closet. Foldable bicycles are easy to spot because of their smaller wheels and hyper-extended steering columns and seat posts. The smallest of them can shrink down to fit in a shoulder bag. (They’re also the only bikes allowed on the MARC train.) At Light Street Cycles in Federal Hill (1124 Light St.; 410-685-2234; www.lightstcycles.com), half a dozen foldable models are available. “They’re very popular for travel and storage solutions” and are “relatively maintenance free,” says bike mechanic Andy Coleman, who has since left the shop. But Patrick Gore-Traill of Joe’s Bike Shop in Fells Point (723-B S. Broadway; 443-869-3435; www.mtwashingtonbikes.com) doesn’t recommend them for, say, the Tour de France. “They feel sketchy at high speeds,” he says. “It’s never going to be as a efficient as a full-size bike.”

—Simon Pollock

photo by John Seabrook

Gourmet Kibble

Eight years ago, when Baltimoreans John and Stacey Seabrook bought a dog from a breeder, they were surprised to discover that the pup was being fed a diet of raw meat and vegetables. After some research, John understood why. “What goes into commercial dog food is absolutely appalling,” he says. “It’s garbage; it’s absolute crap.” Now, the Seabrooks only feed their three Bernese Mountain dogs (Walden, Saxon, and Daphne) raw food, which they turn out in South Baltimore under the name Dogs Gone Wild (410-960-8667; www.DGWrawfood.com).

Their recipe uses 100 percent human-grade products: The meat is USDA-approved, the produce is shipped fresh daily, and there are no additives, preservatives, or antibiotics. Flavor options include chicken, beef, turkey, and lamb, with venison and rabbit blends on the way.

Dogs Gone Wild food can be purchased frozen at several pet stores around the area, including Howl (3531 Chestnut Ave.; 410-235-2469; www.howlbaltimore.com) and Bark (16822 Georgia Ave., Olney; 301774-1944; www.barknatural.com).

—Amelia Blevins w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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Featuring new bikes for all budgets, expert mechanics for all repairs, and professional bike fitting by certified bike fitters. All are invited to go for a ride at BALTIMORE’S NEWEST BIKE SHOP.

5. Greetings & Readings A full service book and Hallmark store, the selection at Greetings & Readings in the Hunt Valley Towne Centre has been refined over the years to include notable brands like Vera Bradley, Brighton, Swarovski, Waterford, Godiva and so much more. Plus, a café with free Wi-Fi, great coffee and desserts.

6. Poppy and Stella Shoes and handbags that combine modern detailing with timeless appeal, as well as a handpicked assortment of jewelry and accessories for embellishments that inspire. Like stepping into the closet of the most stylish woman you know, Poppy and Stella has everything you need to make that closet your own.

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3. Waterstone Bar & Grille Introducing Mt. Vernon and Seton Hills newest wine bar & grille with an eclectic menu. Large variety of premium wines, liquor, and beer.

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4. Mt. Washington Wine Company Mt. Washington Wine Company offers a hand-picked selection of fine wine, microbrews, spirits, and accessories.

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Paper Goods

When Maryland Institute College of Art grad Kat Feuerstein decided she wanted to open her own business, she thought it would be strictly graphic design. But she fell in love with the hands-on aspect of letterpressing, acquiring a few of her own printing presses. In 2004, Feuerstein combined her two passions in Gilah Press + Design (410-746-9059; www.gilahpress.com). In a green-and-orange studio tucked away in Hampden, she designs and prints paper-based products, from custom wedding invitations and baby announcements to feisty greeting cards. Her latest letterpress creations, unveiled in May, include square “Small Talk” note cards and “Tipsy Tags” wine glass tags. “They’re a little bit sassy,” Feuerstein says. “It’s just kind of how I am.”

—A.B.

Baby à la Mode

Cara Schrock doesn’t think motherhood should mean sacrificing personal style—for mom or baby. “I want parents to be able to dress their kids as cool as they dress themselves,” says Schrock, single mom to son Julian, who turns 5 this month. In July 2006 she launched the online clothier Urban Baby Runway (www.urbanbabyrunway.com) to sell petite fashions with attitude: mini rockabilly shirts, polka-dot dresses, fedoras, and more, as well as tees for new and soon-to-be parents that don’t mince words (“I Make Milk. What’s Your Superpower?”). Orders of more than $100 ship free, and if you’re local (and Schrock isn’t too swamped juggling baby and business), she just might deliver your goods in person.

—M.T.

photo by La

Kaye M bah

Hometown Brews

photo by Karly Kolaja

When John O’Melia was a young man, he dreamed of brewing beer, inspired by a vacant brewery he’d pass by while driving along I-83. “A bunch of guys from Loyola High School had a dream that we would take that place and make beer in it,” he says. Switch that abandoned building out for an office and manufacturing facility in Highlandtown, and O’Melia has finally done it: He launched his microbrewery, Bawlmer Craft Beers, in April. The former civil and environmental engineer is down to earth—and so are his brews. “We want people to know two things: that it’s a craft beer, and that it’s from Baltimore.”

Bawlmer’s first two concoctions, an amber beer dubbed “Amber’s Ale, Hon” and a brown ale called “Formstone Ale,” are available in liquor stores and bars around the city. Go to www.bawlmerbeer.com for a list.

—S.P. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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Waiting for the revolution: Baltimore City high school students William Murphy, left, and Derek Slaughter say the school lunch fare leaves much to be desired.

baltimore observed

e d U C at i O n

Hard to

Swallow School lunch guru Tony Geraci steps out amid dashed expectations.

T

by michael anft

|

photography by daniel bedell

ony Geraci blew into Baltimore two years ago with gas burners wide open, giddily preaching his healthy-eating gospel as if he were reading directly from The Whole Food Bible. A flashy success story that started in the projects of cuisine-glutted New Orleans, Geraci boasted a four-star career as a chef/entrepreneur. (See “The Lunchroom Chronicles,” Nov. ’08 Urbanite.)

He slept on a sailboat docked in the harbor, where he planned his takeover of institutional cafeterias across the city.

As Baltimore City Public Schools’ food and nutrition chief, he promised to transform lunchrooms from dishers-out of prepackaged glop and fried, unidentifiable animal parts into sanctuaries for fresh, locally grown food cooked in-house. His vision included establishing a central kitchen that would receive fresh meats, cheeses, and produce and turn them into nutritious, tasty meals, and a “farm to fork” educational program that would teach kids how to grow and cook food.

Intrigued by the possibilities and by Geraci’s oversized personality, National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm featured him on her show. Slow food guru Michael Pollan predicted that if Geraci could pull off his trick here, it would ignite a nationwide school food revolution. In April, the White House asked him to take part in Michelle Obama’s Childhood Obesity Summit.

But while Geraci won the adulation of the new-food crowd, what he got from the city that initially embraced him is something else entirely: a tossed salad made of red tape, croutons the size of roadblocks, and too few greens—meaning cash. His

efforts to convert his locavore vision into edible reality effectively ended in late May, when the city announced that, as of July 1, he would no longer be in charge of what city school kids eat. Geraci will continue on as a city schools “food consultant,” but he’ll also juggle consulting gigs across the country.

City school officials chalked up Geraci’s departure to his desire to return home. “It was based on family,” says Edie House-Foster, a city schools spokeswoman. “He’s been commuting back and forth to New England”—Geraci’s family lives in New Hampshire—“and that can take a toll on a person.”

While the job is not yet complete, House-Foster says that the school system is very pleased that Geraci did the early heavy lifting. “There’s no dissatisfaction with the job he did whatsoever,” she says. “He’s been a trooper. We love Tony.”

But cafeteria trays never reflected Geraci’s promises, his critics say. Some wonder whether Geraci was full of anything more than hot air. “I’ve watched the food over the past two years, and I can tell you the quality hasn’t really changed,” says Bakari Nazeer, a sophomore at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute.

“I’m disappointed in the whole system.” Nazeer is an activist for the Baltimore Algebra Project, a student group that works to improve schools and has sent representatives to school board meetings to protest the lack of quality food.

School administrators privately complained that the fresh food Geraci promised was missing or inadequate—peaches that weren’t ripe, eggplant that appeared only once. Some say w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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Tony’s ideas. Things just moved slower than he wanted,” she says. “We’re very serious about reform in this area. We’re really hoping that what Tony has envisioned will come true here.” The school system has begun a nationwide search for his replacement.

There is some question, however, whether the Geraci revolution is what Baltimore kids and their parents want. “Meatless Mondays,” a program Geraci started in 2008, offers such meals as black bean tacos, cheese lasagna, and cheese quesadillas. The problem is that kids often don’t recognize the food. “They serve more kinds of food from more ethnicities,” says Melike Humbles, a junior at Heritage High School and a member of the Baltimore Algebra Project. “But it still looks like it’s been pre-cooked and shipped in from somewhere. A lot of it’s stuff from other cuisines I’ve never tried.”

Geraci conceded that his vegetarian meals didn’t exactly win over the masses: “You wouldn’t believe the number of calls I get from parents on Mondays who are angry because their kids can’t get a chicken box.”

Despite the barriers, Geraci and the school system say they’ve had some successes: A new menu designed by students.

Several farm-to-fork events that have involved meals made by kids. A new food contract starting July 1 that involves delivering better food to schools for $2 million less than the old contract. More than $2 million spent in the last two years on fresh produce from Maryland.

Geraci’s backers—and there are many of them—say that he was the victim of his own enthusiasm and that people wrongly came to expect miracles from him. “The problem is that Tony is excited and comes across as a visionary when he speaks,” says Richard Chisolm, a Baltimore fi lmmaker who is directing a documentary about Geraci’s work here.

“That gets people thinking that things will be done—and done quickly—even though it’s not ever that simple. City kids have been eating crap for thirty years, and even though Tony has accomplished several of his goals, people will say it’s not enough.”

During an interview in April, Geraci hinted that his time was short. “There are other places that want to do this, and I’ve been hearing from them,” he said. “Maybe someone from Baltimore should step up and take this job. I could consult and mentor them. It isn’t rocket science.” He said he hoped that, in time, the city’s budget would include money to complete his dream. “The funding issue is what it’s all about,” he said.

“I just want to feed some kids, man.” ■

baltimore observed rock bottom: Thanks to a scrambling City Council, Baltimore’s Recreation and Parks Department will avoid losing nearly half of its staff due to the city’s budget shortfall. (See “Breaking the Silence,” June ’10 Urbanite.) Before the passage of a second package of revenue-enhancing bills on June 11, almost half of the city’s fi fty-five rec centers were slated to close by June 30.

This latest funding measure approved adds $21.65 million to the fi rst revenue package, which totaled $23.4 million; combined, the two bills surpass the $41.5 million in new revenue needed for critical city services.

U p d at e

they begged for more salad and less pizza and fries. One points to the produce grown at Great Kids Farm—the 33-acre, organic, cityowned outpost in Catonsville that Geraci reinvigorated—as an example of how far his vision veered off course. “The stuff they grow there ends up going to Woodberry Kitchen,” the administrator says. “Why aren’t the kids getting that food?” Others in the city say Geraci never completely followed through on promises to find jobs for foster kids working in nonprofit greenhouses in Clifton Park, which have been slow to get started.

Now, city schools leaders say they will concentrate on expanding certain parts of their food education plans. The system will use city and state money to focus on training students who will make two thousand meals a week for at-risk elementary and middle school children. Fruits and vegetables grown at Great Kids Farm will be used in those meals.

For his part, Geraci—interviewed before he left the position—said that many of his ideas never came to fruition because of a lack of commitment from the city and its denizens. It came down to a chicken-andegg thing, Geraci said: Seventy-five percent of the 82,000 kids who attend city public schools eat cafeteria lunches. Geraci hoped that percentage would rise as the food quality improved, which would kick in a federal spending formula that rewards school kitchens that serve more lunches. More federal money would, in turn, lead to better food and more food-centric education. To get the ball rolling, he wanted more money from the city to help develop a modern kitchen where he and his staff would turn healthy recipes into meals that could be delivered citywide.

But the city never made the initial investment. Perhaps as a result, during his two years here, the number of students ordering lunch at cafeterias remained flat.

Geraci partly offset the lack of growth in lunch sales by kick-starting the school breakfast program, quadrupling the number of breakfast boxes sold before school. Those contained fresh juice and milk. But most lunches still lacked flavor and nutrition, his critics say. Geraci blamed this on city contracts with prepared food companies and the city’s reluctance to activate clauses that allow it to break those contracts with thirty days’ notice. “I was told I’d have the support of the school system for my ideas, but it hasn’t happened,” Geraci said, adding that he decided to sell organic produce from Great Kids Farm to offset the lack of financial support he received from the city to run it. “The reality is the citizens of this town need to stand up and say that they need these ideas to happen.”

But House-Foster says Geraci got plenty of backing from the system. “We supported

—Simon Pollock only a test: When students at George Washington Elementary passed their 2008 standardized tests with flying colors, teachers, students, and administrators were thrilled—until they found out it was all a ruse. An investigation, conducted jointly by the Baltimore City Public Schools and the Maryland State Department of Education, concluded in May and found that someone had tampered with the Maryland State Assessment tests by erasing and changing answers. Even though the investigation did not identify the person or people who made the changes, the professional license of former principal Susan Burgess was revoked.

Baltimore City Public Schools spokesman Michael Sarbanes denies that high-stakes testing, in which test results determine federal funding, is to blame. (See “Testing in Progress,” Sept. ’09 Urbanite.) “Someone got greedy,” he says. “The school had improved a lot with no tampering at all. Someone wanted it to be a school where the results were off the charts.” But while George Washington was not at risk for losing funding, the episode shows just how focused school faculty and administration have become on test scores. Local education consultant Claire Tesh says that rather than centering education on acing tests, teachers need to be given more accountability and flexibility to allow students independent thought and creativity in their learning. “At the end of the day,” she says, “the students lose out if they’re not getting the support that they need.”

—Amelia Blevins

On the air: A conversation with Tony Geraci on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on July 21 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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This is personal: Sixty-one-year-old East Coast Surfing Hall of Famer Kathy Phillips has made it her mission to clean up the Eastern Shore poultry industry.

With renewed commitment from federal and state leaders, we may finally clean up the Chesapeake Bay—but only if citizens do their part.

Now or Never story by heather dewar photography by david harp

Kathy Phillips seems an unlikely adversary

for the Eastern Shore’s poultry-growing factory farms, an industry she calls “Big Chicken.” She is 61 years old, an avid amateur surfer who moved to Ocean City for the waves in 1978. Phillips still bodyboards when she gets a break from her job as the Assateague Coastkeeper, the local representative of the nationwide nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance.

She is probably the only waterkeeper who’s in the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame.

But consider how she got there: She started as a volunteer for the Ocean City chapter of the Eastern Surfing Association, a pack of wave riders determined to convince people there really was decent surfing east of California. She ended up running the organization, which became an aggressive advocate for beach access and clean water. In 2006 Phillips ran for a seat on the Worcester County Commission, lost to a better-financed incumbent, and then went to work for the Assateague Coastal Trust, a local conservation group that also sponsors her other job as the Coastkeeper.

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partnership among the bay states and the federal government has, at best, kept the bay’s plight from getting worse in the face of rampant population growth in the watershed. Virtually all the experts admit that the bay is not much better off than it was twentyseven years ago, and in some respects its condition is worse. “It’s an abysmal record,” says J. Charles Fox, senior advisor for the Chesapeake at the EPA. “We have a long way to go.”

But here’s a twist: Now that nobody’s in denial anymore, there are glimmerings of hope. Members of the bay’s old guard say they sense a new determination at the EPA, which released a sweeping new restoration strategy in May. If the agency’s leadership stays involved, if the old guard remains outspoken, if the politicians keep their campaign promises, maybe the bay states can finally make good on their pledge to bring back the Chesapeake’s lost abundance. Maybe— but only if citizens keep the pressure on.

Monocrop: The iconic American farm has given way to standardized, automated buildings housing tens of thousands of look-alike animals.

In 2008, Maryland’s poultry growers produced nearly 300 million broiler chickens—and 600 million pounds of manure.

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Phillips would like to stick to her home waters, patrolling the Atlantic side of the Delmarva Peninsula by truck, by boat, and occasionally from the passenger seat of another volunteer’s airplane. But she couldn’t turn her back on the nearby rivers meandering through Chicken Country. The Pocomoke and Wicomico rivers are listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as “impaired” by pollutants from farm runoff—a slurry of fertilizers, herbicides, and animal waste that rainfall washes into the rivers, and from there into the Chesapeake Bay. These rivers deserve their own waterkeepers, Phillips says, but no organization has stepped forward to sponsor those positions. So she began patrolling the area when she could, studying local issues and sitting in on meetings. Before long, she’d become the area’s unofficial clean water cop.

“Our mission in life is to stop sources of pollution and keep the water swimmable, fishable, and drinkable,” Phillips says of the sixteen waterkeepers in the Chesapeake Bay region. “And we’ll do it by whatever means necessary.”

The waterkeepers don’t fit into any existing niches in the Chesapeake Bay restoration hierarchy. They don’t belong in the circle of academic and government scientists who put out progress reports on the 27-yearold effort to save the bay. When legislators and leaders of the big environmental groups get together to work out compromises between Maryland’s ecology and economy, the waterkeepers usually aren’t invited. But Phillips says she learned something important from her failed run for the county commission: “I can do a lot more from the outside,” she says, “being able to be the thorn in their side.”

And a thorn may be just what the situation requires. After twenty-seven years and billions of dollars spent, Chesapeake Bay restoration is an obvious failure. The program once touted as a model of

The original pact to clean up the Chesapeake was a one-page document that made a simple promise: “to improve and protect the water quality and living resources of the Chesapeake Bay.” Called the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, the pact was signed in December 1983 by the governors of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the mayor of Washington, D.C., and the head of the EPA. Later, those same leaders followed up with more pledges. They would dramatically reduce the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants flowing into the bay from sewage plants, industrial outfalls and smokestacks, farms and feedlots, developed lands, and other sources. The bay’s waters would be clearer and richer in oxygen and would support healthy populations of native plants and animals. Underwater grasses would flourish, providing nursery areas for young fish and crabs. Commercial fisheries would thrive, with plenty of seafood left over for recreational fishing.

It was up to the bay states to make this vision a reality by working together, imposing new laws on themselves, and enforcing the new laws and regulations with help from the EPA. If that sounds laughably idealistic now, it didn’t at the time. The bay program was born just as a golden age of environmental politics was waning. In the 1970s, Congress passed a fistful of bills that called on the states to protect the ecology first and only then look out for the economy.

Maryland’s leaders made the same choice in the early 1980s with the passage of the Critical Areas Act, one of the toughest land-use laws in the country. “When I’d go around the state, for example, in parades, people would yell, ‘Save the bay! Save the bay!’ People were quite enthusiastic,” says former Maryland governor Harry Hughes, who was a driving force behind both the Critical Areas Act and the Chesapeake Bay Agreement.

Community groups planted bay grasses and buffer strips of native trees. Schoolchildren helped environmental groups grow oysters—not for their taste, but for their natural water-cleansing abilities. Fueled

by a spirit of volunteerism, in the neighborhoods and the watershed associations, things seemed to be working. In the statehouses and the halls of Congress, not so much.

The problem was that success demanded strict enforcement of existing environmental laws, along with implementation of tough new ones. The federal Clean Water Act delegated those critical tasks to the states. But the state environmental agencies were chronically underfunded and outgunned by the industries they were supposed to be regulating—industries with money, influence, and cadres of lobbyists. Time and again, businesses and property owners convinced the legislatures to water down new laws and thwarted attempts to enforce existing ones.

The Clean Water Act gave the EPA the power to take direct action against polluters, as well as to punish the states if they failed to follow the law by taking away federal funds or by taking over some of the states’ regulatory powers. “We really expected some help from the EPA,” Hughes says. But the federal agency rarely used its power, preferring to act as an advisor, not an enforcer.

The Chesapeake Bay Agreement was supposed to restore the bay by 2000. But over the years, goals slipped and deadlines passed, to be replaced by new goals and deadlines that also went unmet.

Today the bay’s situation is murkier than it was when the cleanup effort began. In 1985, about onethird of the bay met the Clean Water Act’s standard for clarity; in 2007 less than one-eighth of the bay met the standard. In the 1980s, about 40 percent of the bay’s deepest waters formed “dead zones,” so low on oxygen that aquatic creatures fled or died. Between 2006 and 2008, more than 80 percent of the deep waters were summertime dead zones. The Chesapeake Bay oyster harvest plummeted from more than 20 million pounds in the 1970s to less than 200,000 pounds in 2003.

Oysters feed by fi ltering tiny organisms from the water, so as their population dwindled the bay lost a vital ally in the fight against pollution. The blue crab harvest also fell to historic lows. The nadir came in 2007, when watermen caught roughly one-third the crabs they had caught before bay restoration began. That year, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fishery an economic disaster. (See “Hard Times in Crab Country,” Nov. ’08 Urbanite.)

Conditions are a little better this year. After two years of strict new regulations that sharply reduced crab harvests, surveys show that numbers are up. And in mid-May, an annual report card from the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Environmental Research gave the bay’s overall health a score of 45 percent, or a C, compared with last year’s 40 percent, a C-. Gov. Martin O’Malley told reporters the improvement is a glimmer of hope. But the bay is still on life support, he said.

In fact, some scientists say the bay that H.L. Mencken called an “immense protein factory” is becoming an immense jellyfish factory, as species that do well in polluted waters take the place of the valuable fish and shellfish that used to thrive in a chicken house (upper left) and jellyfi sh (lower right) photos by David Harp; chick photo by Ana Vasileva | Dreamstime.com; plastic bottle by Nikolai Sorokin | Dreamstime.com

healthy Chesapeake. There are summers when, on the most oxygen-starved rivers of the Western Shore, the coffee-colored water is so dense with jellyfish that you’d have a hard time tossing a pebble into the water without hitting one.

Many of the cleanup effort’s longest-serving insiders have run out of patience. Fox, a longtime bay advocate and former Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources, lambasted the program’s voluntary approach before accepting his current post. “The straightforward path to saving the bay can be summed in three words,” he wrote in a 2005 essay in the Baltimore Sun. “Enforce current law.” In January 2009 the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the region’s largest and most influential environmental group, set aside its long history of trying to solve the bay’s problems through negotiation and sued the EPA in federal court, alleging that the lack of progress constitutes a decades-long failure to enforce the Clean Water Act. Then in December more than three dozen senior scientists, former elected officials, and other members of the environmental old guard spoke out in a letter to the EPA, calling the cleanup effort “insufficient and failing.”

The tide seemed to turn for environmentalists when, in March 2009, the Obama administration’s new EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, appointed Fox to the new post of senior advisor for the Chesapeake. Two months later, Obama issued an executive order instructing federal agencies to pursue more aggressive action to restore the bay. And exactly one year after that, on May 12, 2010, Jackson and a phalanx of cabinet members unveiled the federal government’s new restoration strategy.

The new plan envisions a revived bay in the midst of a revitalized landscape of cities, farms, The great jellyfish factory: Species that do well in polluted waters are taking the place of the valuable fish and shellfish that used to thrive in the Chesapeake.

dave harp

Rainwater washing off cities and other developed lands contributes between 9 and 17 percent of the bay’s three main pollutants, contributing to oxygenstarved “dead zones.”

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parks, and nature preserves by 2025. It would place new or more stringent pollution control measures on 4 million acres of farmland; preserve 2 million acres of land from development, including almost 700,000 acres of forest; restore oyster populations in twenty rivers; and give the region’s cities a forceful nudge in the direction of bay-friendly infrastructure. The plan requires an “unprecedented” degree of cooperation from scores of government agencies in six states and Washington, D.C. Most important, it requires these governments to do what they have not been able to do consistently in the past twenty-seven years: strictly enforce existing antipollution laws and impose tough new ones. “We’ve made it very clear that there will be a series of consequences for individuals as well as state governments if they continue to fail to clean up bay pollution,” Fox says.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation dropped its lawsuit in May when the EPA agreed to a settlement that makes many elements of the plan enforceable. But the foundation does not endorse the new plan, and many environmentalists remain skeptical. “Enough is enough!” says former state senator Gerald Winegrad, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a longtime environmental gadfly.

“Hey, instead of an executive order, start taking action.

Start filing lawsuits!”

Which brings us back to Kathy Phillips. And requires us to talk about an indelicate subject: chicken shit.

If you want a good example of the reasons why bay cleanup has circled the same problems year after year like a snake eating its tail, look no further than the problem of animal waste. It’s not the only source of bay pollution, but it is one of the largest ones: The EPA estimates that animal manure accounts for onefourth of the bay’s excess nitrogen and phosphorus.

The U.S. Poultry and Egg Association says it takes forty-seven days for a chick to reach market size. In that time, each bird produces 2 pounds of “litter”—manure mixed with wood shavings or other bedding materials. And in 2008, Maryland’s poultry growers produced a total of nearly 300 million broiler chickens, according to statistics from the Delmarva Poultry Industry. The manure is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus—natural fertilizers—and farmers use some of it on Eastern Shore crops. But do the math: Six hundred million pounds of manure divided by the Chesapeake Bay’s 64,000-square-mile watershed works out to about four and a half tons of chicken manure per square mile, every year. And where animal manure is left out in the open, rainfall washes it from field to ditch, from ditch to creek, creek to river, and ultimately into the bay. The nutrients fertilize explosive algae blooms that can use up the limited supply of oxygen mixed into the water, creating dead zones.

The poultry industry is under pressure to clean up the excess manure. But big companies like Perdue Farms say the manure is not their responsibility.

Perdue’s arrangement with the farmers who raise its birds works like this: from chick to broiler, Perdue owns the birds; the growers own the shit.

Maryland has a state law requiring farmers who store manure or spread it on their fields to minimize runoff into nearby streams and rivers. Farmers have to file written “nutrient management” plans with the state. But after lobbying from the Farm Bureau and the poultry industry, the Maryland General Assembly kept the plans away from public scrutiny and turned the job of enforcing the plans over to the state Department of Agriculture. In 2006, eight years after the law was passed, more than one-third of those farmers still had not filed nutrient management plans. The Agriculture Department says 95 percent of the farmers now have plans, but enforcement remains lax.

“There are chicken growers out there that do more than they have to do,” Phillips says. “They put in very wide buffer strips [of shrubs, trees, and grasses] to filter the runoff. At their own expense they put in cement pads to hold the manure. … We know what works, and some people are doing it.

“And some people,” she adds, “are digging a trench from the manure pile to the nearest ditch, and that runoff ends up in the bay.”

Soon after Fox was appointed, the EPA began signaling that the lax regulation would change. Late last year, the EPA and state officials held meetings around the Eastern Shore, warning farmers that the federal agency planned to crack down on manure runoff.

Many Maryland chicken growers would have to get permits from the government for the first time or risk being fined for violating the Clean Water Act. This was a major change, and after twenty-seven years of lowered expectations, it was an unwelcome one. Some farmers argued that they had taken steps that go far beyond what the average city dweller has done to protect the bay. They had a point. Rainwater falling on developed lands collects a witches’ brew of chemicals that contribute between 9 and 17 percent of the bay’s three main pollutants. The amount of pollution from urban and suburban land is on the increase, and the new bay strategy calls for Baltimore and other urban areas to reduce polluted runoff. But farm runoff is still a larger pollution source and a top priority in the EPA’s new enforcement effort.

At the meetings, some poultry growers aimed their wrath at the waterkeeper. Phillips says she was often booed on the way in, heckled when she tried to speak, and cursed on the way out. “What I came up against, time and time again, was that the ag community was not interested in working with anybody outside their own community,” Phillips says. “After five or six instances of being cursed and booed and being told to sit down … I got to the point where I said, ‘Nothing else is going to work. It’s time to create a poultry situation.’”

The Clean Water Act and other environmental statutes “are what we call ‘aspirational’ laws.

Congress aspired for all the water bodies in the United States to be fishable and swimmable … They couldn’t just make that happen. But they set up mechanisms where you have to keep pushing to get where you want to be.”

— Jane Barrett, director of the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic

Last September Phillips and a volunteer pilot were surveying the Eastern Shore, accompanied by two visitors from the Waterkeeper Alliance’s New York headquarters and a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. The environmentalists noticed a large pile of what looked like manure on a farm near the

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Pocomoke River. A trench ran from the pile to the farm’s drainage ditch, which ultimately flowed into the river, Phillips says. The group photographed the scene from the air. Over the next several weeks Phillips took water samples downstream of the farm from a public road nearby. When the lab results showed high levels of e. coli, a family of bacteria that indicate the presence of human or animal waste, Phillips began gathering evidence for a lawsuit.

In March the Assateague Coastal Trust, the Assateague Coastkeeper, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and Kathy Phillips sued Perdue Farms and two of its chicken growers, Alan and Kristin Hudson of Berlin—the owners of the farm the environmentalists had photographed from the air—accusing the farmers and the poultry company of violating the Clean Water Act. Citizens’ groups have successfully used the same legal strategy to win lawsuits against big livestock operations in Alabama and Kentucky, says Jane Barrett, associate professor and director of the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic, which is representing the environmentalists. But this is the first time citizens have brought a Clean Water Act lawsuit against a big poultry company in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Three days after the lawsuit was filed, Perdue Farms Chairman and CEO Jim Perdue went to Annapolis and met with the entire Eastern Shore delegation. Perdue called the case “one of the largest threats to the family farm in the last fifty years.”

Some Eastern Shore legislators were so upset about the lawsuit—and the fact that a state university was representing the case—that they filed a bill in the General Assembly threatening to cut off $250,000 in funding to the university’s law school unless all of the school’s twenty or more legal clinics turned over their clients’ names and budgets for the last two years. That sparked a controversy that landed on the front page of the New York Times. The president of the American Bar Association condemned the Maryland legislators’ threats, as did about four hundred other attorneys and law professors. By the time the affair ended in a compromise that protected the law clinics’ confidential client records, people all over the country knew that a bunch of law students had accused Perdue Farms of polluting the Chesapeake.

As Urbanite went to press, the parties to the lawsuit were waiting for a federal judge to decide whether to hold hearings in the case. Perdue maintains its innocence. Company spokesman Luis A. Luna says the pile that the waterkeepers photographed was not

chicken manure at all, but Ocean City sewage sludge that was being used as a fertilizer on the farm. “The waterkeepers don’t seem to know their basic materials,” Luna says.

In any case, he says, Perdue is not responsible for any pollution that might have occurred. “When it comes to the raising of the chickens … these farmers do whatever they want. We have no enforcement power over them.”

The Hudsons could not be reached for comment.

Their attorney, Hugh Cropper IV, did not return Urbanite’s calls.

Meanwhile, the waterkeepers have become disillusioned with the state’s ability to enforce state and federal pollution laws, say Phillips and Barrett. The group, known collectively as the Waterkeepers Chesapeake, filed an administrative petition with the EPA, asking the federal agency to strip the Maryland Department of the Environment of its authority to issue and enforce water pollution permits. The petition lists more than a dozen examples of suspected pollution cases that the waterkeepers believe the department mishandled.

“There are concerns about the enforcement programs, and a lot of it is valid,” says department spokesperson Dawn Stoltzfus. But she adds that state Environment Secretary Shari Wilson made enforcement a priority in 2009. Last year the agency reported handling 44 percent more enforcement cases than in 2008 despite state budget cuts.

But the workload is increasing. The chronically understaffed agency is now responsible for administering a federal permit program for livestock farms.

Most Maryland chicken farmers were exempt under that nationwide program’s old rules. But the EPA recently made the program stricter, and more than five hundred Maryland chicken farms have applied for the permits. And the EPA’s new bay cleanup strategy increases the states’ burdens even more. It relies on a provision of the Clean Water Act that calls on the states to consider every water pollution permit they issue in the context of the health of nearby waters and the bay as a whole. That means that state regulators will sometimes have to tell industries, farmers, or cities to drastically cut their pollution for the sake of the bay. The state agencies will more than likely end up having to defend some of those decisions in court— something they may be unable or unwilling to do. continued on page 77

“Ultimately, meeting the water quality, habitat restoration and land conservation goals described in this strategy depends on engaged citizens who support stewardship … and take personal action to carry it out.”

—from a summary of the EPA’s bay restoration strategy

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From Left: Gary Cohen, MD, Robert Donegan, MD, Neri Cohen, MD and Robert Brookland, MD

scope U R BA N ITE ’ S

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n the twilight netherworld of anesthesia, the young woman drifts, unaware for the moment of the pain flashing across the gastroenterologist’s face. Years of misdiagnoses of the young woman’s stomach and bowel discomfort, of assumptions that she was simply too young to be seriously ill, have brought her here, just days after she collapsed inside her front door from exhaustion. She implored her primary care physician to please, please, send her for tests usually reserved for women thirty years her senior. Now, looking from the video monitor down at her body, curled in a fetal position that speaks of innocence and vulnerability, the gastroenterologist realizes the horrible truth.

Been there: Eden Stotsky-Himelfarb was diagnosed with rectal cancer when she was 26. Today, as a patient advocate, she helps cancer patients live fulfilling and healthy lives.

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Moments later, the woman is awakened by a gentle pressure on her leg. She opens her eyes, and what she sees is not what she expects. As she scans the faces of her mother and her fiancé, there are no smiles, no “welcome back.” There is only silence and red-rimmed stares. She suddenly becomes aware of the doctor’s hand resting lightly on her ankle. He gives it a light squeeze, and she looks at his face. His eyes are filled with tears.

“Eden, I’m so sorry,” whispers the physician. “You have cancer.”

In this city, she’s far from alone.

B

altimore’s cancer problem is nothing short of horrific. According to figures from the National Cancer Institute and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the city’s cancer death rate is among the highest in the country— roughly 30 percent above the national average—and more than 70 percent higher than upscale Montgomery County. Pollution, poor access to health care, health-adverse behaviors, lack of education, the environmental legacy of our industrial heritage: The reasons and theories abound as to why we’re as much Cancer City as Charm City.

control, improving both the quality and possibly the quantity of their lives—if they have the right tools and if they treat more than just the cancer.

This was underscored by a groundbreaking 2007 report from the Institute of Medicine, a non-governmental arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The institute didn’t mince words when it called for doctors and hospitals to offer, for lack of a better word, holistic cancer care. “The failure to address the very real psychosocial health needs of patients and their caregivers is a failure to effectively treat that patient’s cancer, plain and simple,” the authors wrote.

They used depression and anxiety— common reactions to a cancer diagnosis—as examples of conditions that, when missed by oncologists, can undo medical treatments. “These mental health problems can … decrease patients’ motivation to complete treatment [and] change unhealthy practices such as smoking, and decrease their ability to cope with the demands of a rigorous treatment process,” they wrote, adding, “There is growing evidence that stress can directly interfere with the working of the body’s immune system [already compromised by

“eden, i’m so sorry,” That’s the bad news. If there’s a counterbalance, it’s that, for the more than three thousand Baltimoreans expected to be diagnosed with cancer this year, the majority—almost two-thirds, according to national trends—will survive for at least five years. The numbers vary by disease site, but skin, breast, and prostate cancer all have five-year survival rates of around 90 percent. Some cancer patients will live much longer. A 2002 Lancet report showed twenty-year survival rates for melanoma, prostate, and thyroid cancer were greater than 80 percent, and more than 50 percent for colon, breast, and cervical cancer.

(Those diagnosed early generally fared best.)

Put another way, cancer is rapidly turning from a fatal illness not discussed in polite company into, in many cases, a chronic condition along the lines of asthma, diabetes, and hypertension.

While improvements in screening, medications, training, and surgical techniques have all played a role in this tidal shift, that’s only part of the story. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that, when it comes to dealing with cancer, patients themselves can exert a level of

E

den Stotsky long suspected that cancer was a battle she was destined to fight.

Though it was rarely discussed during her Randallstown upbringing, her father had survived Hodgkin’s when he was in his 20s, and, as a teenager, Eden accompanied her mother during early treatments for breast cancer. Lynda Stotsky would survive, but when she required additional surgery a few years later, Eden sensed that eventually her own time would come.

She just didn’t think it would happen less than a year later, at the tender age of 26.

During surgery after the colonoscopy, doctors removed a tumor the size of an orange. It was Stage III rectal cancer, advanced to the point that it had spread to her lymph nodes. By that point, Stotsky had endured years of bloating and cramps, of being mistakenly told that her stomach problems were being caused by everything from sucking too much air from the straw of her ever-present water bottle to lactose intolerance. She was determined that, when it came to her cancer, whatever she could control, she would control.

Her personal advocacy process began with a massive information search. She arrived at her first meeting with Hopkins surgeon Michael Choti armed with dozens of questions. Her second act was choosing,

scope

whispers the physician. with her doctor’s input, a surgery that preserved her fertility by permanently moving her ovaries outside the radiation field that would later attack the tumor site.

The surgery appeared to be a success, but the days that followed filled Stotsky with a terror that was nearly superstitious in nature—a feeling that, should she be left alone for even a short period of time, something horrible would happen. But rather than suffering in silence, Stotsky made her needs known. As a result, during the week she was in the hospital recovering, one of her family members was always by her bedside. She was in survival mode, pure and simple, and it was taking her to a place the usually self-reliant Stotsky had never gone: reaching out to others so she could find a moment’s peace.

As Stotsky settled into her chemotherapy regime—five successive daily sessions followed by three weeks off to allow her body to recover—she discovered the physical challenges weren’t nearly as demanding as her fluctuating emotional state. She designed

“you have cancer.” chemo and radiation] and other functions.”

The institute’s report gave the oncology business a badly needed wake-up call, but the burden of finding help for many problems related to cancer still falls largely on the patient. “Surgeons and oncologists probably would like to advocate for their patients, but they’re so focused on their specialty that they often don’t see the patient’s big picture,” admits a Johns Hopkins oncology nurse. “The patient can fall through the cracks if they don’t advocate for themselves.”

The idea of speaking up when one’s entire body and spirit is being beaten down might seem untenable, but given a little forethought and motivation, cancer patients can build a support team, understand the long-term consequences of treatments, and create a structure to help them not only survive but also thrive.

After all, all that’s at stake is your life.

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an elaborate schedule, signing up a rotating cast of family and friends who accompanied her to each roughly three-hour-long chemo session. She also began putting into place the tools that eventually became the mainstay of her cancer survivorship: an audiotape containing a “guided imagery” exercise in which a soothing female voice asked her to imagine an army of tiny chemo warriors conquering cancer cells and a support group for young cancer patients. “I had to find others with cancer who were young,” she says. “Without them, honestly, I don’t know where my mind would have gone.”

But her continued advocacy came at a steep price. Following her six months of treatment, Stotsky would need quarterly checkups to ensure she was still cancer-free.

She had complete faith in her doctor. But prior to her diagnosis, she and her fiancé had discussed moving to Arizona. It was a dream of his, one they put on hold when cancer took over their lives. “He said he understood,” Stotsky says. “But he didn’t, not really.”

They were married just after her treatment, but the westward conversation continued. Eventually Stotsky faced a choice: Her health or her marriage.

surgery, a fourth place to receive your chemotherapy, and a fifth place to receive your radiation therapy. Somebody has to pull that all together; it’s an awful lot for someone to navigate and even decipher alone.”

Shockney says that by helping patients figure out where to go and when, and “nudging” them with regular communication to help them comply with treatments, she helps improve their outcomes. Research backs her up. According to the National Cancer Institute, patient navigators brought on board soon after a diagnosis “can help steer patients and their families to appropriate care and treatment that could dramatically

of life and, perhaps, survivorship.

Ideally, patients want alternative practitioners who will talk with their doctors. “You must be in contact with your physicans about using herbs,” advises clinical herbalist Sara Eisenberg of the Ruscombe Community Health Center.

Complementary approaches, notably the use of herbs and, in rarer cases, nutritional supplements, can have a powerful impact on conventional treatments.

What these alternatives offer are everything from science—the NIH cites acupuncture, for example, as being potentially

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ortunately, unlike in 1997 when Eden Stotsky was first diagnosed, people with cancer no longer have to negotiate the travails of their disease by the seat of their pants. A growing number of hospitals, particularly academic medical centers, are offering patient advocates—often called navigators or educators—as point people to help newly diagnosed patients figure out everything from the potential side effects of their chemo treatments to how to get discounted parking. Many are nurses or social workers who have first-hand experience as cancer survivors.

Registered nurse Lillie Shockney battled breast cancer twice in the 1990s; now, as a patient educator, she’s often the first person breast cancer patients at Johns Hopkins sit down with after they’ve been diagnosed.

She shares with them the treatments she went through, along with her own fears and concerns. “I’m reassurance that treatment is doable,” Shockney says. “I’ve been told by my patients that I’m a walking vision of hope: ‘If I can look like you fifteen years from now, I’ll be very happy.’ I tell them, ‘That’s the goal we share.’”

A good patient navigator helps educate patients and coordinate complex and often disjointed medical care. “It used to be you could go to one place and all your care would happen there,” Shockney says. “Today, you may be having your screening mammogram at one place, and if they see something they’ll send you to another mammography facility for the biopsy. Then a third place for the

Helping hand: Lillie Shockney battled breast cancer twice in the 1990s; now, as a patient educator, she’s often the first person breast cancer patients at Johns Hopkins sit down with after they’ve been diagnosed.

improve patients’ chances of getting the best care and have an opportunity to live with cancer as a manageable disease.”

Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts, an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., which operates independently of any hospital, offers a sort of educational cancer boot camp for patients. “One metaphor we use is when somebody is diagnosed with cancer it’s like being dropped out of a plane into enemy territory without the benefit of compass, training, or any tools,” says executive director Shanti Norris. “We would never think of not training the physicians and nurses who are working with people with cancer, but we don’t often think about how you train the patient, and they need to have a whole set of skills.”

Initially those choices may include deciding which treatment is best, but they can quickly spread to health-supportive behaviors. Massage, nutrition, yoga, Chinese medicine, and acupuncture can improve quality

effective with nausea associated with chemotherapy and surgery—to additional opportunities for education in a non-threatening setting. Support groups, once only a onesize-fits-all option, are now often gender-, age-, and cancer-specific, right down to the stage of a disease. “Each group has very different issues and a very different emotional journey,” notes licensed social worker Tom Large, co-founder of HopeWell Cancer Support in Lutherville.

And there is spiritual nourishment as well. Cancer can crush the body and the will.

Sometimes restoring both comes down to nothing more than an act of connection, of a patient actively reaching out to a therapist or practitioner who, more than anything else, is willing to listen. Can science measure this effect? Sometime, yes; sometimes, no.

But patients always can. For acupuncturist Kaiya Larson of the Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, the twenty-or-so minutes she spends listening to each patient’s issues before a w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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treatment is as important as the treatment itself. “If you feel heard, and you feel less fearful—and you can talk to someone that’s not your family, who’s scared along with you that you’re going to die—and you feel understood and braver and healthier and stronger, that absolutely, 100 percent affects your physiology.”

And, just perhaps, the desire to fight on.

N

ow 38, the confidant woman striding across the lobby of the Daily Grind in Hopkins Broadway Research Building wears a white lab coat announcing to the world that she’s gained both a nursing degree and a new husband.

Stitched in blue script over her left breast pocket is “Eden Stotsky-Himelfarb, B.S.N., R.N.” Now more than twelve years removed from her cancer diagnosis, she’s taken the patient advocacy that marked her own personal battle and turned it into a career.

At her fi rst follow-up appointment post-treatment, Stotsky’s surgeon, Michael Choti, asked her if she’d be interested in becoming a patient educator. Impressed with the activism she displayed in her own case, Choti wanted to create a patient educator’s position for his colon cancer center, someone

who understood the disease on both a personal and professional level. “It was obvious to me she’d be outstanding in the role,” Choti says. “Her personality, her positive outlook, that optimism that comes across would be so reassuring to patients.”

At first Stotsky gently said no, but Choti persisted. Each time she saw him for checkups over the next two years, he’d greet her the same way: “Are you ready? Are you ready??”

One day the answer became yes, and for the next three years she volunteered to collect data to prove to Hopkins’ management that budgeting for a patient educator would improve care and save money. The position was funded in 2002, and Stotsky almost immediately realized that her degree in public affairs could go only so far in her new role. “I knew I had to get some medical or health care degrees,” she says. “Otherwise I wasn’t really going to be able to provide care for these patients.”

Stotsky began her prerequisites for nursing school in 2004, completing her R.N. education last year, all while working fulltime for Choti. Today she provides the same kind of compassionate care she says she was fortunate enough to receive from friends and family during her illness.

Healing touch: Kaiya Larson of the Tai Sophia Institute says having someone who will listen makes a real difference for cancer patients: “If you feel heard, and you feel less fearful, that absolutely, 100 percent affects your physiology.”

She often looks into the faces of her patients and sees herself. She’s forever aware of the toll cancer can take—her father died in 2005 of heart disease related to his long-ago cancer radiation treatments— and she remains vigilant, aware that, as a survivor, she’s at higher risk for cancer than the general population. She watches what she eats, tries to work out (“I’m not so good with that one,” she laughs), and recently added acupuncture to her arsenal, both as a way to increase her chances of successful in-vitro fertilization (there’s some evidence to support this) and to relieve the arthritic hip pain caused by her radiation treatments.

Her wellness regime also includes occasionally seeing a therapist—as well as a masseuse and a manicurist and stylist. “I’m not rich, I don’t make a lot, but you have to budget for it,” she says, pride rising in her voice.

“After what I’ve been through, I’m entitled to take care of myself. Aren’t I worth it?”

That’s the kind of confidence she’s trying to promote in her patients. Cancer has redefined Eden Stotsky-Himelfarb. It’s not something she would wish on her worst enemy, but if there’s one positive that’s come out of it—and it’s a big one—it’s that she can now show others how to speak up for themselves, to move from the utter devastation of diagnosis to a place of hope and promise.

When she feels it’s appropriate, she doesn’t hesitate to share her story with others. And sometimes, it’s the lifeline they’re desperate for. “I saw a patient today who had just been diagnosed and who was absolutely terrified. I went in for a few minutes and talked to him, told him, ‘I’ve been in your shoes. I had rectal cancer when I was 26. I’m 38 now, and I’m doing great. You are going to get through!’”

The odds say that with her help, and his own, he will. ■

scope

—Mat Edelson’s most recent book, The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen, was voted “Best Health and Special Diet Cookbook” and the “People’s Choice” best American cookbook by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Eden Stotsky-Himelfarb wrote the foreword for Edelson’s first cookbook for people with cancer, co-authored with Rebecca Katz, One Bite at a Time.

Web extra: Resources for cancer patients and caregivers at www.urbanitebaltimore.com On the air: More on cancer in Baltimore on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on July 22 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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n the Julys of my northeast Baltimore childhood, as the heat shimmered above the asphalt streets and the cicadas sang from the treetops, I listened enviously to the splashes and screams of our neighbors across the alley, whose backyard was dominated by a giant above-ground pool. We weren’t friendly with them—they were some of the “bad kids”—so we were never invited over to swim. Some days, I practically drooled with desire over that pool, so thirsty for the shimmering blue water on my sweaty preteen limbs.

For bored, city-bound kids, the public pools run by the Recreation and Parks department are the saviors of summer. They give kids something to do and somewhere to be—and they’re affordable: Entry is usually a dollar or two, compared with the hundreds a private-pool membership can run. “The pool is very important for urban life,” says Gennady Schwartz, chief of capital development for Recreation and Parks. “So many kids have no chance to go to Ocean City or on vacation with their parents. Providing them a summer experience is very important.”

Last summer, two hundred thousand people dipped their toes in Baltimore’s municipal pools.

Several have undergone extensive renovations in the last decade, including those in Patterson and Clifton parks. “We started trying to change the municipal pool design,” Schwartz says. “In the Downsized: A third of the 1940s-era Roosevelt Park pool house was removed to make room for a covered deck area, where parents can recline while keeping a watchful eye on their little swimmers.

The pool house got a fresh coat of stucco and beige paint on the exterior walls, plus moisture-resistant chipboard on the inside. New materials were chosen for their durability, which should cut down on maintenance.

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past, you would have a pool and a concrete deck and a chain link fence around it.” The new designs boast fun features more likely to be found at water parks or private clubs, like the beach volleyball court and water slides installed at the Cherry Hill pool.

The pool in Hampden’s Roosevelt Park is the latest to get a makeover. After a $1.5 million facelift, it opened for the season last summer with brightly colored water features and umbrellas, a whimsical mosaic-tile wall designed by local artist Helen Hardesty, new splash and wading pools, and a covered deck topped by a playfully cantilevered roof. The project was jointly undertaken by Rec and Parks and local architecture firm Murphy & Dittenhafer, which received the 2009 Grand

Award from the American Institute of Architects’ Baltimore chapter for the redesign of the pool house.

Matthew Compton, who served as project architect, says the team didn’t want to start from scratch. Rather, they wanted to retain most of the 1940s-era pool house, well used by the neighborhood, while adding a dose of playfulness and complexity to the structure’s straightforward architecture, which favored function over style. “You tell a child to draw a house, this is the building they would draw,” Compton says. So the team “lopped off” a third of the building, leaving ample space inside for showers and changing rooms, and created a partially shaded area where parents can relax while keeping an eye on their kids.

The canopy serves a purpose—it’s designed to shed rainwater away from the pools—but it’s also cool to look at. “A lot of people said it looks like it floated and landed

there,” Compton says. It’s made from durable flat-seamed copper and should slowly patinate to a sea-foam green, eventually matching the paint color of the steel support beams.

“What I really like about [this project] is that it’s a very small, modest project, and yet I give the city credit in wanting to do something interesting,” he says. “A lot of times people will only build the minimum thing that the project needs. It’s about more than meeting needs. It’s about creating interesting space, a place the community can identify with and like and come to.”

The thoughtful investment in these pools—and, indirectly, in the folks who use them—belies a generosity of spirit not often found in interactions between bureaucracy and citizenry. And one hopes the city’s budget crisis won’t prevent such things in the future. Last we heard no pools were to be closed this year, although the season was truncated to save money: The pools shut down on August 8, six weeks after the opening in late June—and three sweltering weeks before the start of the school year. ■ —Marianne Amoss is Urbanite’s managing editor.

Hosers: Children get sprayed with water by these comically shaped water features (not yet turned on in early June when these photos were taken). The wading and splash pools are bordered on one side by a colorful mosaic-tile mural and on the other by a low fence that keeps youngsters from wandering into the deeper, big kids’ pool.

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This month in eating

Good Dog

Who’s got the best wiener in Baltimore?

BY DAV I D D U D L EY | P H OTO G RA P HY BY T YL E R F I TZ PAT R I C K

S

everal years after battling General Motors but before beginning his quadrennial assaults on two-party presidential politics, Ralph Nader launched an attack on another flawed national institution: the frankfurter.

The consumer advocate declared in 1969 that hot dogs were “among America’s deadliest missiles.” Nader’s beef with the wiener industry had a familiar ring: Sixty-three years earlier, Baltimore-born muckraker Upton Sinclair’s portrait of nose-to-tail sausage-making in the Chicago meatyards helped lead to the Pure Food and Drug Act. Another Baltimorean, writer and German food aficionado H.L. Mencken, is widely credited with defining the hot dog as “a cartridge fi lled with the sweepings of abattoirs.”

Tellingly, the Sage didn’t let this get in the

way of putting away his share. In his memoir, Happy Days, he recalls feasting on “rubbery, indigestible pseudo-sausages” at Baltimore ballgames in the 1880s. “One year I got down six in a row, and suffered a considerable bellyache thereafter, which five bottles of sarsaparilla did not cure.”

So it goes. We hate hot dogs, but we still eat them. Some seven billion will be consumed this summer between Memorial Day and Labor Day, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. (July is National Hot Dog month.) This despite a grim dossier of evidence that hot dogs are going to kill us all. The cancer-causing properties of the nitrates they’re laden with have been understood for years; a recent Harvard study showed that eating cured and

processed meat was associated with a starkly higher risk of heart disease and diabetes compared with eating fresh red meat. Hot dogs also currently account for 17 percent of all food-related asphyxiations. The American Academy of Pediatrics made headlines this year when it announced that it wants the dog to be somehow re-engineered to be less of a choking hazard. On their website, the folks at the Hot Dog Council dutifully attempt to head off the food police with a variety of tactics: They post video of a squeaky-clean hot dog factory, offer choking guidelines for parents, and even display a calorie counter showing how a hot dog can fit into a healthy diet. (Answer: challengingly, since you can pack in a day’s worth of sodium with a single jumbo chili cheese dog.) w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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eat / drink Whose Weenie Reigns Supreme?

Thanks to the local food revolution and the arrival of the upscale grocery chains like Wegmans and Whole Foods, fanciers of fancier franks can finally find some variety.

This spring, Urbanite staffers rounded up a number of links, grilled ’em up, and faced them off in a seven-way battle for hot dog supremacy. Despite post-prandial bellyaches of Menckenesque proportions, we dutifully tallied the results. Here they are, from least to most favorite.

Love-hate relationship: Ralph Nader called hot dogs some of “America’s deadliest missiles.” Nonetheless, Americans will down seven billion of them this summer alone.

Whatever. Such is the tubesteak’s status as unassailable culinary Americana that the health debate seems pointless. Clearly, the things are no good for you. The massproduced frankfurter might well be the First Bad Food, an industrial confection of meat scraps and chemicals cunningly engineered to deliver a targeted blast of fatty-salty pleasure for the minimum cost. For God’s sake, don’t eat one every day. And when you do indulge, make sure it’s a good one.

For me, that means a natural-casing dog from Sahlen’s of Buffalo, New York, my hometown and one of the Northeast’s hotbeds of hot-dog culture. Like many exBuffalonians, I have a huge bag of these in my freezer at all times; they are longish and thin, with a rich, peppery bite and a distinctive skin that splits and crackles on the grill. Open ten refrigerators in ten homes in western New York, and you will likely find nine bags of Sahlen’s; they are part of the landscape, like the snowplows and piles of chicken-wing bones.

Baltimore/D.C. is the nation’s numberthree hot dog market, but our supermarkets and streets are strangely bereft of an equivalent sausage-on-a-bun scene. The closest we have is the half-smoke, a spicy extra-fat frank, usually split, vended from carts and bars in the nation’s capital and all but unattainable beyond the D.C. beltway.

Getting a half-smoke with chili at Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street—considered by aficionados the definitive half-smoke experience—is a de rigueur D.C. politico photo op. But, as the Washington City Paper reported in an exhaustive 2007 half-smoke taxonomy, Ben’s sausages are Charm City imports—they’re made by Manger Packing in West Baltimore.

Good luck finding half-smokes in your local bar or ballpark, however, or any other locally distinctive commercial hot dogs beyond the ever-present Esskay franks, which I find spongy and generically dull. It’s curious that Baltimoreans are so undiscriminating with their weenies: Cities with roughly similar demographic ingredients—Cincinnati,

Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia—boast vigorous and hotly debated regional variations. A blindfolded Michigander can tell the difference between the Detroit-style Coney (or chili dog) and a Flint-style example. Most of these are variations of a theme, with the common thread being the Greek-style chili sauce that, hot dog scholars say, spread across the Northeast and Midwest from a handful of entrepreneurial restaurateurs in New Jersey in the early 20th century.

The Greeks, who dominated the lunch trade in urban centers, probably made the strongest impression on the ways of American hot-dog eating, but the cheap and endlessly adaptable hot dog is a friend to all immigrants. And like any savvy newcomer, it effortlessly assumes local accents as it journeys around the world, from the remouladeladen lamb-meat hot dogs of Iceland to Chile’s “El Completo,” topped with kraut, guacamole, and mayonnaise. The current objects of hipster fascination are the Sonoran-style dogs of Mexico and the American Southwest, which take the cross-cultural potential of the frankfurter to magnificently unhealthy new heights: They are wrapped in bacon and layered with beans, cheese, and salsa.

In other words, there’s a world of wieners out there, and we are missing out. Still.

“Throw off the chains of the frankfurter,” Mencken implored his readers in an Evening Sun column from 1929. He was bemoaning the lack of novelty at the city’s hot dog stands, a call-to-arms that he might well repeat today: “There should be dogs for all appetites, all tastes, all occasions. They should come in rolls of every imaginable kind and accompanied by every sort of relish from Worcestershire sauce to chutney. The common frankfurter, with its tough roll and its smear of mustard, should be abandoned as crude and hopeless ... The hot dog should be elevated to the level of an art form.”

Go tell it, Henry. But hold the Worcestershire sauce. ■ —David Dudley is Urbanite’s editor-at-large.

Gunpowder Bison & Trading Franks average score: 4.5/10 These short, stout franks were the heart-healthiest options, made from “95 percent lean” shoulder meat. But they tasted healthy, too. Tough-skinned, dry, and mealy, the bison-based dogs had too much chew: “Like hot dog jerky.”

Hofmann’s Snappy Grillers average score: 5.5/10 Snappy Grillers (or “white hots,” in Central New York regional argot) swap in veal for beef. They were rich and delicately flavored, but non-Upstaters were a little freaked out by the tender, bockwurst-like Snappies. “Too soft,” said one. “What animal birthed this dog?”

Zweigle’s Texas Brand average score: 6/10 These have nothing to do with Texas. They’re pinkish franks from Rochester, New York, and they are distinctively girthy.

The pork/beef mixture was pronounced “most bologna-ish” by one disapproving sampler, but others were transported by the musky bite and snap of these Old World-y wieners.

Niman Ranch Fearless Franks average score: 7/10 Available at Whole Foods, these uncured, nitrate- and nitritefree all-beef dogs impressed the tasters with their clean, meaty flavor and general juiciness, perhaps because each was loaded with a generous 19 grams of fat each. “Beefy!”

Sahlen’s Smokehouse Hot Dogs average score: 8/10 To me, the pride of Buffalo is the weenie by which all others must be judged: Its real casing crisps up to a bacon-y frazzle, its plush interior is deeply porky, and it comes in handy 5-pound bags. Some local tasters were put off by the prominent skin and “artificial” flavor. (Wha?) Esskay Franks average score: 9/10 Another head-scratcher: I find the cheap-tastic standardissue Esskay franks, full of “mechanically separated turkey” and other spooky additives, thunderously dull. But the hometown crowd raved over the local brand. Clearly, some Proustian childhood memories were being evoked by the Esskay’s generically hot-doggy flavor. Or maybe it was just simple math: “Worst for you = the best.”

Hebrew National Beef Franks average score: 9.5/10 The Kosher king! An almost-all-gentile crowd of experts chose the lone entrant that adhered to Jewish dietary laws.

The Hebrew National’s all-beef offering impressed testers with its juiciness, garlicky flavor, and firm texture. The only complaint: “Too skinny!”

—D.D.

Web extra: David Dudley’s signature hot dog topping recipe 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 u l y 1 0

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uUMUC9917_CJ_Urbanite_8x4.875.indd rbanite july 10

1

6/15/10 5:44 PM

photo by John Miskimon

The Dizz

Old standby: Burgers and beers at The Dizz

The Dizz, a modest corner tavern in Remington, makes the grand claim (on a nearby billboard) to be nothing less than “Baltimore in a Bar.” It’s a bold and nonsensical boast, but it does capture some of the place’s catholic spirit. If you close your eyes and imagine this city’s archetypal watering hole, it should probably look something like this: a creaky brick rowhouse on the better edge of a sketchy neighborhood, a place steeped in the sweet-sour funk of beer and frying oil and good times. The Dizz looks like it’s been around forever, and it has, although this space has worn many names since pulling its first drafts in 1934. It acquired its most recent moniker in 2008 following a very mild renovation that seemed to accomplish little more than truncating its name (for the previous eleven years it was called Dizzy Issie’s) and changing a few bulbs on the year-round Christmas lights.

People come here for many reasons: It’s staggering distance from Johns Hopkins, Charles Village, and Hampden; it’s got a sweet fireplace in wintertime and a sidewalk patio in summer; the beer is affordable and

abundant; and it’s civilized enough to take the kids or the in-laws for a safe and friendly serving of blue-collar Baltimore. (The Dizz also hosts the occasional out-of-town tourist who knows the bar from its cameos on the Food Channel’s Ace of Cakes.) Memorable food is probably midway down the list of attractions for most patrons, but the kitchen does field a nigh-encyclopedic menu of bar eats: a good-sized strip steak (cooked well beyond the requested rare, but tender enough), fabulous fries with gravy, meaty diner-style chili, a decent cheeseburger. A special of tuna sliders—a quartet of nicely rare tuna steaklets on mooshy burger buns— offers a welcome variation on this siege of red meat. For dessert, there’s pie and cake (not, alas, from the celebrity bakers across the street). But most Dizz-goers seem to vote, not unwisely, for just getting another pitcher. (Breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily.

300 W. 30th St.; 443-869-5864; www.thedizz baltimore.com.)

reviewed

eat / drink

—David Dudley

Centro Tapas Bar Owner George Dailey, who grew up in Venezuela, calls his restaurant a tasca, a casual place for eating and drinking, and says most of the dishes are based on his mother’s recipes. Whatever you call it, this tapas-style dining—grazing through a series of small portions—is a great way to share a meal with a group. And you can avoid having to stare longingly across the table at the entrée you should have ordered.

However, the competition for one of the four skewered lamb meatballs layered between a roasted potato and a pearl onion may turn rough. (In this lone case, the spoils of the meatballs, a moat of almost flavorless—a touch of mint?—green sauce around the rim of the rectangular plate, is not worth fighting for.) There may also be a run on the churros—fried, sugar-dusted twists—served with thick “Spanish drinking chocolate.” In this case, it really is all about the sauce. (Dinner Tues–Sun. 1444 Light St.; 443-869-6871; www.centrotapasbar.com.)

photo by John Miskimon

The odds are probably quite good that Centro Tapas Bar did not set out with an existential conceit in mind. But the restaurant, which opened in March in the former Bicycle location in Federal Hill, is a perfect argument for the way negative space can serve as definition. Here, all that surrounds an object—in this case, a floret of cauliflower, a fava bean, or a hunk of rockfish—gives it meaning. In other words, you could be perfectly content at Centro following each plate around the table with a slice of bread, sopping up what’s left once the main attraction has become nothingness.

Take the rockfish fritters: on their own, so-so. But the swirl of almond aioli on which they sit is densely nutty. Likewise for the roasted cauliflower with whole cloves of garlic and romesco sauce or the dish of giant fava beans from Asturias, Spain, swimming in olive oil flavored with oregano, garlic, and a hint of chili. Luckily, the waitstaff is happy to keep the table plied with slices of crusty white or raisin nut bread (the latter less successful in the dipping department).

—Martha Thomas Bar none: Centro Tapas serves up a roster of Spanishstyle small plates.

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urbanite july 10

eat / drink

In the heat of summer, even guys go for sparkling rosé.

photo by inhaus creative | istockphoto.com

By Clinton Macsherry

M

y first pair of eyeglasses alighted on my little nose at an elementary age, promptly inviting heaps of classmate scorn.

Some obvious playground-variety epithets of other-ness (“four-eyes!”) were already passé, but these spectacles—that’s the word, all right—had translucent pink frames of a style somewhat fashionable among my parents’ shabby-genteel set. None of my parents’ friends, however, attended my grade school, so the ridicule their aesthetic provoked fell exclusively upon me.

As my fellow former boys will attest, one did not choose pink to color one’s world.

I’ve since learned a lesson about the color from wine, however: Pink comes in many shades, and like a hardware store booklet of paint chips, it can accommodate a healthy spectrum of gender identity. “Blush” may connote cosmetics and Victorian femininity, but manlier tonalities resound from “salmon” (fishing), “partridge eye” (hunting), and “copper” (pipe-fitting, pitching pennies), with lots of delicious variety in between. Let a hundred rosés bloom!

Sparkling dry (or “brut”) rosé has become my favorite summer refreshment, so it’s a little discouraging to hear one of my regular wine-mongers complain about the trouble his shop has selling the stuff. Brut rosé “has two strikes against it,” he says.

“It’s pink, and it’s bubbly.” I sorta get that.

We Americans still suffer from our collective White Zinfandel hangover, and for no good reason we tend to reserve sparklers for special occasions, like weddings and World Series championships.

And yet, just a few years ago, brut rosé’s fortunes appeared to be on the upswing. In

March 2007, the trade journal Wine Business Monthly reported that United States consumers were “buying more Champagne and sparkling wine than ever before,” a boom largely attributable to “the extremely hot rosé segment.” Then, like lots of other bubbles, champagne’s burst, as Wine Spectator put it in January. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, “Champagne is facing one of its biggest crises in almost a century,” WS observed. “Sales of bubbly are slumping, both in the United States and worldwide.”

The perception of brut rosé as a luxury product may be its third strike, at least until consumers decide economic recovery gives them something to celebrate.

That’s a shame, because in addition to its variegated shades, brut rosé comes from an array of wine regions in a broad range of prices. In France’s Champagne appellation, brut rosé production dates to the late 1700s. Two red-skinned grapes blended with Chardonnay in traditional champagne— Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier—come to the fore in brut rosé. (For more on champagne, see the July 2008 Urbanite; for more on still rosé, see the August 2008 issue.) The French would have you believe this is the “real” stuff and will charge you a premium for its prestige. But it’s certainly not the only option, nor necessarily the one best-suited for slaking summer thirst.

Among the bottles I sampled, Gruet Brut Rosé ($15, 12 percent alcohol)— produced by a Franco-American family in New Mexico—comes closest to capturing champagne’s elegance. Pale salmon with a golden hue, it offers a rich mousse and steady bead of bubbles, with scents of violets and yeast introducing soft black cherry and blackberry flavors on a light frame. It represents outstanding value, but pushes the envelope of my everyday-wine budget and may be a bit subtle for July slurping. Despite my brut-ishness, Korbel California Champagne Sweet Rosé ($12, 11 percent alcohol) provides enjoyable contrast. Light pink with a trace of copper, it’s juicy, medium-bodied, and semisweet, with a ripe strawberry and cherry candy profile to pair with a summery dessert. Segura Viudas Brut Rosé ($9, 12 percent alcohol), a fine example of Spain’s cava, pours the color of cut watermelon.

Wild strawberry and bread crust aromas precede a light- to medium-bodied, grillfriendly palate of raspberry and cranberry, with a yeasty finish. Its price-qualityquaffability ratio hits the spot, and I bought a case from my wine-monger. (I told him it was for the Missus.) ■ w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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

Popping Pink

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go

eat / drink

photo by John Miskimon

tHe Feed

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This Month in Eating Compiled by Tracey Middlekauff

KIDS COOK! HOW TO THINK LIKE A CHEF

MONTHLONG

At this weeklong intensive cooking course with Culinary Institute of America-trained Chef Diane Bukatman, your kids will learn how to make homemade pasta, sauces, burgers, buns, quiches, crepes, custards, and more. Just think—you’ll never have to make dinner again. For kids ages 11–17: July 5–9, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.; $375. For kids ages 8–10: July 12–16, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.; $410. Classes also available in August.

For the Love of Food 20 Clarks Lane, Reisterstown 443-865-0630 www.fortheloveoffood.com

C ARIBBEAN C ARNIVAL FESTIVAL

JULY 9 –11

Roti, rice and peas, jerk chicken, curry goat, coconut juice: Eating your way through the Caribbean Carnival Festival is like going on vacation, without having to deal with travel headaches and airport security. As well as authentic cuisine, this year’s event—part of the city’s Showcase of Nations series of ethnic festivals—includes reggae, steel drum bands, and a costumed parade. Fri 5 p.m.–9 p.m., Sat and Sun noon–9 p.m. $10 admission; children younger than 12 free.

Druid Hill Park 410-230-2969 www.promotionandarts.com

BASTILLE DAY DINNER AT TERSIGUEL’S

JULY 14

Don’t expect beer and hot dogs at this Independence Day dinner. It’s French. Celebrate Bastille Day in style with a fivecourse chef ’s menu at Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant.

Allons enfants de la patrie! 6:30 p.m. $75 per person; reservations required.

Tersiguel’s 8293 Main St., Ellicott City 410-465-4004 www.tersiguels.com

BALTIMORE COUNT Y 4-H FAIR

JULY 14–18

Ogle the oversized vegetables, marvel at the arts and crafts, win big at bingo—and, most importantly, eat. This year’s 4-H Fair features an old-fashioned picnic supper followed by a prize-winning cake auction, plus a country-style pancake breakfast. Picnic supper and cake auction: July 15, 6 p.m. dinner and 7 p.m. auction; picnic is $3 or $6 depending on choice of entrée. Pancake breakfast: July 18, 8 a.m.–10 a.m.; $4, children younger than 3 free.

Maryland State Fairgrounds 2200 York Rd., Timonium www.baltimorecounty4hfair.org

DOG DAYS AT DOVE VALLEY

JULY 17

In most civilized countries, canines regularly accompany their owners to bars, restaurants, and shops; they even get to ride on public transportation. At Dove Valley Vineyards and Winery’s second annual Dog Days, your pooch can get a taste of what his European cousins take for granted. The two of you can spend the day together, enjoying a picnic, listening to music, and sipping wine. (Although you should probably keep the alcohol to yourself.) 11 a.m.–7 p.m. Free admission.

Dove Valley Vineyards and Winery 645 Harrington Rd., Rising Sun 410-658-8388 www.dovevalleywine.com

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64

urbanite july 10

art / culture

69 theater

Much Ado About Nothing & Hamlet

69 visual art

The Sondheim Prize

71 79

Where Paths Diverge by lionel foster

festival Artscape

the scene This month’s cultural highlights

The Other Wes Moore lays bare the role of family, community, and plain old luck in deciding our paths in life. |

illustration by mark arsenault

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f you pay attention to just about any major news or infotainment outlet—Oprah, National Public Radio, People, USA Today— you’ve probably heard about a phenomenally successful Johns Hopkins University alumnus named Wes Moore and his new book, The Other Wes Moore.

In case you’ve missed it, here’s the CliffsNotes version: In late 2000, shortly after Moore had been named a Rhodes Scholar, the Baltimore Sun ran a story about his remarkable rise. Around the same time the paper ran a series of pieces on a jewelry store robbery that led to the death of an off-duty police officer in Baltimore County.

One of the alleged assailants in the robbery was named, improbably enough, Wes Moore.

Those stories stuck with the scholar, and after he returned to the United States, he started a correspondence with the other Wes Moore. The book is his attempt to pick apart how two black boys, close in age, growing up under similarly trying circumstances, ended up in such different places—one on Charlie Rose, the other in the Jessup Correctional Institution serving a life sentence for murder.

The book has received rave reviews and exposure that is almost unheard of for a fi rst-time author.

But those of us who know Wes understand that he’s not just some upstart media darling. I met Wes when we were both undergraduates at Hopkins. Just two years my senior, he was already a trained soldier and the founder of his own youth mentoring organization. I was still figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, and he was happy to help. Wes was the fi rst person to tell me that I too should apply for a prestigious postgraduate scholarship.

Not long afterward, I landed an award that took me to London for three years.

For a long time, I assumed Wes was born pretty much as I met him: 6-foot-plus, ready to take on anything—“the Black Captain America,” as I sometimes playfully call him.

But in his book, he makes a convincing argument that his destiny was not predetermined.

Wes’s father, a newscaster in the D.C. area, died when Wes was only 3 years old. Wes, his mother, and his sisters moved to the South Bronx, and he spent most of his childhood struggling to deal with the loss of his dad. He became a troublemaker at school and talked tough with the boys in his crime-ridden New York neighborhood. When he was 12, he was arrested, spray paint can in hand, and hauled in on charges of vandalism. Stuffed into the back of a police squad car, he finally saw how grimly his future could play out. Still, a week later, Wes was up to his old tricks. He seemed determined to fail. It wasn’t until his mother made good on her threat to send him

away to military school (tuition provided by his grandfather, a pioneering minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, and grandmother, who mortgaged their house) that he began to find and fulfi ll his potential.

And then there is the other Wes Moore.

With this book, writer/narrator Wes sets for himself what seems like an impossible task: If the story is to succeed at all, readers have to walk away believing that the target of an interstate manhunt had at least as much potential as the handsome Army officer. And you do. As a boy, Wes from West Baltimore was an athletic, quick-witted, and charismatic leader among his peers. While his energies were tragically misdirected, this boy seemed more serious, focused, and ambitious than the author. While my friend dabbled in graffiti, the other Wes Moore was an entrepreneur, indulging his taste for finer things by selling crack. Where the future soldier tried unsuccessfully to convince other people he was a lady’s man, his counterpart was a lover, a fighter, and a father before his eighteenth birthday.

art/culture class children are born into, appears to be putting that dubious theory to rest. (See “The Way Out,” Nov. ’09 Urbanite.) Malcolm Gladwell offers more reinforcement for the belief that environment matters in his 2008 book, Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell argues that many of the world’s most revered businessmen, athletes, and inventors—our icons of individual genius and accomplishment—are actually the beneficiaries of family, provenance, and public policy. In other words, to no small extent, it’s just dumb luck. “It makes a difference where and when we grow up,” Gladwell writes—and how we grow up.

Both Wes Moores would agree. Perhaps the most poignant piece of insight in the book is that we are the product of “others’ expectations that you take on as your own.”

Tellingly, this comment comes from the man on the wrong side of the bulletproof glass in the prison visiting room. You can’t help but wonder, “What if?”

Even before the publication of The Other Wes Moore, it was hard to imagine something the author could not achieve, which is why it is remarkable that he would tie his life story to that of a convicted murderer.

We like to think of America as a land of immigrant kings, a place where talent, inexhaustible determination, or some combination of the two can lead anyone to his greatest dreams. But by examining the role of family, community, and luck in his life, Wes has destroyed pieces of the up-by-his-bootstraps mythology that had begun to grow around his name and personality.

I’ve seen this before. Nine years ago, Wes looked across a restaurant table and said that I too could do great things. Those encouraging words joined a lifelong chorus of support from my own single mother, church members, aunts, uncles, and surrogate fathers encouraging me to push beyond the daily dangers of life in East Baltimore. Support like his changed the trajectory of my life and, it’s becoming clear, could do the same for millions more. ■

How much can our smarts, our strength, and ultimately our life trajectory be altered by the people and environment around us?

Baltimore Wes had second chances too, including a relocation to Baltimore County that was supposed to take him away from drugs and violence, but he never made it off the streets. So why? Where did one Wes go right and the other wrong?

At the heart of this book is the “nature versus nurture” debate that is at least as old as that first pair of siblings, Cain and Abel— and continues today. In short, how much of our smarts, our strength, and ultimately our life trajectory are coded in our genes, and how much can they be altered by the people and environment around us? The question has particular relevance for African American kids growing up in the inner city: Using narrow interpretations of standardized test results and genetics research, some have argued that African American kids are inherently less intelligent than white kids and that no amount of nurturing can overcome this nature.

The Harlem Children’s Zone, an effort to give 10,000 low-income children the same educational resources that many middle-

—Lionel Foster spent three years on a Marshall Scholarship in London and went on to earn master’s degrees in social policy and planning, urban planning, and creative writing. A former Urbanite staff writer, he is now an assistant program manager at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.

On the air: A conversation with Wes Moore on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on July 8 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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art/culture t He at er

Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, presented by the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

photo by Teresa Castracane

Play dates: This summer, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company performs Hamlet among the ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute.

visUaL art

The Big Winner

The Sondheim Prize finalist exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, through Aug 1 with award presentation on July 10 In the past five years, the stakes have risen considerably for Baltimore’s visual artists, thanks to the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize. The contest, named for the late public servant and civic leader and his late wife, provides the winner with two things any artist needs: Money and exposure. The prize includes a $25,000 purse, and the competition is juried by internationally respected curators. “One of the biggest reasons for initiating the Sondheim was to set up something that would promote area art-making as the serious endeavor that we in the arts already knew it was,” says Gary Kachadourian, a former employee of Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, which organizes the exhibit.

Each year, the prize is given to a visual artist or group of collaborating artists who live or work in Pennsylvania, Maryland, D.C., or Virginia. This year’s seven finalists include a fi lmmaker, several sculptors, an animator, and a photographer. An exhibition of their work runs through August 1 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, with the top award given

The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company was born in 2002 when Artistic Director Ian Gallanar and five others produced Twelfth Night in Howard County with just $1,000.

Eight years later, CSC has become one of the five most-attended theaters in the Baltimore area, mounting four to five fresh, unforgettable productions a year. Most of these are performed outdoors at the stabilized ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute—a majestically columned, Greek Revival structure in Ellicott City, now owned by the Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks, that was once a finishing school for young women (and is rumored to be haunted).

Such rapid growth has not come without challenges, and CSC is experiencing what might be termed growing pains. The Patapsco Female Institute has started to feel a little cramped. “Imagine going into a porta-pot wearing hose, a doublet, and a sword,” says CSC board member and veteran actor Steve Beall.

As part of a company-wide revisioning process, CSC has begun to explore the possibility of building its own theater, estimated to cost about $3 million. But Beall says the company won’t suffer from the loss of its

out on July 10. There’s also a semifinalist exhibition at Maryland Institute College of Art during Artscape, July 16 through 18. (For more about Artscape, go to page 71.)

“The exhibit is amazing exposure for Baltimore artists,” says Laure Drogoul, an interdisciplinary artist who netted the first Sondheim Prize in 2006. “The curators have a very fresh, outside eye. They are interested in the ‘now’ artwork of the time.” The prize money gave Drogoul several years to prepare for a huge 2009 retrospective of her work at MICA—Follies, Predicaments, and Other Conundrums: The Works of Laure Drogoul— that was named Best Solo Show of the Year

by Baltimore’s City Paper.

But the Sondheim’s scope is not just local; it has propelled several winners onto the national radar. “Winning the prize in 2007 enabled me to travel, to help create national opportunities, and I was involved in a number of shows in New York,” says painter Tony Shore.

And the BMA’s spacious galleries provide a rare opportunity for the finalists to exhibit in a museum setting. “It’s important to see work in this type of space,” Kachadourian says. “It reveals the existing polish in the work that isn’t always as evident in smaller spaces.”

Kristen Hileman, curator of contemporary art at the BMA, says the exhibit is

unique setting. “PFI has definitely shaped our style and helped us develop an intimacy with audiences that we think is kind of rare in classical theater companies,” he says.

“If we did outgrow it or the county made other plans, what we’ve learned there [would] translate to other places.”

Meanwhile, this summer’s lineup—the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, playing through July 11, and CSC’s fi rst crack at the bloody revenge tragedy Hamlet, which wraps up July 25—takes full advantage of the space’s unique atmosphere, by turns exotic and spooky. For Gallanar, the haunted ruins provide a perfect setting for Hamlet, which takes place in a Danish castle called Elsinore.

“I love that the PFI can stand in for the castle,” he says, “rather than have it be represented by a few painted flats or special lighting effects.”

—Brent Englar

For tickets, call 866-811-4111 or go to www.chesapeakeshakespeare.com.

courtesy of Baltimore Offi ce of Promotion and the Arts

Updating a Classic

Time to think: Laure Drogoul, winner of the 2006 Sondheim Prize, says the $25,000 award enabled her to spend several years on a 2009 retrospective of her work, which included The Root (blue-eyed), pictured.

a good chance to get a glimpse into the current art scene. “The audience will be able to see what fi lm, sculpture, animation, and drawing is—what those things mean today.

If people haven’t gone to a contemporary art show recently, this is the one to go to.”

—Cara Ober For more information, go to www.artscape.org. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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Street Party Artscape, July 16–18

Crowd pleaser: The annual Artscape festival has something for nearly everyone, from music to fashion to comedy.

Arts visual arts coordinator Jim Lucio was responsible for assembling this year’s diverse crew of artists. “I’m really excited to see the whole thing come together as one big piece,” he says. The sixteen installations are “both conceptual and functional”—and depend on audience participation, as in Alisa Alig’s “Stink Hole: A Subterrestrial Quest,” in which safari-outfitted guides lead visitors through a passageway fi lled with all sorts of odd creatures, peculiar plant life, and strange peepholes.

There’s also Clark Agre and C. Christopher Rouse’s shooting gallery, where passersby can aim laser guns at hand-painted ducks and old appliances. (Look out: Some of this

rifle-fodder may talk back.) The duo also created a pulsating, 20-foot-by-15-foot kinetic balloon sculpture to hover above Midway.

And if the excitement of the festival is too much, take a moment to recline on the analyst’s couch in “Art Therapy.” Artist Jeremy Crawford’s installation features a contemplation room where Artscapers can ponder their existence—or at least figure out which event to visit next.

—Simon Pollock For more information, go to www.artscape.org.

Thanks to the Urbanite!

Rain Date: July 11

Slather the kids with sunscreen and join the 350,000-plus people descending on Baltimore this month for Artscape. Boasting the title of largest free arts festival in the nation, Artscape is packed with interactive exhibitions (both at the central venue in Station North and Bolton Hill and at satellite locations around town), live music and cultural performances, and art activities for all ages.

This year’s lineup includes several live music stages (including one on Mt. Royal Avenue near Lafayette Avenue that’s sponsored by Urbanite, which is also a festival sponsor), an Art Car Lounge where folks can recline on automotive parts and seats, and Betascape, a series of demonstrations and workshops on innovative technology.

One popular attraction is Midway, which for the third year spills its carnival sideshowesque flare onto the Charles Street bridge.

For this year’s version, a crew of about forty local artists have worked individually and collaboratively to create an otherworldly experience, with skate ramp/golf hole, a life-size Whack-a-Mole game, and a stuffed animal-fi lled chill-out room.

Baltimore Office of Promotion and the

art/culture

courtesy of Baltimore Offi ce of Promotion and the Arts

Fes tivaL

8 7

                   

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    

scrumptious food Brewer’s Art beer dessert contest cool exhibitors

Herring Run Watershed ● 410-254-1577 ● www.herringrun.org Special thanks to PNC Bank, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, Inc. for helping to make this event possible.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

71

BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

0 1 0 2 R E M SUM JUL

JUL

Star-Spangled Spectacular 03 04 SUN 8 pm at Oregon Ridge SAT

Donald Pippin, conductor Rick Dempsey, special guest vocalist Join the BSO and Baltimore Orioles great Rick Dempsey for this annual tradition! Bring your picnic basket and listen to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, with an incredible fireworks display.

JUL RICK DEMPSEY

16 The Music of the Eagles FRI 8 pm at Pier Six

THE EAGLES TRIBUTE BAND

Brent Havens, conductor The BSO, a full rock band and singers will fill the Inner Harbor with the trademark vocal harmonies and rich melodies of the Eagles, featuring many of the Eagles’ greatest hits. Ticket prices $20-$45.

Purchase on ticketmaster.com or tickets.piersixpavilion.com

JUL

22 Porgy & Bess

THU 7:30 pm at the Meyerhoff

09 Planet Earth Live

FRI 7:30 pm at the Meyerhoff George Fenton, composer & conductor The celebrated BBC series, featuring spectacular high-definition footage of nature’s most mysterious and beautiful creatures, comes to life on the big screen with live orchestral accompaniment conducted by its composer George Fenton.

JUL

Marin Alsop, conductor This all-Gershwin program opens with An American in Paris, and Marin Alsop leads works from Gershwin’s great American opera, including favorites such as “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

MARIN ALSOP

JUL

23 The Music of Frank Zappa & Philip Glass FRI 7:30 pm at the Meyerhoff

10 Rising Stars Perform SAT Tchaikovsky Concertos 7:30 pm at the Meyerhoff

Christian Colberg, conductor Sirena Huang, violin Conrad Tao, piano Two gifted 15-year-old soloists each demonstrate their phenomenal talents with a dramatic Tchaikovsky concerto—the Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto No. 1. The program opens with the perfect summer fantasia, Capriccio Italien.

JUL

Marin Alsop, conductor Shodekeh, beatboxer Hear Zappa’s great orchestral versions of works such as Be-Bop Tango and Dupree’s FRANK ZAPPA Paradise. Marin Alsop and the BSO also perform Philip Glass’ Heroes Symphony and introduce Baltimore beatboxer, Shodekeh, in a unique collaboration of vocal percussion pyrotechnics with orchestra.

JUL

24

Broadway Melodies 8 pm at Oregon Ridge

SAT Randall Craig Fleischer, conductor

15 Michael Jackson Tribute THU 7:30 pm at the Meyerhoff MICHAEL JACKSON

JUL

Brent Havens, conductor Join the BSO and Jackson-esque vocalists for an evening filled with fabulous music spanning 40 years of Michael Jackson’s influential and celebrated career.

Patricia Phillips and Doug LaBrecque, vocalists The BSO gives its regards to Broadway in this evening of celebrated music from Gershwin to Bernstein, Richard Rodgers to Andrew Lloyd Webber and tunes from My Fair Lady to Jersey Boys!

OREGON RIDGE

Summer Media Sponsors:

Oregon Ridge Presenting Sponsor:

BSOMUSIC.ORG 410.783.8000

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LOCAL MUSIC

Even in the summer months, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is going strong. This month’s highlights include a live accompaniment to high-definition footage from the BBC documentary Planet Earth Live on July 8 and 9; a performance of Tchaikovsky by two 15-year-old musicians on July 10 and 17; and The Music of Frank Zappa and Philip Glass, two of Baltimore’s celebrated natives, along with a special accompaniment to Mikael Vainio’s Fujiko’s Fairy Tale by local beatboxer Shodekeh, a 2009 Urbanite Project participant, on July 23. (410-783-8000; www.bsomusic.org)

Local folk group Small Sur celebrates the release of their new limited-run EP, Bare Black, with a show at the Windup Space (12 W. North Ave.; www.thewindupspace.com) on July 9. The album is put out by Aural Slate Recordings, the small-batch EP label division of the Aural States music blog (www.auralstates.com).

To launch a week of flute master classes at Peabody Conservatory, flute virtuoso Marina Piccinini performs with the Brasil Guitar Duo on July 7. The program includes Bach’s Sonata in B minor, considered one of the composer’s most difficult works for flute.

The week wraps up with a master-class recital on July 12. (1 E. Mt. Vernon Place; 410-234-4543; www.peabody.jhu.edu/ piccininimc) NEW MUSIC

The locals pair up with U.K.-based label/ performance series Nonclassical for London Calling, the July 23 installment of the Contemporary Museum’s new-music series, Mobtown Modern. Joining the British guests is local beatboxer Shodekeh, straight from his performance that night at the Meyerhoff (see above). At the Windup Space. (www.mobtownmodern.com) ROCK

This month at Rams Head Live: Indie rock band Interpol on July 14 and the Swell Season—the duo who starred and sang in the 2007 movie Once—on July 31. For a full list of this month’s performers, go to www.ramsheadlive.com. (20 Market Place; 410-244-1131)

The haze of summer and the thrill of youthful abandon are captured in Wild Nothing, an exhibit featuring the work of such locals as Andrew Laumann, Jordan Bernier, and Beth Hoeckel, whose Reservoir is pictured. July 10 through aug 29; opening reception takes place July 10.

(1700 N. Charles St.; www.themetro gallery.net) Compiled by Marianne Amoss

MUSIC FESTIVAL

The fifth annual Whartscape, organized by the Wham City artist collective, is four days jam-packed with more than 120 musical, video, and theater performances. Local musicians on the docket include Dustin Wong, Jimmy Joe Roche, and Rap Dragons.

Get tickets early! July 22–25. (www.wham city.com) THEATER

art/culture presented at Northminster Presbyterian Church (705 Main St., Reisterstown) on July 24. To register, contact 443-834-4612 or quotidianplays@gmail.com. (http://osarts. org/Quotidian/) PERFORMANCE

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sacagawea, and Thurgood Marshall come to life in the Maryland Humanities Council’s living history program, Chautauqua 2010. The three historic characters—performed by Gerry Wright, Selene Phillips, and 2010 Urbanite Project participant Lenneal Henderson, respectively—“exemplify the idea of overcoming barriers,” according to the MHC. The traveling show, this year dubbed Beyond Boundaries, stops at locations across Maryland this month, including the Catonsville campus of CCBC July 8 through 10.

(410-685-0095; www.mdhc.org/programs/ chautauqua/)

Recline on the rolling lawn of the Evergeen Museum and Library for the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s productions of two funny tales replete with schemes, mistaken identities, and other antics: Shakespeare’s late-16th-century The Comedy of Errors (July 9–15, 23–29) and Scapin!, a modern version of Moliere’s 1671 play Les Fourberies de Scapin (July 1–8, 16–22, 30–Aug 1). (410366-8596; www.baltimoreshakespeare.org)

The folks behind April’s Illuminopolis variety/burlesque show are back, displaying fierce patriotism at the Creative Alliance in Tilted Torch’s Salute to the Union on July 2. There’ll be star-spangled pasties, whimsical songs, fire tricks, and more. (3134 Eastern Ave.; 410-276-1651; www.creative alliance.org)

In the second annual Quotidian Plays festival, drama fiends have twenty-four hours to create an original one-act play on a theme drawn from a hat. Their works are

At the Windup Space, local photographer J.M. Giordano’s series Voom!: Behind the Burlesque Curtain is paired with the results

VISUAL ART

of the “Dr. Sketchy’s” burlesque-themed life drawing sessions, which take place worldwide and locally at the Windup Space.

Through July 31.

The Creative Alliance’s annual Big Show is devoted to “unedited creativity”: Any CA member can hang a piece of artwork. The result is a mélange of styles and media.

Through July 24; an open-to-the-public critique takes place July 21.

Students in Maryland Institute College of Art’s MA in Community Arts (MACA) program develop community-building skills along with their own artistic abilities. Graduating students display their thesis work in the Brown Center at MICA July 15 through 31, with a reception on July 30. (1301 W. Mt. Royal Ave.; 410-225-4217; www.mica.edu) FILM

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum hosts a screening of an award-winning documentary created by the Jewish Museum of Maryland—Lives Lost, Lives Found: Baltimore’s German Jewish Refugees, 1933– 1945—followed by a discussion with two of the people featured in the film, Herta Baitch and Martha Weiman. July 8 at the Lewis Museum (830 E. Pratt St.; 443-263-1800). (www.jewishmuseummd.org)

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Now or Never continued from page 35 Fox admits the Obama administration’s strategy will strain the bay states’ environmental agencies. “There’s no question that we are going to be putting increased demands on permit writers and enforcement personnel, and the capacity of state agencies is more strained today than it’s ever been,” he says. “Many in the development sector and the industrial sector believe we are pushing too hard and too fast.”

But some longtime environmentalists believe the feds and the bay states still aren’t pushing hard enough. “There’s a huge disconnect between the scientific evidence and the political will,” says former Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, who teaches environmental policy at Salisbury University. “What has to happen is tough political leadership—tough, knowledgeable, competent, informed political leadership. I think Obama has the potential to do that, Martin O’Malley has the potential to do that. It’s just that they have to say, ‘This is a priority, and this is what we’re going to do.’”

And if the political leaders don’t follow through? Well, the waterkeepers could always file another lawsuit—and so could any other citizen, for that matter.

Barrett, the law clinic director, says the waterkeepers and other groups that file citizen lawsuits are doing exactly what Congress wanted them to do back in 1970 when it passed the original Clean Water Act. “There was a recognition back then that because of the complexity of the issues involved, it would be impossible for state or federal governments to fully enforce the law,” Barrett says. So Congress included explicit language ensuring that citizens could sue to stop pollution.

The environmental laws of the early 1970s belong to a special category, Barrett says. “They’re what we call ‘aspirational’ laws.” In the case of the Clean Water Act, “Congress aspired for all the water bodies in the United States to be fishable and swimmable. They couldn’t just make that happen.

But they set up mechanisms where you have to keep pushing to get where you want to be.”

Are we entering a new era of aspirations?

Maybe so. There’s renewed hopefulness in the air. But there’s also widespread agreement—as close to unanimous as environmentalists ever get—that they have to back up their aspirations with action. It’s either that or lose the bay.

The EPA’s new restoration strategy acknowledges citizens’ role in this effort. It

calls for creating more than three hundred new access points where the public can spend time on the bay. The theory is that people who enjoy the bay will vote for politicians who protect it. A summary of the strategy puts it like this: “Ultimately, meeting the water quality, habitat restoration and land conservation goals described in this strategy depends on engaged citizens who support stewardship … and take personal action to carry it out.”

For some people, personal action means planting native trees or driving a hybrid car. For Phillips, it means taking on one of the biggest agribusinesses in the nation, a company with $4.6 billion in annual sales, with a legal team made up mostly of ten law students and their professor.

“You can’t be part of the environmental community and walk away from what the real problems are,” Phillips says. “It’s not about having more meetings and appointing more committees or stakeholder groups. It’s about solving the problem now.

“You have to stand up for the resource.

That’s your job.” ■ —Heather Dewar is Urbanite’s green/sustainable online editor.

Become a CASA Volunteer!

(Court Appointed Special Advocate)

It takes all of us, everyday people, to stand up and commit to making a meaningful difference in the lives of abused and neglected children. It starts, very simply, with one volunteer at a time.

Call today and learn how to become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for a child in Baltimore City.

CASA Baltimore PO Box 13004, Baltimore, MD 21203 www.casabalt.org • 410-244-1465 • 410-244-1460 Fax w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u l y 1 0

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eye to e y e

What happens when, working on intuition, you create a structure and then use logic to respond to it? This is the basis of a certain part of Ed Harris’s work. In Growing Overmuch, shown above, the Baltimore artist creates a base structure of strong black gestures and then reacts by fi lling the voids created by the strokes. One might think of stained-glass windows. In essence it is a simple dance, one that clearly pits the conscious mind against the subconscious.

In a great many of his works, the canvas is covered by a profusion of much smaller elements, similar in configuration to Growing Overmuch but much more dense, creating a texture rather than a particular explosion. The painting shown here, then, seems a piece of something that is open-ended and capable of incremental growth—as though it were pulled from an endless universe bubbling with potential.

—Alex Castro

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urbanite july 10

Ed Harris Growing Overmuch 2010 60 x 60 inches acrylic on canvas www.edwardkeithharris.com

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