June 2006 Issue

ting

from noveli

less : in side jone stow n

st lou is bay ard

a ho me when you ’ re h ome

: new fiction

crea

reading

issue no. 24

beach

2006

u r b a n p la y g r o u nd : s e e i n g t h e city as one pa rk

june

B A L T I M O R E

can’t relax?

one writer ex plores why we ’ve stopped ha v ing fun

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New Destinations BENJAMIN LOVELL SHOES CITY SPORTS HANDBAGS AND THE CITY INTERNATIONAL NEWS NOUVEAU CONTEMPORARY GOODS SPA SANTÉ

Great Favorites

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contents

21 what you’re writing 29 corkboard 31 have you heard … edited by marianne amoss

35

35 food: food pyramid joan jacobson

39 baltimore observed: linking the green gary gately

45 space: creating a home when you’re homeless bill mesler

53 encounter: baltimore storyteller elizabeth scott leik

56 recreation rebound

45

elizabeth a. evitts

62 all work and no play nicky penttila

66 fiction louis bayard

71 sustainable city: no small change julie e. gabrielli

56

75 out there: waste not erika blount danois

79 in review 83 what i’m reading susan mccallum-smith

95 resources 98 eye to eye

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cover note: Sam Trapkin, a student in Mike Weikert’s Graphic Design II class at Maryland Institute College of Art, created this month’s cover through a special partnership between MICA and Urbanite.

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Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial Inquiries: Send queries to the editor-in-chief (no phone calls, please) including SASE. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year.

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Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at 410-243-2050.

editor’s note

quotes BALTIM ORE

There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

photo by Sam Holden

happy talent to know how to play.

It is a

—Calvin, from Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

I grew up on a small college campus in Virginia. Our house sat on the crest of a steep hill overlooking the college buildings below, which were cradled in a valley at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. One of my clearest memories of childhood is from a blustery spring day when I was about 6. My older brother and I were running around in circles, the strong wind whipping our hair. I can still smell earth and evergreens, and recall the unbridled joy that came from standing at the top of that hill and leaning into a powerful gust. It held me up, briefly, then shifted, sending me tumbling headfirst down the hill. My brother was right behind me. We laughed, ran back up, and did it all over again.

Flash forward to another spring day, in 2006. It’s sunny and it smells like earth and evergreens. The editorial team in our office is hunkered down, brainstorming for this issue about recreation. We ask what “recreation” means to each of us. For some it means sports and adventure, for others it means time with friends, for most it means connecting to something intrinsically human. As we talk, I keep drifting back to that feeling from so many years ago when I belly-laughed with my brother. And as we all realize that these moments of recreation are few and far between, it comes to us that we’ve forgotten the very tangible benefits of fun.

“Recreation is as much for balance and health as it is for fun,” Sally Michel had told me when I posed the same question to her. One of the founders of the Parks & People Foundation, Sally has spent a life creating recreation opportunities for all of Baltimore’s kids. “Balance is a big key in this crazy world we live in,” she said.

Sally is right. Whether recreation is active or passive—rock climbing or reading a book—it’s about balance. If we continue to strip the fun and games from our lives, we lose an essential element of our humanity.

I wish I could say that this revelation caused us to leap up from that table and go frolicking in a sun-filled park. Instead, we returned to sit in the anemic glow of our computers, and the workday continued. But something has happened in the subsequent weeks. More of us have started taking lunch. We’re scheduling summer vacations. Me, I took a trip to the Bahamas, even though I’d heard it was their windy season. It was OK, because I really wanted to feel the wind in my hair.

—Elizabeth A. Evitts

RECREATION: , It It ss not not just just fun fun and and games games A presentation by Charles Jordan, Urbanite’s June guest editor and chairman of the environmental nonprofit The Conservation Fund Morgan State University Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. School of Engineering Complex William Donald Schaefer Auditorium 5200 Perring Parkway Baltimore MD 21251

You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

—Plato, Greek philosopher

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.

—Sylvia Plath, American poet and novelist

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

—Anatole France, French novelist

Stress is an ignorant state.

It believes that everything is an emergency.

—Natalie Goldberg, American writer and teacher

The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.

—Ashley Montagu, British-born humanist and anthropologist

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

—Chinese proverb

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urbanite june 06

contributors

behind this issue

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

Ericka Blount Danois A regular feature contributor to The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore magazine, and The Crisis magazine, Ericka Blount Danois’ work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Baltimore’s City Paper, Sports Illustrated, and Vibe, among others. Danois has interviewed such cultural figures as Quincy Jones, LL Cool J, and Fidel Castro. She wrote about the “zero waste” trend in the Out There department.

About that movement, Danois says, “I think this philosophy is the most progressive approach to reducing waste in our environment while at the same time creating jobs.”

Elizabeth Scott Leik “Mr. Shivers introduced me to the city and taught me how to appreciate Baltimore,” says Elizabeth Scott Leik about Frank Shivers Jr., the subject of her Encounter article. Leik has lived in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but she now considers Baltimore her home. Leik teaches writing at Loyola and Goucher colleges and enjoys roaming around Baltimore, learning whatever she can about the city.

Candance L. Greene Candance L. Greene, who reviewed Tonya Maria Matthews’ Still Swingin’: New and Selected Poems from These Hips, earned her master of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction writing from Goucher College this year. Much of Greene’s published writing has examined family issues. Her work has been included in several anthologies, most recently the 2003 The Hoot and Holler of the Owls: An Anthology of New Black Writers.

Neil Meyerhoff Photographer and Baltimore native Neil Meyerhoff has worked on several projects for the City, creating panoramic photographs to be displayed in public landmarks.

Some of Meyerhoff ’s photos of New York are in the collection of the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society, and photos from his Cuba series are in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Meyerhoff ’s panoramic photographs of Baltimore’s parks appear in the feature article “Recreation Rebound.”

Growing up in rural segregated Texas in the 1930s, Charles Jordan wasn’t allowed to share the public parks with his white neighbors. Instead, he took to the nearby woods and explored nature on his own. His relationship with the outdoors grew even stronger when his family moved to a Native American reservation in California in 1950. A high school basketball star, Jordan went on to study sociology, education, and philosophy at Gonzaga University. He took graduate courses in education at Loma Linda University and public administration courses at the University of Southern California. Jordan worked in Palm Springs, California, as the city’s first African American recreation leader in 1961, and he soon became assistant director of recreation and then assistant to the city manager. In 1970 he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he served as fire commissioner for two years, police commissioner for five years, and parks commissioner for three years. After a ten-year stint as parks director for Austin, Texas, Jordan returned to Portland in 1989 and worked for fourteen years in the city’s park system. During his tenure, the budget increased from $27.2 million to $62.5 million, his staff doubled, and he significantly increased the city’s parks and natural areas. Jordan is now chairman of the board of the environmental nonprofit The Conservation Fund and is a sought-after speaker on conservation and the power of parks and recreation. He is currently working on a book about his life. courtesy of The Conservation Fund

photo Lisa Macfarlane

with guest editor charles jordan

I

am in the business of building community. I connect people to their neighborhood, their neighbors, and the land. The tools of my trade are people, parks, and programs. For many of my professional years, I thought I was simply in the business of “fun and games.” People came to parks and recreation for fun activities and we delivered. I was very aware of the challenges society was facing with juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, drop-out rates, and racial issues, to name a few, but I didn’t fully realize at first that I had an important part of the solution: recreation.

Parks and recreation made such a difference in my own life because of dedicated individuals who gave love and time to me. My personal relationship with nature and my professional work have shown me that everything is connected; nothing exists in isolation.

What I do in my front yard can impact what happens in your front yard five miles away. As John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” That philosophy guides me every day.

During my career in parks and recreation, I came to realize the power these programs can have in the lives of children, especially those living in urban areas. In 1984, I delivered the closing address of the National Recreation and Parks Association. The title of my speech was “More Than Just Fun and Games,” and in it I discussed my belief that we can use parks and recreation to nurture and motivate our kids to do more than they have in the past. If little Johnny knows he cannot play on the basketball team unless he spends one hour studying before every practice, he will come to that hour of study. And you can’t beat urban parks and recreation for promoting diversity. We teach the kids this little by little by doing such things as pulling them aside after every basketball game to say, “You won tonight. And you know why you won? You won because you set aside some of the artificialities of life, like the color of one’s skin, the shape of one’s eyes, or the manner in which one worships God. Once you set those aside, you not only win on this court, you win in society.”

Not every kid can kick a football or hit a home run or dunk a basketball, but we who work in parks and recreation can make sure that every kid has a chance to win. We must remember that every kid has the need, at least one time in his or her life, to run home and say, “Mom, today I was number one.”

And yet money for parks and recreation has been diminishing. We have to figure out how to combat this.

As chairman of the board of one of America’s premier conservation organizations, The Conservation Fund, I now have a broader understanding and appreciation for John Muir’s discovery.

Nothing exists in isolation; every effect must have a cause. The challenges that face our society are complicated, but we can begin to address them through working together and supporting parks and recreation. We are all connected, and what betters one will better us all.

You can hear Charles Jordan speak about parks, recreation, and the conservation movement on June 7 at 6 p.m. at Morgan State University. Call 410-243-2050 for more information. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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urbanite june 06

april 2006

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 22

Your Space What You’re Saying is the place for letters from you. We want to hear what you’re saying—and it does not have to be all about us. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore. com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211. Submissions should include your name, address, and daytime phone number; they may be edited for length and clarity.

CAN ARCHITECTURE SAVE A CITY? ARCHITECTURE REVIEW THE CITY’S DEBATE OVER AESTHETICS • HOTEL RWANDA’S PAUL RUSESABAGINA AN EXCERPT FROM HIS NEW AUTOBIOGRAPHY LESSONS FROM MOMA CURATOR TERENCE RILEY ON CONTEMPORARY DESIGN • STAYING IN THE CITY URBAN MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES ON THE RISE

Urb22_Master.indd 1

If we publish your letter in our July issue, we’ll send you tickets to The Summer All Star Jazz Jam featuring Fourplay and the Original Superstars of Jazz Fusion at The Murphy Fine Arts Center on the campus of Morgan State.

3/10/06 10:26:56 AM

Death and Life of Charm City Thank you for a wonderful issue full of great articles on such a pertinent and urgent subject—urban renewal (April 2006).

Having spent my childhood and adolescence in cities of Asia and Europe, the first thing that struck me about Baltimore is the appalling condition of its inner city. It is unreal to stumble upon the sinister, ailing inner city after strolling on the bustling and scenic streets of the Inner Harbor. “Navigating Urban Space” descriptively posed my question when I first arrived: “Why are there no places to walk?”

“Spanish Lessons” pointed out that America has a lot to learn from European countries. I think one reason is that Europe is not well endowed in terms of land. City planning is a much more critical process than it is in this country. Every structure must be carefully planned so it can fulfill its function and be in harmony with its surroundings. The article also distinguishes between preservation and sensitivity to history. The distinction is an important one.

Vienna is a city full of architectural splendor. There is no better place to observe the seamless mélange of Greco-Roman, Gothic, Baroque, and contemporary styles. The old and the new coexist harmoniously.

It is a testimony to how city planning is as much an artistic endeavor as it is a pragmatic enterprise.

Having extolled the virtues of European cities, I should also applaud the positive changes in Baltimore. As an undergraduate, I was advised not to step off campus for my own safety. Years later, I can take pleasure in wandering the streets of historic Mount Vernon and the vibrant arts and entertainment district. It is also promising to see increasing diversity in city dwellers.

Despite my optimistic outlook, I wonder about the fate of the urban poor. Will they be displaced once again and denied the joys of the healing city?

—Vivienne Feng lives in Charles Village and is a student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Baby Bust I found the article on the new baby boom in Baltimore (“The Next Baby Boom,” April 2006) to be

quite interesting but not in a good way. The author failed to mention that there are families in the city with older kids who decided to stay years ago and send their kids to public school—and not only to the newer charter schools. The article makes it sound like staying in a city to raise kids is a totally new phenomenon. There are tons of families, of all socioeconomic levels, that make the decision to stay in cities to raise kids—so why make it seem like it is such a new thing?

Why not do an article about the families that have already decided to stay and that are already sending their kids to public school? We are everywhere, and we are really getting tired of being ignored.

—LizNoel Duncan is a full-time stay-at-home mother of three kids and a part-time crisis clinical social worker. She lives in South Baltimore.

Chicken or the Egg? The article in your April issue entitled “The Next Baby Boom” by Fern Shen was an encouraging look at what could be the future for Baltimore City. As Ms. Shen correctly points out, the city of Baltimore has been losing population for fifty years. The postulated solution to this has been “if we could solve the crime and the education problems, then the population of Baltimore could rise.”

There have been massive efforts to this end with all the best intentions. Some have had a modicum of success, and yet the population continues to decline, and the crime and education situation is still seen as very problematic.

I say turn the issue upside down. To improve the crime and education situation in Baltimore, increase the population of the city. If there are enough middle-class people in the city, more will look to send their kids to public schools. With more children of middle-class households in the schools, they too will improve. There will be more hands helping address the problem, not to mention more taxpayer money.

—Melvin Mintz is a former Baltimore County councilman.

photo by Michael Northrup

update

what you’re saying

Last fall, Urbanite took to the battlefields with Darkon, the Baltimore/D.C.-area medieval wargaming group, and spent a day chronicling the fantasy feuds of countries and characters wielding homemade, foam-padded swords and spears (“Sword Play,” October 2005). Around the same time, a ninety-minute documentary about the group was in post-production. The film follows the lives of members as they straddle two worlds—the real world and the world of Darkon.

Produced by New York-based Ovie Entertainment and SeeThink Productions, Darkon had its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, this past March and walked away with the Audience Award for Best Documentary. Darkon was also screened at the Maryland Film Festival in May and will be shown at Silverdocs this month (see Corkboard listing for more information). It is the first feature-length film for directors Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer, and it was shot in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia over a one-year period between the winters of 2003 and 2004.

“We really believed in the movie,” says Neel.

“It’s a very human story. I always felt that if it could get seen, people would really like it.” He was right.

During the week-long South by Southwest festival, Darkon enjoyed sold-out screenings and positive reviews.

“I was excited that the audience felt that way, but I wasn’t surprised,” Neel adds.

Another person excited by the film was Bennett Miller, the Academy Award-nominated director of Capote. Miller screened the film before its debut at South by Southwest at the request of Meyer, and he provided the film and its makers with this endorsement: “Darkon is a great little film that reveals the often private aggression and fantasies of civilized, everyday people.”

For all the film-festival fanfare, Neel says that one of the best experiences was having the actual Darkon members attend South by Southwest.

“We always hoped that we could make everybody feel like they were a Darkonian by the end of the movie,” he says. “You go in wanting to laugh and gawk. Our hope is that you come out and say, ‘They’re human beings and these tendencies make perfect sense, and maybe I would even go out and try it.’”

—Jason Tinney For more information about Darkon, go to www. darkonthemovie.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 n e 0 6

17

Outdoor projects ahead?

Stay clear of power lines.

Here’s an important ‘heads up’ for everyone who works or plays outside: Stay away from overhead power lines! While safely installed away from everyday life, power lines are live wires that can cause serious injury or even death. Make sure you and the equipment you are using are at least 10 feet away from these lines—preferably further. It’s the law. Even equipment that isn’t touching high voltage lines is at risk for conducting electricity. If you must work within 10 feet, call BGE first at 410.685.0123. To learn more about overhead line safety, visit us at bge.com

WORK AND PLAY AWAY FROM OVERHEAD POWER LINES.

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“You’d Think She Owns The Place” ... She Does!

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urbanite june 06

what you’re writing “What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month, we pick a topic.

Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month’s theme.

Only nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We have the right to edit for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits.

You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know.

Due to libel and invasion of privacy issues, we reserve the right to print the piece under your initials.

Submissions should be typed (and if you cannot type, please print clearly). Only one submission per topic, please. Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 or to WhatYoure Writing@urbanitebaltimore.com. Please keep subphoto by Marshall Clarke

missions under four hundred words; longer submissions may not be read due to time constraints.

The themes printed below are for the “What You’re Writing” department only and are not the themes for future issues of the magazine itself.

pl ay tim e

I can’t wait to see what you want to

show me, she says.

We walk hand in hand up the slope to my old school playground. When I was just 7 and in second grade, I’d felt on top of the world in this land of pebbly, coarse sand and squeaky swings. I ran laps with other boys around the shiny silver railings lining the lot, unable to escape the clutches of the girls who caught us and dug their nails into our arms.

So, this is it? This is what you wanted to show me?

At 10 years old, we sat on these worn railings to play Truth or Dare with the girls: to tell or to swear—mostly lies that we wanted others to believe.

The boys always believed each other; the girls were impressed by our storytelling style if nothing else.

Very nice.

When 11, we jumped from the railings and ran across the baseball fields to hide behind the backstop and smoke our parents’ menthol cigarettes and revel in just-discovered French kisses.

She wraps her arms around her chest, fingers holding the cuffs of her sweater tightly. Looking at the car, she rubs her shoulders.

I’m cold. I think I want to head back, if you don’t mind.

To her, this old playground under the early moonlight, this landmark of my innocence, is little more than a concrete pit filled with tired sand. She can’t see that these coarse pebbles have absorbed countless falls, endless tears, numerous broken hearts, heart-shivering first kisses.

She stops, turns around. For a moment, I think she gets it.

Keys, please.

I toss her the car keys and turn back to the limelined field. I feel again the chain-link fence pressed against my back, digging in with each new kiss a girl pushes into me.

I’ll see you in a minute, yes?

Lips on lips. Menthol swirls. Hands on backs, in hair, on necks.

Topic

Deadline

Publication

Blunder

July 24, 2006

Duplicity

Aug 28, 2006

Nov 2006

Grace

Sept 25, 2006

Dec 2006

Oct 2006

Coming?

Yes, I say. There is nowhere else to go.

—Rus VanWestervelt is a writer and educator living in Towson.

There aren’t

many hours in a day, and even fewer after work and sleep and meals. But last Monday, I found myself with a handful of extra hours before the day was over.

I read a short story by Flannery O’Connor, one that I had read before. I listened to music by John Prine, music that I had not heard before. And I sat on my bed with a pen in one hand and paper in the other, trying to write something I had not written before. It was the most enjoyable experience of the day—as though time had stretched to allow these few untouchable hours. Strange that something so physically passive, where almost all movement is concentrated in one wrist, could feel so exhilarating. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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pl ay tim e During all my reading and writing and listening, I realized what power one good story can have over me. One good story makes me forget every meaningless thing I did yesterday, and makes me remember significant moments from fifteen years ago. Every good movie, book, or song is, at heart, a universal and compelling story. For that matter, so is every person I love.

But I get overwhelmed by working, sleeping, and eating, and I need time away from things that rely on physical activity. And time need not be spent on anything other than a story: stories like the ones in John Prine’s songs—songs like “Illegal Smile,” “Christmas in Prison,” and “Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You.” Good stories invite me to explore them, like a park on a spring afternoon. What better way to spend leisure time than completely forgetting the things I am taking leisure from?

—Matt D’Accurzio lives in Fells Point.

We’d had six years,

most of them beautiful, but the last was a bloodbath. Like sharp-tongued, two-headed monsters, we fought over everything except what was really going on. He went away for a week, and in the mountains of Colorado he found his freedom. There, for him, it was playtime. New lips told him what he wanted to hear.

His ego feasted, its needs met. He brought that feeling home with him and hit me in the teeth with it.

For ten months I stared at the ceiling, tears welling in my ears and spilling onto the pillow. Lexapro didn’t help. Match.com didn’t help. My life with-

out him had no point. I used to know what to do and how to do it. I used to know who I was supposed to be and why. Quiet suburbs had purpose once upon a time. The picket fence on the horizon had disappeared.

I tried to get it back. I pulled as hard as I could on the reins of my life but it yanked against my will.

I tried to retrieve him. I tried to replace him. Again and again, I failed. Finally, exhausted, I let go and I watched my life run off without me. I packed up my past in boxes, put a for-sale sign in front of my dream of suburban bliss, and moved on.

In my new life, I am learning that soybeans are delicious with a little salt, that parallel parking is not life threatening, and that what I think and feel do not have to be compromised in the name of love.

I am surrounded by the things that stir me: art, music, theater. I sit on my stoop now and write while the night gives way to ribbons of morning. My lungs fill with air and my heart beats a rhythm like a song.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am comfortable in my skin. I am at home. My creative energy is growing vibrant and alive. I think of him often and hope that he is happy. I miss him, and I love him still, but that love is no longer heavy and hard. There is no longer any urge to fight. It’s my turn to play.

—N. M. is loving her life in Hampden.

What exactly are you doing?”

my neighbors asked.

Well … I was wearing a feather boa and sitting by a toaster oven, which lay unplugged next to me in my yard. Okay, maybe in their yard. I had strategi-

cally placed a pin-punctured salt shaker within the toaster to burn the light reflected by the oven grates, my boa, and myself onto a sliver of photo paper in an attempt to produce a photograph. Would this information comfort my worried neighbors? I doubted it, but I eagerly stumbled over my explanation, anxious to justify my weirdness with something as profound as art. My neighbors nodded and grunted with appropriate understanding, then glanced at each other (perhaps flattered that I had deemed their yard more aesthetically pleasing than my own) before shuffling back inside.

This was the first time I’d felt that sharp cocktail of pride, embarrassment, uncertainty, and stubborn dedication, which I have experienced only from doing weird shit for art.

While doing weird shit for art, I’ve discovered that photos of a television in a nearby cornfield (made possible by half a dozen extension cords) tend to develop too dark; carpet can only be propped up on trees for twenty minutes max; mothers tend to throw away the tampons needed to design a ballroom-dancing dress; and turning the school nurse’s office into a movie set can hinder necessary medical procedures.

But that’s all irrelevant. I am addicted. Not to making art (I’m unconcerned whether I make something or not), but to the rush of knowing that I’m doing something for the unadulterated sake of doing it. Was the photograph the most significant result of the pinhole camera experiment in my neighbors’ yard? No, it was the experience that was more memorable, more life affirming, more fun.

Unfortunately, high school is product-oriented: poems and choreographed dances, paintings and

Kerry Dunnington • • • • •

Private Home Caterer Menu and Recipe Developer Traveling Culinary Demonstrationist Food Columnist Author of This Book Cooks www.thisbookcooks.com 410-243-3508 napsack8@cs.com

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urbanite june 06

pl ay tim e monologues—somehow all always due tomorrow.

Out of time and out of energy, what is an artist to do?

Well … paint with a broom for ten minutes or record conversations at a seedy diner. And remember to laugh when your neighbors ask what exactly it is you’re doing.

—Emma Sartwell, a senior at Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson, lives in Pikesville.

We were mostly newcomers,

mostly of the true-believer type, and, hoping to build community, we applied faith to the planting of trees that Sunday morning. Some long-time residents didn’t appreciate our fervor (or the noise of the jackhammer), and they let us know. Others just stood in their doorways and shook their heads.

By late that hot afternoon, not a single newly planted leaf was fluttering in Highlandtown and we decided we could all use a beer. Still effusing “community,” we decided to try the bar around the

corner, identifiable only by a neon ATM sign in the window. The bartender buzzed us in and the beer was as cold as the AC. Although we’d only just met, we fell into that easy conversation paved by a hard day’s work in the sun.

Against one wall was a classic shuffle alley bowling machine. Coin operated, it had a long deck, with pins that flipped upward as the relays beneath them were tripped by a sliding puck. The bartender told us that Jon, who was in his forties and lived around the corner with his elderly father, was the only one to ever play it. Jon came in twice a day and would challenge anyone to a game, especially anyone new.

He was never allowed to drink, the bartender explained, but he could come and go as he pleased, and was welcome to bowl whenever he wanted.

When Jon arrived, he introduced himself with a pumping handshake. He had the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes and some gray hair, which contrasted with other features distinctive of Down’s syndrome. He challenged me to a game. Usually a challenger pays to play; however, I upped the

quarters for two games and he showed me how to slide the metal-cased puck. We took turns knocking the pins back, which made a satisfying clack as they flipped. He won both times. After the second win, I knew that we would play as long as there was money in my pocket, so I declined a third game and again, with a big smile, Jon shook everyone’s hand and left.

One evening, a few months later, I was back at the bar after hanging some drywall in my kitchen.

The beer was just as cold, but the shuffle alley bowling was gone. I was the sole customer and the bartender told me that the owner had to eliminate shuffle bowling because he could only have five machines and video poker was a better draw. I asked about Jon, and she didn’t know where he was, but she had heard that his father had died and Jon had to move in with someone else, somewhere else.

Later, as I walked back up the block, I noticed that the dumpsters and scaffolds outnumbered the trees. ■ —Joshua Easton lives in Highlandtown.

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The Board Certified physicians of WomanKind OB/GYN Associates welcome new patients and accept most insurances.

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MILLRACE CONDOS New 1-2 bedroom condominiums in historic Clipper Mill Easy Commuting and light rail connection at your doorstep Adjacent to the hiking-biking trails of the wooded Jones Falls Valley Spectacular community pool in the center of a lively neighborhood Now selling -- Priced from the $300’s For more Information: 410-243-1292 or www.ClipperMillLiving.com

VILLAGE LOFTS New loft-style, 1-2 bedroom condominiums in Charles Village Smart city living with extraordinary amenities Spacious gourmet kitchens and private balconies Where modern conveniences meet vintage neighborhood charm Now selling -- Priced from the $300’s For more Information: 410-243-0324 or www.village-lofts.com

FRANKFORD ESTATES Stylish new East Baltimore town homes, duplexes and single-family homes Urban energy with tree-lined tranquility Numerous floor plans and models to suit your lifestyle Beautifully landscaped neighborhood with pool and clubhouse Phase III closeout - Priced from the $300’s - only 12 left For more information: 410-325-8838

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Timothy Dean electrifies Baltimore dining with his first location in historic Fell’s Point. Celebrate American cooking with a nod to French tradition with one of the DC area’s hottest chefs. Expect exceptional service, ambience and, of course, cuisine.

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urbanite june 06

Dinner Tuesday–Thursday 5–10, Friday & Saturday 5–11, Sunday Brunch 11–3

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corkboard

International Fil

m Festival

Ethnic Festivals

ph ot o or Gus sha Sa by

Tour

teron photo by Gary Let

The annual Tour de m Parks invites bik e riders to tour throug h the city’s parks. Th ree routes, ranging from twelve to more than thirty miles, take riders th rough Baltimore’s pa rk s, waterfront areas, an d historic neighborh oo ds.

Following the ride is a festival and celebrat ion in Carroll Park with a barbecue and live m usic.

Tours begin and en d in Carroll Park 1500 Washington Bo ulevard June 11 Ride begins at 8 a.m .

Adults $25, children 14 to 18 $10, children 13 and under $5; day-of-eve nt registration for ad ult s $30 410-366-7086 www.tourdemparks.o rg

ts Mahler’s Yuri Temirkanov presen tion in his final rec sur Symphony No. 2, Re director of the performances as music chestra. Soprano Or ny Baltimore Sympho e, mezzo-soprano Janice Chandler-Etem chorus are featured.

Nancy Maultsby, and Hall Meyerhoff Symphony eet 1212 Cathedral Str June 8 and 9 at 8 p.m. and June 11 at 3 p.m. $25–$75 410-783-8000 ony.org www.baltimoresymph r at Strathmore BSO at The Music Cente , Bethesda 5301 Tuckerman Lane .

June 10 at 8 p.m $21–$78 1-877-BSO-1444 .org www.bsoatstrathmore

The Beer Facts g, types Learn about beer brewin w best and brands of beer, and ho is hosted to enjoy it. This free event Tavern, by the crew of Clayton’s from the located across the street Enoch Light Street Branch of the Pratt Free Library.

Light Enoch Pratt Free Library, Street Branch 1251 Light Street June 5 6:30 p.m.

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Theatre Hopkins Presents Tom Stoppard’s Travesties is a funn y, farcical play about the fictional meeting of twentiethcentury revolutionaries Lenin, Dad a founder Tristan Tzara, and James Joyce—a ll three happened to live in Zurich in 1917.

Swirnow Theater in the Mattin Arts Center Johns Hopkins University 3400 North Charles Street June 16, 17, 18 and 23, 24, 25 Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.

General admission $15; student rush $5 410-516-7159 www.jhu.edu/~theatre

amstime gency: Dre Wolsey | A

Baltimore Parks Bike

A Maestro’s Finale

Gary photo by

times, and Locations, dates, ation for all additional inform p. found at www.bo festivals can be aevents.aspx org/events/bop

photo courtesy of www.aahf.net

case of Nations The annual Show bring traditional Ethnic Festivals ue owned food, uniq dance, world-ren ery ev usic to the city crafts, and live m ns gi ar, the season be summer. This ye 4) stival (June 2­– with the Polish Fe al e Russian Festiv and ends with th .

(October 20–22)

The fourth annu al Silverdocs: AF I/ Discovery Channe l Documentary Fe stival introduces nearly one hundred of th e be st new international do cumentaries in its six -d ay event. Some past Silverdocs stando uts include Murderball, Griz zly Man, and Boys of Baraka.

AFI Silver Theatr e and Cultural Ce nter 8633 Colesville Ro ad, Silver Spring June 13–18 Go to www.silve rdocs.com or www.afi.com/silv er for ticket info rmation AFI Silver Theatr e: 301-495-6720

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

–Elie Wiesel, writer

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urbanite june 06

Welcoming poets, writers, and memoirists, we offer the untypical—excellence, diversity, and intimacy. Come bask in the light of brilliant lecturers and have your work critiqued by genre companions. Scholarships available for women demonstrating exceptionality.

Visit www.flanked.org for complete guidelines or send inquires to info@flanked.org/ Flanked P.O. Box 10899 Baltimore, MD 21234

have you heard . . .

—Alissa Faden

Coffee Roasters …

Baltimore is home to several coffee roasters; the newest addition to that group is Bluebird Artisanal Coffee Roasters , who are focusing on selling shadegrown and sustainable-certified beans. Erik Rudolph, formerly of Key Coffee Roasters, and Zorana Grdjic founded the company in November 2005 to provide their sustainably grown coffee to businesses and restaurants as well as individual customers. “It’s kind of a trickle-down effect,” says Rudolph.

“You start with getting your pound of coffee in the

Book Distribution Website …

“If you know that when you buy from Place A the author gets $1, but if you buy from Place B the author gets $6—what do you do?” asks Baltimore resident Brad Grochowski, an author and the founder of AuthorsBookshop.com . When Grochowski put his first book, The Secret Weakness of Dragons, up for sale through one of the large web-based booksellers, he found the experience to be less than satisfying: The website took about 60% of the cover price of his book from each sale and dictated the terms of bookselling. Wanting more creative control over his work and believing his experience to be common, Grochowski launched AuthorsBookshop.com, a

photo by La Kaye Mbah

overly trendy.” Bottoms are mostly designer denim, including Hudson and hard-to-find celebrity favorite Genetic. Many of the shop’s tops and dresses, made

by Matty M, R Jean Blouse, and other better contemporary labels, are feminine and subtly flirty. Shoes range from sexy Michael/Michael Kors platforms to beaded flat sandals from Mystique. Open Sun 11–7, Mon to Thurs 11–8, Fri and Sat 11–9. 813 South Broadway; 410-522-0941.

website dedicated to giving independent and selfpublished authors and small presses more say in the distribution process. Authors are charged a flat fee of $4 for each sale instead of a percentage, and the website allows registered users to set the selling price of their book, which can also benefit book buyers (prices may be lower because authors are able to make more on each sale). The website also serves as a clearinghouse of information on self-publishing and provides networking opportunities for first-time authors. Go to www.authorsbookshop.com.

morning and it trickles down to the producer in South America and everyone gets something out of it.” The beans, which are roasted in Bluebird’s Greektown facility, are available through their website to both businesses and individuals and at the Mill Valley Garden Center and Farmers’ Market in Remington. In the future, the pair plans to set up a retail location. Call 410-675-2424 or visit www.bluebirdcoffee.com.

—Marianne Amoss

photo by Charles Taylor | Agency: Dreamstime

Boutique …

Cupcake , which opened April 1 in Fells Point, entices passersby with shoes displayed on cake trays in its windows. The 2500-square-foot boutique feels open and uncluttered; interior brick walls are painted white, providing a textured backdrop to clothing displays and the work of local visual artists. Owner Lisa Schatz named the store Cupcake to communicate sweetness with an edge: “A ‘cupcake’ is someone sassy,” she says. Schatz describes the shoes and clothes, which range from $20 for tee shirts to $200 for jeans and dressy tops, as “on-trend rather than

edited by marianne amoss

—M. A.

Cockeysville, 10015 York Rd. (410) 628-8001 • Baltimore, 2500 Boston St. (410) 522-0353 www.coldstonecreamery.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 n e 0 6

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have you heard . . . national arena; the other half discusses regional and local issues and is written by local chapters of the organization, which exist at several universities across the country, including Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT. Last summer, Johns Hopkins University started a chapter, which published its first issue this past April. Copies of the Hopkins edition of the journal can be found in the university library, and all articles from each chapter’s journal can be accessed at the website www.thetriplehelix.org.

—M. A.

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Plant a Tree …

In March, the Department of Recreation and Parks announced Baltimore City’s Urban Tree Canopy Goal. This plan to double the city’s tree canopy over the next thirty years will positively affect air and water quality, fight the atmospheric greenhouse effect, provide homes for wildlife, and save energy for city residents—plus, there will be many more shady spots for respite from the summer sun. Research by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service finds that the health and quality of urban forests and street trees are indica-

Chocolate and Pastries …

The glass case in Tenzo (the Zen Buddhist Tenzo, a new patisserie and chocolate shopSummer in Camp 06pastry - Urbanite term for “cook”) is often filled with luscious fruit Federal Hill, offers all-natural, preservative-free, and 9.125 x 2.625 tarts, geometrically designed mousse cakes, and often gluten-free sweets. Owner and pastry chef 0106.094 assorted chocolate truffles filled with sumptuous Janice Shih, previously a successful obstetrician/gyflavors like banana and mango. The perfectly sized necologist, now spends her days designing delectable mini-cheesecakes come in a variety of flavors (try the works of edible art. “Imagine not even being able to margarita!) and all have graham cracker crusts crafteat your own wedding cake,” says Shih. “Most of us ed from Tenzo-made graham crackers. Open Wed to take it for granted when we walk into a store to buy Sat 10–7, and Sun 12–4. 1016 South Charles Street; a cupcake or a sandwich, but people with wheat 410-302-6233; www.tenzoartisan.com. allergies can’t just do that.” Along with baker Shafia Mensuphu-Bey, she fashions pastries and foods that —Shannon Dunn are “harmonious with the palate as well as the spirit.”

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tors of the health of neighborhoods. In March 2007, the TreeBaltimore report will outline the City’s urban forest management plan. In the meantime, citizens can get involved by taking part in treesteward training classes, which are offered by the City and cover the basics of tree planting, maintenance, and identification. Call 410-396-0729 for course information.

—M. A.

photo by La Kaye Mbah

Scientifi c Journal …

“Without hypotheses and bold unconventional suggestions, much of the world’s innovation and progress would have never happened,” states the website of The Triple Helix: The International Journal of Science, Society, and Law. The aim of the journal, whose name comes from the incorrect theory that DNA is made up of three strands, is to examine the impact of science and technology on society and the law through both a national and local lens. It focuses on timely and provocative issues like intellectual property law, avian flu, genetic research, and facial transplantation. Half of each biannual issue is concerned with topics affecting the

Community Art Center Summer Art Camp (Ages 6 - 14) June 19 - August 4 9 am - 4 pm • Extended Day option Drawing/Painting/Printmaking, Sculpture/Clay, Drawing on Location, Museum Tours, Swimming

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food

by joan jacobson

photography by gail burton

Food Pyramid An international couple pursues their dream of opening an Egyptian restaurant

Above: Ayman Ramadan and Mary Bontempo prepare authentic Egyptian food at the Ruscombe Mansion.

Twenty years ago, Mary Bontempo was a community activist in Southwest Baltimore; she was also known as Baltimore’s “Coddie Lady.” When she wasn’t frying her secret-recipe codfish cakes and selling them to corner bars and groceries, she was flying to Iceland to meet the fishermen who caught the cod for her popular cakes.

Bontempo has long since moved on from the coddie business. Her wanderlust took her to Egypt, where she arranged tours for Americans. But, as an adventuresome lover of international cooking, she has never strayed far from the epicurean world.

“The quickest way to connect with people in any culture is by eating with them. Food is the common passion that brings us together,” says Bontempo.

During her adventures overseas, Bontempo fell in love with Egypt and opened a bed and breakfast there. She also married an Egyptian man, Ayman Ramadan, who was the night manager of an Egyptian seafood restaurant.

Today Bontempo and Ramadan live part of the year in Baltimore and have opened a fledgling Egyptian catering and restaurant business called Arabian Nights. They prepare meals to serve to the public once a week (lunch and dinner on Friday) in the modest kitchen of the Ruscombe Mansion, a community health center in Coldspring Newtown.

It is here that you can find Ramadan working unhurriedly one morning to prepare the day’s meal.

It is also the place to tactfully ask him how he discovered a secret Bontempo kept during their first year of marriage.

But first, the food: With a crisp breeze blowing through an open window, Ramadan’s kitchen smells of earthy garbanzo beans boiling on the Vulcan stove and three fat, wrinkling eggplants roasting in the oven. He is making his own hummus. (He never uses canned chickpeas, to avoid chemicals.)

His babaganoush will be warm from the freshly baked eggplants.

He washes two colanders full of baby spinach for his soup and pours a healthy dose of olive oil to simmer in a pot of onions, garlic, broth, and pureed fresh tomatoes. He’ll add the spinach just before he serves the soup. He’s already baked his own pita bread the night before. He’ll make the coconut cake, called basboosa, later, just before guests are ready to eat dessert.

Prior to this morning, Bontempo has already told her version of the “secret” she kept from Ramadan. It goes like this: Ramadan, like Bontempo, has many talents.

He is a civil lawyer in Cairo, and for nine years he managed a seafood restaurant near the Sphinx that w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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caters to tourists. Bontempo soon realized that Ramadan was a first-rate cook.

In fact, his cooking was so good that Bontempo, a normally vivacious and outspoken woman, was uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject of her own culinary skill. And Ramadan, who had stereotyped American woman as clueless cooks, didn’t ask.

So Bontempo kept blissfully quiet for months as she dined on Ramadan’s stuffed grape leaves, his thick spinach soup with whole tomatoes, and his sweet basboosa.

The former Coddie Lady couldn’t stay out of the

The quickest way to connect with people in any culture is by eating with them. Food is the common passion that brings us together. kitchen forever, though. It would be like an opera diva never singing for her new husband. Bontempo decided to make him an Egyptian dessert called rose pudding, made with rose essence, rice flour, and milk, topped with crushed nuts and fresh fruit.

Like a good newlywed, Ramadan requested the rose pudding often.

“He thought all I could make was rose pudding,” she says. But Bontempo could tell that Ramadan suspected something was not right with the pudding. It was just too good for a woman who could not cook.

It was later, when they came to Baltimore and she made him all-lump Maryland crab cakes, that he realized Bontempo was not the woman he thought he had married.

Ramadan remembers it differently: After the rose pudding incident, Bontempo told him she could make moussaka (a rich Middle Eastern dish with eggplant, ground meat, and a creamy béchamel sauce on top). “When she said it, I didn’t believe it. It was a surprise to me.” He shakes his head a little sadly as he tells the story in between checking the eggplants in the oven and stirring the soup.

Bontempo baked the moussaka and waited for his reaction. “She invited four witnesses,” he remembers.

“I said, ‘It’s not good,’” he recalls. But he doesn’t mean the food. “It put me in a terrible position,” he says, “because she cooks better than me.”

“I will tell you the truth,” he says. “Until I came here, I could not recognize there was a woman in America who could cook. It was a surprise.” He had a dim view of American women as cooks because he had met so many American tourists at his Egyptian

Ayman Ramadan’s Vegetarian Grape Leaves

1 medium to large onion, finely chopped 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped ¼ cup olive oil 1 bunch parsley 1 bunch cilantro 1 bunch dill 5 medium organic tomatoes, cut in chunks 1 28 oz. can crushed organic tomatoes 4 cups uncooked Jasmine rice 1 large jar of grape leaves* 8 to 10 large iceberg lettuce leaves 5 cups vegetable broth In a large tub of cool water, swish herbs to allow any sand to sink to the bottom of tub. Shake and drain herbs in a colander, then gently press in paper towels. Pull off of stems and chop.

Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil until slightly transparent. Add fresh tomatoes and stir a few minutes. Add canned tomatoes, stir, and then simmer for 10 minutes. Cool for about 15 minutes.

Transfer tomato mixture to a large bowl, add herbs and rice, and mix with hands.

Spray the bottom of a heavy soup pot with olive oil, then line with the iceberg lettuce leaves. (If burning should occur during cooking, the lettuce leaves will burn instead of the grape leaves.) Discard the lettuce when dish is finished.

Remove grape leaves from jar, rinse with water and drain. Open each leaf and cut away tough stem. Lay the leaf in front of you with the vein facing up and the point of the leaf on the top. Place a small spoon of filling near the base line of the leaf. Tightly roll up a little, fold the sides in, and continue to roll tightly.

Pack the leaves as tightly as possible in the pot, otherwise they will fall apart during cooking. Pour the broth over the leaves and cook over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Immediately lower burner as much as possible, then cover the pot and simmer for 45 minutes or until rice is soft.

Serve with cucumber yogurt sauce on the side.

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce ½ of a large container of plain yogurt ½ cucumber, cut open, seeds scooped out Blend both in processor very briefly. If you like, add a few sprigs of chopped mint leaves to the mix before blending. *Leaves and other Egyptian cooking items are available at Koko Market, 6020 Eastern Avenue.

continued on page 85

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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baltimore observed

by gary gately

Linking the Green An old idea with a new name, One Park is aspiring to make the most of Baltimore’s open spaces

In the streetscapes of Sandtown-Winchester, the city wallows in its shame and shines in its glory. A used syringe, condom packages, and glass shards lie on pavement near boarded shells of houses where nobody has lived for years, and the occasional drug dealer emerges from the shadows into the unflattering glare of the mid-afternoon sun. But turn a corner in this West Baltimore neighborhood and hope blooms. Where buckled and broken asphalt had served for decades as a sad excuse for a schoolyard, new grass and flowering pear, cherry, elm, and ash trees now sprout on a few acres outside Gilmor Elementary.

Walk a half-dozen blocks, through scenes right out of The Wire, and a stretch of alleyway the length of a football field explodes in a kaleidoscope of greens and yellows and purples and pinks and reds.

Here along Small Street, a sliver of the city no longer bears any semblance to the ghetto.

Jackie Carrera, executive director of the nonprofit Parks & People Foundation, delights in the transformation. Gone are the eight-foot-high piles of tires and rubble and cast-off clothes. Now, daffodils, daylilies, tulips, and dogwood trees blossom. On this April afternoon, Carrera finds reason to believe that around Small Street, and far beyond, a mishmash of

crumbling concrete and asphalt, weed-covered lots, and brick shells can become so much more.

Carrera, an ebullient Baltimorean smitten with urban parks, trails, streams, and gardens, envisions a whole network of interlinked and environmentally friendly green refuges throughout the city. One Park, she calls it. It’s a notion at once extraordinarily complex and simple as childhood itself, as fresh as a newly planted tree and as old as a vision for Baltimore mapped out more than a century ago. Imagine a city where you’re never far from a diversion that transports and transforms you and reduces air and water pollution, too—a playground, a park, a trail, a stream, a tree-lined boulevard, the sounds of birdsong and squealing children instead of sirens and horns.

Parks & People, in collaboration with the Baltimore architecture firm Ziger/Snead, developed the One Park concept to bring together government agencies, nonprofits, environmental groups, universities, public schools, and community associations to finance and help devise the strategy, and to dig and plant. Those who toil in the name of a greener city include residents, architects, planners, landscape designers, master gardeners, urban foresters, environmentalists, scientists, and legions of volunw w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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Architect Steve Ziger created maps of Baltimore City that illustrate the One Park concept.

teers, and not least, of course, kids who marvel when what they planted and tended grows.

Think of One Park as a sort of green master plan for Baltimore that encompasses wide swaths of the city, from the neighborhood garden to projects like the fourteen-mile Gwynns Falls Trail; from trees and planters scattered along a stretch of a blighted street to plans for grand boulevards with landscaped medians and wide walkways. One Park’s vision for the city as a whole can perhaps be best seen on a map, with the open spaces marked in green (see illustration above). The exercise in cartography shows instantly how it all connects, or doesn’t but could, and the map provides a framework for nurturing, expanding, and connecting the city’s green spaces.

“It’s about imagining, cities imagining, envisioning what they could be,” says architect Steve Ziger, a member of the Parks & People governing board. “The idea is to take parks and other open space and form a network in which all public open space is interconnected. It can transform us from a city with a park and with open space, to a city within a park. It’s like one park in which we happen to live.”

This spring, Ziger and Carrera have been delivering the pitch—along with the white buttons with a tree and “One Park” in green—at community meetings on the city’s comprehensive master plan. The green-city vision drew instant converts from neighborhoods all over Baltimore, and now city planners say they’ll incorporate One Park’s goals and many of its strategies into the comprehensive master plan, a blueprint guiding urban development through 2012.

“We thought One Park made a lot of sense the first time we saw it,” says Otis Rolley III, the City’s planning director. “I think people sometimes under-

estimate what good, quality, open green space can do in changing people’s perspective on their environment while improving the city’s environment.”

Rolley, like One Park’s designers, points to the direct relationship between the amount of green space in Baltimore City and the amount of pollution that flows into streams, the Middle Branch, and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay. Grassy open spaces, plants, and trees provide a critical filter that reduces pollutants in rainwater runoff, and trees remove pollution from the air. A greener city also makes for a healthier city because it encourages people to walk, bike, jog, and maybe even eat fresh vegetables from community gardens.

Connections underlie the One Park philosophy.

People dig and plant and prune and play, and connect with neighbors. Old-timers see their neighborhoods resurrected and, perhaps for the first time, make the connection between green space and streets where you want to walk and feel safer doing so because the dealers have moved on. Hikers, bicyclists, and picnickers head for wooded trails and connect with the quietude of nature near the edge of the city’s bustle. The One Park map, with parklands and other open spaces between them marked green, shows the links in a city blessed with 6,000 acres of parks and untold green space on college campuses, golf courses, community gardens, public squares, and stream valleys and such. One Park aims to foster the spread of green space and build new connections.

Ziger sees a connection between his One Park work and the ghosts of a few of his heroes, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and his brother John Charles Olmsted, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, the renowned designer of New York City’s Central Park. Like their father, the Olmsted brothers earned a reputation for

planning green urban landscapes throughout the country, developing park systems in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Boston, and Louisville, and helping to create the National Park Service.

In a report for Baltimore submitted in 1903 and published in 1904, the Olmsted brothers envisioned interlinked greenways throughout the city—not only parks, but also public squares, playgrounds, stream valleys, college campuses, churches, schoolyards, tree-lined parkways, and boulevards. But the city was focused on rebuilding after the Baltimore fire of 1904, and many of the Olmsted brothers’ recommendations lay hidden in file drawers for much of a century. One of the Olmsted brothers’ ideas came to fruition—albeit more than a century later—with completion of the Gwynns Falls Trail in June 2005.

The fourteen-mile linear paved path runs alongside the Gwynns Falls as it meanders through the city’s West Side from the city limits to the Inner Harbor.

One of the largest urban greenways in the country, linking thirty neighborhoods and two thousand acres of parks, the $14 million project relied on contributions from state and local governments, nonprofits, and private donations. Parks & People teamed with Baltimore City and the Trust for Public Land to help make the trail a reality after so many years.

The Gywnns Falls Trail quickly became a hit with Baltimoreans and visitors alike and drew national attention as a model of urban park design.

The linear park also inspired Parks & People to start One Park and, in many ways, guides and informs the concept.

Parks & People, for instance, helped create the Jones Falls Watershed Association, which with Baltimore City is designing a trail lined with plantings w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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that will connect Lake Roland to downtown. And as vast portions of the city undergo massive redevelopment, the foundation is working with the planners of two high-profile projects, the estimated $1 billion East Baltimore biotech park, which broke ground in April, and the University of Maryland expansion on the West Side, to ensure greenways run through them. Ultimately, according to the One Park vision, greenways should connect a tree-lined Broadway to Clifton Park to Patterson Park.

Some of the more radical One Park ideas call for casting aside current layouts of streets in favor of more walkable alternatives. Using federal transportation funds, for instance, Parks & People plans to bridge the divide between the Mondawmin community and most of Druid Hill Park by improving pedestrian access across a busy stretch of Auchentoroly Terrace, a street at the park’s southwestern edge. For ideas, Parks & People turned to landscape architecture students at Morgan State University. They devised novel plans like building a tunnel for traffic along Auchentoroly Terrace and covering it with parkland or adding a pedestrian bridge covered with vegetation.

Nearby, a triangular patch of land on the southwestern edge of Druid Hill Park seems a forgotten place. Overgrown weeds, scrub trees, and wild raspberries crowd a littered path that leads to a stone shell of a mansion burned by arsonists in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Auchentoroly Terrace Man-

sion had once been the home of the park superintendent. Now Parks & People has high hopes for the abandoned home and section of park: It plans to restore the land to its former splendor and convert the old superintendent’s mansion into the foundation’s headquarters.

And so the maps grow greener, but big challenges remain. During Baltimore’s decades-long population decline, the city’s parks and open spaces fell victim to neglect, vandalism, and disuse; infrastructure crumbled and urban blight spread like kudzu.

Even now, with a population of about 640,000, Carrera says, Baltimore still has about 12,500 vacant lots where houses once stood and even more abandoned houses.

Nonetheless, the timing for the One Park concept seems propitious. After decades of decline, the city’s population and tax base are growing as more residents seek the vibrancy of urban living. Urban greenways enjoy widespread support here and elsewhere because they make cities more attractive places to live, work, play, and visit, and they increase property values. And it’s hip to be green. (Check out Vanity Fair’s May “Green Issue,” which spotlights well-known people deemed environmentally friendly, from George Clooney to Mayor Martin O’Malley.)

Inner-city neighborhoods present some of the toughest challenges, and perhaps most fulfilling results, in One Park’s quest for a greener Baltimore.

An ambitious Parks & People project focuses on a

nine-hundred-acre area of West Baltimore that comprises some of the city’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods. In planning documents, the area is known as Watershed 263, whose storm drains dump water into the harbor and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Here, as elsewhere, the quality of the water below ground is directly related to the amount of green space above ground.

Carrera walks and drives the streets of the watershed often, figuring out ways to make it a kinder, greener place. Where others see poverty, misery, and despair, she finds hope because of places like the gardens along Small Street. Next to the Small Street alley lives one of Carrera’s heroes, Justine Bonner, a gardener who comes out in her straw hat and overalls and works wonders in the alleyway.

Eventually, Sandtown-Winchester, Harlem Park, and the ten other neighborhoods in the watershed will be connected by greenways to the Gwynns Falls Trail and downtown, and the lofty goal—one park—will be that much closer to reality.

“What inspires me most to dream this dream is having heard so many times from so many people what they desperately want,” Carrera says. “When we break it down, one person, one community, one garden at a time, there’s no longer this sense of abandonment. Instead, we see opportunity, a sense of excitement that changes people’s lives and changes a neighborhood.”

And ultimately, she says, a city. ■

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urbanite june 06

space

by bill mesler

photography by marshall clarke

Creating a Home When You’re Homeless Inside the Jonestown settlement

Above: A view from the west side of the park.

The white collie is the community mascot.

On the surface, Katrina Williams looks like a happy woman. A smile is fixed upon her broad, pretty face, and she beams with excitement as she recounts her recent “marriage,” a marriage not in the legal sense, yet as real as one could hope for in the world of Baltimore’s homeless. But when she’s asked about the bad experiences sleeping on the streets, the Cheshire-cat smile disappears and a sullen look washes over her.

“I can’t even talk to you about that,” she says, the pained look in her brown eyes telling the story for her. “It’s not good, especially if you are a woman.”

She stares blankly into the distance, then shakes her head, as if awakening from a bad dream. “But it’s a lot better here,” she says. “It’s safe here in the park.”

To social workers and the men and women who have at one time sought refuge here, it is known simply as Bum Park. It is a kind of urban Bedouin encampment that lies under the long shadow of the Phoenix Shot Tower and catercorner from police headquarters, a stone’s throw from the intersection where President Street meets the Jones Falls Expressway. For the thousands of commuters that pass by every day and the policy makers nearby at City Hall, it stands like a modern day Hooverville, a stark reminder of the poverty that holds sway in big American cities. But for those with nowhere left to turn, Bum Park is the only home they know.

It is no more than a small expanse of concrete and grass and a few benches—a typical small city park, except for the tents. A large tent marks the center of the encampment, and nine smaller ones line the edge furthest from Fayette Street, along with a kennel for a frisky snow-white collie that has become a communal mascot. Williams lives in a small, green tent filled with pillows and blankets and personal belongings, which she shares with Ron Brown, whom she met two months ago at a local soup kitchen. She soon moved in with him, and they began to think of themselves as husband and wife.

“We’re all like a family here,” says Brown. “Everyone takes care of everyone.”

Other than a thin layer of faded brown cigarette butts, the park is a remarkably tidy place. “We all try to keep it clean,” says Brown. He points out a man sitting nearby on a bench muttering to himself.

“Now this guy, here, might not have the sense to say ‘It’s dirty, time to clean up.’ But I do. We all do what we can. We look out for each other like a family. ’Cause we treat this park as our sanctuary. That’s exactly what the preacher told us; he said it was our sanctuary.”

The southern edge of the park is marked by the white brick walls of Saint Vincent de Paul Church.

The tall neoclassical tower and spire loom protecw w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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tively over the tents below, which is appropriate because the church is also home to the man who is in many ways the patron saint of Bum Park.

With his signature tobacco pipe in hand and his long, squarish beard, Father Richard Lawrence looks a little like a practical, modern-day Santa Claus.

He has a jocular, charismatic manner of speaking, blended with a little curmudgeonliness that appears whenever he is talking about some act of charity he has done, a very Catholic dismissal of his own good works.

“There were guys sleeping in the park when I became pastor in 1973, and probably a long, long time before that,” he says. A self-described child of the 1960s social-justice movements, Lawrence says he’s always felt some sense of responsibility to the people sleeping on his doorstep, a feeling shared by the church’s two previous pastors, Father John Sinnott Martin and Father Edmund Stroup. In 1998, when the City put the park up for sale, Lawrence purchased the land on behalf of the archdiocese. He fought a successful legal battle with the City to allow the homeless to remain in the park without being harassed by the police, what Father Lawrence describes as “the old beat cop tapping you on the feet and telling you to move along, or its more modern equivalents.” Soon after, individual donors provided tents, creating a permanent encampment.

Like the homeless population in general, those sleeping in the park are a disparate lot with various reasons for avoiding the shelters. Some are tired of

Father Lawrence, pastor of Saint Vincent de Paul and “patron saint” of the park

We all do what we can. We look out for each other like a family. ’Cause we treat this park as our sanctuary.

That’s exactly what the preacher told us; he said it was our sanctuary. being turned away from an overcrowded system. Some are just too independent-minded to fit in. Many have severe mental problems, and almost all battle depression. And then there are those with severe drug or alcohol addictions, unable to sober up enough to approach the shelters.

Father Lawrence isn’t naïve about the reasons they are there. “You’re always walking a line between compassion and enablement,” he says. But he has been impressed by the level of communal responsibility that has flourished. He doesn’t micromanage, and he doesn’t need to. “They’ve developed their own selfgoverning community,” he says. “For the most part, it works pretty well.”

Newcomers usually sleep on the benches that line the park’s edges; more established members take ownership of the tents.

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Leon Brandon lives in one of the tents in the Jonestown settlement.

It is in some ways a community of shared selfinterests, like when the group has to come together to put down a troublesome bully. But there are also market rules in play, a survival of the fittest. The more able take greater responsibility for keeping the park clean. They also take ownership of tents. That creates a certain hierarchy, particularly at night, when the hardship cases and newest arrivals sleep on the periphery, on the benches or under the stone archway of the church. They are tentless, but are still part of the community, not alone in some dark alley, liable to awake to find that all their meager possessions have been stolen, or, as one man put it, “worrying about some young kid hitting you with a brick.”

But Father Lawrence knows the park is no substitute for a permanent home, or the substanceabuse treatment so many need. “For some of them, it’s a step up from where they’ve been and on the way to where they are going,” says Lawrence. “For some, this is as far as they are going to go. But it’s something.”

One needn’t travel far to find the hopeless for whom life in Bum Park would be an improvement.

The park lies at the center of a kind of homeless nexus, between downtown (where they panhandle and have access to services like soup kitchens and the offices of Healthcare for the Homeless) and the less populated warehouse district to the east (where lost souls sleep under an overpass or in dank alleys, emerging on rainy nights to find shelter under the awnings of big buildings, like the ritzy Radisson Pla-

za Hotel, a particular favorite among the homeless, until the police inevitably arrive to move them on).

A couple of blocks north of the church is the barren Oasis Station, a shelter that one social worker describes as “the bottom of the barrel.” Inside, men sleep uncomfortably on chairs. Others sit outside smoking, waiting for the occasional pickup truck to drive by looking for day laborers for construction, moving, or, most commonly, carrying out the evictions that left so many of the men homeless in the first place.

Down the block, a weathered, broken-looking man sits in a wheelchair as white-collar workers pass by, their furtive glances a mixture of pity and contempt. Michael Reece, an alcoholic, has been homeless for six years, ever since his parents passed away.

“They were all I had,” he says, in a soft, sad voice. A year ago, he contracted frostbite while sleeping in an alley in Beltsville, and his legs had to be amputated.

Since Johns Hopkins Hospital dropped him off at Oasis Station, all his belongings, even his eyeglasses, have been stolen. He drops his cigarette, and as he stoops to pick it up, the blanket in his lap shifts, revealing that he has no pants. Reece is, perhaps, the kind of man Father Lawrence referred to, those for whom Bum Park might be the best they can hope for, the seemingly hopeless causes from whose ranks come the eighty-one homeless people who died in the city last year. But there are also plenty of examples of the other side, the individuals who, with help, are lifting themselves up.

Denise Scott spent six years homeless on the streets of Baltimore, sometimes in shelters, and sometimes in old abandoned houses the homeless refer to as “abandominiums.” Bum Park was the best alternative. “It was a comfortable place,” she says. “I felt safe there.” But the park was only a part of her journey, that “step up” that Father Lawrence refers to. Last winter, she was approached by a social worker who enrolled her in the City’s Housing First pilot program, which provides immediate and independent housing and healthcare, and assists with the process of recovery and integration into the community. Since the program began last June, twenty-eight individuals (including couples and families) have been given nineteen apartments.

Now Scott is enrolled in a drug-treatment program and is living in an apartment on Park Avenue.

It’s a tiny place, but she glows with excitement as she shows off every last detail: the bathtub, the sink, every pot and pan, the brightly colored walls left over from the last resident, an artist. She finishes her tour with the sparse bedroom, where, above a lone mattress, are painted some lines of verse by the nineteenth-century artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti: I have been here before, But when or why I cannot tell; I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The lights around the shore. ■

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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Baltimore Storyteller Frank Shivers Jr. has been gathering the city’s untold tales for more than fifty years

Above: Frank Shivers and one of Antoine-Louis Barye’s sculptures in Mount Vernon

Native American and African communities have certain respected members who use tales to remind their tribes of the past. Scandinavians chanted and sang stories and myths until they could eventually be written down for posterity. To some degree, every culture relies on storytellers to convey knowledge to its people so that the lessons of history are not forgotten. Even in our age of technology and fast-paced living, storytellers remind us of where we came from and what we value. Storytellers tell us who we are.

At 81, Frank Shivers Jr. is Baltimore’s storyteller.

“It’s in my gene pool. I come from a family of diarists.

I watched my father write in a diary and record what he saw and did every day, all his life.”

Shivers has recorded the stats and stories of Bolton Hill (Bolton Hill: Baltimore Classic), Maryland literature (Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards), and general points of interest in the city ( Walking in Baltimore). He collaborated on The Architecture of Baltimore with Mary Ellen Hayward. And he knows so much about the history and development of the Bay that the Environmental Protection Agency asked him to contribute to a report on that subject, which, at Shivers’ suggestion, later became the book Chesapeake Waters.

Surrounded in his parlor by history books and biographies, Shivers recalls how he developed this skill of recounting the past.

“I was born in New Jersey and went to Yale for undergraduate and graduate degrees in English.

Then I went to Cincinnati to teach at the university and met my wife. We came to Baltimore so I could do more graduate work and teach at Johns Hopkins University. But we were outsiders. We had to work at getting the neighbors to know us and trust us.”

Shivers and his wife, Lottchen, moved to Baltimore in 1951. In 1955 they settled into a house on Bolton Street where they raised their four children, and where they still live today.

“People asked us, ‘Who are you? Where did you come from? Who were your relatives?’ I told them my father was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Somerset County on a farm near Princess Anne.

That’s about as far south as you can get in Maryland.

My wife’s uncle and aunt belonged to the Gibson Island Club. Once our well-established neighbors heard our connection to Maryland, then we were okay. But we were always considered Yankees.”

A large Southern contingency resided in Bolton Hill in the 1950s. After the Civil War, people had moved up from the South looking for work and a place to live that hadn’t been physically ruined.

“There were many people living here who remembered the Civil War, the effect of that outcome. I just started listening to their stories. There were quite a few characters.” w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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One woman in the neighborhood, a Southern sympathizer, refused to take a five-dollar bill in change. “She would insist on getting five ones, not a five. Why? Because Lincoln was on the fivedollar bill.

People just want someone to listen to them. I was more than eager to do that.

“There is always that little suspicion that a Yankee doesn’t really quite get it. He may write all these books, but he really doesn’t understand. But I have a perspective they don’t have.”

Gradually, Shivers’ encounters with Baltimore residents helped him gain an understanding of the city’s past. “People just want someone to listen to them. I was more than eager to do that.” And in doing so, he uncovered stories that eloquently relate history’s lessons.

He met a woman who remembered, as a child, the Baltimore fire of 1904. “Her family was packing up important belongings and loading up a wagon to get ready to leave the city. But then the wind shifted and the fire didn’t spread north.” The February fire destroyed much of the downtown business district, which then required rebuilding for the next few

Shivers points out rural areas of what is now West Baltimore on the 1869 Sachse map at the Maryland Historical Society.

years. “I can’t imagine watching that fire and wondering what might happen, if it was going to overtake the entire city.”

Many neighbors also talked about the political activity at the Fifth Regiment Armory, located at 29th Division Street just below Bolton Hill. The 1912 Democratic Convention, when Woodrow Wilson secured the presidential nomination, was a big draw. “People sat on their porches and listened to the cheering over at the Armory when Wilson came to town,” Shivers says. “And Kennedy and Ike came to the Armory. Many presidential candidates went

through [Bolton Hill] to get to the Armory and people would gather to see the motorcade go by.”

Some of Shivers’ tales are just plain entertaining, like the ones about F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of Bolton Hill’s most famous residents. “One of the people who took my class, Franklin Mason from the Baltimore Sun, told great stories of Fitzgerald. When Franklin was young, he had to deliver first-edition copies of Tender Is the Night to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house so that they could be signed,” Shivers recalls. continued on page 87

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Recreation Rebound

With a new director of recreation and parks and an entire section of the City’s Master Plan dedicated to “play,” recreation is being touted as a priority. But after years of disinvestment, are the City—and the citizenry—really ready to ante up?

By

E lizab et h

P h ot o g r aph y

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by

A .

Ne i l

E vit ts Me y erhoff

O

utside the Barclay Recreation Center, Ms. Barbara, the center’s director, herds the stragglers. It’s one of the first truly warm spring afternoons and a few of the teenagers are reluctant to go inside. “Tyrone! They need young men for the dance practice; now get up there.”

A breathless young man jogs up to the entrance. “Sorry, Ms. Barbara, I lost track of time.” Tyrone hurries through the front doors to join kids from several of the city’s recreation centers who are inside preparing for the Third Annual Junior Quadrillion to be held this month at Martin’s West. The formal event has the kids performing dance and public speaking routines in front of a large audience of family and friends.

Getting Barclay kids to sign up for the quadrillion took a bit of coaxing.

“I told them that it’s not about hip-hop or street dancing. It’s ballroom.” They were dubious at first, but after six years as the director of this rec center, Barbara Williams has earned a measure of trust. “We always try to introduce the kids to something different,” she says. “Exposing them to new things gives them a better understanding of what they do know.

They know more than they realize.”

Inside, the center swarms with activity. The chatter of children illuminates the otherwise dark building. The center has that antiseptic taxicab smell—the odor of industrial cleaners trying to mask years of heavy

A spring day at Cylburn Arboretum

use and the realities of an aging building. A worn carpet is soiled in places by pools of dried glitter glue that have captured dirt and debris.

Kids are clustered into different rooms. One group rehearses a sign language performance as another practices public speaking. While Tyrone dances a classic waltz with the teenagers in the gym upstairs, a younger group of kids runs through a tap routine down the hall. Taron, age 9, is the lone male in the tap group. In the growth spurt of pre-puberty, Taron’s feet are temporarily too big for his body, and he slides around on the slick floor in oversized tap shoes trying to will his feet into submission. He watches the girls, who are serious about their dance moves, and he works to keep up. At some point, the slippery taps defeat his earnestness, and Taron trades choreography for pure abandonment. He hams it up. He smiles from ear to ear. He dances with the unadulterated delight of a kid having fun.

Pure, unmitigated joy.

If money marks the worth that we place on moments like this, then our city’s recreation and parks system is a seriously devalued commodity. A glance at a pie chart of the City’s budget expenditures shows that the slice for the Department of Recreation and Parks is like your carb intake on the Atkins diet. It’s diminutive.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1860, Baltimore Mayor Thomas Swann created a tax on trolley fares that was dedicated revenue for parks and

recreation. For almost eighty years, that tax supported the acquisition and improvement of parkland and recreational opportunities and helped the City hire visionary landscape architects the Olmsted Brothers. Having that guaranteed income helped to build the vast urban parkland that we still have today, which makes up nearly 10% of the city’s land.

When the trolley tax was abolished in the late 1940s, the bulk of funding for parks and recreation came from the City’s general fund, an account that shrank like the city’s population during the latter half of the twentieth century. Recreation lost more than its fair share. Drowned out by the flood of concerns over schools, crime, drugs, and seemingly more pressing urban issues, recreational budgets were slashed. Fun, it seemed, was not worthy of funding.

By the 1990s, the Schmoke administration had drastically reduced the recreation budget and the Department of Recreation and Parks was a rudderless ship mired in mismanagement and poor communication between higher-ups and staff, and guided by principles that gave priority to programs like pet spaying and neutering services instead of human activity.

The situation was dire enough that the Sierra Club, a national grassroots environmental organization, ran an article in its regional newsletter in 1997 encouraging members to take action in Baltimore. “Caught in the middle of a budget battle between the Mayor and the City Council, and without w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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a permanent Director, Baltimore City’s Department of Recreation and Parks is a deeply troubled agency,” the article declared.

The City Council (consisting of many delegates who grew up in the city’s rec centers) was finally moved to act. Ten years ago this month, the Council announced it would audit the Department of Recreation and Parks. A task force studied the issue and their report, released in March 1997, was blunt. It described a disjointed agency hindered by inadequate planning, staffing, and financing—one that seemed impotent to effect change. “The Department has permitted itself to be viewed as a financial sink rather than a substantial source of direct and indirect economic gain,” the report stated.

A financial sink. Telling language. In the ten-year period studied by the task force, the number of full-time employees decreased 34%, from 974 to 643. Thirtyseven recreation centers were closed, a 39% decline. The budget took a serious nosedive. The report recommended an immediate influx of funds and a complete overhaul of management and departmental priorities.

In spite of the report’s strong language, the hemorrhaging continued. Today, the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks has a mere 364 full-time employees and only 46 rec centers, down from a high of 148 in 1975. Its annual budget for 2006 was $29 million, and it still draws much of its revenue (about 80%) from the City’s general fund.

While the staff and the money shrunk, the park acreage did not. Baltimore’s parks and natural resource system includes more than 6,000 acres of land on more than 400 different properties, from the 700-acre forest in Leakin Park to tiny lots in the hearts of city neighborhoods. Compare this to a city like Chicago, with a similar amount of parkland (just over 7,000 acres) supported by an annual budget of $350 million and a staff of 2,500.

“Ours was probably one of the fastest-shrinking budgets in the city,” says Connie A. Brown. In February, after two years as the chief of parks and more than a year as acting director, Brown was officially named director of the department by Mayor O’Malley. (“It was the longest running play in town,” Brown quips about the time it took to officially name him to the post.)

Brown has taken over a department that barely has enough cash or staff to keep the grass mowed. He says only fifty people manage those 6,000 acres and 400 properties. The nationwide average for recreation centers, Brown adds, is between six and eight full-time employees. Baltimore’s average is one or two employees, and there aren’t enough people to keep the centers open on the weekends when kids have the most time on their hands. “We’re struggling across the board,” he says.

On a recent trip to a Boys & Girls Club in Harford County, Brown and Portia Harris, the associate director for the Bureau of Recreation, could hardly fathom the

Inside the Palm House at the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens

The grounds of the Carrie Murray Nature Center

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The pagoda in Patterson Park is a Baltimore landmark.

difference. “It was about the same physical size as the average rec center in the city and they had a staff of twenty-seven.” Brown says. “We wanted to cry.”

“When I started with the agency [in 1981], there were more than 120 rec centers. But that has long since changed,” says Harris. “The value of recreation and parks is so understated.”

But that may be changing. The last few years have seen an interesting development: a growing awareness among city officials of the value of green space and recreation. Proximity to parks and access to recreational activities is now considered a selling point and is seen as an important amenity in attracting the much-desired market of new city residents. In the national competition for new residents, the cities with the most green have an edge.

“The mayor has expressed his commitment to greenery and better parks. But at the base of everything is always economics,” Brown says.

“Better parks make economic sense for a redeveloping city. That’s evidenced by the property values in the blocks immediately surrounding our parks as they evolve.”

Brown comes aboard at a potentially promising moment. Investments in parks and recreation may no longer be considered a financial sink, not when you see the household incomes of people choosing park-front homes.

Brown points to Patterson Park and the increase not only in property values (houses that sold for $89,000 in 1999 are now going for $350,000, according to Ed Rutkowski at the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation) but also in park usage. The young adults in Patterson Park and the surrounding neighborhoods, like Canton, are renting the ball fields and recreation facilities for raucous sporting events. There is a small but rapidly increasing market for recreational use of public lands by these sporting leagues, like the Baltimore Sports & Social Club.

The City’s new Comprehensive Master Plan (which will dictate development priorities and capital expenditures for City agencies through 2012) dedicates a quarter of the plan to “play” and calls for improving and increasing local participation in recreational activities. The Master Plan also calls for finding a dedicated funding source for parks and recreation (much like that trolley fare tax of 1860). Brown’s department is now working closely with the City’s Department of Planning to look for ways to upgrade and market Baltimore’s recreational resources.

According to Otis Rolley III, the director for the Department of Planning, public feedback during a series of open meetings held around the Master Plan this spring overwhelmingly supported recreation. Residents, particularly those living in poorer, inner city neighborhoods, stood up again and again to deliver a clear message: Give us a place for our kids to play.

But even with this new momentum, public-supported recreation is not an easy sell. We live in a time when the very idea of recreation is under siege. The national percentage of students attending a daily physical education class dropped from 42% in 1991 to 28% in 2003. Even when we do “recreate,” we rarely play; we work out with a grim sense of dutiful purpose. A recent tour of Druid Hill Park and nearby Roosevelt Park on a sunny Saturday found both spaces virtually empty. The weather

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New flowerbeds grace the exterior of the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens.

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was perfect: bright and 70 degrees, low humidity with a gentle breeze carrying the scent of blossoming trees. A few bikers and walkers navigated the circle around the Druid Lake Reservoir; a handful of kids played ball at Roosevelt. The elliptical trainers and squash courts indoors at Meadow Mill Athletic Club, on the other hand, were full.

The Master Plan identifies this challenge: “The market for Baltimore’s park and open space system is difficult to define … While some parks, or park facilities, appear to receive a great deal of use, many others appear to be virtually empty.”

Part of the reluctance to use the parks for recreation could be that for decades our perception of underutilized public open space has been dominated by suspicion and concern. If urbanist Jane Jacobs was correct about “eyes on the street” being critical to city living, then solitude in the park is potentially dangerous.

Our general relationship with parkland and the idea of community-supported recreation could also have something to do with it. In a nation obsessed with property rights and undergoing privatization of civic functions—from schools to garbage collection to prisons—it could be that we simply don’t value public spaces and aren’t willing to support them. That which belongs to everyone is owned by no one.

So in Baltimore, our public playing spaces have endured an accelerating spiral of decline. Deteriorated by lack of funds, they suffered further from the consequent lack of use. “Recreation out of doors and not confined to a recreation center was difficult to foster,” Chris Delaporte said in a 2004 interview. As the head of the Department of Recreation and Parks during parts of the Schaefer and Schmoke administrations, Delaporte was instrumental in the development of the nonprofit Parks & People Foundation in 1984, which works with the City to help foster an appreciation of parks and to bring recreational programming to Baltimoreans.

“The notion of having recreation without walls … did not come easily,” he said.

Today, Brown is not just battling budget issues, he’s also contending with public perception. He says he’s up for the challenge. Brown came to Baltimore after thirty-one years in the Army Corps of Engineers with whom he traveled the world working in parks. While stationed in Germany, he was inspired by the relationship that Europeans have with their open space. Brown is also heavily influenced by a childhood spent in inner city Boston. Field trips to area parks and zoos gave him an appreciation for the true value of recreation to the human soul. “You think, ‘I’m supposed to follow this narrow path.’ But getting out of your tiny world reminds you that there is more than just where you are,” he says. “It allows you to think outside your daily existence and dare to dream.”

Brown has dreams for Baltimore. He wants to mitigate his department’s reliance on the City’s general fund by “getting entrepreneurial,” as he says, and finding new revenue resources, like public-private partnerships with corporations.

He looks at the successes in cities like Chicago and New York for inspiration.

“We’re trying to make Druid Hill more like Prospect Park,” Brown says of a park in Brooklyn that thrives with farmers’ markets, music, sports leagues, and picnickers.

He hopes to inject new life into area parks so that they become spaces where people will want to recreate. He talks about the desire to bring in traveling exhibits from local museums and offer live music and concessions at recreational areas throughout the city. He talks about increasing access for inner-city youth and the need for a bus system that links neighborhoods like Mondawmin to area parks like Druid Hill, so kids aren’t walking miles over busy city streets. He talks about the Master Plan to expand the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens in Druid Hill over the next ten to fifteen years.

He also talks about what he would do if there were resources, if the budget were sufficient. “The first thing I would do is triple the staff.” Then he would clean up the rec centers, like Barclay, and make them more attractive and “fresh” in order to serve those kids who need it most. Then he would get cracking on those new ideas for the parks.

But for now, these are just dreams. The truth is, Brown doesn’t have the budget. In spite of all the increased chatter about the economic value of parks and recreation, the investment isn’t yet there. The small jump in the City’s proposed 2007 operating and capital budgets is not difference-making—“a couple million higher,” notes Brown, “but there is no significant increase.”

The interior of the Conservatory

A new revenue source has not been earmarked in the proposed 2007 City budget, and when asked what a potential dedicated funding source might be, both Brown and Rolley said they did not yet know. Brown readily admits that his staff struggles to keep the basic system intact. “We do it through smoke and mirrors,” he says.

So how is Brown going to dig his agency out of decades of disinvestment and misperception? How is he going to sell parks and recreation as a valuable commodity to both the city government and the citizenry? He says he hopes to pitch the true value of recreation.

“We’re about giving people a place where it’s perfectly OK to loiter. People come in the park and just park. They sit there for no good reason other than it helps cleanse their mind in the middle of an urban jungle. Somebody who’s got something on their mind is a lot better off sitting on a bench in a park watching the fountain and cooling off than they are somewhere else.

“I always joke with the police chief that my job is to make him as bored as possible,” he says.

For Brown, the value of recreation and play in a human life is obvious.

A solution to so many societal ills is all around us in the acres of parkland, the school playgrounds, the bike trails, the rec centers, and the waterways.

Recreation heals: It inspires and it balances. It provides kids like Taron and his friends at Barclay a refuge from the city streets and a place to just have fun and be a kid.

“Sure, lots of kids are getting in trouble,” Brown says. “Sure, this city has got lots of crime. But I like to think that one at a time, or ten at a time, or one rec center at a time, we’re trying to pull as many as we can in the other direction. We do something that hopefully will help them make those right choices when they’re at the crossroads and they have to decide which way to turn.

“This job was something that seemed very rewarding because of what you give back to the community: You give back sanity,” Brown says. “I sell us that way.” ■

The Gwynns Falls

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all work and no B y

N i c k y

P e n t t i l a

Il l us tra ti on

I�m too busy busy. I’m too tired. I’m too worried. I’m too sad.

I’d be embarrassed. I don’t see why I should. I can’t remember how. It would be wrong.

What is your reason for skipping out on fun—on being playful, in the moment, doing something just because?

Whatever it is, you are in good company. As a group, Americans— especially East Coast Americans—don’t pencil in as much time as they’d like for plain-old play. Just ask around the watercooler, or check out the blogs, assuming you’ll allow yourself a moment for such idle speculation.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever known how important play is,” says Susan Oliver, executive director of Playing for Keeps, a child advocacy group focused on the significant role of play. “It’s seen as a privilege rather than a necessity, a reward rather than an integral part of development.”

Well, we know now. A few decades’ worth of studies of both children and adults show the benefits of freely chosen play and games, and the costs of not including at least a little playfulness in our lives. Yet we’re still, in the main, an over-serious bunch.

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C hri s

M uc c i

Why? According to the experts, it’s in our blood, in our culture, and in our habits. It all started back when America started, for many of us.

The arguments against play and in favor of work began to build with the arrival of the first European immigrants four hundred-some years ago. The Puritans came to the wilds of America and got busy right away working to build their New Jerusalem, a land of God. They had no time— and no patience—for non-work and non-prayerful activities. Other clans arrived on our shores with similar values, most involving endless toil and then death, with perhaps fun in the afterlife if you had worked hard enough.

The “pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, even our later forebears weren’t that much cheerier. For every “all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy,” we had an “idle hands are the devil’s tools.”

Of course, play couldn’t die out, being hard-wired into humanity. In the nineteenth century, Americans passed laws setting maximum work hours, partly in reaction to the seventy-two-hour week people were

When did

fun?

Americans stop having working in New England textile mills. And in the mandatory downtime before electricity lit up the night, families entertained themselves with stories, games, and music, as well as getting enough sleep. Play was allowed for children, until they could be taught better, and there was talk of joy in daily work and the occasional holiday. But in practice, and in traditions of thought passed from parent to child, generation after generation, play was just a frilly accessory of life. Nice, but not necessary.

There was a bit of blowback in the 1950s and 1960s, when beatniks, hippies, and other counterculture folk caught the eye of the masses and asked uncomfortable questions. Why work so hard? Is work the sole purpose of life? It feels good to play, so why not? But the majority shut the lid on that kind of talk through the 1980s and 1990s, as building wealth to support a booming economy and to support an enviable lifestyle grew from a pleasant enterprise to a screaming need.

Both parents need to work because they need that second car, and need the house with a separate room for everybody, and need those special lessons for the kids, and need that five-hundred-channel satellite dish, the Xbox, the latest PC. If they stopped, what would they have? Debt, and unmet needs that weren’t even wants or dreams to their parents.

This way of thinking, in some respects, has served us fairly well.

Americans successfully fought wars and weathered economic depressions and natural cataclysms. But in the case of play, as with others, the common wisdom, while common, is not wise.

Boomer parents remember their own parents as people who played cards with the neighbors, attended and hosted dinner parties. “Greatest generation” parents didn’t seem to need to bring work home, and didn’t seem to worry all the time. Boomers with siblings often slept in the same small bedroom, without emotional or developmental consequence.

The real seams started showing in the 1990s, when technology reached the point when regular people (not doctors, not emergency workers) could be expected to be working at any moment of the day.

Now, some people we know sleep not only with their cell phones at their bedsides but also with their BlackBerry e-mail devices under their pillows.

And they try to schedule playtime into their calendar, maybe riding bikes, but first they have to get to the sports store and buy all the latest gear or they won’t be able to compete and “win.”

And while all this speed-of-light living has made many of us cranky and sad, it seemed wrong to complain—and unthinkable to stop. We’d been taught that more work is better, and now that we could work more— all our waking hours, if need be—of course that is what we should do.

The pressure was cranked up after the attacks of 9/11, when President Bush told us to work even harder, so we could afford to buy more, keep the economy strong, and make sure terror didn’t win. At this point, stopping for a moment to play, or just to unwind, might get one classified unpatriotic.

play Of course,

there always have been the naysayers and the visionaries, disputing the common line and living joyful lives despite the downturned faces of their neighbors. The most monetarily successful was Walt Disney, who built an empire on play. But, it seemed, the rest of us were waiting for the data, and until anyone told us different, we’d follow the path our forefathers trod.

Well, the data is rolling in now, and it is pretty convincing.

For instance, working ourselves sick isn’t the only path to success.

While Ireland’s economy has taken off in the past two decades, its workers labored an average 285 fewer hours last year than they did two decades ago, according to the International Labor Organization in Geneva.

And in terms of per-hour productivity, France wins hands-down.

French employees, when they work, are very efficient—so much so that even though they spend only the government-set thirty-five hours a week at their jobs and take up to eight weeks vacation and holidays each year, their yearly per-employee productivity is fifth-best in the world, according to the ILO. American yearly per-employee productivity is first, but American workers reach that number by working 30% more hours than their French counterparts.

Not only that, but play just may be the secret to thriving in the new information economy. As the U.S. economy tilts more to the service and information sectors, creativity and problem-solving (areas that are developed chiefly through play and playfulness) will be more in demand.

“Creative people are the problem-solvers, which we need,” says Dr. Bowen F. White, a physician, consultant, and author of the book Why Normal Isn’t Healthy. “It’s not just a positive health habit, it’s a positive work habit.”

The scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who come up with the biggest breakthroughs are the ones who can break out of the mold of same-thinking that the rest of their peers are in. In many cases, they nurture their childlike minds, staying playful and open-minded when others might bow down to cynicism, their “inner voice of reason,” or a fear of failure. And creativity requires downtime, a chance for the brain’s synapses to knit in new ways without pressure. The new approach, or the right answer, just seems to “pop into” your head when it’s ready. It can’t be set to a timer.

Other research indicates that through “authentic play,” which is a state of mind where the mere act of playing and playfulness gives more pleasure than any goal associated with it, children learn and adults improve flexibility and adaptability, as well as trust, empathy, sociability, and intimacy. Play is the gas that makes learning—and growing—happen, as researcher Stuart Brown puts it.

“Play is poorly understood and underused as a positive force in the world,” says Brown, a doctor whose studies included reviewing the lives of death-row inmates in Texas. He found that these troubled men had almost no playtime in their childhoods, not to mention their current lives, a state he termed “play deprivation.” Other cases of play deprivation he has studied include felony drunk drivers, stressed-out lab rats, and overworked students.

“The opposite of play isn’t work,” Brown says, “it’s depression.”

When children are ill, they often don’t play. A sign they are starting to recover is the return of that gleam of playfulness in their eyes, and then actual play. The same might be said of neighborhoods, work groups, and communities.

Also unlike their parents, today’s parents are more fearful for their

children, both in terms of playground and neighborhood security and future economic success. It feels unsafe to let them out loose to play, it feels unwise to skip any of the “enrichment activities” we can cram into their days. So the amount of time children spend on unstructured w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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activities, exploring, and learning important skills such as how to direct their own time and to entertain themselves, dropped by half in the past twenty years, reports child psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld. Whose fault is it when a 12 year old complains he can’t think of anything to do?

One of the best predictors for school success is the ability to play with others, including imagining oneself in the other’s shoes to develop empathy and understanding. But in many kindergartens—and even preschools—this skill is no longer encouraged. Play also helps children master other school-necessary skills, including self-regulation, selfsatisfaction, and the ability to keep oneself entertained while waiting for others to finish their schoolwork. And, as Oliver puts it, “You can’t teach someone how to use their imagination with a worksheet.”

But political initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, which test and reward only cognitive skill-building, are pushing social, individual, and collaborative-creative learning to the side, and in some cases out of school altogether. Art and music classes are once-a-week affairs; recess optional.

Even in preschool, where children were once expected only to learn to “self-regulate” (what we commonly know as playing well with others), the focus is turning to learning to read, do math, and take standardized tests.

And apparently, fewer preschoolers are mastering self-regulation: Roughly five thousand preschoolers—six of every one thousand 4 year olds—are kicked out of school each year, according to the Yale Child Study Center.

“The notion of standards is coming down almost to the embryo,” psychologist Adele Brodkin told The New York Times. “We are not allowing normal, creative, interactive play. We are wanting kids to sit down and write their names at 3 and do rote tasks that are extremely boring at a young age.” Such out-of-range expectations can lead to frustration and result in bad behavior, Brodkin and others say.

Play and games foster the development of community by helping players discover how to build mutual trust, cooperation, and common goal setting, as well as building optimism and the power of perseverance, Brown says. Play, including trying on different roles, also has a large part in shaping a person’s inner vision of herself or himself as well as the model of the world she or he uses to navigate through life.

In most cultures, children are given time to play. “But since it’s not required to prevent death, it’s devalued,” Brown says. “And play is not sanctioned for adults.”

Does it need to be sanctioned? Who is telling us what to do? We are.

What To Do? Make sure your kids’ schools provide daily recess and unstructured time for play. They will learn better during instruction if they are replenished, hitting their “reset” buttons, during playtime.

Make sure there is a balance between work and play at school.

Studies are showing that intensive, academics-only curricula do not produce children with better test scores; they produce burnt-out children who are less interested in learning.

Watch your attitude. Notice when you are critical of children and adults who are “playing around.” If you can, consider joining in.

Ask: What harm is there in taking a minute to sing a song, even if it’s only in your head? In stepping outside for a moment on your lunch break? In knocking off work for a half-hour and walking to the closest park to watch others at play? In joining in yourself? Wonder at your answers.

Remember when you are playing that you can quit at any time.

You play because you want to, not because you have to.

She acts

like a child. He doesn’t take things seriously enough. She lets her children play outside. He takes lunch. She laughs too much. What do you mean, you’re doing nothing?

Ever notice how kids play “grown-up?” It’s not a pretty sight. Mouths turned down, arms crossed, they say such things as, “I’m very busy” and “not now,” says Bernie DeKoven, author of The Well-Played Game. DeKoven theorizes that as they grow, kids just get better and better at playing adults until they forget that it’s only play. They forget they can take off the “adult” mask and just be themselves from time to time—or for good.

“I don’t think it is so much that the world takes away our childhood.

I think we do that to ourselves. We get so damn good at pretending to be serious,” he said in a 2001 interview.

Pick Your Play Personalities Just as there are many styles of healthy, authentic play, there are many kinds of players. Do you recognize yourself in any—or all—of these descriptions?

The Joker finds humor in every part

of life and living and loves to make people laugh. Might be called the “class clown.”

The Explorer loves to go adventuring and holds endless curiosity about how and why the world is the way it is. Physical explorers climb, ski, dive, drive to find new places to explore and ways to stretch their bodies. Intellectual explorers delve into the mind’s pursuits, including science, art, literature, philosophy, and medicine.

continued on page 89

The Competitor loves the game itself,

loves the challenge to be the best, to challenge mind or body to the ultimate and succeed.

Competitors may be found on game fields, performance stages, board rooms.

The Artist loves the forms of beauty, creating, designing, performing.

The Director loves to run the show, which might be directing a musical show, running a country, shepherding a family, or running a shipshape playground.

The Storyteller loves to delight others with tales of imagination or reality.

The Collector loves the hunt and the joy of found treasure, be it first-edition books, shoes, or underperforming companies.

The Performer loves to be in the front of the show, braving the audience in search of connection and accolades.

The Craftsman loves to make excellent things, from pies and whole-family turkey dinners to space shuttles and other mechanical wonders.

—The Institute for Play

fiction

photography by david a. douglas

Landscape With Table, 2003. 40” x 50”

by louis bayard

an excerpt from

    Narrative of Gus Landor, Oct. 28, 1830

One October morning in 1830, a military cadet is found dead, hanging from a tree at West Point. Former New York City detective Gus Landor is called in to investigate: Was it suicide, or murder? Drawn into an intrigue of deceit, insanity, and revenge, Landor enlists the help of an enigmatic young man by the name of Cadet Fourth Classman Edgar Allan Poe. Louis Bayard, the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Timothy, shares with Urbanite an excerpt from his new novel, The Pale Blue Eye—a tall tale of death, drink, and doubleness …

—Susan McCallum-Smith 66

urbanite june 06

T

he very next day I broke my abstinence vow. It began, like all great falls, with the best intentions. I was going home to gather some belongings … when what should come my way but the steps leading to Benny Havens’ tavern? I could only conclude that fate had brought me here. For wasn’t my mouth dry as bone? Wasn’t there a fine stack of hay in back for Horse? Weren’t there civilians inside?

And even when I passed through the doors of Benny’s Red House, I had no idea of taking a drink.

One of Mrs. Havens’ buckwheat cakes, maybe. A glass of lemon juice and iced water. But Benny had made his famous flip—the hot iron had just been plunged into its eggs-and-ale bath—and the air crackled with caramel, and a fire shivered in the hearth, and before I knew it, I was sitting at the counter, and the missus was slicing up her roast turkey, and Benny was pouring the flip into a pewter flagon, and I was home again.

Here, on my right: Jasper Magoon, a former assistant editor with the New York Evening Post.

Left the city (like me) for his health and was now, a scant five years later, half deaf and all blind, begging people to read the latest news into his left ear. Fair at Masonic Hall. ... Weekly Report of Deaths. ... Compound Syrup of Sarsaparilla. ...

In that corner: Asher Lippard, an Episcopalian rector who nearly fell into the sea off Malta and, in a fit of reform, became one of the founders of the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance … before being taken with another fit of reform. He was now as devout a drinker as you could know. Took his drinking as seriously as a priest takes unction.

Next table over: Jack de Windt, in the midst of a lengthy lawsuit over claims he had invented the steamboat before Fulton. A local legend for two reasons: he paid for everything in Russian kopecks, and he backed only doomed candidates. Porter in ’17, Young in ’24, Rochester in ’26 … if a ship was sinking somewhere, they said, de Windt would find it. But he was buoyant as a cork and would be pleased to tell you how, once the Fulton folk had given him his due, he would find the Northwest Passage—he was even now looking for dogs.

And here was Benny himself, tender of these sheared sheep. A short man, well into his thirties, with an old man’s mouth and a young man’s eyes and a thatch of black hair, tousled by sweat. A prideful man: he might be serving bargemen and idlers, but you’d never find him in anything but a boiled shirt and bow tie. And though by most accounts, Benny had lived his whole life in the Hudson Valley, you could often hear a brogue nagging at his vowels.

“Now did I ever tell you, Landor? About Jim Donegan’s daddy? The village sexton he was.

Dressed up the corpses for funerals, put on their best clothes and such, tied their neckties for ’em. Well, whenever my pal Jim needed help getting his tie on, his daddy said, ‘Now Jim, I’ll have you lie down

on this here bed, there’s a boy. And close your eyes, would you? And yes, put your arms crost your chest just so.’ I’m telling you it was the only way he could dress his sons. Man had to lay down just to dress himself. And never gave a thought to how he looked from behind … who ever sees a dead man’s ass?”

At Benny Havens’, you won’t find any of the cocktails from Manhattan’s finer saloons. It’s raw whiskey and bourbon, thank you, it’s rum and it’s beer, and if someone is a bit out of his senses, perhaps a root beer passed off as bourbon. But do not think, Reader, our Benny is as common as his surroundings. He and his wife (as they themselves will be the first to tell you, voices tottery with pride) are the only U.S. citizens enjoined by law from setting foot on West Point. On account of being caught a few years back running whiskey onto the reservation.

“You ask me now, the Congress should’ve given us a medal,” is what Benny Havens says. “Soldiers need drink same as they need grapeshot.”

The cadets have been inclined to see it Benny’s way, and when they are parched enough, they find a way to run it to the Havens’ establishment. If by chance, they can’t, there is always Benny’s barmaid, Patsy, to ferry a stash right onto the reservation under cover of darkness. This is the way preferred by many cadets, for Patsy is never too proud, they say, to leave herself off the bill of sale. It’s possible (and don’t think we haven’t placed bets) that at least two dozen cadets have been led into the female mystery by our Patsy. And yet who can be sure? Patsy talks about everything but the act itself, and it may well be she’s only squeezing herself into the idea that people have of barmaids. Playing a type, as it were—and also contemplating this type from a great remove. In truth, I can vouch for her giving herself to only one man, and he’s not likely to brag to anyone.

Here she came now: in passage from the scullery, all black eyes and batiste drawers. Bonnet too small, hips a touch wide (for some tastes). “My angel,” I cried, not insincerely.

“Gus,” she said.

Her voice was as flat as a table, but it didn’t stop Jack de Windt. “Ohh,” he moaned. “I’m a famished man, Miss Patsy.”

“Mm,” she said. “Hum.” And passed her hands across her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen.

“What’s grieving her?” I asked.

“Oh.” Blind Jasper shook his head darkly. “You’ll have to excuse her, Landor. She lost one of her boys.”

“That so?”

“You must have heard,” said Benny. “Fellow name of Fry. Once gave me a Macintosh blanket for two shots of whiskey. Not his own blanket, goes without saying. Well, the poor devil hanged himself the other night … .” Casting his eyes left and right, he leaned into me and, in the loudest possible whisper, added: “What I heard? Pack of wolves tore the liver right out of his body.” He straightened again, wiped a tankard with great care. “Ah, but why’m I telling

you, Landor? You’ve been up at the Point yourself.”

“Where’d you hear that, Benny?”

“The whippoorwill, I think.”

The smaller the town, the faster word gets around. And Buttermilk Falls is nothing but small.

Even its citizens are a mite smaller than the mean.

Except for a gigantic tinplate peddler who blows in twice a year, I may well be the tallest man about.

“Whippoorwills are chatty beasts,” said Blind Jasper, nodding sullenly.

“Listen, Benny,” I said. “You ever talk to Fry yourself?”

“Once or twice is all. Poor lad needed help with his conic sections.”

“Oh,” said Jack, “I don’t think it was his conic sections he wanted help with.”

He might have said more in the same manner, but Patsy was coming out again, with a plate of bannocks. Shamed us into silence. Only when she passed within a foot of me did I dare to touch her hem.

“I’m sorry, Patsy. I didn’t know this Fry fellow was—” “He wasn’t,” she said. “Not in that way, but he wanted to be, and that has to count for something, don’t you think?”

“Tell us,” said Jasper, half panting. “What kept him out of your favor, Patsy?”

“Nothing he could help. But Lord, you know I like a darker coloring in a man. Red hair is all well on top, but it won’t do below. It’s one of my principles.” She set down the plate, frowned at the floor. “I can’t understand what would possess a boy to do such a thing to himself. When he’s too young even to do it proper.”

“What do you mean, ‘proper’?” I asked.

“Why, Gus, he couldn’t even measure the rope right. They say it took him three hours to die.” “‘They,’ Patsy? “Who is this ‘they’?”

She thought about it for some moments before lowering her original estimate. “Him” is what she said, nudging her head toward the far corner.

This was the corner furthest from Benny’s fire.

It was occupied by a young cadet. His musket rested against the wall behind him. His leather cap lay at the very edge of the table. His hair was smeared with sweat, and his pale swollen head bobbed in the half-shadows.

Hard to say how many rules he’d broken by coming here. Leaving the West Point reservation without authorization … visiting a place where spirituous liquors were sold … visiting said place for the purpose of drinking said liquors. Many another cadet, of course, had broken these same rules, but almost always at night when the watchdogs were abed. This was the first time I’d seen Benny’s broached in daylight.

He never saw me come, Cadet Fourth Classman Poe. Whether it was reverie or stupor, I can’t say, but I stood there a good half-minute, waiting for him to lift his head, and I had about given w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

67

Doing More For The Music.

Doing More For Baltimore.

8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252 410 704 8938 wtmd.org wtmd@towson.edu SedAd_sleep3_urb9.125x5.5OL.pdf

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urbanite june 06

5/16/06

6:02:38 PM

Listener Supported Public Radio From Towson University

Landscape With Clothesline, 2004. 43” x 70”

up on him when I heard faint sounds coming from somewhere in his neighborhood—words, maybe, or spells.

“Afternoon,” I said.

His head snapped back; his enormous gray eyes swiveled. “Oh, it’s you!” he cried.

Half tipping his chair over, he rose and seized my hand and began pumping it.

“Dear me. Sit. Yes, sit down, won’t you please?

Mr. Havens! Another drink for my friend here.”

“And who would be paying?” I heard Benny mutter, but the young cadet must not have heard for he beckoned me toward him and, under his breath, said: “Mr. Havens there …”

“What’s he saying about me, Landor?”

Laughing, Poe cupped his hands round his mouth. “Mr. Havens is the only congenial man in this whole godforsaken desert!”

“And it’s touched I am to hear it.”

There was, I should make this clear, a doubleness to everything Benny said. You had to be a longtimer to catch it: the thing said and the comment on the thing said, happening at the same moment. Poe was not a long-timer, and so his impulse was to say his piece again—louder.

“In this whole benighted, godforsaken … den of … rapacious philistines. The only one, may God strike me down if I’m a liar!”

“You’ll make me weep, you go on, Mr. Poe.” “And his lovely wife,” said the young man. “And Patsy. The blessed … the Hebe of the Highlands!”

Pleased with this coinage, he raised his glass to the woman who had inspired it.

“How many drinks would this be?” I asked, sounding uncomfortably like Sylvanus Thayer to my own ears.

“I don’t recall,” he said.

In fact, four empty glasses lay in formation alongside his right elbow. He caught me in the act of counting them.

“Not mine, Mr. Landor, I assure you. It appears Patsy isn’t keeping the place as neat as she might.

Owing to grief.”

“You do seem a bit … liquid, Mr. Poe.” “You’re referring, probably, to my fearfully delicate constitution. It takes but one drink to rob me of my senses. Two, and I’m staggering like a pugilist.

It’s a medical condition, corroborated by several eminent physicians.”

“Most unfortunate, Mr. Poe.” With the curtest of nods, he accepted my sympathy.

“Now maybe,” I said, “before you start staggering, you could tell me something.”

“I would be honored.”

“How did you come to learn about the position of Leroy Fry’s body?”

The question affected him as an insult. “Why, Huntoon, of course. He’s been spouting the news like a town crier. Perhaps someone will hang him before long.”

“Hang him,” I said. “I assume you don’t mean to imply that someone hanged Mr. Fry?” “I don’t mean to imply anything.”

“Tell me, then. Why do you think the man who took Leroy Fry’s heart was a poet?”

This was a different sort of inquiry, for he was all business now. Pushing away his glass. Correcting the sleeves of his coatee.

“Mr. Landor,” he said, “the heart is symbol or it is nothing. Take away the symbol, what do you have?

A fistful of muscle, of no more esthetic interest than a bladder. To remove a man’s heart is to traffic in symbol. Who better equipped for such labor than a poet?”

“An awfully literal-minded poet, it seems to me.”

“Oh, you cannot tell me, Mr. Landor, you cannot pretend that this act of savagery did not startle literary resonances from the very crevices of your mind. Shall I delineate my own train of association? I thought in the first moment of Childe Harold: The heart will break, yet brokenly live on. My next thought was for Lord Suckling’s charming song: I prithee send me back my heart / Since I cannot have thine. The surprise, given how little use I have for religious orthodoxy, is how often I am thrown back on the Bible. Create in me a clean heart, O God ... A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

“Then we might just as easily be seeking a religious maniac, Mr. Poe.” “Ah!” He brought his fist down on the table.

“A statement of creed, is that what you’re saying?

Go back to the original Latin. Credo, a verb derived from the noun cardia, meaning … meaning heart, yes? In English, of course, heart has no predicative form. Hence, we translate credo as ‘I believe,’ when it means literally ‘I set my heart,’ ‘I place my heart.’ Not a matter of denying the body, in other words, not continued on page 91 w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

69

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urbanite june 06

Media Sponsors

sustainable city

by julie e. gabrielli

photography by mitro hood

No Small Change Microentrepreneurs make a major impact

Above: Nicole Goode, owner of So Goode 4 You, whips up vegan fare in her kitchen.

When local leaders think about economic development, they like to think big: Wooing large corporations to town; giving tax breaks to hotel developers; redeveloping whole sections of the city based on themes like the arts or biotech. After all, as the legendary Chicago architect Daniel Burnham said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” These grand plans catch our attention and help us believe that Baltimore is on the upswing.

And if the investments yielded a return in the range of $2.06 to $2.72 for every tax dollar spent, we would see the economic development folks as geniuses. But while this is rarely the case with largescale projects, this is the kind of return that comes from making little plans. Tiny plans, in fact. It’s a concept called microenterprise, and it’s a viable, proven way to boost local economies.

According to Mikal McCartney, executive director of the Microenterprise Council of Maryland (MCM), a microenterprise is any business that employs five or fewer people and lacks access to traditional resources. These resources could be lending, technology, training, technical assistance, and access to markets.

How do these disadvantaged individuals get involved in microenterprise? And how does this often-overlooked business development model benefit our private and collective quality of life? Most microbusinesses come from the passion and talent of an individual with the ability to find a market niche to serve the local community. Many microentrepreneurs are women who need flexibility to

balance home and work and who want to gain more control over their lives. Some are immigrants who lack the certifications, licenses, or language skills required to find professional work. People with disabilities can benefit from the custom fit of their own microbusinesses. With the right support and the willingness to put in long hours sometimes, many people find starting a business preferable to a minimum-wage job.

For all microentrepreneurs, starting a business is the fulfillment of a dream, which invariably leads to increased self-esteem, the acquisition of new skills, and the opportunity to give back to the community. Studies have shown that microenterprise contributes to the social capital of communities through a system of networks and leads to housing improvements, financial stability, and more stable family life. Indeed, 60% of the revenue generated by microenterprise stays in the community.

In a city like Baltimore with its high poverty rate, the role of microenterprise cannot be underestimated. National studies indicate that 72% of poor microentrepreneurs increased their household income by an average of $8,484 and their household assets by an average of $15,909 over the course of five years. Over half of them moved above the poverty line as a result of their microbusiness, and their reliance on various forms of public assistance decreased by 61%.

Most micros stay small: the national average is 1.5 employees. So how do such tiny businesses have any impact at all? The answer is in that old adage: w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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There is strength in numbers. In Baltimore, where 31,499 of the 37,877 businesses are micro, this means an estimated minimum of 47,000 jobs. In addition, most organizations that provide services to microenterprise clients are nonprofits that bring in many federal and corporate dollars through grant programs. These services in the form of training, volunteer mentoring, financing, and follow-up are critical to the success of micros. Perhaps because of this level of attention, microbusinesses have a higher survival rate than other small businesses.

Further, microbusinesses naturally bring uniqueness, passion, quality of service, and a personal touch. Baltimore has many niche businesses that celebrate our region’s distinctive culture, history, and arts, and it is almost always a more satisfying customer experience to deal directly with a knowledgeable owner than to spend a half-hour hunting unsuccessfully for the poorly trained, unmotivated sales staff at the local big box retailer.

A case in point is Nicole Goode. A recent graduate of a microenterprise assistance program through Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore (WEB), she has started a vegan bakery. WEB’s program turned her dabbling into a nutritional mission called So Goode 4 You. Goode is also a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and she aspires to be a local expert in vegan baking. She bakes only with natural, organic ingredients and no trans fats. And while she currently works out of her kitchen, her business plan foresees a few full-time employees to meet the growing demand. Her creations are regularly sold at the Yabba Pot, a local vegetarian restaurant.

Then there is the occasional example of, in the parlance, the “high-growth microbusiness.” Maria Welch enrolled in WEB’s training program back in 2001, hoping to start a small business and make a decent living with maybe three or four employees.

Today, she is the CEO of Respira Medical, a nearly $3 million company that employs almost forty people.

Headquartered on Lord Baltimore Drive, Respira provides home-based respiratory therapy and other health care to thousands of people in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, Southern Pennsylvania, and Southern Delaware.

Respira’s amazing growth is attributable to the intensive training and mentor support that Welch received, as well as her savvy business networking.

Indeed, Welch is a living testament to the power of microenterprise to rebuild lives and transform communities. A simple question in a letter from the state unemployment office, “If you had a chance to start your own business, what would it be?” galvanized her. She had been homeless, was lucky to make $8 an hour when she was working, and knew nothing about starting or running a business. But she went to the interview, along with two hundred other women, and landed one of twenty places in the WEB training program. In 2005, Welch became the first graduate of the WEB program to serve as a board president.

Welch’s network has been a key to her success.

Despite a poor credit rating, M&T Bank saw the value of her services to the community and took a risk on her, giving the company its first line of credit. Her accountant and attorney, both local business people

Maria Welch, a graduate of the Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore microenterprise assistance program, is president of the board of Centro de la Comunidad, an organization committed to the success of Hispanics in Baltimore.

who cater to entrepreneurs, have given her invaluable advice and guidance along the way.

Respira Medical illustrates why locally owned and operated microenterprises and small businesses are so important to a vibrant community. The company contributes to the economic and social development of the community by keeping money local and active in causes that are important to Baltimore and Baltimoreans. In addition to paying employees and taxes, the business spends money locally on office space, suppliers, IT support, advertising, printing, and legal, financial, and marketing firms. Many microenterprises also foster strong communities by contributing to the revitalization of downtown areas, and donating time and money to local causes.

A study in Maine by the Institute for Local SelfReliance found that small businesses have a much greater positive impact on their economy than the big box chains. For every $100 spent in a big box store, only $14 stays in the local economy. By contrast, $100 spent in a local business (of which microenterprise is a subset) results in $45 staying local.

That money goes to pay other local businesses for their services, to pay taxes that support local police and fire departments, and to charitable causes that improve quality of life in the community. The big box store’s local expenses are restricted to paying wages and benefits (if any) to its employees. While the big chains do boast about their charitable giving, the Maine study found that, in fact, the local businesses gave an average of 0.4% of their revenue to local causes, which was four times Wal-Mart’s giving, and twice that of Target.

This study advised local leaders to develop strategies to strengthen and expand locally owned businesses rather than supporting additional chain store growth because it demonstrated that small locally owned businesses could, in aggregate,

generate as much economic return as a major national employer.

Whether you are making personal or business purchases, the case for buying services and products from one of Baltimore’s many microenterprises is multifaceted. Author David C. Korten writes, “In contrast to the publicly traded, limited-liability corporation, which is best described as a pool of money dedicated to its self-replication, living enterprises function as communities of people engaged in the business of creating just, sustainable, and fulfilling livelihoods for themselves while contributing to the economic health and prosperity of the community.”

They are “place-based, human-scale, stakeholderowned, democratically accountable, and lifeserving.” Local economies allow for self-determination, a closer connection to people, as well as the sources of raw materials, and a gentler touch on the environment.

This sense of connection and empowerment is borne out by the example of Respira Medical’s dynamic founder and CEO. A Hispanic-American and a survivor of domestic violence, Welch speaks for the House of Ruth and the United Way of Central Maryland. She also serves on many boards, including Centro de la Comunidad (where she is president), Kennedy Krieger, the American Lung Association, Living Classrooms, and the Morgan State University’s Entrepreneurial Development and Assistance Center, to name just a few. Welch is now the first woman to be president of the board of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which has a program to promote microenterprise in the Hispanic community. She stresses that her business opened these doors. Spend five minutes with this woman and it is clear that nothing about her accomplishments, and the accomplishments of those who have supported her, is small. ■ w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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out there

by ericka blount danois

LE

TR

IT

Y

METHANE GAS

E

C

IC

O R G A N I C WA S T E

Waste Not A new movement to stop adding to landfills is sweeping the West Coast. Could Baltimore get on board?

Where does trash go after it is picked up at your curb? Every year Americans discard millions of tons of garbage, and most of us never see or hear from it again. Poof. But don’t be fooled—it is somewhere, especially since we throw away so many things that do not easily decompose, often sealing even our biodegradables in plastic bags. Most of that garbage ends up in landfills, and the landfills are quickly filling up. Some of that garbage is incinerated, but the environmental effects of burning garbage are considerable. So a few people started thinking: What if we stopped producing “garbage” altogether? What if we stopped looking at things as waste, as matter that had exhausted its usefulness?

The concept that evolved from this way of thinking is called zero waste—a philosophy that offers a solution to trash that involves neither incineration nor a reliance on landfill, that views the stuff that we dismissively call “trash” and “garbage” as useful and reusable.

San Francisco, the national leader in the zerowaste movement, is currently using dozens of recycling programs to divert 63% of its household garbage away from landfills, working toward its goal of no new landfill waste—or zero waste—by 2020.

And San Francisco found something surprising as they analyzed the region’s refuse—nearly 4% of household waste is produced by pets, specifically by

dogs. Consequently, they devised an innovative approach that combines dog waste, food scraps, and bacteria that feed on the organic waste in a methane digester (a device that allows the bacteria to work on the organic material without the presence of oxygen), which then captures methane that can be combusted to create electricity (see diagram above).

Robert Reed, spokesperson for Norcal Waste, which collects recyclables and garbage (including pet waste) from homes and businesses throughout San Francisco, says the city is also an international leader in food-scrap composting. In that city alone, three hundred tons of food scraps from about two thousand restaurants and homes are collected every day and turned into nutrient-rich compost that is used by more than one hundred farms and vineyards as food for the soil.

Places that have followed San Francisco’s lead and adopted a defined zero-waste goal include Berkeley, Seattle, Palo Alto, and Boulder County in Colorado. Other U.S. cities are taking a more aggressive approach to getting their citizens to recycle, which is often the first step toward a serious commitment to a zero-waste lifestyle. In Olympia, Washington, households are provided with recycling bins and get a reduced garbage rate for recycling.

Some cities offer coupons to residents for the quality of their recycled material. Others charge residents w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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based on the amount of garbage picked up, thus providing residents with the incentive to recycle more in order to have less garbage.

Conspicuously absent from this list of U.S. cities and regions that are thinking progressively about waste is any metropolis on the East Coast.

Baltimore’s downtown BRESCO facility (a waste-to-energy plant) converts more than 650,000

Things you can do to create less waste

Zero waste is a philosophy that offers a solution to trash that involves neither incineration nor a reliance on landfill.

Cupcake

Use cloth napkins, cloth rags, and maybe even cloth diapers

Bring your own bags to the grocery store

Avoid buying items that come in extravagant packaging

Limit the use of disposable containers

Buy in bulk Buy refills

Use the unused sides of paper for scrap paper

Repair items instead of replacing

Buy and sell at tag sales/ garage sales

tons of non-recycled waste into energy each year.

Baltimore also has two facilities that convert sewage sludge (human waste) into useful products—62,000 tons of sewage sludge per year is composted into soil amendment, which is sold to landscapers, golf courses, and soil blenders. continued on page 93

Buy items that can be recycled or composted

Use newspaper comics for wrapping paper

Donate items that you no longer need to charity

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in review

BOOK Digging to America Anne Tyler Alfred A. Knopf, 2006

courtesy of Maxine A. Cohen

photo by staff of The Jewish Museum of Maryland

If the thought of family gatherings makes you squeamish, this perceptive book is not for you. Social anxiety is so perfectly distilled here; you’ll cringe while you laugh.

In 1997, the Donaldsons (American), and the Yazdans (Iranian) meet by chance at Baltimore’s airport, where both are awaiting the arrival of baby girls adopted from South Korea. Because of this remarkable, shared experience, the two families stay in touch.

A tradition is born to celebrate the double miracle that occurred, and this “arrival party,” together

CULTURE Cabin Fever: Jewish Camping and Jewish Commitment The Jewish Museum of Maryland

with birthdays and anniversaries, provides many opportunities for these good folks to get together and talk at cross-purposes and misunderstand each other’s jokes. These are opportunities for oneupmanship over catering and gifts, for awkwardness about who sits where and who does what, for mild xenophobia and sycophancy, and for competitiveness over the height, weight, and intelligence of the girls—all compounded by an uneasy melding of Iranian and American customs. Each party ends, as such parties tend to do, with a whispered argument behind a closed kitchen door.

This cobbled-together family (and what family isn’t?) is bonded by the adoptive mothers, Bitsy and Ziba, through their realization that, to some people, “to adopt was to settle for second best,” as though children, like bacon or cars, are graded for quality: acceptable (adopted), better (assisted fertility), or best (natural born). Bitsy “yes to soy milk, no to soda” Donaldson is endearing, despite her ruthless good intentions. Every family has a Bitsy and every family needs a Bitsy: the instigator, the peacemaker, the one who stubbornly insists on finishing the Monopoly game while some of us sulk in the garden. By the time Bitsy adopts her second child, she accepts that love plus muddling along is often as good as it gets, and we find ourselves sharing her disappointment.

The adopted girls embody “otherness” in the novel, and the parental angst over what to call them, how to dress them, how to integrate them (or not), provide some of its funniest moments. (Comically, the Donaldsons decide to keep their daughter’s Korean name to preserve her heritage, while the Yazdans choose a Western name to make theirs more American.) But Jin-Ho and Susan are not mere

symbolic devices; Tyler characterizes them fully, and they mature into normal kids. In complete oblivion of their parents’ aspirations, they become exactly, and uniquely, who they are.

At the novel’s heart is a tentative romance between Don, the newly widowed, American grandfather of Jin-Ho, and Maryam, the Iranian grandmother of Susan. Glamorous Maryam, who is “not a bathrobe kind of woman,” fascinates Don, even as her enigmatic, unruffled demeanor frustrates him.

“You can start to believe that your life is defined by your foreignness,” Maryam tries to explain; “You think everything would be different if only you belonged.” However, on reflection, she realizes she hadn’t belonged in Iran either. It’s personality, not nationality, that fully defines her. She has made of herself a foreign country, with borders jealously guarded against all invaders, especially Don—needy, straight-talking, decent, bull-headed, all-American Don. Although this is a timely book, crafted with Tyler’s hallmark elegance and deceptive simplicity, her central focus isn’t geopolitics—it’s the human condition.

Returning from the airport after collecting the newest adopted grandchild, Don and Maryam each decide it’s time for the other to face some home truths. “It’s harder than you realize, being American,” insists Don, to which Maryam snaps back, “It’s a lot of work, being foreign.”

Of course, both of them are right and both of them are wrong. Family isn’t something you’re born with, implies Tyler, it’s something you make, something you dig for; and being a particular nationality isn’t hard; it’s being human that’s hard.

As a grown alumna of Jewish sleepaway camp, walking around Cabin Fever: Jewish Camping and Jewish Commitment brought back many fond memories of childhood summers. I remembered the great friends I made, the Israeli dancing I attempted, the swimming strokes I mastered, and the life lessons I learned.

Then, it dawned on me. I hated sleepaway camp and went home early. I missed my parents and found a lot of the activities boring. But while exploring the exhibit, I was able to put the actual events of my childhood on hold and travel back to when bug juice was the drink of choice and complex lanyard stitching dominated arts-and-crafts time.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland presents the Jewish camping experience as a multidimensional one. On the surface, camp is about receiving an award from your counselors for being the best lip balm wearer and decorating your bunk sign with all the campers’ names. But the Jewish camping experience remains distinctive among sleepaway camps. In addition to the normal daily activities, campers also learn to appreciate Israel and begin to understand the significance of Shabbat dinner every Friday night.

Jewish sleepaway camp is not just for making friends and having fun; it is also for learning to appreciate and embrace religion at a young age.

The exhibit does its best to attract people of all ages. Kids can watch camp videos and read sample letters sent home (the writers talk about homesickness as well as all the great things about camp).

Adults can look at an impressive collection of old documents, camp ledgers, and photographs.

While walking around, it is nearly impossible not to get swept away in the mix of camp songs and color-war fever. I began doubting my own memories, eager to replace the bitter taste in my mouth with a sweeter one. At times it was difficult not to feel like the atmosphere was a little too sugar-soaked, full of a subtle propaganda whispering that if you are a Jewish adult with children, you better send your kids to camp. Still, glorified presentation aside, it is impossible not to leave smiling; whether you notice a young woman attempting to teach an elderly man how to do the “barrel” stitch or see a sticky note of an ex-camper’s favorite memory: “My first bf—well, he wasn’t a real bf, but we held hands during the fireworks display!”

Cabin Fever runs through next spring at the Shoshana S. and Jerome Cardin Gallery at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. It is open 12 p.m.–4 p.m. on Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday. Call 410732-6400 for more information.

—Susan McCallum-Smith

—Carey Polis w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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in review

POETRY Still Swingin’: New and Selected Poems from These Hips Tonya Maria Matthews Three Sistahs Press, 2005

MUSIC The Art of Distraction Karmella’s Game Speedbump Recordings, 2006

Tonya Maria Matthews is a Renaissance woman.

This poet, also known as JaHipster, has published books of poetry and performed around the United States and abroad. She received a 2005 Maryland State Arts Council grant for poetry, was voted Best Storyteller Poet by the community service arts organization P4PB (Poetry for the People of Baltimore), and she earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Also, her work is a part of the permanent collection at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History.

Matthews fearlessly expresses her views in the book Still Swingin’: New and Selected Poems from These Hips and captures the reader with her politically charged commentary in an effort, as she says in her poem “Synthetic Ulcers,” to “lower [their] rosetinted glasses” and get them to see the inconsistencies of governmental policies and social constructs.

The second edition of the book, published by the local Three Sistahs Press, consists of twentyone hard-hitting poems that force the reader to see America through her eyes. The subject matter is diverse. In addition to her signature poem, “These Hips,” Matthews tackles the hip-hop music industry, “bling” mentality, and the idolization of slain rap artists in “Blood Spangled Banner.” She confronts police brutality in “Double Consciousness,” questions the media’s misrepresentation of African Americans in “I Prayed For More Gun Control And Got Better Background Checks,” and wrestles with Big Brother in “crazy.”

Matthews brings her creativity to the forefront in “the untitled SUPERHERO poem” and “Nothing to Wear.” In “SUPERHERO,” she cleverly juxtaposes mainstream society’s views of African Americans, asserting they are invisible until seen as a threat. “… I can’t so much as move a school board to buy school books … but after 6 o’clock I can move crowds of innocent old white ladies across the street … with a single glance.”

Matthews captures the destructive nature of assimilation in “Nothing to Wear,” pondering how she nearly lost her identity when she began to smother her blackness by “pick[ing] personas to please.” These two poems, placed back-to-back in the book, effectively epitomize the insidious nature of racism and its lasting effect on the human psyche.

Still Swingin’ is not for the thin-skinned. It was written to engage honest discussion for those who acknowledge racism as an American problem. It was written to implore people to take action, to demand that changes be made. It was written, as Matthews says in “Trivial Pursuits,” so that we can remember who, when, where, what, and why we are, to keep from going insane.

Local pop-punk band Karmella’s Game is one of the hardest-working bands in the genre. Their frenzied tour schedule takes them all over Baltimore and up and down the East Coast promoting their sweet’n’-straightahead rock that’s tinged with cheeky punkishness. Tiny Baltimore indie label Speedbump Recordings recently released the band’s new record, The Art of Distraction. Its nine songs combine powerrock guitar riffs; persistent, almost manic synth and keyboard lines; and gorgeous vocal harmonies. Lead singer KTO (that’s Katie Ostrosky) wails and shouts in her best food-court complaining voice, while her brother Joe pounds out spic-and-span punk beats on the kit. They perform in matching red Catholic school-kid uniforms. It’s the kind of pop/rock market-cornering that gets so many up-and-coming bands spots on the Vans Warped Tour, where they pay their dues by establishing a massive high schoolaged fan base.

The Karmella’s Game sound is distinctly generational. They clearly owe a debt to Weezer, and all the other bands in their wake (Saves The Day, Fall Out Boy, etc.) who discovered, thanks to Rivers Cuomo, that a love of KISS, The Cars, and other cheesy stadium rock, in the hands of some ironic Internet-era punks, can result in a cool sound that gets your friends bopping at indie clubs.

The band’s selfsame Internet-era ethos also pegs it as a trendy act. Song titles like “The Revolution will be Cybercast” and “Cyberspace Lipgloss” are tip-offs.

Then there are the whiny lyrics, like “I will not wait patiently / For what you promised can’t you see / The ball is in your corner,” which sometimes feel like myspace.com message board postings.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this approach—indeed, it’s just an update of Weezer’s pre-Internet adolescent depression, which was filled with Dungeons & Dragons and surfboards instead of Final Fantasy II and skateboards. But irony is hard to do well, and Karmella’s Game doesn’t keep it real enough. The problem is in the songwriting. The gals cram too many syllables into lines, like in “ … Cybercast,” where KTO tries desperately to make the first half of “You won’t ever catch me retreating / Plug me in till my eyes are bleeding” fit the rhythm. Or take these lines, from “Cyberspace Lipgloss”: “Absentee ballots can’t be complete / By assessing the data electronically / Even transmissions sent at light-speed / Will be misconstrued eventually.” Hard to process, right?

Even so, Distraction has some excellent moments. “Safely Negative” rocks, and its organ breaks vaguely recall The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly.” The opener “Diversions” is a great tone-setter, a tasting menu of reasons for why Karmella’s Game could actually qualify as a sweet post-punk dance band. And there is a moment of bliss in a little vocal quartet in the middle of “A Lullabye.”

Overall, Karmella’s Game should be commended for not pretending to be anything that they are not. Their stylistic versatility has very little wiggleroom. They’d be a great fit to headline the Empire Records: 2 soundtrack. But as far as being the band they want to be—fun and lively with the same kind of high emotional tenor that Weezer so often struck—they’re a little hard to take seriously.

—Candance L. Greene To purchase a copy of Still Swingin’: New and Selected Poems from These Hips, visit the publisher, Three Sistahs Press, at www.threesistahspress.com. To find out where Tonya Maria Matthews will be performing next, visit her website at www.jahipster.com.

—Robbie Whelan w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m j u n e 0 6

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by susan mccallum-smith

’m the publishing-industry version of Pavlov’s dog: Show me a beautiful book jacket, combine it with those “olde-fashionede” raw-edge pages, and make it sensuously tactile, and I’m gamboling happily towards the register, coins jangling and nose wet (although that could be allergies …).

Alice Greenway’s first novel prompted this conditioned reflex. On its cover, two young girls use sticks to draw a large circle on an empty beach.

Behind them laps an aqua sea under an aqua sky, pearled by a luminescent dawn. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered White Ghost Girls has no need of marketing ploys. Set against the backdrop of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War, this story of the complicit, manipulative relationship between two sisters growing up in 1960s Hong Kong is one I’ll remember long after the superficial charms of this debut’s packaging fade.

Far from being a first-time novelist, Walter Mosley, the award winner and creator of the Easy Rawlins series, has just released his twenty-fourth book. Fortunate Son also concerns that mysterious tie between siblings; in this instance, two stepbrothers, one black and one white, bond closely in childhood, before their paths diverge in disturbing ways. I wish I could say Mosley’s novel matches the sophistication and complexity of that of newcomer Greenway, but many of his characterizations lack authenticity, skirt stereotypes, and fail to surprise.

Mosley is a respected writer with a huge audience, and if ever we needed smart literature to tackle race

relations in the United States, it’s now. Although I empathized with the story’s intent, I simply didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it when a 17-year-old female character turned to her 14-year-old lover and said, “No man has ever made me feel like this.”

And it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the phrase “torrid lovemaking” in print, outside of a Harlequin paperback.

William Faulkner’s 1939 novel The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) is a glorious hymn to New Orleans and the cruel and mighty Mississippi.

Parts of it read like a survivor’s account of Hurricane Katrina: “The water was up to the window ledges.

A woman clutching two children squatted on the ridgepole, a man and a halfgrown youth, standing waist-deep were hoisting a screaming pig onto the slanting roof of a barn … a yelling negro boy on a saddleless mule … approached the haystack, splashing and floundering. The woman on the housetop began to shriek … her voice carrying faint and melodious across the brown water …” I admire Faulkner’s genius: His “life is shit and then you die” philosophy resonates with my maudlin, Scottish nature. Plus, he revolutionized literary form, and his ability to convey regional dialect without condescension has never been bested. But reader beware: Faulkner is overly partial to the long sentence, and if you suffer from short-term memory loss or enjoy reading out loud, you’ll run the risk of either losing the gist of the plot or hyperventilating. Faulkner never met a full stop he liked.

Such intensity can be exhausting, like gorging on fancy-schmancy cuisine, and if you yearn for home cookin’, Baltimore Noir is excellent crab cake and fries—snappy, fresh, and satisfying. Editor Laura Lippman kicks off this new collection of Baltimore-based short crime fiction with a reminder of the dangers of home improvement, followed by hard-boiled contributions about homicide and hustling, contract killing and scams, and other downright un-neighborly behaviors, penned by legendary locals including Dan Fesperman, Marcia Talley, Ben Neihart, and David Simon. “Almost Missed It by a Hair,” by Lisa Respers France, is my personal favorite—the story of tawdry shenanigans behind the scenes at a hairdressing convention in (“small town with big hair”) Baltimore. I had no idea that being “king of the weave” could trigger murderous lust!

There’s an irony here, of course. Our city has become famous for quality literature and screenplays inspired by its unenviable flaws. “Bulletmore, Murderland” may be a clever nickname, but it certainly doesn’t imply apple-pie living. Glasgow, my hometown, shares a similar reputation for violence and quirky locals and spawns similarly edgy and engaging art. It’s safe to assume both cities will continue to play the role of “dark muse” until the unlikely day we decide that being mad, bad, and dangerous to know is no longer attractive. ■ —Susan McCallum-Smith is Urbanite’s literary editor.

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Food Pyramid continued from page 37 restaurant who seemed to know so little about good food.

Just then, Bontempo comes into the kitchen with her salmon lasagna. It is an unusual recipe she engineered from an inferior one she found in a magazine.

She mixes salmon with pesto, eggs, ricotta, Parmesan and Romano cheeses, then layers it with the noodles. She covers the top with a saffron-colored sauce made of freshly roasted red sweet peppers pureed with sour cream.

Bontempo sets down the lasagna and takes out a large stainless-steel teakettle. She fills it with water and drops dried hibiscus flowers in the little strainer that fits in the middle. This is called karkade tea, she explains, and it is from the Luxor and Aswan regions of Egypt.

As the tea brews on a back burner, Ramadan tells his story of the salmon lasagna, which he discovered many months into their marriage.

“I was very hungry and I said, ‘What is there to eat?’ She told me she had salmon lasagna.” He was dubious. “Lasagna with salmon?” he asked.

He took a taste.

“It was very good,” he says, again in that reverential whisper.

Now that the secret is out, Bontempo and Ramadan dream of opening Arabian Nights as a full-service restaurant in Baltimore. They are starting small for now and will build up slowly from a catering business and the meals served at the Ruscombe Mansion.

Once they open a restaurant, Ramadan will do most of the cooking.

How about Bontempo?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says with a sly grin. “I can make rose pudding.” ■ For hours and other information on Arabian Nights, call 410-926-7422 or check their website at www.arabiannightscatering.com.

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Page 1

Baltimore Storyteller continued from page 55 “Well, Fitzgerald fell asleep while signing the books.

The housekeeper came by and told Franklin she would make sure the books got returned to the store,” he says.

“Another story about that book always makes me laugh. Fitzgerald gave a signed copy of Tender Is the Night to a neighbor whose daughter went to school with his daughter, Scottie,” Shivers remembers. “The neighbor threw it in the trash because she didn’t want this book to harm or spoil the innocence of her daughter. She didn’t want her daughter to even see it. A first-edition, signed copy of Tender Is the Night, right in the trash. Can you imagine that now?” he asks in disbelief.

Baltimore’s stories are not always as pleasant.

Early writers who spent time in the city developed a reality-based style of writing that reflected this truth. Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain were “hard-boiled” detective and mystery writers who used the city as a backdrop, even if it was not named as Baltimore on the pages. Upton Sinclair’s work focused on the reality of living and working in the extreme conditions of abject poverty. “I see their work as precursors to David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on

B U Y.

SELL.

the Killing Streets,” he offers. “You can see how that style of writing has continued in the city.”

Shivers collected these tales while doing one of the things that storytellers do best: teach. He was head of the English department at Friends School

There were many people living here who remembered the Civil War, the effect of that outcome. I just started listening to their stories. There were quite a few characters. of Baltimore for twenty-five years, as well as a parttime professor at Johns Hopkins, the University of Baltimore, and Towson University.

Last year, Shivers retired from teaching at Johns Hopkins. In 1999, the alumni association honored Shivers with its annual Excellence in Teaching Award

for his time at the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education. “I don’t even want to say how long I was there, but I really enjoyed it.”

Presently, Shivers is updating and expanding his Bolton Hill book, to be released this fall under the title Bolton Hill: Classic Baltimore Neighborhood.

And he is looking into the story behind the subject of his most recent writing project, the four parks surrounding the Washington Monument in Mount Vernon. “I asked around, ‘Who designed these parks?’ and nobody knew.” He discovered that architect Robert Mills designed both the parks and the monument. Mills went on to design the Washington Monument in D.C., along with other government buildings. “The Baltimore monument was finished years before the D.C. monument. We honored George Washington here first. But this is the way we are sometimes. It’s Baltimore. We don’t call attention to ourselves.”

Not every city is blessed with such a historian and advocate. Wayne Schaumburg, another local historian and a Green Mount Cemetery tour guide, puts it best: “Frank is a walking encyclopedia of Baltimore history. Whether it is in a book, a tour, or a lecture, his knowledge of the city and its past is second to none. We are lucky to have him.” ■

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All Work and No Play continued from page 65 Americans do know how to have fun. We have the theme parks, entertainment palaces, and booming recreation, sports, and travel industries to prove it. But too many of us just don’t give ourselves permission, or we set rigid boundaries on what is allowable fun and where we are allowed to have it. But the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we can—we should—wait to have fun until we retire. “Have fun now,” White advises. “Now is all you have, anyway.”

And who decided work couldn’t be fun?

An hour on the job, just as an hour throwing a Frisbee, can have moments of creativity, discovery, and cooperative success. Having a playful attitude doesn’t take any more time or energy than having a sour one.

“Play is an experience of work at its best,” says DeKoven. It is when you hit the “flow,” everything is clicking on your project—or, better, everything is clicking at the same time for everyone on the team. It’s not imposed externally, like those foosball tables that were a staple of dot-com businesses a decade back and ended up used mainly to continue an unhealthy competition onto another field. It’s building something bigger than each person’s separate piece, not just working to maintain status or put out the standard product. And it starts with conversation, which in itself can be a great form of play.

Play and games are different for adults, in many ways richer, says DeKoven, who leads corporate employees through mini-exploration in his play community. “I set them up playing pattycake.” He tells them, “It’s not your inner child doing this. It’s you as a grown-up playing this game. There is no kid here, it’s you. Your whole being, your whole maturity is here playing this game of patty-cake.

“We are truly fully at play as adults. We’re compassionate with each other. We can much more easily delight in each other’s delight than when we were kids. We take much better care of each other. We understand each other more clearly. There are all kinds of wonderful things that we do that we couldn’t do when we were kids, and experience the play contract with each other.”

People in the corporations he works with tell DeKoven they find it very liberating to use the word “fun” to describe the reason they do things day-to-day during one of his play sessions. For at least a little while, they stop thinking of their world in terms of “what I do for fun” and “what I do for everything else” and start seeing all daily life as a chance to play—to have fun, grow, and perform the best they can.

Play deprivation, like

sleep deprivation, is chronic and costly. And reversible. There’s plenty of hope for a speedy

recovery; all we need is the will. And the gentle self-discipline to set healthy habits and stick to them. The forces of seriousness and overwork are strong indeed. But we have the ultimate weapon: We can make up our own minds.

“If you decide that you’re going to have fun, you can have fun. You can do it now,” White says. “You can have fun with the person giving you trouble at the restaurant, at the grocery.

“Laugh, misbehave, make mistakes, and through it all discover your very own potential for health, healing, and wholeness.”

Choose play, from time to time. Years from now, will you remember that extra hour you spent at work on a sunny June day or that single second of surprise and wonder you felt during a lunch break when you tried to skip—and realized you still could?

Play is a main ingredient in anthropologist and author Ashley Montagu’s definition of health: the ability to work, to love, to play, to think critically. Many of us unthinkingly signed on to the idea that play is not sanctioned for adults. We could as easily make the rule the other way—we are all the bosses of our inner selves. The inner playground is always open.

The outer playground, on the other hand, would require cooperation, a society-wide acceptance of letting loose a little. Here’s hoping enough of us were allowed to play enough as children to have learned that skill. ■

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An excerpt from The Pale Blue Eye continued from page 69 a matter of transcending it but expropriating it. A trajectory of secular faith.” Smiling grimly, he leaned back in his chair. “In other words, poetry.”

Maybe he saw the corners of my mouth shrink, for he seemed all at once to be questioning himself … and then he laughed and rapped himself on the temple.

“I neglected to tell you, Mr. Landor! I am a poet myself. Hence inclined to think as one. I cannot help myself, you see.”

“Another medical condition, Mr. Poe?” “Yes,” he said, unblinking. “I shall have to donate my body to science.”

It was the first time I figured him for being good at cards. For he was able to carry a bluff as far as it could go.

“I’m afraid I don’t get round to poetry much,” I said.

“Why should you?” he replied. “You’re an American.”

“And you, Mr. Poe?” “An artist. That is to say without country.”

He liked the sound of this, too. Let it revolve in the air, like a doubloon.

“Well now,” I said, standing to go. “I do thank you, Mr. Poe. You’ve been a great help.”

“Oh!” He grabbed my arm, drew me back down.

(Great force in those slender fingers.) “You’ll want a second look at a cadet named Loughborough.”

“Why is that, Mr. Poe?”

“At evening parade last night, I happened to notice his steps were amiss. He repeatedly confused ‘left face’ with ‘about face.’ This indicated to me a mind laboring under distraction. In addition, his demeanor at mess this morning was altered.”

“And what would that tell us?”

“Well, if you were acquainted with him, you would know he jabbers more than Cassandra … and to similar effect. No one listens, you see, not even his best friends. Today, he desired no listeners.”

As though to dramatize the scene, he draped his face in an invisible veil and sat there, as wrapped in thought as Loughborough himself. There was this difference, though. Poe brightened in a flash, as though someone had tossed a match in him.

“I don’t think I mentioned,” he said. “Loughborough was, in former days, Leroy Fry’s roommate.

Until they had a falling out, the nature of which remains uncertain.”

“Strange you should know of this, Mr. Poe.” A lazy shrug. “Someone must have told me,” he said, “for how else would I know? People do tend to confide in me, Mr. Landor. I hail from a long line of Frankish chieftains. From the dawn of civilization, great trusts have been placed in us; these trusts have never been misplaced.”

Once again, the head was thrown back in that accent of defiance—the gesture I remembered from the Superintendent’s garden. He would brave any scorn.

“Mr. Poe, you’ll pardon me. I’m still getting a fix on the Academy’s comings and goings, but it seems to me more than likely you’re expected somewhere.”

He gave me the wildest look just then, as though I’d jostled him from a fever-dream. Shoved his glass away and sprang to his feet.

“What time is it?” he gasped.

“Ohhh, let’s see,” I said, drawing the watch from my pocket. “Twenty … twenty-two minutes past three.”

No reply.

“P.M.,” I added.

Behind those gray eyes, something began to kindle.

“Mr. Havens,” he announced, “I shall have to make good next time.”

“Oh, there’s always next time, Mr. Poe.” As calmly as he could, he put the leather pot back on his head, rebuckled the yellow-brass bullet buttons, grabbed his musket. Easily done: five months of cadet routine had stamped themselves on him. Walking, though, this was another thing.

He crossed the floor with great care, as though he were stepping over a creek bed, and upon reaching the door, he steadied himself against the lintel and, smiling, said: “Ladies. Gentlemen. I bid you good day.”

Then he flung himself through the open door. ■ Louis Bayard reads from this novel at the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (400 Cathedral Street) on June 13 at 6:30 p.m.

This excerpt is taken from the book The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard. Copyright 2006 by the author. Reprinted by arrangement of HarperCollins Publishers.

RWM_1-6th Vertical 4/25/06 4:02 PM Page 1

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Fall 2006 Sampler

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Sat., Sept 16 Directed by Cherri Cunningham Cragway 7:30 PM A musical play that’s a nostalgic look at the famed Royal Theater. If you were there, you’ll relive every minute of it. If you’ve only heard about it ...you’ll see what you missed.

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A MORTGAGE PROGRAM OF CDA / MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Governor

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Waste Not continued from page 77 But Baltimore and other East Coast cities still accept waste as a matter of fact, which limits the kind of creative thinking necessary to move a city toward a future without garbage.

“Waste incineration in Baltimore should be phased out in favor of more environmentally benign technologies,” says Brenda Platt, codirector of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Washington, D.C. “San Francisco is being innovative and trying new

tices, it would be a huge hurdle to reach to something like 70%.

“We have a diverse population where recycling isn’t a priority for some,” says Murrow. “However, we are making our quota for recycling, which lessens the amount of waste we have to dispose.”

But Reed believes that Baltimore can adopt basic zero-waste concepts from San Francisco and other progressive cities. Right now, Reed says, more than 80% of garbage can be recycled by fully utilizing technologies that already exist. “It is possible, but it

San Francisco is being innovative and trying new strategies in order to reach a zerowaste goal, and other U.S. urban areas can piggyback on San Francisco’s experience. strategies in order to reach a zero-waste goal, and other U.S. urban areas can piggyback on San Francisco’s experience.”

Robert Murrow, spokesperson for Baltimore’s Department of Public Works, believes that setting specific goals, including picking a target date, for achieving zero-waste status in Baltimore is unrealistic. He says right now the city is recycling about 30% of its waste, and, given its current systems and prac-

takes a commitment.” He points to the need for new recycling plants, designated containers in homes and businesses, sustained education efforts, compost facilities, and a commitment to conversion technologies.

The first step, though, is reconsidering, eliminating even, the idea of waste. The residents of a city committed to producing no new landfill have to believe that the items they are used to tossing in trashcans can be repackaged, reused, and recycled. ■

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METHANE GAS

resources

75 Waste Not The website for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (www.ilsr.org) contains information about promoting sustainable communities and downloadable papers on such topics as the economic benefits of recycling. Visit www.mdrecycles.org to learn about how businesses can arrange their own recycling.

83 What I’m Reading Our literary editor included the following books in this month’s column: White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway (Grove/Atlantic, 2006); Fortunate Son by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown and Company, 2006); The Wild Palms (If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem) by William Faulkner (Vintage, 1990, originally published in 1939); and Baltimore Noir edited by Laura Lippman (Akashic Books, 2006). ■

photo by Neil Meyerhoff

62 All Work and No Play OR A N Iof C playfulness WA S T E For tips on adding aG dash to your life, visit the website of The Center for a New American Dream (www.newdream.org), a Takoma Park nonprofit that has published the booklets Tips for Parenting in a Commercial Culture and Good Times Made Simple: The Lost Art of Fun. Playing for Keeps, a Chicago-based nonprofit that works to improve the quality of life for all children by promoting healthy, constructive play, has news, studies and resources—including games—for parents and teachers at www.playingforkeeps.org. The Institute for Play (www.instituteforplay.com) offers information and resources that aim to give adults and children a deeper understanding of the nature and importance of play. The institute produced The Promise of Play documentary series, which was first shown on PBS stations in 2000 and featured Dr. Bowen F. White’s book Why Normal Isn’t Healthy: How to Find Heart, Meaning, Passion & Humor on the Road Most Traveled (Hazelden Publishing & Educational Services, 2000), which argues that doing what millions of years of evolution have programmed us to do may be perfectly normal but isn’t perfectly healthy. A classic in the “why have fun” field is Growing Young

by Ashley Montagu (Bergin & Garvey Paperback, second edition, 1988). For an introduction to the idea of “flow,” an optimal creative and productive state, try Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Basic Books, reprint, 1998). For ideas for creative games and to learn why they are so satisfying, try Bernie DeKoven’s The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness (Writers Club Press, 2002).

For more information on recreation in the city, see page 52.

coming next month: BALTIMORE AND THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION: How will science change your world? with guest editor Arthur Caplan, national bioethics expert and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

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breathe books

urbanite marketplace

Greenbuilders, Inc. www.greenbuilders.com 410-833-4814 We specialize in straw bale construction MHIC# 86807 LEED AP

Baltimore’s only new age store with gifts, music, books, and more for the body, mind and spirit.

See our events at www.breathebooks.com Susan Weis, proprietress 810 W. 36th Street 410-235-READ (7323) store hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Sunday 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.

The Center for Italian Studies School of Language, Literature, and Culture

Non-credit courses of Italian LANGUAGE (beginner to advanced levels), LITERATURE, CULTURE (Dante, Italian Cities, Films, European Union).

New: Italian for Children.

To receive a brochure call 410-235-0006 www.centerforitalianstudies.it Courses are offered all year round.

In Roland Park area.

Free parking.

Chesapeake Residential Realty, Inc .

Making real estate work for you!

Free 1 year home warranty Call for details

410-675-0030 3220 O’Donnell St Canton, MD 21224

Elliot Zulver's

Taylor Rental Party Plus The most complete party rental store in the Baltimore area. Tents, tables, chairs, linens, place settings, grilles, moonbounces and more...

With an experienced sales staff, planning your party is a snap.

1 Beaver Court Cockeysville, Maryland 21030 www.PartyPlusRentals.com 410-771-1997

MIM

Classes forming for jewelry, crafts & fine arts.

701 S. Broadway Baltimore, MD 21231

DIRECT FROM THE MANUFACTURER!

• Crab Meat • Fish & Shrimp • Crab Cakes • Seafood Soups • Seafood Entrees & Appetizers ... and MORE! Open Monday - Friday 11am – 6pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm Phillips HQ – Locust Point 1215 E. Fort Avenue (443) 263 – 1314

Fine Swiss Chocolate Premium Estate Loose Tea Tea Lounge

We will customize the perfect gifts & packaging to suit your company’s or your special occasion needs.

62 village square – The Shops at Cross Keys Baltimore, MD 21210 410.532.8500

Stressed Out? Let Us Help.

your urban escape

Featuring lennie greene photography June 3 - July 8 Open Reception: June 3, 7 - 9 p.m. with Geoffrey Harris/sculpture & Mary Lou Nelson/collages

410-675-5500

Buy premium quality seafood

gallery M.I.M. Presents: The Baby Doll Garden

Fells Point Office

eastbankhair.com

Women’s Growth Center is a small, non-profit collective of therapists. We offer individual, couples, family, and group therapy for women and men, empowerment workshops and professional development.

Women’s Growth Center

3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 130 Baltimore, MD 21211 (410) 662-6623 www.madeinmetal.net

Since 1973 5209 York Road #B12 410-532-2GROW (2476)

By Appointment Only

Walbrook Mill & Lumber Baltimore City’s most complete building material source.

Supplying Baltimore’s builders & remodelers since 1918.

Historic millwork, lumber, doors, windows, hardware we have it all. Special orders gladly accepted. Free delivery.

WE KNOW RENOVATION. Walbrook Mill & Lumber Co 2636 W. North Ave 410 462-2200 www.walbrooklumber.com

stimulate your mind soothe your spirit find Jews of diverse background For more information on programs for Young Adults, email: eliza@bethambaltimore.org 2501 Eutaw Place in Historic Reservoir Hill email: office1@bethambaltimore.org phone 410-523-2446

bethambaltimore.org

CUSTOM BUILDERS Since 1976

Residential Commercial Design - Build Construction Management Systems Built Specialists

410-559-0000 1 6 0 5 U n i o n Av e n u e , B a l t i m o r e , M D 2 1 2 11

info@ashleyhomes.com

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Mufungo.com is a wonderful mix of unique and beautiful items from all over the world. . Talavera Pottery . Unique Jewelry . Art Pottery . Unique Gadgets . Cowboy Boot Purses, and more.

Mufungo.com is fun and the service is the best!

Live

To get a 10% discount, use code UR2006 at checkout.

Avanti Tours, Inc Presents:

next to the

Sicily 2006 September 5 to 15 Sicily shares the culture of mainland Italy, but, centuries of Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Arab, and Norman domination have made it truly unique. The tour includes four star hotels: breakfast, lunch, and dinner with wine; guides; land transportation; and museum fees.

For more information: 410-374-6268 jackandmary1@comcast.net

Ellen Lewis, Ph.D.

With 20+ years of practice in Baltimore, specializing in helping adults with anxiety, depression, ADD, and mind-body/ health concerns. GLBT sensitive.

Positive psychotherapy that affirms each individual’s potential.

Licensed Psychologist

(410) 433-1118 Village of Cross Keys 2 Hamill Road Suite 134 West Baltimore, MD 21210

Mount Vernon:

Spacious 2000+ SF Luxury Condos in Historic Bldg., priced in the $500’s.

Parking, walk to the LR & Train.

Top-of-the-Line Amenities.

Call Sandy or Tom at (410)821-1700 or (410)404-4710.

Mayor

and walk to the

Inner Harbor. contemporary loft condominiums, a residence unique in creativity, spaciousness and value Units available starting from the $300’s to the $600’s. One and two bedroom units, 2 penthouses with rooftop decks.

Sp eci al i zi n g i n Co n tai n er G ard en s & Urb an L an d scap i n g Commercial & Residential Design - Installation - Maintenance www.baltimoregarden.com 4007 Falls Road Baltimore, MD 21211 410-366-9001

Featuring high coffered ceilings with concrete beams,exposed brick and large wall windows. Solid oak wood floors throughout.

Yoga Drawing and Painting Come explore breathe as the baseline of creative inspiration. Discover how breathe flows into movement and then into the mark of the artist. Experienced Artists are finding new sources of inspiration and newcomers are discovering the joy of their authentic expression. Classes available at Charm City Yoga of Baltimore.

For more information e-mail info@charmcityyoga.com or call 443-386-6010, or visit www.charmcityyoga.com or www.yogadrawing.com

“We’re on it” Are you?

Are you in on the Secret?

Kitchen and baths designed with all granite countertops.

Upgraded stainless steel appliances, oak kitchen cabinets with glass inserts.

234 Holliday Street, on the corner of Holliday and Saratoga St. Open Saturday & Sunday 1-4 pm and by appointment only.

Office 410-522-6309 or 6310 Sandra, cell 410-961-5103 & Burt, cell 443-416-5951 brecocondos.com Long and Foster Realtors

www.buildingbaltimore.com

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eye to eye

The principal person in a picture is light.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Edouard Manet Painted on black velvet, this painting seems to grow out of the dark. It has been said that painting, sculpture, and architecture are principally about light. It is through light that we read our world, and, in this instance, the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world of marginalized subjects given majestic scale.

The artist, Tony Shore, is native to Baltimore and returned here after graduate school and spending a short while in New York.

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Tony Shore 10:30 p.m.

42 x 30 inches Acrylic on velvet Courtesy of Harry Merritt and Susan Vator

BALTIMORE’S NEWEST SUBARU DEALER

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Made in Downtown LA Vertically Integrated Manufacturing

Leotards, leggings, unitards, tights and many more dance-inspired pieces, now at our stores.

To learn more about our company, to shop online, and to find all store locations, visit our web site: www.americanapparel.net

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Baltimore Retail Location: Federal Hill 1125 Light St. Phone: (410) 244-7260 Coming Soonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Silver Spring 8701 Colesville Rd. Silver Spring, MD 20910