March 2006 Issue by Urbanite LLC

march 2006

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 21

e l s p n o pe ovatio inn es si su ideas

PLUS: fresh fiction from michael kun â&#x20AC;˘ new food for foodies: specialty salts â&#x20AC;˘ mario livio on the final frontier

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contents

15 what you’re writing 21 corkboard 23 have you heard … 27 food: with a grain of salt anne haddad

31 baltimore observed: the city of tomorrow jason tinney

37 space: designed for healing karen baxter

43 encounter: ladies’ night jessica leshnoff

47 what’s next?

edited by elizabeth a. evitts and joan jacobson

65 poetry

lia purpura

67 poetry

jane hirshfield

69 fiction: corrections to my memoirs michael kun

75 sustainable city: mother nature cleans up cate han and stacey seltzer

79 out there: q & a with atrophysicist mario livio nicky penttila

83 in review 87 what i’m reading

91 resources 94 eye to eye

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

Buying a home is a big deal. Financing it shouldn’t be.

Urbanite Issue 21 March 2006 Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth A. Evitts Elizabeth@urbanitebaltimore.com Executive Editor Heather Harris Heather@urbanitebaltimore.com Assistant Editor Marianne Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Copy Editor Angela Davids/Alter Communications Contributing Editors William J. Evitts Joan Jacobson Susan McCallum-Smith Contributing Writer Jason Tinney Art Director Alex Castro

CALL M&T TODAY TO FIND OUT MORE.

Production Manager Lisa Macfarlane Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com Traffic/Production Coordinator Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com Production and Design Assistance Ida Woldemichael Web Coordinator/Office Assistant Adam Schoonover Adam@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Account Executive Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com

Whether you’re buying your first home or a larger home, M&T makes home financing easy and affordable. Our wide range of programs feature low downpayments with available closing cost financing, fast approvals and competitive rates. We also offer a variety of refinance options. At M&T we understand buying a home is a big deal, we just think financing it shouldn’t be. Call M&T today at (410) 354-8720.

Account Executives Darrel Butler Darrel@urbanitebaltimore.com Keri Haas Keri@urbanitebaltimore.com Marketing Kathleen Dragovich Kathleen@urbanitebaltimore.com Interns Sid Bodalia Carey Polis Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger 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. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2006, by Urbanite LLC. All Rights Reserved. Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at 410-243-2050.

urbanite march 06

editor’s note

quotes BALTIM ORE

If you don’t visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.

Trend is not destiny. —René Dubos, ecologist

photo by Sam Holden

—Thomas L. Friedman, American journalist, critic, and author

Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time. —Bill Gates, American cofounder of Microsoft

e’ve been thinking a lot about trends at Urbanite lately. For the last several months, as we prepared this annual “up-and-coming” issue, we decided to expand last year’s concept—where we profiled only individuals—and put the individual’s achievements into context. What are the overarching trends that are affecting the way we live and work? Who are the individuals responding locally to these trends with innovative ideas and approaches? By taking this bird’s-eye view and asking what’s next for cities in general, and for Baltimore in particular, we realized that the single most significant trend impacting our local lives isn’t local at all; rather, it is the expanding global community. Globalization is transforming the way we live, work, and communicate, and it is shifting the way cities everywhere function. So who is ahead of the trend? Who understands the future of cities best? As I write this, I am attending a conference in Miami on sustainable architecture. Gathered from places near and far, the professionals talk about the realities of their urban environments, and the dispatches from cities around the globe are often frightening: shrinking energy resources for higher-than-ever consumption rates, car-clogged metropolises, socioeconomic divides where hermetically sealed downtowns are encircled by slums ... the list goes on. But then Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and Jeremy Harris, former mayor of Honolulu, talk of how they, with their citizens, transformed their cities from poorly planned, highly congested, poverty- and trash-laden places to sustainable communities. (We wrote about Curitiba, Brazil, in Issue 1, which is available online.) And again, my thinking returns to trends. What does it take to generate true change? It starts by realizing, in the words of Dubos, that trend is not destiny. So while we dedicate the feature article in this issue to some of the trends that are impacting us now, it is important to remember that we have the power to change course. The leaders and citizens of Curitiba and Honolulu saw the trend towards polluted, lonely, disjointed cities, and they chose to alter that. How did these two leaders do it? They decided it was achievable, and they encouraged their citizens to believe the same. “Don’t think it is impossible,” Lerner told a full auditorium. “Understand that you don’t have to have all the answers at the start. Just start. Be okay with simplicity and imperfection. The people will tell you how to adjust your trajectory.”

—Elizabeth A. Evitts

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. —T. S. Eliot, American poet, dramatist, and literary critic

The economy is like a corn popper in which not all of the kernels are popping simultaneously; but all the time corn is popping. —Jane Jacobs, American-born Canadian writer and activist

I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at the moment. —Bono, Irish lead singer of U2

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea. —Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door. —Albert Camus, French author and philosopher

Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade. —Constance Baker Motley, American civil rights activist, judge, lawyer, and New York state senator

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contributors

behind this issue

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

photo by Adam Schoonover

John Dean “It’s exciting that we have so many people in Baltimore who are poised to make a difference on the national stage,” says John Dean, who shot the portraits of the up-andcomers in this month’s feature using a large format camera. Dean earned his BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1977; he specializes in photographing people for editorial, corporate, and institutional clients. Since 1995, he has produced educational videos to accompany exhibitions for museums such as The Walters Art Museum and the Maryland Historical Society. Dean lives in Keswick with his wife, artist Ellen Burchenal, and their son, Charlie. In his spare time, Dean sings jazz standards with his band, The Big Hearts.

Joan Jacobson Joan Jacobson has been a regular contributor and sometime editor for Urbanite since she co-authored Wised Up, the 2004 memoir of FBI informant Charlie Wilhelm. For this issue, Jacobson co-edited the feature article “What’s Next?” (p. 47), which, she believes, captures “the varied talents of Baltimoreans who give this town its sense of place and hope.” For twenty-eight years, Jacobson reported for Baltimore’s Evening Sun and The Baltimore Sun. She now works as a freelance writer and researcher and recently completed a study of illegal slot machines in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for The Abell Foundation.

Chris Mucci Illustrator Chris Mucci is interested in the way kids interact with the natural world: “Children tend to have a better connection with nature than adults … they rely more on instinct, like an animal does.” Mucci, who earned a BFA in illustration from MICA in 2005, often uses feelings and images from his childhood in his work. His illustrations accompany this month’s fiction piece (p. 69). Mucci’s work has been exhibited at MICA and at a three-person show at The Ottobar in April 2004. He lives in Hampden.

Nicky Penttila A Baltimore resident since 2003, Nicky Penttila considers science one of her paths not taken. Penttila interviewed Mario Livio for this month’s issue (“Q & A with Astrophysicist Mario Livio,” p. 79), and agrees with Livio’s comment that Hubble has brought outer space into people’s homes: “Hubble’s images help us to see how these far-out theories really work.” She spent more than fifteen years working at newspapers on both coasts, most recently writing editorials for The Baltimore Sun. Now self-employed, Penttila is trying her hand at writing fiction, in addition to the facts.

Marc Alain, who designed this month’s cover, graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003 with a BFA in photography. He is the cofounder of the artist collective Splotch (www.splotches.org), which holds exhibitions and curates a juried online publication featuring art from around the globe. In 2005, Alain won first place in the “Art of Human Life” category for Esquire Japan’s annual digital photography competition. His work has also been featured in Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts, Radar, Look-Look magazine, The NOWW Book of Contemporary Photography, and mooncruise magazine. Currently he splits his week between working for fashion photographer David LaChapelle and photographer Ryan McGinley in New York City.

photo by Aiko

photo by Penny Forrester

with illustrator marc alain

his cover has been a lot of fun. I always enjoy the challenge of trying to come up with something that is eye-catching and conveys a message. I think this cover has been more challenging than the other two Urbanite covers I did (April 2005 and October 2005) because the phrase “What’s next?” is so open. I didn’t want the cover to answer the question, but rather depict the idea of the question itself. Alex Castro, Urbanite’s art director, has a great eye for what is working and what is not. When we communicate, we are both on the same wavelength, pushing and pulling the idea to make it stronger. When Alex approached me to do the cover, he told me he wanted something “explosive” in terms of the future and the city of Baltimore itself. I proposed six sketches of various figures in silhouette and Alex ended up picking the one I thought was strongest. Once Alex approved the sketch, I concentrated on building that image. Originally, the silhouetted figure was made of ripped magazine pages layering guitars, politicians shaking hands, planes, fire, etc. The intent of the torn edges was to show how one new idea replaces the next, and these trends are disposable and temporary. Unfortunately, the idea wasn’t being conveyed visually, and the composition was too cluttered, losing the figure amidst the layers. After scrapping the torn layers, I thought the city itself would be a more appropriate symbol. I sent it over to Alex, and he said it was almost there, but it had a dark mood and needed to be brighter, more colorful and optimistic. That’s when I went back in, hand-colorizing the buildings, sky, and background with pinks and blues. If you look at the sketch and look at the final cover, they are worlds apart! For me, the connection between the cover and this issue’s theme is the figure’s body language. The silhouette is a combination of two photographs of a friend of mine to create the right feeling. The hand raised to the face can be read several ways: Is she thinking? Is she looking out onto the city and into the future? Does she have a headache? Is she planning the next move? Does she already know what lies ahead? The layers of collage blur the depth and reality of the scene. Even the sky is uncertain … Is it twilight or sunrise? Is there hope for a brand-new day or an end to yesterday? Humble progress. Baltimore is such an amazing city with the same potential New York had during the late ’70s and early ’80s for young artists, musicians, and thinkers to thrive. Low rent, spacious apartments, diverse culture, danger, and the surrounding universities attracting fresh young minds from all over the country can rejuvenate the city, allowing a productive, creative environment. I only fear that, like New York, once the artists start thriving, everything else follows: rent increases, cost of living rises, the poor get pushed out, Wal-Mart opens on every street corner, and the city turns into one big Inner Harbor. I also fear rising tuition costs will make art even more elitist, where only the wealthy have the opportunity to formally study art. As long as Baltimore embraces the fact that it is unique, I think all will be fine. —Marc Alain w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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update

what you’re saying

january 2006

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 19

are suburbs the new cities? are cities the new suburbs? THIS MONTH’S GUEST EDITOR KARRIE JACOBS | COMING OF AGE IN COLUMBIA AN ESSAY BY STEPHEN AMIDON DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH A SURPRISING FIND FOR FOODIES | OFF THE GRID MARYLAND’S NEW SOLAR HOUSE

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What You’re Saying is the place for letters from our readers. 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 51058, Baltimore, MD 21211. Submissions should include your name, address, and daytime phone number; they may be edited for length and clarity.

Not Too Busy to Write I enjoy reading Urbanite each month and wish it were a weekly! I have learned so much about Charm City from your magazine after moving here one year ago. I often take copies with me on trips back to Maine to share with friends. I absolutely love Stephen Dunn. He is a kind, kind man and an amazingly perceptive, astute, and accomplished poet. I was pleased to find one of his poems in your January issue and thrilled that I had not read it before. “Poem for People Who Are Understandably Too Busy to Read Poetry” is a superb piece and the perfect selection for Urbanite. —Elsey Curtis is a retired educator who now spends her days caring for her granddaughter. She lives in Baltimore City. The writer penned the following poem as a homage to Stephen Dunn.

Reading Stephen Dunn My attorney-daughter (brow arched) dares me to explain, “He’s your literary heartthrob?” then smirks, “literary heartthrob?” She opens our city magazine to read his poem over breakfast of espresso light; darkly rich or creamy imagery could be lost on her though not on me whom he once advised at a summer workshop: “If your husband can’t understand your poetry, seek a wider audience.” My daughter laughs not where Dunn allows but early when she first connects dots in space his commas generate, “How does a poem make us happy so that we want to cry?” As if possessed she requests the kitchen shears, cuts around my heart, then stuffs a piece from Urbanite in her new green bag she takes to work. Stephen Dunn guessed she might.

poster courtesy of the Food Network

Your Space

Since Duff Goldman, the owner of Charm City Cakes, was featured in our March 2005 “Up-and-Coming” issue, the baker has received a lot of attention. In January 2006, he was a guest on the Food Network Challenge, a show that pits some of the nation’s top culinary artists against each other in themed competitions. Duff was a participant in the “Mystery Cake” and “Elvis Birthday Cake” episodes. Duff was chosen because of his excellent reputation and his fun, irreverent personality, says Allison Page, the Food Network’s vice president of programming. Billboards and commercials for the show cropped up all over the country this winter, including in New York’s Times Square. The baker also appeared in an episode of the Food Network show Sugar Rush, hosted by Warren Brown of the Washington, D.C., bakery Cake Love, which aired at the beginning of February. For the “Fire & Ice” episode, Duff and Sherry Chambers, one of Charm City Cake’s sculptors, created an ice cake in the shape of a penguin. Business has been so good for the bakery that they relocated to a larger space—the former Angel Falls Studio in Remington—in December 2005. And keep your eyes peeled for Duff on the Food Network in the future: He is currently in negotiations with the cable network for a reality show that will capture the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life at the bakery.

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what you’re writing

epiphany I was born with one hand: my right. My left arm ends at about the middle of my forearm. I never thought much about it. When I went to nursery school, they told my mother that my sleeve would have to be pinned over to conceal the stub. She refused. I guess the school needed the kids, because they gave in and my arm was always exposed to everyone. Has been ever since. I just adapted and went on. Played softball, some football, went fly-fishing, worked on my car and my house. My aunts on my father’s side were always trying to fix it. When I was about 14, my aunt Rosa, a sweet, well-to-do Virginia widow, arranged for me to be fitted over at Kernan Hospital with an artificial arm made by Dankmeyer. It had a pair of opposing stainless steel hooks that could open and close on each other by using the pressure of my right shoulder. It had a funny, plastic smell. I never liked it, and I never really wanted it after I found out all the things I couldn’t do with it. It was like a club on the end of my arm and I quickly stopped wearing it. Came across it many years later when we were cleaning out my mother’s house in Parkville. Still had that funny, plastic smell. I put it in the trash. Last year I hurt my middle finger putting a spring on the idler tension arm in my lawn tractor.

It was cut pretty badly, but I’ve had worse. After ten days, it still hurt and was a little swollen. I went to the doctor—a doctor old enough to have worked with Clara Barton. He said I had a granuloma, whatever that is, and sent me to a hand specialist to have it cut out. The next day, thinking I didn’t really want a doctor cutting me, I went to a big modern place in Lutherville. Waiting room about as big as my house with twenty to thirty patients waiting for one of the eight or so doctors in the practice. Most of the patients had slings, bandages, braces, or those carpal tunnel things. When I walked in, all eyes turned to me, and I knew they were thinking, “Oh, god. He’s here for his post-amputation visit. Poor guy.” And I was thinking “Goddamn, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.” Anyway, the doctor turned out to be about 15 years old. A Doogie Howser. He sent me home with a Band-Aid, saying the granuloma would heal itself. Back out through the waiting room I went, where everybody was still telling themselves it could be worse, after seeing me, which is exactly what I was telling myself after seeing them. —Tom Woolfolk is a landscape architect and native Baltimorean. He lives in Parkton with his wife, Sheila.

“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). Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 or to WhatYoureWriting@urbanite baltimore.com. Please keep submissions under five hundred words. 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.

Topic

Deadline

Publication

Playtime Awe Humility Commitment Blunder Duplicity Grace

Mar 13, 2006 Apr 24, 2006 May 22, 2006 June 26, 2006 July 24, 2006 Aug 28, 2006 Sept 25, 2006

June 2006 July 2006 Aug 2006 Sept 2006 Oct 2006 Nov 2006 Dec 2006

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what you’re writing Lincoln’s birthday, 1972. The clock on the mantle rang its first verse of Winchester chimes—a quarter past noon—and we were between rounds of Jeopardy hosted by the unflappable Art Fleming. My mom loved Art Fleming. Although Mom was the only one who could answer a question that was not from the sports category, my sisters and I watched it as well. The cloud of smoke about to change our lives sneaked through the front door, down the hallway, and hid around the corner before bursting into the living room. It scattered us like roaches when you flip on a kitchen light at midnight. We thought the furnace had exploded. Quickly, my mom got my sisters and grandmother to safety in the backyard before returning to the house. I ran this way and that, found myself in the basement, ran back up the stairs to the hall. The smoke blocked retreat from the second floor. My mom was still up there, somewhere, battling. In the street, I watched flames shoot from our front windows; reddish orange tongues darted in and out, spitting at the glass until it cracked into shards that fell shattering onto the sidewalk. Engine 12 arrived and the firemen did their jobs with axes and hoses. One of those terrible things that happen to other people was happening to us. I waited. My eyes found the face of a friend in the crowd. His expression mirrored my misery.

Moments later my mom, her face and hair charred black and gray, ran out the front door, tripped, and fell with a thud I can still feel. Although my father’s father was there along with nearly all of our neighbors, no one comforted her; no one needed to comfort her, because although clearly in shock, bleeding and bruised, she remained dry-eyed and strong, so very strong. She spoke calmly to the firemen, and one handed her the charred black box of important papers they’d retrieved from her bedroom. Then she turned and saw my father jogging with his rhythmic limp towards her. She ran a few steps and collapsed, weeping, in his arms—those arms with a dozen pieces of tiny steel buried somewhere in them, arms that would always be stronger than mine. I’d never seen my mother cry. Nor had I seen my parents show the slightest affection, the type of warmth and love I read about or saw in movies. They laughed all the time, but hugs, kisses, and dinner and dancing were not something they did, not a part of our family dynamic. Yet watching them comfort each other, while the firemen tossed our burned belongings on the sidewalk, our home still smoldering, I knew we were going to be fine.

Her purpose was simple: to be the eyes for those who could not see. But it became more complicated than that. The day we learned she was returning to live with us was filled with indescribable emotions of utter joy; the kind you can’t fathom until you experience them; the kind that make you notice the smell of brisk air and the rustling leaves on a crisp fall day. What did we do before she was part of our lives? She wasn’t picky; she ate anything. She was nicknamed “the helpin’ girl” since one of her favorite tasks was to help bring in groceries from the van. She never had enough toys! She’d get a new one daily and forget the pile accumulated in the corner. Playing with her was therapeutic; you forgot what phone call you were going to make, what problem needed your attention, or what horrible news you’d heard. She’d sit smiling at you with those big brown eyes, as if to say, “Give me five minutes and I’ll let you into my world.” She became the constant in my life; knowing me meant knowing her. Dedication, loyalty, excitement, understanding, patience, and determination were all a part of her joie de vivre and, in time, these all became mine. However, when a family member is sick, a physical ache consumes your body, your mind, and ultimately your world. You reflect on your time spent

with them and what you would have done differently if you could have known this was how it would all unfold. I’d never believed that angels watch over us. “Show me proof,” I’d thought. “I need some sort of evidence.” Well, ten years of living with one is pretty hard evidence to ignore. Some angels visit us in times of tragedy, some talk us through difficult life decisions, and some push us to move on when we think we can’t take another step. To me, the evidence is as clear as the first break of daylight during an intense coastal sunrise. My angel has a name, a face, a personality—a story, a purpose, and a mission. Glory touched my heart the moment I began working with her at the Guide Dog Foundation as a “puppy-walker,” and after she “failed” her training, we welcomed her into our home. We went out of the kennel and into the world, scared and unsure, but we were in it together. Glory’s role was not simply guide, but also teacher. It took me only ten years to learn the true meaning of her name. Glory: an indescribable emotion, a way of life, an angel.

—Michael Eckhardt is a Baltimore resident who enjoys reading and writing.

epiphany

—Naomi Susman, a New York native, adopted Glory after training her to be a guide dog for the blind. Glory, a beloved family pet for nine years, was recently diagnosed with bone cancer.

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urbanite march 06

Susan lives at Millrace Condos in Clipper Mill

what you’re writing

After graduating from college in 1973, I worked at a life insurance company for long hours, little pay, and a boatload of bureaucracy and discrimination. I had serious doubts about what made living worthwhile. I looked at people’s faces as they drove around the Beltway. Is this what people did for forty years? How could they bear it? I found a way home to myself by finding my way into the earth. A friend who had a serious health problem, caused mainly by poor eating habits, changed his diet and was better in no time. This made a riveting impression on me. Maybe I too could take the reins of my own life? I devoured Adelle Davis’ book Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit and made a tremendous change in my diet. Everything alive is connected, I realized. Poison the earth and you poison your own body. Given my limited income, I decided to learn how to grow my own food. I started gardening on borrowed lots, with no idea what I was doing and not much success. Nonetheless, I liked working in the earth. It grounded me and gave me something to do with my body that felt useful. Eventually, I managed to rent a rowhouse with a small backyard. My landlord, Mr. Bolyard, a soft-hearted ex-Army sergeant from West Virginia, had a corner lot with a beautiful garden. He allowed me to dig up my entire backyard—and gave me some

seedlings to transplant. When they survived, he proclaimed, “You must have a green thumb.” His words were a green light. I was desperate to be good at something. Here was my chance. Reflecting on that generous remark from a kindly older man, it occurs to me that many of the turning points in our lives result from seemingly small and random events. And very likely, we ourselves have unknowingly inspired others. It is so important to be present to life—to pay attention to ourselves and others. Limitless grace is always around us. We don’t have to do anything momentous; we just have to show up. As a friend of mine observes, “We’re not human doings, we’re human beings.” Following the garden path led me to a career as a gardening writer, a teacher, a host of an organic growing series on Maryland Public Television in the early ’80s, and now a practitioner of a cuttingedge therapy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those tiny seedlings Mr. Bolyard handed me were cosmos plants.

We sold freeze-dried ice cream and tiger’s eye, and told a million kids, “No, the seals aren’t dead; they can rest on the bottom for twenty minutes.” We set the solar system fill-in-the-blank game to U_ANUS and ate our lunch on the catwalk above the African diorama, our feet dangling over The Lioness Stalks Her Prey. We took walks in the park and bought piroshkies on 9th Avenue, and all the while I watched her, her thin lips and pale eyes, her wild red hair loose on good days or yanked back with a

rubber band when she was depressed. I studied the half-dozen rings in her ears and the one in her nose like stars, trying to read my future. Did I have a shot? Would she let me in? Could I hope to touch the curve of her ribs? The day she came to work with that once feral mob of hair close-cropped to her skull, I had my answer. The alligators slept on their rocks; the octopus hid in his cave.

city_lit_urbanite_final.pdf

2/7/06

epiphany

—Tina Beneman still has her heart and her hands in the earth and enjoys officiating weddings and inspiring positive change through holographic repatterning.

—Joseph Young lives in Hampden.

9:14:53 PM

CMY

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ssibilities e challenges and po Examine some of th e 2006 th coming decade at for Baltimore in the out Ab ries Straight Talk Odyssey Lecture Se banite, Ur s, cosponsored by Baltimore. The serie ext: A nt Co th “Baltimore in kicks off March 7 wi er dirm fo y” by Neil Hertz, Photographic Journe ieger Kr s U’ ities Center at JH rector of the Human Sciences. School of Arts and mpus rsity, Homewood Ca Johns Hopkins Unive Street 3400 North Charles April 25 Tuesdays, March 7– 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. parking); (or $220 including $188 for the series series tir e-register for en e participants must pr n form tio tra download regis Call 410-516-8516 or hu.edu from www.odyssey.j

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ght of satire abaret is a ni C it H e h T : 7/11 o play, and a ’50s-era radi s, ng so g in ur feat from indepens productions ou or m hu r othe in the area. eater groups th d an m fil dent s for the inde s to raise fund lp he t ch en hi ev The Musical, w 7/11: The Hit pendent film son this July. tt t at The Pa er bu de s it es mak erson ce at The Patt an lli A e iv at re C Avenue 3134 Eastern March 23 7:30 p.m. ents bers and stud $15; $12 mem 410-276-1651 lliance.org www.creativea

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Fine Arts Buildin g 1000 Hilltop Circ le Through March 18 Tuesday throug h Saturday, 10 a. m. to 5 p.m. Free 410-455-3188 or 410-455-ARTS www.umbc.edu/ arts

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Explore the fusi on of sight and sound in electronic media with What Soun d Does a Color Make? Th is traveling exhi bition is showing at UMBC ’s Center for Art and Visual Culture.

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sialtimore mu neration of B ge t ar ew p n , a ay te D unity Celebra usic: Comm M ’ n in A k a th M ie es Fort cians at Concert Seri l al H r ee fr ve e ri d of the Sh ivities inclu a, ebration. Act ring Orchestr niversary Cel the FAME St y b s a, tr ce es an h perform the Arts Orc e School for a the Baltimor s, as well as g Arts Choru n So n ew ca N n e and th hich childre ng zoo, in w musical petti ruments. lay with inst handle and p University ns Hopkins h Jo l, al H r Shrive harles Street 3400 North C March 26 2 to 4 p.m. 45 or 410-367-72 410-625-0403 oncerts.org www.shriverc

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urbanite march 06

have you heard . . . to see how major news stories are presented by different newspapers,” says Joe Urschel, Newseum executive director and senior vice president. The Newseum, a museum dedicated to the study of news and media, opened in Arlington, Virginia, in 1997; that facility was closed in 2002 and a new physical museum will open on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in mid-2007. At that time, some of the front pages will be displayed at street level on Pennsylvania Avenue and in an indoor gallery; the complete set will still be available online. www. newseum.org/todaysfrontpages.

Boutique … “I wanted to give the younger crowd in Baltimore another option besides the mall,” says Alana Madill, owner of Catapult boutique, which opened in December. Catapult, which shares store space with independent music store once.twice:sound, carries vintage and small-designer clothing (like Brian Lichtenberg, James Jeans, Taverniti So Jeans, and LA Made), all handpicked by Madill herself, a veteran of the Baltimore-and-beyond thrift store scene. Also for sale are sunglasses, bags, vintage jewelry, shoes,

Books … One of the best things about a good book is sharing it with other readers. Now, bibliophiles can follow their books’ travels with the help of the web-based project BookCrossing. Ron Hornbaker, a partner in a software and Internet development company, created BookCrossing as a way to encourage and track the sharing of books. Anyone who wants to share a book with a friend, a stranger, or the world at large by leaving it in a library or coffeeshop or even on a park bench can register at BookCrossing’s website and then “release” the book “into the wild.” Whoever discovers

the book (the “catcher”) can go to the website to see where the book has been and make a journal entry to let the original owner (the “releaser”) know where it landed. The catcher can then pass the book on to someone else, thereby continuing the chain. The service is free, and users can search for released books nearby—a search for Baltimore at press time showed that there were more than six hundred registered users in the city, and that about thirty books had been released but not yet caught. www.bookcrossing.com.

and boots—even large sizes, says Madill, which are typically difficult to find. Madill also stocks the work of several local designers, and she believes the oneon-one relationships she has with them make her boutique special. “They’re trying to make it, too,” she says. The two shops split the space right down the middle, and the colorful clothes and jewelry nicely complement the linear shelves of records and CDs. In fact, it makes a perfect his/hers outing. 519 North Charles Street; 410-244-7373.

photo by Phil O’Reilly, © BookCrossing.com

photo by Daniel Janssen

Media … In today’s world of shrinking and homogenized media, it’s more important than ever to keep the big picture in mind. In Today’s Front Pages, an online exhibit created by the Newseum, more than four hundred front pages of newspapers from around the world are posted on the exhibit’s website daily. Viewers can click on each page to get a closer view, then access each newspaper’s website for more information and articles. “The daily front pages exhibit is part of our mission to try to create better educated news consumers, allowing them

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The talks deal with such relevant topics as the reconstruction of The Rotunda, Baltimore’s Master Plan, the redesign and expansion of the Baltimore School for the Arts, and the proposed Charles Street trolley. Someone intimately involved in each project speaks, and the audience is welcome to ask questions. The hour-long presentations are free, and they provide anyone interested in the future of Baltimore with a better understanding of where the city is headed. 410-539-7772; www.baltimorearchitecture.org.

photo by Adam Schoonover

Coffeeshop ... Themar Long wanted to create a soothing space for relaxation and community-building. To achieve that, the former New York and Alabama resident opened the Peace & A Cup of Joe coffeeshop in Ridgely’s Delight last October, and since then the coffeehouse has become a neighborhood hotspot. Ridgely’s Delight residents, along with students and doctors from the nearby University of Maryland hospital, stop by frequently, and attendance has been good at the eatery’s many events, including live jazz almost every Friday evening, the neighborhood’s monthly game night, and art openings to introduce new work

Restaurant ... Even though Parkside Restaurant opened on Friday the 13th in January, its beginning has been anything but unlucky. The restaurant, which occupies the first floor of a building owned and occupied by Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, already has regulars and is so busy on the weekends that reservations are a must. Parkside Restaurant derives its name from its location at the intersection of East Baltimore Street and Linwood Avenue at the northeast corner of Patterson Park.

The menu offers American traditional cuisine and standout dishes include Shore Boy Meatloaf, Monkfish Bouillabaisse, Chessie Gumbo, and classic Southern Fried Chicken. Chef Jason Carver, an Eastern Shore native, crafts most of the dishes from scratch. As a result, Gary LaFrance (co-owner with wife Jennifer) says, “We tell people that we hope they’re not expecting their meal in ten or fifteen minutes because it takes a little longer to prepare. But it’s worth it.” 2901 East Baltimore Street; 410-522-5893.

by local artists, which hangs on the coffeehouse walls. Long recently introduced a frequent buyers card for regulars, and he gives new neighborhood residents free gifts of tea and coffee. Patrons can choose from coffee, espresso, tea, and chai, as well as soup, chili, and breakfast and lunch sandwiches. The space is cozy; it includes a second-floor lounge area complete with a fireplace and comfortable chairs. In the future, Long hopes to expand hours, offer live music at lunchtime, and start a poetry night. 713 West Pratt Street; 410-244-8858.

photo by Adam Schoonover

Lectures … Instead of staring at your desk from noon to 1 p.m., use your lunch hour wisely: The Baltimore Architecture Foundation kicks off its free Spring Forum Series this month. Every Wednesday at noon, from March 29 to May 17, the public is invited to bring their lunches to the Johns Hopkins Downtown Center at Charles and Fayette streets for presentations about Baltimore’s built environment. The foundation’s president, Joe Clarke, says, “We wanted to do something to attract people who work downtown but don’t stick around in the evenings.”

photo courtesy of Downtown Partnership of Baltimore

have you heard . . .

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

PS-2006-0003 Urbanite

1/19/06

4:01 PM

Page 1

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urbanite march 06

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

food

by anne haddad

photography by gail burton

With a Grain of Salt Gray, red, pink, smoked … exotic salts are the latest culinary trend

Above: Barbara Lahnstein, owner of Neopol Savory Smokery in Belvedere Square, smokes sea salt with ﬂavors like lemon oil and rosemary, and red wine and juniper berries.

A spoiled, aristocratic houseguest in an old French film insists on only sea salt, sprinkled on after the food has been cooked. The brief scene stuck with me, partly because I laughed at the chef ’s reaction: “She can eat like everyone else,” he says. “Diets I can accept, but not obsessions.” But I could also understand an obsession with a particular salt. I love salt—on food, rather than in it. It doesn’t have to be a lot. A few flakes are enough. I just like to see them and feel them. And I am not alone. Salt is both the oldest and newest thing in food. The trend now is to use hand-harvested, natural, and smoked salts and sprinkle them on top, or at the very end of cooking, and eat the salt before it has a chance to dissolve. “I think most people are looking for that quality, for a salt that doesn’t dissolve into food,” says Rob Seideman, a Colorado chef and consultant who started Salt Traders in 2002 to sell all the exotic salts he was finding around the world. “At that one lucky moment, you bite into that salt crystal and it just sends a wonderful burst of saltiness in your mouth,” Seideman says.

For a start, open a jar of fleur de sel—literally, the salt “bloom” that forms atop shallow pools of seawater along the Ile de Re, off the coast of France. This salt is pretty easy to find in Baltimore groceries that sell gourmet foods. So delicate, it’s used even in desserts and candies. Or try Celtic gray salt, with its irregular crystals and flakes, residue of seawater with a kind of lunar hue. For more color and texture, try Peruvian pink salt, Cyprus black salt flakes, Hawaiian Red Alaea salt, and the apricot-colored Australian Murray River salt flakes. Some salts are flakes, some are crystals, and the sizes of the flakes and crystals vary. Texture is everything, Seideman says, because the flavors of the salts are not that different. But there is one exception—smoked salts. For deep flavor, try the salt that started it all: Danish Viking-Smoked Salt, made by a Dane who rekindled his ancestors’ method of letting seawater evaporate from an iron vessel over a fire. While it can be a challenge to find some of these specialty salts locally, energetic and passionate salt sellers are working hard to change that. In Baltimore, Barbara Lahnstein, owner of Neopol Savory w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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Smokery in Belvedere Square Market, has added a line of salts to the other smoked delicacies she features. In her red smokery, trays of California sea salt that have been wet down with oils and herbs, like lemon and rosemary, slowly develop flavor over smoldering logs of maple or cherry wood. For Lahnstein, salt is a return to purity of flavor, of using an ancient mineral to bring out the true flavor of a fresh meat or vegetable. She remembers standing in a gourmet store in New York, looking at a dizzying array of foods and flavorings. “I almost got sick. It’s overwhelming,” she said. “There is so much out there. But what is the thing that everyone has in the kitchen? Salt … and pepper.” She tasted smoked salts and thought she could do much better. That is, she added more flavorings, such as red wine and juniper berry. I started my own salt odyssey at Neopol with a sampling of five different smoked salts, with a quick stop at Ceriello Fine Foods next door for fresh chicken breasts, a steak, and some ground beef. I went home and turned on the electric grill. The red wine and juniper berry smoked salt was perfect for the steak and burgers, sprinkled on just before grilling. The chipotle-lime smoked salt gave the chicken breast a flavor that did not scream southwest, but hinted at it, and it worked great the

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next day, cold, added to a salad dressed with cilantro lime dressing. Neopol’s lemon-rosemary smoked salt was just right for potatoes cut into medium chunks and roasted for thirty minutes. I also roasted other vegetables—eggplant, fennel, and cauliflower—on which I sprinkled a salt-and-herb blend I saw at the butcher counter in Ceriello. With nothing but salt, meat, potatoes, and vegetables, I had an incredible dinner on the table in thirty minutes. I have never been more ready for a food craze. I’m putting salt on everything and buying just about anything that has it—artisan butters, a chocolate bar, and even luxury caramels. Chocolate with gray sea salt sounded weird even to me. I probably would not have bought it for myself, but my husband slipped a $6.99 chocolate bar purchased at Ma Petite Shoe in Hampden into my Christmas stocking. This Barcelona Bar, by Vosges Haut-Chocolat, was out of this world. The French have always valued good sea salts. Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a microbiologist who lives in Mount Washington, usually brings home a few jars of fleur de sel whenever she visits her native Lyon, France. “In France, it’s one-tenth the price,” she says, but admits to spending several dollars here at Wegmans in Hunt Valley for French artisan butter

5:07 PM

that has crystals of fleur de sel in it. I found a similar butter made by the Vermont Butter & Cheese Company at Eddie’s of Roland Park on Charles Street for $7.99 for the equivalent of one stick— except it was in a pretty round wood basket. You can’t think of this as standard “lightly salted” butter. “It’s more like the price of a very good cheese,” DiRuggiero says. When I told DiRuggiero a few days later about the Peruvian pink salt I ordered from Salt Traders, it was the first she’d heard of it. But she knew exactly what made it pink. Seideman had already told me that it was something naturally occurring, which he didn’t understand fully. He knew one thing—unlike the red clay deposits in the Hawaiian red salt, and the activated charcoal that makes the Cyprus salt black—the pink color does not sink to the bottom when you dissolve Peruvian salt in a glass of water. DiRuggiero smiled with recognition. The pink comes from Halobacterium, a salt-loving singlecelled micro-organism classified as Archaea. DiRuggiero studies DNA repair mechanisms and genome evolution in Archaea, and she is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. In case you are wondering: Yes, the halobacteria could rehydrate if you sprinkle pink salt on something moist. And yes, it is completely harmless. Halobacterium is, in fact, what makes a flamingo pink, hon.

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Connect with your inner artist, or keep ahead of your ever-changing world.

As one of the leading art colleges in the country, MICA’s Division of Continuing Studies offers an array of courses, workshops and certificate programs. Each taught by expert instructors in an environment that both nurtures creativity and challenges the idea of personal exploration. Our programs in Fine Arts help adults develop their artistic abilities and bring inspiration to their lives. Our Professional Development programs keep professionals ahead of change and in front of industry trends.And the Entrepreneurship Program, an innovative education partnership with the University of Baltimore, provides the business tools needed by art-based entrepreneurs.

For a full listing of courses: www.mica.edu or 410-225-2282.

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The City of Tomorrow Kids compete to plan the ideal future metropolis

Above, left to right: Lemmel Middle School students Terrance Lagree, Jasmine Johnson, and Angela Akes secured the Most Creative City award for their miniature metropolis, Townsville.

Over the last several weeks, eighth-grade student Lacey Meneide, 13, has learned that she is sure of two things: Building a successful city is hard work. And hot glue guns are a menace. “When you get hot glue on your finger,” she says, “it really hurts.” It’s 8:30 a.m. on a Monday morning in late January, and Room 219 at William H. Lemmel Middle School in West Baltimore is buzzing with activity. Students bounce between tables, excitedly crafting additions to the models of imaginary cities that they have designed for the 2005–2006 Maryland Future City Competition. With judging less than a week away, the students still have much to accomplish. Lemmel is the only Baltimore City public school participating in this year’s Future City Competition, an annual event sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation. Now in its fourteenth year, the contest requires that students work in teams with a teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor to create functioning cities, first as simulated computer mock-ups and then as physical models. Some thirty thousand students from more than one thousand schools in thirty-three regions across the country participate annually. In the regional competition last year (Lemmel’s first year of competition), Lemmel went up against

schools from Montgomery and Howard counties whose students had access to an abundant amount of resources. The Lemmel students have few of these advantages, but what they lack in resources they make up for in spirit. This year, the twenty-four participating Lemmel students know what they’re up against, and they waffle between excitement and nervousness as they near the completion of their projects. There are many other lessons that Lacey and her classmates have learned as they’ve worked to construct a vision of their future—not the least of which is the untapped talent that they each posses. Tapping that talent is part of the reason that Lemmel’s chair of the science department, Clifton Williams, began dedicating time to this project two years ago. Williams asked Mike Dominelli, an engineer for the Baltimore firm Kennedy, Porter & Associates, Inc., to help bring Lemmel to the regional competition. For the two men, it’s a labor of love involving a considerable amount of time, energy, and patience. Dominelli, who worked for three years with students in the Future City Competition in New York, attributes the absence of other city middle schools to the difficulties of juggling large class sizes, curricula, and

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Lemmel students first build their cities with SimCity 3000, and then, using the knowledge and ideas gained from creating a simulated city, construct their models. Members of Lemmel’s Future City Competition teams, with teacher Clifton Williams.

devoting time to the project during and after school and on weekends. “It’s a lot of work,” Dominelli says. “To Mr. Williams’ credit, he’s given up his time to do it.” The payoff, they say, is not necessarily a trophy, but something broader. “The students are learning about teamwork and cooperation,” Williams says. Students realize that they have to depend on one another to make this project succeed, which also means “they have to show up to school.” Countdown to the competition For Dominelli, the best part is watching two dozen middle school students with almost no engineering experience learn the practical applications of words like infrastructure, feasibility, and sustainability. “I really like when all the kids get it,” he says, and “all the kids really do get it at some point.” This year, the twenty-four students divided into seven teams to create models using SimCity 3000, an advanced video game for building simulated cities. The students name and develop their city, scoring and losing points as the cities progress. They build residential, commercial, and industrial areas. They learn how to deal with zoning and budgets. Kristen Braden discovered that a city doesn’t always get off the ground on the first try. “Oh my goodness,” she says. “We had to start over five times.” This is because their city was way over budget. As Kristen explains, “We had to learn how to manage our money so that we could buy things and not over-buy.” One solution to the budget problem was to build paid parking lots to assist in city funding. Another city faced a similar problem. “We were going bankrupt,” explains team member Jermaine Farrar. Their answer? “We legalized gambling.” Nearly every model city has to deal with pollution in some way. One city ships its garbage to outer space. Another uses solar power to provide energy. Lacey now sees pollution as a major issue for real

cities. “I’m finding out more about how ozone depletion can probably be solved if people would think more about the social aspect of it rather than money,” she says. The simulated cities—named Nebula, Paradise City, Townsville, Laugh-A-Lot, F.A.J. and G.R.K. (taken from the initials of student participants), and Asylum—then become physical models. The students create a physical model built to scale, which must contain at least one moving part with a selfcontained power source. This moving part can be anything from a subway to an elevator to a windmill. All Lemmel models are built with recycled materials, mostly collected by the students themselves, from plastic water bottles to egg cartons. As the physical models begin to take shape, scissors and hot glue guns are passed back and forth between tables. Construction paper is wrapped around cereal boxes to create hospitals and Coca-Cola plants. Model railroad tracks are put down on supported platforms and cardboard stilts to create elevated train systems. Green construction paper and tiny trees become parks, dotted with tiny soldier figurines that symbolize monuments. Room 219 has become a model factory of sorts. This year, Jesse Turner, who heads up the model department at the Baltimore architectural firm Development Design Group (DDG), stepped in to help with resources. Over the last few weeks, he and his staff have devoted materials and classroom time to help the students with their models. “It’s a low-budget, low-maintenance type of situation,” Williams says. “You know, we are the underdogs.” But, he adds, “Our kids need this kind of exposure.” Riquel Jackson of the city F.A.J. doesn’t think being an underdog is such a bad thing. As for being the only city school participating, she says, “We feel special. They always say county schools are smarter than city schools. We have a chance to prove them wrong.”

With just one day left until the competition, students add finishing touches as Dominelli goes from table to table coaching students for the oral presentations that each team will have to give before a panel of judges made up of professional engineers. The energy among these students is unbridled. Part of it is simply the fact of being 13 years old—a period in a young person’s life when things begin to change. But there’s also a sense of committed participation, the hands-on side of the project where the students are working fully engaged as a team. “You see them milling around?” Williams says. “You’ve got kids talking to other kids. They’re feeding off of one another.” Students go from one table to another—from one city to another—picking up ideas and returning to their own cities to implement their new, or sometimes borrowed, ideas. Maravia Marshall of Asylum says, “I’m just nervous. I’ve never been to a competition before.” In addition to the first-, second-, and thirdplace prizes, specialty awards are presented for such categories as Best Bridges and Highways and Most Creative City. But just about everyone in the class has his or her eyes on winning the regional competition and going to the national competition in Washington, D.C. Antonio Smith of Nebula, though, is philosophical about the whole thing. “If we don’t win, at least we tried,” he says. “I’d love to live here myself, if I could.” The day of the competition arrives and the students meet at Lemmel at 7:30 a.m. to pack up the models and take them to the Baltimore Museum of Industry, the host for the event. The models are set up on a table in front of the Maryland Milestone Wall, a tribute to Maryland firsts in industry. It’s a fitting backdrop for these young engineers. By 9:15, Cris Moen, the regional coordinator of the Future City Competition, kicks off the model judging, and the oral presentations begin. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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Kristen Braden of G.R.K. proudly displays the features of her team’s city.

Lemmel is well represented in sheer numbers— seven teams from one school competing against individual teams from Prince George’s County, Howard County, and Queen Anne’s County. Moen sees the seven teams as a testament to Williams’ and Dominelli’s devotion to the project, and notes, by looking at the models that are just being set up, that Lemmel has come a long way since last year’s competition. “It takes extraordinary people to get a team here, but to get seven teams here—it’s not easy. It takes hundreds of hours to get them to the competition.” Kristen Braden stands over her model, beaming, very satisfied in her team’s completed model. “I’d love to live here myself, actually, if I could.” Williams is nervous. “I feel like an expecting father,” he says. The first oral presentation is given by the Lemmel team Nebula, made up of Antonio Smith, Nakearra Guy, and Kayanna Johnson. The team members trade off presenting different features of their city, including an elevated train, two power plants (one is a backup), and, for security reasons, an underground parking garage so cars don’t get broken into. As the other teams speak about their projects, it becomes apparent that the cities created by the city kids and those of the suburban kids are radically different. While the other schools deal with fighting erosion and utilizing biodiesel within their cities, Lemmel students have focused on placing security cameras on buildings for citizens’ safety and operating hospitals that provide gunshot victims with treatment even if they lack health insurance. After students present, the judges ask questions about their cities, such as, how does your city fund itself? What is your city’s main energy source? The Lemmel students hold their own, giving well-spoken and often humorous responses. Lacey is presenting by herself today. Her two other teammates could not make it to the competition. She stands alone on the stage and declares to the judges that “the cities of the future are going to have to be a lot more environmentally friendly.” After her solo presentation, she sits down behind her model and sighs. “I think waiting to hear the results of who wins the awards, that’s the hardest part.”

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Designed for Healing A local hospital embodies a national architecture trend

Above: Spa products line the shelves in a private massage room at The Weinberg Center for Women’s Health and Medicine at Mercy Hospital.

Upon entering the lobby from the busy streets of downtown, visitors are greeted by an inviting twostory water wall, a cafe serving Starbucks coffee, and a spa offering massages, microdermabrasion, and hot sea stone facials. Stylish granite covers the floors, clean lines please the eye, and the earthy tones of the walls and upholstered furniture create a contemporary but warm and welcoming environment. This may sound like a posh hotel, but in fact it’s the main floor of The Weinberg Center for Women’s Health and Medicine, located at 227 Saint Paul Place, at the intersection of Saint Paul and Saratoga streets. The $43 million Weinberg Center, which opened in September 2003 as part of Mercy Medical Center’s larger expansion and renovation plan, exemplifies a burgeoning trend among healthcare providers to create environments that heal. One hundred percent of top healthcare design firms surveyed by Interior Design magazine in 2005 said that their clients (healthcare providers) understand that design is a healing tool, and ninety-five percent said they were more willing to invest in design than ever before.

The Weinberg Center, an outpatient facility, includes The Hoffberger Breast Center, The Gynecology Center, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Radiation Oncology, The Center for Bone Health, The Women’s Imaging Center, and the Institute for Cancer Care, Division of Surgical Oncology. Neil B. Rosenshein, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist and medical director of The Weinberg Center, saw the construction of the building as an opportunity to provide the amenities that he’d heard his female patients asking for throughout the years. “The primary goal was to have a center for women that would be seamless for all of their healthcare needs,” Rosenshein says. “We wanted to bring all of our services for women together in one area.” Mercy previously had a Center for Women’s Health and Medicine, but its offices were located in different areas of the Mercy campus. The new facility now encompasses 118,000 square feet on six floors. Not only can patients easily navigate from one doctor’s office to another, thanks to the simple

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floor plan, they can also visit the fifth-floor Women’s Health Boutique, which offers post-mastectomy bras and prostheses, or stop by the Women’s Resource Center, also on the fifth floor, to look up their medical records online or do some reading on their medical conditions. Valet parking is another feature offered patients. “We know that these are sick people, and they’re coming here for the very first time and they’re potentially receiving news that they didn’t want to receive,” says Robert Berry Jr., AIA, LEED AP, CSI, CDT, a principal of the architecture, engineering and planning firm RTKL Associates, and the lead designer for The Weinberg Center. “So we tried to make all of the environments and all the connections as user-friendly and as warm as possible so that they felt like they were being taken care of, and that they weren’t necessarily in a hospital.”

Below, right: An elliptical skylight ﬂoods the common area with natural light.

photo by Kevin J. Parks/Mercy Medical Center

Below, left: “We tried to make all of the environments as warm as possible,” says lead designer Robert Berry Jr., including functional rooms like this suite in Radiation Oncology.

“People all over are growing more open to a connection between environment and well-being. If patients increasingly believe that colors, sight lines, and window views affect their personal comfort, why not try to provide these elements?”

photo by Kevin J. Parks/Mercy Medical Center

This private room contains a Vichy Shower: a luxurious water treatment which detoxifies and hydrates the skin.

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Upcoming Events

THE MURPHY FINE ARTS CENTER “Kiddie” C.A.T.S. Performing Art Series for Children presents

Beauty and The Beast Friday, March 17 Saturday, March 18

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For group sales, call 410-433-5383 or the MFAC Ticket ofﬁce 443-885-4440

The Morgan State University Fine Arts Department presents

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Michael Brooks Rip Michaels photo by Kevin J. Parks/Mercy Medical Center

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S t a r r i n g t o d a y ’s h o t t e s t comics seen on ◆ TV’s Bad Boys of Comedy The MediSpa lobby, pictured below, was designed to create a soothing and healing physical environment.

❖ Showtime at the Apollo ❍ HBO’s Def Comedy Jam ● MTV’s Boiling Point ▲ BET’s Comic View Come get your laugh on! Saturday, March 11, 2006 7:00 PM

Tickets available at all Ticketmaster o u t l e t s , t i c k e t m a s t e r. c o m , T i c k e t m a s t e r c h a r g e - b y - p h o n e ( 4 1 0 - 5 4 7 - S E AT ) , a n d the Murphy Fine Arts Center ticket office (443-885-4440).

photo by Nancy Froehlich

Within the medical suites, patients enjoy amenities such as private bathrooms in The Gynecology Center’s exam rooms, carpeted floors to absorb noise, large, lit mirrors for freshening up, and furnishings that feel more residential than sterile and that cleverly conceal medical supplies. Waiting rooms are warm and comfortable places for families, and many feature paintings and sculptures procured to add to the ambience. On the sixth floor, an expansive elliptical skylight filters natural light into the common area. (Natural light has long been known for its therapeutic benefits and is often used as a symbol of healing.) And when patients walk down the spiral staircase to the fifth floor, they find a restful reflecting pool—the facility’s second water feature. “The water wall was created and located in a way to hopefully be a respite or almost a Zen-like enclave within the lobby,” Berry says. It contains water from the fountain at the Mercy House in Dublin, where the Sisters of Mercy was founded. Studies in the field of environmental psychology known as psychoneuroimmunology have shown that the brain and nervous system can be directly influenced by sensual elements in the environment. The research shows a healing environment in hospitals can reduce stress among patients, caregivers, and families, resulting in boosted immune function and fewer caregiver errors. “People all over are growing more open to a connection between environment and well-being,” says Kelly Beamon, Interior Design’s senior editor. “If patients increasingly believe that colors, sight lines, and window views affect their personal comfort, why not try to provide these elements?” ■

You Can’t Arrive Unless You Know the Destination The Murphy Fine Arts Center 2201 Argonne Dr. 443-885-4440 www.murphyﬁneartscenter.org w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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Sit by the ﬁre and get cozy at the coffee house. Mention Urbanite magazine and receive a free coffee with any lunch menu purchase.

Doracon Contracting, Inc. 3500 East Biddle Street Baltimore, MD 21213

p: 410.558.0600 f: 410.558.0602 rlipscomb@doracon.com

Ronald H. Lipscomb President

urbanite march 06

encounter

by jessica leshnoff

photography by michael northrup

Ladies’ Night On the town with the Red Hat Honeys

Gwendolyn West, “queen” of one of the many Baltimore chapters of the Red Hat Society, lives it up at the Sportsmens Lounge.

Monday night—second in agony only to Sunday night—usually has the appeal of a muddy boot. The weekend’s long gone and Friday isn’t even in sight. This Monday night is a particularly cold one in Baltimore. Despite a bitter winter wind and icy sidewalks, a steady stream of women—all in red hats, all smiling—are piling into the tiny Sportsmens Lounge in Gwynn Oak for a night of jazz. The club’s small round tables are covered in red vinyl tablecloths, and the women have brought a smorgasbord of goodies that are lined up along the wall: meatballs, cheese cubes, dips, you name it. They’re even feeding the musicians. The drinks are flowing and the music’s about to start. There’s chattering and table hopping. It’s just a night out with the girls. And why not? The workday’s over, the kids are grown and, perhaps most importantly, they’re Honeys. And it never feels like a Monday night when the Red Hat Honeys are around. The Honeys are a local chapter of the Red Hat Society, an association for women age 50 and up that has some 41,000 chapters in 31 countries. The basic premise of the society is simple: to have fun—irreverent, loud, frivolous fun.

The society began almost by accident in 1997 when founding member and California native Sue Ellen Cooper gave a close friend a bright red vintage hat and a copy of a favorite poem, “Warning” by British author Jenny Joseph, for her friend’s fifty-fifth birthday. The poem describes older womanhood as a time to throw caution to the wind. “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me,” Joseph writes. By 1998, Cooper was organizing outrageous afternoon tea outings for her friends. Staying true to the poem, the girls hit the road in giant red hats and purple dresses. Soon, a second chapter was started in Florida. After the press reported on the fledging group, inquiries starting pouring in and Cooper was lovingly crowned “Exalted Queen Mother” of the Red Hat Society. The group has spread like wildfire. There are currently 833 active Red Hat chapters in Maryland and 108 in the Baltimore area, according to Kerry Towner, the Red Hat Society’s public relations and marketing coordinator. With twenty to twentyfive members in an average chapter, that translates into some sixteen thousand members in Maryland,

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Love Natty Boh as much as we do? Of course you do, hon. Join us at The Patterson Theater for a free screening of “Mr. Boh’s Brewery,” a short documentary film on Baltimore’s National Brewery. • Vintage film footage, area photos and interviews. Filmmakers Alex Castro, Harry Connolly and Lyle Hein tell the history. • A discussion with the granddaddies of beer brewing, hosted by Elaine Eff. • A Natty Boh memorabilia show & tell with Turkey Joe Trabert. • Plus plenty of Free Natty Boh (what else) and popcorn for all!

Saturday, March 11 • 3:30 pm • The Patterson Theater Reservations suggested. Call 410-514-7653. Presented by Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and Obrecht Commercial Real Estate.

urbanite march 06

and more than two thousand members in Baltimore alone. Each Red Hat chapter must have a “queen” to be officially registered with the society, and it’s not hard to spot the queen of the Honeys tonight. Her name is Gwendolyn “Honey” West, and she’s buzzing around the club in a fluffy red feather boa and a pin on her hat that reads “queen mother” in rhinestones. “I do tend to be flamboyant,” says West with a laugh. “I’m never as proper as people think I should be.” Two years ago, West—who picked up her nickname from the 1965 TV series Honey West—hadn’t even heard of the Red Hat Society. Then, on her way back to Baltimore from Nashville, she saw some Red Hatters at the airport—“a batch of ladies all dressed in red and purple,” she says. “The place was just buzzing with these ladies.” She went over to them and asked what they were all about. The answer was “nothing,” West recounts. “We’re just having fun,” they told her. And that was right up her alley. A month later, West had an official Red Hat Society charter and sent out invitations—red and purple, of course—to friends, acquaintances, and friends of friends for a first tea at the Thir-tea First Street Café and Tearoom on East 31st Street in Charles Village. It was a rousing success with all the trappings of an outrageous dress-up tea party. (“If it was going to be tea, I wanted a prissy tea,” West says.)

“Honey, I love being 50!” Eunice Jenifer whoops amidst the jazz beats. “And I’ve got fifty more to go!”

The group has since hosted outings every two to three months all over town, from an Inner Harbor drift on the Lady Baltimore to a night of dinner theater in Silver Spring. Honey membership requirements are simple: Show up and be 50, or close to 50, but be aware that Red Hat Society guidelines dictate that 40-somethings must wear a pink hat and lavender dress. Also, no men allowed. “You have to find something that excites you,” West says of her group, which celebrated its two‑year anniversary in February. “It has to do with living longer and healthier. I like to have fun! And this gives me an excuse to do it.”

The Honeys, who range in age from 52 to 74, all mention their infamous first anniversary pajama party last year at The Carlyle hotel on University Parkway. They rented two suites, watched movies, and “talked about men,” West says. “Even our pajamas were purple!” Eunice Jenifer, a member for just over a year, shouts over the music. She says that joining the group was the best decision she could’ve made. “Honey, I love being 50!” she whoops amidst the jazz beats. “And I’ve got fifty more to go!” In between sips of a pink cocktail, Anna Gross chimes in. “I learned that the good Lord gives you four scores and ten to live, and I’m gonna do as much as I can with those years,” she says with a hearty laugh. “It’s just a party from now until the end!” “I liked it right away,” adds Pat Teel, a member of the Honeys since its start. “Instead of saying, ‘Oh, no, not another year,’” the group encourages women to feel pride in their age, and, of course, get out and party—something many of them wouldn’t do otherwise, she says. For most of the Honeys, and Red Hatters in general, age forms a common bond. If they’ve had children, they’re grown and it’s finally time for some much-needed recreation with the girls. What usually begins as a party develops into strong friendships and a true feeling of sisterhood. “We’re a young group,” West explains. “Not necessarily in age but in spirit.” ■

Working together to serve you better. Thomas Coard, Lauren Francioli, Joe Lin, Christine Powell, Kevin Lynch, Anthony Myers

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Amazing store front home. Store on main level w/ incredible home above. 2nd floor living room & kitchen w/ top of the line appliances and cherry wood cabinets. 3rd floor master bd w/mb w/whirlpool, sauna, and walk-in closets w/marble countertops. 4th floor guest room, den, and LR. All the wood floors have been refinished, marble entry way, matching chandeliers, dual HVAC, New WH, parking and so much more a truly must see.

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Design Excellence at Stebbins Anderson Since 1867 50+ Patio Sets and Displays FEATURING: Brown Jordan • Lloyd Flanders • Carter Grandle • Winston • Telescope Meadowcraft Wrought Iron • Hanamint Cast Aluminum • Kingsley Bate Teak w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

Doing More For The Music. Doing More For Baltimore.

8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252 410 704 8938 wtmd.org wtmd@towson.edu

urbanite march 06

Listener Supported Public Radio From Towson University

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R e s e a r c h a n d w r i t i n g b y M a r i a B l a c k b u r n , H e at h e r D e w a r , W i l l i a m J . E v i t t s , A n n e H a d d a d , C at e H a n , A l i c e O c k l e s h a w, S ta c e y S e lt z e r , a n d J a s o n T i n n e y

Globalization is changing the American city. From industry to innovation, culture to commerce, this new world economy is affecting nearly every aspect of our lives. The world, explains New York Times journalist Thomas L. Friedman, is now flat. What does this mean for Baltimore? The most important factor for the future success of the city may well be our ability to build local talent. Fostering and retaining talented people—from innovators capable of solving complex issues to individuals stepping into their communities to fill a void—is paramount. “You can flourish in this flat world,” Friedman writes in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, “but it does take the right imagination and the right motivation.” Here is a look at some of the people, innovations, and trends that will help shape your local future in this growing global environment.

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Globalization

Economists like Richard Florida see the struggle for the future as a global battle for talent between urban regions, not nations. In The Flight of the Creative Class, Florida argues that Baltimore’s competition for critical brainpower is not just Boston, but also Barcelona and Bombay. From high-tech to biotech to sustainable design, Baltimore is beginning to answer this global challenge by redefining the economic engines that fuel the post-industrial city.

Key Han 65 Founder and CEO, DDMotion Early in his career as a mechanical engineer, Kyung “Key” Han got a piece of advice from other young engineers: Find a pet project for life. Decades later, Han’s invention—an energy-efficient method of operating machines—has developed into much more than a pet project and is on the brink of revolutionizing fuel efficiency in automobiles. Han is the founder and CEO of DDMotion, a Hampden-based company that explores applications of his patented technology, called Infinitely Variable Motion Control (IVMC). Although IVMC has the long-term potential to save energy in generators and compressors (like those in air conditioners and refrigerators), DDMotion is now focusing on the technology’s use in automobile transmissions. By functioning without belts or hydraulics and transferring a continuous source of energy from engine to drive controls, the new product could lead to less pollution and save fuel in vehicles ranging from small cars to 18-wheelers. “Fifteen years ago, fuel costs were low and people were not really serious about an energy-efficient transmission,” the Korean-born Han explains. “Now everyone is talking about fuel and fossil oil. I believe that the time is right for this product.” “Key’s mind is one of the best minds I have ever encountered in terms of conceptualizing and understanding complex mechanical systems and the way they move,” says Jonathan Haslanger, a design engineer at DDMotion. “He has very good intuition and when he starts applying it to transmissions, he comes up with ideas that are completely different from what people have been doing for the past one hundred years.” Han wants to take a steady approach to proving its value to the market. “When this concept is developed, everyone will move into this,” he says. “Ultimately, I believe it will change the world.” —Alice Ockleshaw

urbanite march 06

I N N O V A T I O N : B ri n g i n g B i o te c h to th e In n er C i t y “For more than fifty years, the central city’s historic role as a center of research and innovation has been usurped by Edge Cities like the Silicon Valley. The return to the city by the young and highly educated has created the opportunity for urban-based research, especially in biotech where big-city research hospitals remain strong. The next Silicon Valley could be in a redeveloped inner-city district like the one in East Baltimore.” —Robert Fishman, professor, Taubman College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan. Excerpted from 40 Ideas about the Future, published by CEOs for Cities.

Margaret “Sue” Penno 49 Founder, BioTechnical Institute of Maryland Jean Smith was a single mother from the Hollander Ridge projects when she knocked on Sue Penno’s door. Penno, director of the Cell Center at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School, had a job opening for a skilled lab technician. Smith wanted it. She had no college degree and no experience, but she had meticulousness and drive. Penno hired her. Smith excelled. The doctor at the center asked, “Jean, do you think there are other people out there like you?” “I said, ‘Yes! Yes!’ and that was it,” recalls Smith, who now works as both a lab technician and budget analyst at the Cell Center. Penno worked for four years from inception to incorporation to found the nonprofit BioTechnical Institute of Maryland, which runs twelve-week training courses for careers in pharmaceuticals and medical research. A typical student can be an unemployed single mother in her twenties or a displaced worker, someone who has earned a high school diploma and who has an aptitude for detail. After completion, BTI places students in Baltimore-area jobs with salaries beginning around $20,000 and rising to $45,000 a year with experience. Executive Director Kathleen Weiss says the program, which began in 1998, has 157 successful graduates so far. Penno is pulling for them all. “I pray for them every day,” says Penno, a cancer researcher whose life changed at age 37 when she found a deep Christian faith. “I wasn’t looking for it,” she says. “It just happened and it has been amazing.” Faith led Penno and her husband, a builder, to move from Towson to North Avenue several years ago. They joined an inner-city church and helped restore their block. They have recently taken leaves from their jobs to expand a malaria research institute in Zambia. Penno plans to come home to Baltimore in two years, and to expand BTI to help extend the burgeoning biotech boom into the communities where jobs are needed. “I’ve been given many things in my life and I’m thankful for it,” she says, “and this is my way of showing my thanks.” —Heather Dewar

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Claire Broido Johnson 32 Energy Entrepreneur

I n n o v Tras a t i ho Nnet: s Baltimore’s dirty harbor could be a little cleaner this year with the help of a clever trash netting system to be installed in Canton at the foot of Lakewood Avenue and Boston Street through the efforts of the nonprofit Baltimore Harbor Watershed Association. A small platform over the water will hold four giant “trash bags” that catch waste. Each bag will weigh 500 pounds when full.

As a Harvard undergraduate, Claire Broido Johnson landed two plum internships. She spent a summer at the Environmental Protection Agency and a summer at the World Bank. “I’m an impatient person,” she says, “and it became clear to me early on that you can’t make huge environmental changes without someone profiting from it.” But she hasn’t always obeyed her maxim that the fastest way to change the world is to make change profitable. As president of SunEdison, a start-up she helped found in 2003, she took no pay for one year. “I did everything,” she says, from negotiating multi-megawatt solar-power contracts to answering phones in a one-room Mount Vernon office. Today she is well paid, and she expects that the growing consumer desire to find alternatives to rising fossil fuel costs will make SunEdison very profitable. The daughter of a Chicago surgeon, Johnson did a seventh-grade science project on acid rain and knew early on that she wanted to do something in the environmental field that would make a difference. She negotiated wind power deals for Enron, which paid her way through Harvard Business School. Enron imploded, leaving her unemployed. She landed at Baltimore’s Constellation Energy and soon met Jigar Shah, who at the time was working at BP Solar. While at BP, Shah dreamed up SunEdison’s business plan and is now the CEO. The company takes advantage of alternative energy tax breaks by matching investors with companies that want to go solar but can’t justify the capital costs. SunEdison sets up rooftop solar panels for clients like Staples and Whole Foods. Clients “host” the panels and enter into long-term agreements to buy the power at fixed prices. Investors pay for the panels and get the income—and the tax breaks. Unfortunately, none of SunEdison’s nine solar plants are in Maryland. This is because “the rebate programs in Maryland are almost nonexistent and the laws don’t foster alternative energy,” Johnson says. “It’s a unique approach,” says Mark Buckley, vice president for environmental affairs at Staples, which has SunEdison set-ups in California and New Jersey. “Claire is a dynamo. She’s a very enthusiastic advocate for the technology.”

—H.D.

Q u ote : Cities have one crucial resource—their people. Human cleverness, desires, motivations, imagination, and creativity are replacing location, natural resources, and market access as urban resources. The creativity of those who live in and run cities will determine future success. —Charles Landry, author of The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators

urbanite march 06

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T h e I n te rs e c tio n of D isc iplines Professional

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rapidly as the global economy. By expanding traditional job descriptions, individuals are able to think creatively and holistically in a way that defies categorization and responds to real world problems. This new crosspollination of disciplines is often fueled by a growing desire for individual work to have a broader social impact.

Qu o te : Lee Boot 48 Filmmaker Filmmaker Lee Boot and his company, InfoCulture, operate from a place where the compulsion to create art intersects with the desire to change culture. He dresses up the anti-drug message in his unorthodox film, Euphoria, with outlandish metaphors, but he’s also prepared to help the viewer strip it down to the naked truth, if necessary. After a year on the film festival and small-group screening circuit, Boot is shopping Euphoria to distributors this spring. The goal, however, is not just to get into theaters, but also into high school classrooms. He made this film not only as artistic expression, but as an instrument of change. “We’re trying to take the most profound information and fuse it back into the culture, literally helping to grow our culture,” says the artist/educator/filmmaker whose film won the Best Documentary award last year at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival. He can’t think of a better home base than Baltimore, which is like ground zero for Euphoria’s topic of drug abuse. “I don’t want to sound like I’m giving the town I love a black eye, but if you’re a culture grower, you want to come to where the culture is struggling,” Boot says. For him, it’s like a battlefield stint for a surgeon. When Euphoria plays in high schools, it is accompanied by diagrams and lesson aids created by his wife and director of outreach, Stacy Arnold. Even without a manual for the science, visual metaphors, and philosophy that pepper the film, audiences embrace its premise that the key to happiness is doing what you find meaningful. This can stimulate the same parts of your brain as the artificial high of drugs, only for much, much longer. Boot, a former high school teacher, is doing his innovative filmmaking as a research associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He appears in his own film as a sort of tour guide, stripping down to boxer shorts in an empty room before explicitly stating the film’s basic message. From then on, it’s a multimedia carnival: Boot talks science and punctuates it with surreal and absurd images. A dead rat embedded in an over-frosted cake is a metaphor for rats that press a lever for more and more cocaine until they drop dead. “We had the privilege of screening Euphoria in both versions—work in progress and finished film,” says Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival. “It’s a unique, visionary film.”

There is a place where different cultures, domains, and disciplines stream together toward a single point. They connect, allowing for established concepts to clash and combine, ultimately forming a multitude of new, groundbreaking ideas. When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. —Excerpted from The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures by Frans Johansson

—Anne Haddad w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

Marybeth Shaw 42 Designer, Graphics and Building Products

Majid Jelveh 50 Architect On the outside, it’s an ordinary Charles Village rowhouse, a sturdy shoebox propping up its showier neighbor, a “painted lady” with a faded face. But inside, Shaw-Jelveh Design’s new office is a column of light. The 106-year-old house has been cored like an apple. Inner walls are panes of glass, surrounding an original staircase topped by a 7-by-8-foot skylight. A blue and white mural looks like Moorish tile, but is actually a custom, digitally printed wallcovering— created by Shaw-Jelvah Design—featuring fragments of the street plans of Paris, New York, and Isfahan, Iran. Those cities used to be home for Marybeth Shaw and Majid Jelveh, the husband-andwife design team who moved here from Manhattan three years ago to make their imprint on Baltimore. The Maryland Avenue house, one of their first projects here, reflects a love of natural light and what Shaw calls a “willingness to execute careful, surgical interventions on older structures.” Shaw, a New Jersey native, studied architecture in Paris in the 1980s and fell for the “fearlessness” of European modernism. Jelveh grew up in Isfahan, one of the oldest Silk Road cities. He designed public buildings in his native Iran, including the first digital wireless telecommunications center in Tehran, before immigrating in 1989. The couple is critical of “New Urbanist” models. Too often these communities end up as quaint enclaves of wealth and reference a nostalgic fantasy of a “perfect Main Street” that has never existed. A better Baltimore would fill gaps in old neighborhoods with new buildings, they say, to create a city that is environmentally sound, egalitarian, and beautiful. The firm’s designs are thought-provoking, says Michelle Moore, vice president of communications and community for the U.S. Green Building Council. “It’s not about making something prettier. It’s about making something that’s evocative of substance.” For now, Shaw’s expertise in graphics, product design, and marketing provides the fourperson firm with its bread and butter. Jelveh works full time for a Columbia architectural firm and designs for Shaw-Jelveh on the side. Eventually, the couple hopes to concentrate on architectural work that makes the Baltimore streetscape “more humane,” in Shaw’s words. —H.D.

Shelonda Stokes 33 President and CEO, greiBO Media For Shelonda Stokes, a childhood without role models pushed her to create longterm change. “Not seeing any businesses run by people who looked like me was disheartening,” she says. “My goal became to provide business opportunities that the community could carry forward.” As president of minority-owned production company greiBO Media, and program director of Baltimore’s Digital Village—which promotes economic development by teaching technology—Stokes has come a long way from the rough East Baltimore neighborhood of her youth. While her father was addicted to drugs and in prison, Stokes’ mother supported the family on welfare—and directed her children toward a better life. “We weren’t allowed to say ‘can’t,’” Stokes says. Stokes graduated cum laude in engineering from Morgan State University. “When you are the first in your family to go to college, you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” she says. Stokes spent five years with Hewlett Packard but felt she could make more of a difference in her community. Her opportunity came in 2001, when she began helping her husband and his business partner by formalizing the structure of their company, attracting new business, and establishing a process for working with customers. That same year, Stokes helped the city secure a $5 million grant from Hewlett Packard to support education programs and forge business partnerships in the East Baltimore Empowerment Zone. Stokes was hired through greiBO in 2002 to manage the program, which she did for two years. Today, in her mission to contribute to the community, she donates her company’s marketing and promotion services to one or two organizations each year and gives substantial discounts to nonprofit organizations. “This is someone who really beat the odds through hard work and a creative spirit,” says Jan Houbolt, executive director of The Leadership, a Greater Baltimore Committee program that Stokes completed. “She cares about her community, and will for the rest of her life.” In her free time, she advises minority-owned companies, tutors girls, and volunteers at a women’s shelter. But Stokes says her biggest contribution is greiBO’s ability to provide opportunities for people. The company performs “compelling, socially conscious” work for clients like AIDS Interfaith Residential Services (AIRS) and The Governor’s Office of Minority Affairs. “I pray that this business is a legacy,” she says. —A.O.

urbanite march 06

IDEAS TO STEAL Who was it that said imitation is the highest form of ﬂattery? We’ve come across a few forward-thinking ideas that Baltimore should consider implementing. Check out these ideas to pinch.

Idea:

Require all new city buildings to ins t all gr e e n r o o f s Stolen From: Chicago’s Mayor Daley Why do it? The Chesapeake will thank us. Green roofs have numerous benefits, including lower energy costs, improved aesthetics, and longer roof lives. The bonus for Baltimore is that these plant-covered roofs soak up 50% to 60% of the precipitation that falls on them, easing stress on storm drains and preventing overﬂow—which in turn eases stress on the Bay.

Idea: Re c laim u n u s e d b u i l d i n g s f o r s us t ainable c o h o u s i n g

Stolen From: Silver Spring, Maryland Why do it? Cohousing reinstates community as a core tenet of life by creating communal spaces for all residents within a larger

Michael Sarbanes 41 Community Activist One of Michael Sarbanes’ neighbors is a 12-year-old girl whose main joy in a hardscrabble life is playing the trumpet in her school band. When the girl moved from an elementary school that had instruments for its students to a middle school that did not, she knew her family couldn’t afford to buy her a trumpet. She didn’t even ask. Sarbanes did. He e-mailed a lawyer friend, who e-mailed other lawyers and got eight replies from people with unused trumpets in their closets. Sarbanes says that’s Baltimore’s problem in a nutshell. “The trumpets are out there,” but class divisions keep the haves separated from the have-nots, so simple needs go unnoticed and unmet. Sarbanes has a gift for seeing simultaneously an individual child’s needs and the larger underlying social problem, says Susan Goering, executive director of the ACLU of Maryland. “He’s smart, he’s savvy, and he’s inspirational.” The son of Sen. Paul Sarbanes, he grew up in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill and Oakenshawe neighborhoods. He was a lawyer for grassroots groups combating open-air drug dealing and later served as deputy chief of staff to former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. In 2003 he became executive director of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, a 65-year-old citywide nonprofit dedicated to strengthening neighborhoods and improving the quality of life in the Baltimore region. Sarbanes sees both danger and opportunity in the city’s real estate boom. As wealthier residents move in, they could revitalize neighborhoods—or drive out the poor, forcing them into worse housing and putting even more stress on blighted communities. He is chairing a Baltimore City Council-appointed task force working on an “inclusionary housing” policy. Inclusionary housing would mean that new development projects would need to include some units for lowor moderate-income families, along with market rate units. “At a real time of transition,” Sarbanes says, CPHA wants to “help citizens understand what is happening and help the region respond in a way that’s consistent with our better nature.” —H.D.

community that still offers the privacy of individual residences. What better way to regenerate the city’s many industrial areas than to convert its surplus of beautiful old warehouses into such developments? Furthermore, innovations in green construction that can be used in these communities have made it possible to make sustainable buildings at no greater cost.

Idea:

Build a progressive city audit pr ogr am w it h c i t i z e n f e e d b a c k Stolen From: Portland, Oregon Why do it? An informed citizenry is a powerful citizenry. Building a comprehensive city stats program will promote an efficient and accountable city government. In addition to making important stats about government agencies easily available online, Portland annually surveys all citizens about city services because they know better than anyone else how their services are being delivered. The government then responds by adjusting its process to address the needs of residents.

Idea:

G ive t ax b r e a k s f o r c a f e s a n d r e s t aur ant s w it h o u t d o o r s e a t i n g Stolen From: Portugal, Spain, and Australia Why do it? Fundamental to revitalizing Baltimore is neighborhood participation. Developing a “cafe culture” by encouraging outdoor seating will make the city more interesting, drawing people to hang out in the city past their regular work hours. More people means more money for local businesses and safer neighborhoods. —Cate Han and Stacey Seltzer w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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Gene r a t i o n C

CJ Hilton 17 Musician

build bridges through their creative

Flashing a wry smile, CJ Hilton refers to himself as an “entertainer.” It’s an easy way of saying, “I do a lot of things.” Entertainer translates into performer, singer, songwriter, musician, and producer. Last year CJ, whose voice has been likened to Marvin Gaye, signed with Capitol Records. The first single from his debut album, Too Young to Know, was released in February. And if the title didn’t give it away, he’s just 17. “On my album,” he says, “I talk about some things that teenagers want to talk about but they can’t. I know all the grownups are going to be like, ‘Wow. He’s so young. How did he know about that?’ So basically, I put it out there in my title.” CJ’s talents emerged at age nine when he auditioned for Thaddeus L. Price Jr., who directed the music program at Southwest Academy Middle School in Baltimore County. Price, who now chairs the performing arts department of Milford Mill Academy, saw CJ’s talents early on. “CJ is truly one of the very rare breed of true musicians. He is a real singer, not a fly-by-night studio sensation,” says Price. CJ was raised in Catonsville. His parents divorced when he was 13. “When it happened, I was kind of upset at my mom, and I was kind of upset at my dad … I just crawled into my music.” He credits his mother with being an anchor in his life as he straddles a blossoming music career and life as a teenager. “Music is kinda like a drug for me. When I go through problems, music is what keeps me level.”

endeavors.

—Jason Tinney

The

stands

for

“Content.”

But it could as easily stand for communication.

technology

increases our capacity to connect, content is building new communities across the city (and the world) as people share their ideas. It’s easier than ever to print a book, build a blog, share a song, and reach new audiences. The result? Our disparate worlds become linked as individuals

Lisa Mathews and Mikel Gehl Early forties Musicians Some children’s performers dress in crazy animal suits to get attention. Others sing in baby voices syrupy enough to infantilize an infant. When the Baltimore band Milkshake wants to grab a young audience, they rock. At a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., lead singer Lisa Mathews belted out songs about being scared and having a bottle full of sunshine as she danced onstage in combat boots and a tutu. Cofounder and guitarist Mikel Gehl and their band accompanied her with guitar licks, rock and roll kicks, two video screens, and confetti shooting out of cannons. The rapt crowd of juice-box swilling fans sang along and bopped to the beat. And the kids liked it, too. “We do music that everyone can listen to and enjoy,” Mathews says. “Kids don’t seem to have any rules for the kind of music they like. I want to do quality stuff that is fun and has an element of goodness.” Child magazine named Milkshake’s first CD Happy Songs one of their “Stand Out CDs” of 2002. Their second CD, Bottle of Sunshine, was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a smiling hug of an album.” And the band was included in an article about children’s music in the February 13, 2006 issue of Time magazine. “Milkshake has a sincerity and sophistication among children’s recording artists that’s fairly rare,” says Kenny Curtis, director of children’s programming for XM Satellite Radio. “They have firsthand experience as parents and they are an amazing band whose songs are conceptual and fully thought out pieces of music.” Next on Mathew’s ten-year plan for the band? She is working on creating The Milkshake Show, a TV series something in the vein of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Mathews says it will be educational and entertaining, with music at the center. And, hopefully, it will rock. —Maria Blackburn

Aaron Henkin 32 Radio Producer, WYPR After a year and a half producing The Signal, a weekly radio arts journal at WYPR hosted by Andy Bienstock and co-produced by Lisa Morgan, Aaron Henkin hasn’t come close to meeting all of Baltimore’s most colorful characters. But he’s working on it—from the dolphin trainer mourning the loss of a beloved animal to the local actor who was stepped on by an AT-AT walker in The Empire Strikes Back. “We’ll never run out of material doing a show like this in Baltimore,” he says. “People [here] have got an openness about them, a willingness to let you into their lives—and they all have something bizarre to tell you.” Baltimore has embraced Henkin’s idiosyncratic glimpses into Baltimore’s culture. As one of WYPR’s most popular locally produced shows, it was named the Best Radio Show by the City Paper in 2005. Henkin also collaborated with Urbanite on its “Portraits of Belief ” story last November. “Aaron approaches his job with a focused passion I’ve never seen in those who work in the field, particularly in someone so young,” says Anthony McCarthy, former host of WYPR’s News Round-Up. “There’s something about his stories that connects with the audience, and in creating those stories, he really is giving a part of himself.” Henkin showed potential from early in his radio career, when the Chicago native started volunteering at WYPR four years ago. He became a full-time producer on the Marc Steiner Show and taught himself digital editing when the station was still analog. After a four-month stint at NPR headquarters in Washington, Henkin returned to Baltimore when the station offered him a chance to co-produce his concept for an arts and culture hour. Although he has considered syndication, Henkin says the program couldn’t work without its local focus. He continues to look for stories, “that will not only continue to surprise the people who live here, but also surprise us.” That said, radio stations across the country have starting picking up episodes of The Signal for rebroadcast. —A.O.

Gregg Wilhelm 38 President and CEO of CityLit Project, Publisher of Pagoda Press At the age of 13, Gregg Wilhelm wrote, illustrated, and bound (with twine) his first book—a sci-fi story borrowed from the intergalactic adventures of Star Wars and Buck Rogers. Today, the Highlandtown resident is the founder and president of Baltimore’s CityLit Project, a nonprofit organization that nurtures the entire culture of literature through literary festivals, author readings, writers workshops, and youth education, along with teaching writers how to get published and market their books. A publisher, editor, and writer himself, Wilhelm is devoting his life to making Baltimore a literary destination. “I’ve always had an affinity for books as artifacts,” says Wilhelm, who was born and raised in Hampden and is a graduate of Loyola College where he also serves as director of Apprentice House, a student-staffed publishing company. By day, Wilhelm is the director of communications for the Babe Ruth Museum. After five years of publishing local authors through Woodholme House Publishers, Wilhelm had the epiphany that to publish was not enough. “I came to the realization that if I didn’t do more to help develop a culture of literature and develop audiences, who would buy books?” Wilhelm founded CityLit Project in January 2004 when he produced the first CityLit Festival at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, featuring a standing-room-only crowd for The Known World author Edward P. Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction just days before the festival. He repeated the phenomenon with the second annual CityLit Festival, when featured author Steve Coll won a Pulitzer for the nonfiction Ghost Wars days before coming to Baltimore. CityLit Project also includes a publishing division, Pagoda Press, and the recently launched site CityLitProject.org, which is the city’s first one-stop shop for local literary news. Judy Cooper, coordinator of programs and publications at Enoch Pratt, sees Wilhelm’s work as a labor of love for both the literary community and for Baltimore. “He’s just very passionate about books and writing and connecting them to people in Baltimore and trying to create a really vibrant literary scene,” she says. —J.T.

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Trend:

The You n g an d R e s tle s s

Pundits warn of a brain drain in certain markets as the pool of young talent moves about the country (and the globe) in search of economic opportunities in creative settings. Educating and attracting new thinkers and keeping that talent local are critical issues for American cities. The places that win will be the ones that create

Peter Kannam

a welcoming environment for this

34 Executive Director, New Leaders for New Schools

diverse generation.

To make a huge difference in Baltimore’s public schools, where do you even start? That’s not a rhetorical question for Peter Kannam. He’s already started. New Leaders for New Schools promotes high academic achievement in public urban schools by attracting, preparing, and supporting the next generation of principals. Kannam, who was recruited last winter to lead the Baltimore office of New Leaders, is a former Lombard Middle School teacher who later became executive director of Teach for America’s Baltimore program. “Teaching was a transformative experience,” Kannam says. “You see all the urban ills manifested in the child. I’m amazed at how resilient kids are and how smart they are. Even with incredible challenges, our students can achieve at high levels.” “Peter never took the easy route or made excuses—he just got it done. For our unit on the Harlem Renaissance, he organized a bus trip every year for the entire eighth-grade to Harlem, ” says Matthew Byars, who team-taught with Kannam at Lombard Middle when both were novices. “Not only was it an incredible educational and social experience for the kids, it afforded them an opportunity most of them had never dreamed of.” Kannam would like to see Baltimore schools achieve to the level of so-called 90-90-90 schools: 90 percent minority, 90 percent low-income, achieving at 90 percent of the proficiency rates. “The reason schools fail is the inability of adults to organize themselves—it’s not the kids.” Kannam is confident his work with New Leaders will make a difference. “Forty new principals in three years—that’s 25% of the schools in Baltimore. We will close the achievement gap in our schools and be part of a catalytic change in the system.” —A.H.

urbanite march 06

I n n o vT haetBi alotni more : S c h o la r s Any Baltimore resident who completes grades 10–12 in the city schools and is admitted to Johns Hopkins University receives a four-year

Qu o te :

full tuition scholarship. That’s $33,000 just for next year. “Baltimore’s future is our future,” says JHU president William Brody.

Andres Duany [of New Urbanism fame] was in town and city leaders asked him, “What can we do to bring people back to inner-city Dallas in meaningful numbers?” Duany said to them, “You can hire me and pay me thousands of dollars for advice and plans that you’ll never use. Or … you can build two elementary schools and a high school right downtown and staff it with good people and the rest will take care of itself.” —Developer Edward Baum, from “Developer Does Dallas” in Dwell magazine

Ryan M. Harrison 18 Student Last year, Ryan M. Harrison placed fifth in what’s known as the Junior Nobel Prize. He was the first Baltimore City Public School student in five decades to make the finals of the elite nationwide Intel Science Talent Search. Harrison’s achievement represented the fruition of more than ten years of work developing The Ingenuity Project at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a program funded by the Abell Foundation to identify and encourage Baltimore City Public School students who show talent in science and math. (Two other Ingenuity Project students, Abe Davis and Owen Hill, made the semi-finals this year, with Davis going on to the finals this month.) Watching Harrison succeed, friends and family had visions of him winning a real Nobel some day. But Harrison, now a freshman in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, says he hasn’t decided whether or not to be a scientist. What? Don’t get him wrong. He still loves science, and he plans to publish the research that got him the Intel placement. He loves the freedom in science to explore and solve puzzles. That’s also why he is considering a second major in economics. “I’m interested in why things are the way they are,” he says. “Why is the whole of subSaharan Africa, with a few exceptions, poor? Why are there so few African Americans at Hopkins? A lot of the answers come from economics. I would say economics can be even more complex than protein science.” It also irks him that social stratification “takes low-income and minority students and puts them into the worst possible educational circumstances and expects them to perform well. I think that’s absurd.” His social studies teacher at Poly, Dennis Jutras, was “surprised, but not surprised” at Harrison’s passion for economics. “He’s not the traditional science geek,” says Jutras, who is Baltimore’s Teacher of the Year for 2005–2006. “He’s very well rounded. In many ways, his approach to the social sciences is not unlike his approach to the hard sciences. It’s about logic and deconstruction. He loves and respects the logic of a good argument.” —A.H.

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Trend:

R etir ing to Ci t i es “The aging of the Baby Boom generation is a huge demographic event, as just about everyone knows, but it’s been discussed

Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell

almost entirely as a challenge or a threat—to

35 Dancer

government budgets, health care systems, even to transportation systems. But there’s another side of this: tens of millions of newly retired people, physically vigorous and available to provide communities with crucial assistance on a whole range of fronts. My instinct is that the Boomers will be unlike any elderly population in history. Many of them, perhaps most, will be functionally middle-aged to 75 or 80 or even beyond. Local government needs to find a way to take advantage of this phenomenon. This might involve changing retirement ages and incentives, systematically mining the expertise of those who have left the work force, or recreating volunteerism in a wholly new way. In short, cities are about

When Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell retired in May as a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, she never questioned what she’d do next. More than anything, Fisher-Harrell wanted to come back to Baltimore to teach dance at The Baltimore School for the Arts. Her reasoning was simple. “This school taught me how to dance,” she said one afternoon before stepping out into the BSA studio to lead a modern dance class. FisherHarrell hadn’t taken any formal dance classes until she was 14. Remembering her audition makes her laugh now. “You know when you dance all crazy in your bedroom to the radio and you think you’re really good but you’re not—that was me,” said the dancer, who also teaches at Towson University. But her teachers saw a blend of raw talent, charisma, and a willingness to work. “She had something so special,” says Baltimore School for the Arts Director Leslie Shepard. “She has such a presence on stage and is so beautiful, but she is also such a hard worker. The minute she entered the dance studio she was hungry to learn.” After graduating from The Baltimore School for the Arts in 1988, Fisher-Harrell attended Julliard for a year, then toured with Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Company, dancing for world-class choreographers like Twyla Tharp. In May 1992, she joined Alvin Ailey and spent the next thirteen years traveling the world. New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff described her as “a vision, glamorous and fluent in her silky leg extensions and stunning in images of sculptural recline.” Now, Fisher-Harrell is committed to teaching her passion to the next generation. She says, “Dance is something that’s in your heart.” —M.B.

to acquire some new burdens, but they are also being given a huge potential gift. The question of how to seize it should be part of the public dialogue.” —Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor, Governing magazine. Excerpted from 40 Ideas about the Future published by CEOs for Cities.

I n n o vE xaper t i ioence n : C or ps A growing national program, The Experience Corps, offers service opportunities to people over 55, particularly as mentors in urban schools. In Baltimore, more than two hundred participants work at least fifteen hours a week with K–3 children, mostly as literacy tutors. Studies show the tutors benefit as much as the kids do.

urbanite march 06

Larry Silverstein 40 Developer There aren’t many lofts in Baltimore with walls large enough to hang the wing of an airplane. Developer Larry Silverstein proudly makes this point as he shows off the massive white-washed brick wall he calls an “open canvas” in the homes that he’s creating near Little Italy. Silverstein’s Union Box Company is developing thirty-eight lofts on five floors—a sophisticated mix of renovation and new infill construction at the old Canal Street Malt House, built in 1866 on the 300 block of South Central Avenue. The project of red brick and colossal paned windows is a bold nod to Baltimore’s industrial past, reflecting the surrounding historic neighborhoods of Fells Point and Little Italy. Thirteen of the lofts occupy the old warehouse, with another twenty-five in an adjoining new building designed to create the warehouse feel of the original space. Ellen von Karajan, executive director of the Preservation Society in Fells Point, said Silverstein has been doing some very good infill in Fells Point that is compatible with adjacent historic properties. “He has really distinguished himself,” she says. Silverstein founded his company in 1996, taking its name from the restored nineteenth century Union Box Company that once built crates for local oyster canneries and is now his headquarters in Fells Point. “I love old buildings,” Silverstein says. “I think they have incredible amounts of character and present a lot of opportunities to create great spaces.” With floor-to-ceiling windows, sleek steel stairs and railings, and old fire doors, each of the Malt House lofts, though luxurious, have aspects that are modern reminders of the blue collar Baltimore once wore. “I try never to build something I wouldn’t live in or work in,” Silverstein said, “and I feel that these industrial products that are re-used are kind of the fabric of Baltimore.” —J.T.

Gary A. Officer 40 Businessman/Philanthropist Gary A. Officer knows that African Americans are more likely to be imprisoned, suffer from crime and chronic diseases, earn fewer degrees, buy fewer homes, and die earlier than other Americans. As president and CEO of the Associated Black Charities (ABC), Officer wants to do something about it. Running a successful nonprofit with programs challenging such overwhelming problems takes more than good intentions, he says. You need to be able to raise money. Lots of it. “If we are to make a difference in our community and take leadership on issues affecting our community, we have to have access to greater means,” he says. Officer is a British-born graduate of the London School of Economics who has run community development programs in Boston and Chicago. As president of the National Credit Union Foundation in Washington, D.C., he established a $370 million community investment fund. Officer took the helm of ABC in December 2004, believing his skills could make a difference. “ABC is my calling,” he says. Tom Wilcox, president of the Baltimore Community Foundation, predicts Officer’s work will have a tremendous impact. “The fact that the head of our leading African American charity is someone so well schooled in community development and sophisticated wealth building is nothing but good news for Baltimore,” he says. Last fall, the ABC, under Officer’s leadership, started the Legacy Fund, which aims to raise $50 million over three years. It’s a huge undertaking for a group with a $23 million budget, but Officer says he is up to the challenge. “We get so many calls from groups and churches asking if we can address issues that affect their communities, issues like affordable housing, community development, and healthcare, and we have to tell them we don’t have the discretionary means to do that,” Officer says. “It’s heartbreaking. I want to change that.” —M.B.

Trend:

DIY C o m m uni t y

Across the country, as city budgets and infrastructure are unable to keep up with urban needs, citizens have started to pick up where their governments leave off, reclaiming public space and parklands, schools and cityscapes. What can government do to capitalize on this do-it-yourself movement? San Francisco City Hall reporter Rachel Gordon has a suggestion: Leverage this human capital. “Help organize and direct these groups and their work,” she writes in the CEOs for Cities 40 Ideas about the Future. “It would be in everyone’s interest to improve the city.”

Margaret Footner Executive Director, Creative Alliance Margaret Footner works in the challenging medium of bringing art to the community. For eleven years, Footner has been the string that ties together the budget and the programs for Baltimore’s most inclusive arts organization, the Creative Alliance at The Patterson. As cofounder and executive director, Footner has helped transform the Creative Alliance into a city-wide institution embraced by the funky, the crafty, the hip, the artists and art lovers, and especially everyday people. From its modest start in Fells Point to its spacious headquarters in The Patterson Theater on Eastern Avenue, the Creative Alliance has integrated arts into the community, with workshops in filmmaking, photography, songwriting—even clowning—and with live performances, screenings of local films, and exhibits. Footner, ironically, is not an artist. Nothing in her background was an obvious prelude to founding the Creative Alliance. Her degrees are in English and education. She designed a unit on black maritime history and wrote grants so city school children could attend it for free through Living Classrooms Foundation. And she owned a cafe for eight years in Fells Point. At the Creative Alliance, she has found a calling orchestrating arts endeavors so creative they have led to new Baltimore traditions, like the annual Halloween lantern parade in Patterson Park, produced in collaboration with Friends of Patterson Park, the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, and artist Molly Ross. It has become a city-wide phenomenon, illuminating the park with at least 3,200 participants and observers last year. “I think there’s a lot more respect for the arts community and for the importance of artists as leaders in the community,” Footner says. “We did grow very fast, but that was in response to a mandate for a successful redevelopment project in Highlandtown.” Today Footner manages an operating budget of $900,000 and ten staff members. Cheryl Casciani, a member of the Creative Alliance board of directors, says Footner’s style complements the flamboyant energy around her. “She’s a very understated person,” says Casciani. “She has this quiet, steady, patient leadership that allows all kinds of people to flourish.” —A.H.

urbanite march 06

Future Trend:

Wh a t ’s N ext for C itie s ?

Cities and regions are changing rapidly. We polled some observers of urban life about the future of the American city in general, and Baltimore specifically. Each was asked the same three questions: What do you believe will

Successful cities will continue to provide opportunities for folks with a variety of backgrounds, interests, and income levels. Developers have already invested money in their next five years’ worth of projects. The most forward-looking ones are planning for the decade after the next five years. Still, as much as developers lead the process, they have to follow someone: innovators, urbanites old and young, anyone with courage and ideas. By connecting with these people, they are assuring that even if all their projects are not huge successes, at least they will not be irrelevant. What should city governments do? What should city-dwellers do? Two things: Listen. Connect. Inspiration needs to be local to be genuine. Along the way there will be opportunities to serve the community, to create moments, to shape institutions, to design places, and to enjoy the ride. —Bob Caldwell, senior associate, Gensler Baltimore

inﬂuence how cities develop over the next five years? What should cities do now to prepare for this opportunity or challenge? Where are the places that we should look for inspiration? These are excerpts of what they had to say. To contribute your own thoughts, e-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com.

More people will choose where they live based on what kinds of amenities they want. Households without kids, retirees, people who work at home, and families teaching kids at home or sending kids to inter-district magnet and charter schools—all growing demographics—do not need to follow traditional constraints on location. Watch for them to move to far-flung exurbs and to unique city neighborhoods, with less interesting urban neighborhoods and older suburbs the biggest losers. All cities and suburbs need to realize that they will have to do more to compete for residents than they did in past generations—both in basics like crime prevention and transportation infrastructure and amenities like parks and cultural offerings. Cities also have to make sure that they remain affordable to people who want to live there by cutting red tape for developers and making provisions for adequate modestly priced housing. Los Angeles is a place to look for inspiration. The city is retrofitting its landscape, designed for 1950s suburbia, with ambitious new transit lines and parks. It is also permitting massive new infill projects, thus helping keep housing prices more manageable than in cities like San Francisco where “not in my backyard” groups kill off development. —Adam Gordon, editor-in-chief, The Next American City

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I think our biggest cities will enter a period of rather severe contraction as America (and the rest of the world) enters a new era of permanent energy scarcity. The big cities are products of early twentieth century fossil fuel industrialism, with a heavy reliance on the automobile. To make matters worse, the suburban project of the late twentieth century resulted in a massive disinvestment in those industrial cities, so we find many of them today in an already advanced state of contraction. Paradoxically, though, I believe these cities will re-densify at their centers and along their waterfronts, in no small part because suburbia is the next to falter. The final result will be smaller but denser cities. In Baltimore, that exact process is well underway. Baltimore is doing a pretty good job at re-densifying its core—as good as any city I’ve seen. And I have seen a lot of them. I say this also because Baltimore was pretty far gone in 1996. Not much was happening then, besides the new ballpark, and the city has come a long way. But the farther-out neighborhoods may never recover, and the suburbs beyond are in for more trouble than the public might imagine. We have to restore public transit at all scales, especially the heavy rail passenger system between cities. City leaders have to start very aggressively campaigning for the state and federal governments to make this happen, while they redirect some municipal funds still going into car infrastructure toward light rail and other smaller-scale local urban transit. The fact that we are not even talking about this shows how dumb, deluded, and unserious we are as a society. —James Howard Kunstler, author of Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape and The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

Baltimore will thrive as young and old continue to discover the pleasures of a cosmopolitan lifestyle and, in the process, remake our city on a European model. New residents across Baltimore will crave Continental features such as parks, sidewalk cafes, transit-oriented development, and mixed-use, walkable communities. The infusion of population, attention, and tax dollars promises to alleviate Baltimore’s biggest challenges, such as crime and the quality of our public schools. But we must be careful not to create a city of extremes—extremely rich and extremely poor. Economic integration, like racial inclusion, is key to creating a healthy community with a place for all. —Kirby Fowler, president, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore

urbanite march 06

I am very upbeat about the future of Baltimore and believe that the last few years of strong leadership, favorable real estate trends, and good economic climate have moved our city over the hump. Not long ago, author David Rusk located Baltimore beyond a point of no return, essentially beyond hope. I believe that now it would take extreme circumstances or incompetence in local government to bring us back to such a state of despair. Our geographic position between the Appalachians and the Chesapeake Bay, our proximity to D.C. and New York, our rich history and memorable architecture, and our world-class institutions, from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Museum of Art, almost guarantee the desire of upwardly mobile folks from around the world to locate in our region. As a city, we have to direct some of this growth from the greenfields to the core. As a state, Maryland has reached density levels comparable to my birth country of Germany. In our metro region, we are at the point where folks are truly fed up with sprawl, destruction of green space, the ugliness of endless commercial strips, and aggressive automobile traffic. Place-making and quality of life are the new paradigms. Instead of segregation by class and race, we will strive for diversity and mix. We will accept density and look for intensity paired with rich visual and sensual experience in lieu of the sterility of the monochrome suburb. The city in the postindustrial world allows work and living, recreation and enjoyment all to come together in unexpected ways, as we can see already in the revitalized mixed-use areas of Federal Hill, Canton, Pigtown, and Hampden. As Baltimore has pioneered downtown waterfronts and the downtown stadium, so will we pioneer urban biotech parks on the east and west side of downtown. Many other things we will have to learn from others. From Philadelphia and Boston, we must learn how to integrate a university campus successfully into urban life. We will have to learn from Portland or Zurich, Switzerland, how to make transit successful in a city that has no space or desire to build more roads or widen the streets. We will have to learn from Chicago, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina, how to maintain affordable housing and make it part of revitalization in order to provide opportunity for all and break up the concentrations of poverty and disinvestments that still jeopardize the future of Baltimore. We will have to learn from Portland or Zurich how to make a city “green.” We will have to grow from being a beggar for development, just any development, to being choosy and critical. We will have to learn how quality development will beget more quality and how raising the bar will attract better investment. We just need to look to D.C. to see how the U Street corridor, which very recently was a “no go” zone, has become a vibrant destination. We need to have the courage for a vision that transforms every part of our city instead of leaving behind wastelands of disinvestments, crime, and abandonment. If we doubt that this can be done, we need to visit Boston and, increasingly, Brooklyn and the Bronx where these transformations have taken place or are underway. I believe that the distribution and scarcity of resources and the resulting cost of energy and concerns about climate change will shape the next decades. I believe that true homeland security grows out of creating a stable, just, and attractive society. Cities and metro regions will be in the forefront of creating such places and solutions for sustainability and livability because cities are the places of knowledge and interaction. —Klaus Philipsen, principal of ArchPlan, Baltimore

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urbanite march 06

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poetry

by lia purpura

Cicada

Disturbances

For a week it’s been spinning the tale of a thing about to believe its new body. Today the eyes are gone, the center split where form side-stepped its own riven length.

The way the vine quivers

That’s just likeness hinged to the tree. A souvenir. A transparency. To find it now make a space in the ear in the shape of what it’s become.

like an ear listening for a bird at the tangled center. In winter, it measures emptiness, the way a gaze lands on the space below that boy’s pinned sleeve. The question it sketches over and over— whose body just now entered air, and where did it go with the bloom of its best idea?

photo by John Dean

A thirst. A flood. Listen. Already the ear is the lip of a generous cup. A graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Lia Purpura is the writer-in-residence at Loyola College. Purpura is the author of two collections of poetry: The Brighter the Veil (1996), which won the Towson University Prize in Literature, and Stone Sky Lifting (2000), winner of the Ohio State University Press Award. Her collection of lyrical essays, Increase (2000), won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction. She is the recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and won a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Glaciology.” Sarabande Books will publish Purpura’s new collection of essays, On Looking, in August.

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urbanite march 06

poetry

by jane hirshfield

What Is Usual Is Not What Is Always What is usual is not what is always. As sometimes, in old age, hearing comes back. Footsteps resume their clipped edges, birds quiet for decades migrate back to the ear. Where were they? By what route did they return? A woman mute for years forms one perfect sentence before she dies. The bitter young man tires; the aged one sitting now in his body is tender, his face carries no regret for his choices. What is usual is not what is always, the day says again. It is all it can offer.

photo © Nick Rosza

Not ungraspable hope, not the consolation of stories. Only the reminder that there is exception.

Vilnius Jane Hirshfield’s sixth poetry collection, After, has just been published by HarperCollins. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared in multiple editions of The Best American Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many leading literary reviews. She will be reading her new work at Goucher College on March 29 at 8 p.m. at the Alumnae and Alumni House. Go to www.goucher.edu/calendar for more information.

For a long time I keep the guidebooks out on the table. In the morning, drinking coffee, I see the spines: St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Vienna. Choices pondered but not finally taken. Behind them—sometimes behind thick fog—the mountain. If you lived high up on the mountain, I find myself thinking, what you would see is More of everything else, but not the mountain.

—Both poems excerpted from After

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

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urbanite march 06

Realtor

fiction

by michael kun

illustrations by chris mucci

Corrections to My Memoirs U

pon much review and deep, deep contemplation, it appears that there may be several so-called inaccuracies in my unpublished memoirs, currently entitled Victory: How I Won World War II and Super Bowl III. (Note to potential publishers: That title is not “set in stone,” as they say.) While most of the so-called inaccuracies are plainly “poetic license,” I understand that potential readers may not be savvy enough to understand that complex literary concept. Among other things, they may not understand that “poetic license” applies to all writers, not just poets, as the name wrongly implies. Accordingly, I would like to make the following corrections to my memoirs. 1. Because the title of the book and chapters 44 through 57 might suggest otherwise to unsophisticated readers, I should explain that I did not serve formally in World War II. 2. Although I was not born until 1962, which was at least a couple years after the war ended, I did read much about that war in various encyclopedias.

Having done so, I did in fact devise a plan that could have helped to end the war much, much earlier. The plan, described in chapter 55 as if it had actually been carried out, involved luring Hitler, Mussolini, and some of the other enemy leaders into a large, open space. (Spoiler alert! The plan involved chocolate cake and very pretty Spanish ladies!) Sadly, President Lincoln did not have access to my plan, and the war dragged on much longer than it needed to. 3. Technically, I also did not play in Super Bowl III, as the title and chapters 94 through 97 might imply. I was only seven years old at the time, and I believe it would be both cruel and entirely unrealistic for readers to expect such a small child to play in a professional football game against grown men, many of whom were quite large and could have caused aforementioned small child serious harm. I did watch the game on television, though, and the outcome described in my memoirs is accurate: The New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts. For the sake of accuracy, all references to “me” or “I” in those chapters should be changed to “Joe Namath.”

4. While their last name is accurate, my parents’ first names are not “Sonny” and “Cher.” I am prohibited by a restraining order obtained by my parents’ lawyers from using their real names in my memoirs, or in any other “form of media, including but not limited to print publication, electronic transmission, television, or film.” However, I am not prohibited from telling you that if you dial directory assistance for Bergen County, New Jersey, not only will the operator provide you my parents’ first names, but she’ll also give you their telephone number so you can call them as often as you’d like. 5. “Ralph” is an important character in my memoirs, particularly during World War II, where he lost his right hand due to a malfunctioning hand grenade. While you will certainly want to quote some of his charming and pithy comments at home or work, you should know that, technically speaking, I do not actually have a brother named “Ralph.” I do not have a brother at all since my parents apparently didn’t think it was important for me to be able to relate to anyone other than them. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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urbanite march 06

Money doesn’t just disappear, as Ralph would say. Money doesn’t just get up and walk away, he’d say. If he were here.

“Ralph” is a composite character based upon my imaginary brother “Scooter” and a man I once met named Tom Something-or-Other. “Scooter” does not appear in my memoirs as he is imaginary, which I now understand. (Thank you, Dr. Deborah Pullari. You’ve been like the mother I never had.)

16. When I speak of my father’s time in “prison,” I am referring to the occasion on which he was given a speeding ticket on the Garden State Parkway two years ago. I wasn’t in the car at the time, but what if I had been? What then? And what if he’d been drinking, too? And what if it had occurred forty years ago, when I was just a toddler? That would be called “child endangerment.” Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t go to prison for that, because you can.

6. The incident at the Copacabana in chapter 54 involving a showgirl named Lola? I’m afraid that’s a combination of actual events and the events that occur in a popular song written by Barry Manilow. Mostly, the song. 7. “Pajamas” is the fictional name I have chosen to give my Golden Retriever for the purposes of my memoirs. He died in the middle of the night because of my parents’ shameful neglect, and I am moved to tears whenever I even think of his real name or picture his cold, unblinking eyes staring at the ceiling. Which I’m doing at this very moment. Oh, and he was actually a goldfish, not a dog, so I’ve used a little of that “poetic license” there. But everything else about him is entirely accurate. Except for the description of his burial, which I’m sure the reader will understand. 8. Although I’ve written in chapter 41 that my parents “completely forgot” my fourth birthday, truth be told they actually had a party for me in our backyard with a clown and a pony. But the clown hardly knew any good tricks, and the pony smelled like its skin was rotting once it began to rain, so in my mind it feels like they forgot my birthday altogether. It would’ve been better if they had. 9. Technically, my father did not stab me with a knife. But you could tell he was thinking about it. You could see it in his eyes. 10. Please ignore chapter 21. I really don’t know much about tuberculosis. 11. I did not actually hit a grand slam home run in my first Little League game, nor was my father sitting in the stands drinking bourbon and fingering the hem of a strange woman’s skirt when he should have been celebrating my achievement. If memory serves, I hit a weak ground ball and we eventually lost the game, after which my father took me to the Burger King in Midland Park to get a hamburger and french fries. Who feeds that kind of food to a growing boy? It’s not healthy! Feed a boy that kind of food, then try to figure out why he ends up fat and out-of-shape, with acne on his face and his shoulder blades! Try to figure out why he has no selfconfidence and girls won’t talk to him! Try to figure out why he plays poker with his computer club buddies every Friday night instead of going to parties!

17. In chapter 39, please change “Harvard” to “Hartford,” and “University” to “Technical School.” Please change “medical” to “refrigeration.” Please change “graduated with honors” to “attended for one and one-half semesters.” Please change “scholarship” to “outstanding student loans that have adversely affected my credit rating.”

So, the truth is actually worse than that which I’ve depicted, isn’t it? 12. My mother sang “What’s New Pussycat” at a Parents’ Talent Night at school, not standing on the coffee table at a dinner party. And she probably was wearing underwear. But, to a six year old, the embarrassment is the same, don’t you agree? The emotional truth is the same! 13. I was not married to Charlize Theron in the 1990s. She is an excellent actress, though, and quite a looker! 14. Why don’t we go ahead and change “Charlize Theron” to “Ruth Heimer” throughout chapters 23 through 27. And let’s change “beautiful movie star” to “surprisingly passable transvestite.” Please change “loved her with all my heart” to “located through an Internet website,” too. 15. When I write that I was robbed at gunpoint and had to turn over $500 to that stinking thief, what I should have said was that some money was missing from my trust fund. And if someone took it, that’s a crime! That’s the same as taking the money right out of my pocket. Importantly, you should know that no one has ever been able to adequately explain the disappearance of the $500 from my trust fund.

18. Regarding chapter 112: While it is true that my father served in the Army during the Korean War, I cannot say with any certainty which side he was on. Although the curled photographs appear to show him wearing the garb of the American forces, isn’t that precisely what those crafty South Koreans would do—dress up like Americans and put American flags on their uniforms in order to try to infiltrate our troops? Or maybe it was the North Koreans. I’m not a history buff. Anyway, please ignore any references to “treason.” 19. You don’t think anyone’s mother would admit working in a strip club, do you? But until she can prove otherwise … 20. While they referred to it as an “allowance,” I believe I earned that money—and more—through various services performed within the household. Likely in violation of applicable child labor laws, I should add. 21. “Take a sweater, sweetheart; it could get chilly.” “Take a sweater, sweetheart; it could get chilly.” God knows how many times I heard my mother speak those damning words. I can still hear those words in my head, rattling around like ball bearings. Telling me to take a sweater was nothing more than the most basic reverse psychology: She knew that I would rebel and choose not to take a sweater, thereby catching a cold. So when I say in chapter 4 that she suffered from “Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy,” a mental disorder by which an individual attempts to gain sympathy by purposefully causing injury or illness to his or her child, I’m referring to the sweaters. The damn sweaters. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a r c h 0 6

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urbanite march 06

22. No one could prove I started the fire. 23. Or that other fire. 24. Or that I broke the windows, even if those were my fingerprints on that thing I threw. Or, should I say, “allegedly” threw. Yes, let’s say “allegedly.” 25. What kind of parents buy their son a racing car bed then won’t let him drive their car? Think about that for a minute. 26. The incident involving the jump rope and the mail truck in chapter 33 actually occurred, but it happened to Teddy Abernathy, with whom I worked at Stone Harbor Refrigeration, not to me. But he told the story so vividly that I felt as if it happened to me, and my therapist seemed to believe it had happened to me when I told her. 27. I did not win a Grammy Award in 1988.  28. I did not star in Woody Allen’s 2005 film Melinda and Melinda, as suggested in chapter 78. Not that anyone would know. But, if we’re going to be sticklers … 29. My father’s “illness?” Nothing but a ploy to keep me from writing my memoirs and exposing him for the agile monster he is. Well, dear father, you did not raise a fool for a son. (I’m speaking of me, not Ralph.

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You did not raise Ralph at all, did you? Did you?) I’m sure that you’re sitting in some secluded little room in the hospital, drinking martinis with your “Army” buddies, when you’re supposedly getting “radiation” treatments. I’m sure you’re getting some big laugh out of that, using “radiation” as a code word to mean “martini.” I’m sure you’re all laughing about how you’ve used all your connections to keep my memoirs from being published. Well, I’m not laughing. You can put an end to all of this nonsense by just putting the $500—plus interest!—back in the trust fund and co-signing for that townhouse in Red Bank. All will be forgiven. Except for “Pajamas.” That will never be forgiven. 30. Poor “Pajamas.”  Poor, poor “Pajamas.”

The piece printed here is the title story in Michael Kun’s latest work, Corrections to My Memoirs, which is to be published by MacAdam Cage this fall. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Kun has published four novels and one work of nonfiction, The Baseball Uncyclopedia. His first novel, A Thousand Benjamins, was published in 1990, followed by The Locklear Letters in 2003. In 2004, he released My Wife and My Dead Wife, followed in 2005 by the critically acclaimed You Poor Monster. Inspired by his experiences working as a lawyer in Baltimore, You Poor Monster will be released in paperback this May. Kun currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

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On-going meditation Classes every Sunday: 8:30 a.m. & 5 p.m.

UPCOMING eventS: Saturday, March 4, 2 p.m. es of Life Meet the Author: Awake at Work: Facing the Challenges on the Job, by Buddhist meditation teacher Michael Carroll Saturday, March 11th, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Feeling Unworthy: A Workshop with Shaman Ross Bishop Sunday, March 12th, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., Aromatherapy and our Emotions with Richard Crafton Friday, March 17th, 7 p.m. Book signing with world-renowned author Ted Andrews (Animal-Speak, Nature-Speak)

Susan Weis, proprietress 810 W. 36th Street Store Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. -7p.m. Sunday, 12 p.m. - 5p.m.

Saturday, March 18th, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Ted Andrews Animal-Speak Workshop Details and all our events listed at www.breathebooks.com or call 410-235-READ.

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5 lifelong friends. 2 turbulent decades. 24 Billy Joel classics.

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sustainable city

Mother Nature Cleans Up A pioneering design concept makes its U.S. debut in Baltimore

Above: The first U.S. installation of a biofilter plant wall went into the Baltimore office of Biohabitats, Inc.

Does work make you sick â&#x20AC;Ś literally? Studies have shown that poor indoor air quality affects our health and productivity. Commonly known as sick building syndrome, poor indoor air quality can cause headaches, watery eyes, itchy nose, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating. While people typically associate these symptoms with allergies of the great outdoors, one Canadian scientist and entrepreneur is seeking to combat sick building syndrome by bringing the great outdoors inside. His solution: an air filter system that captures airborne pollution in a living wall of plants. And you can find its first installation in the United States in Baltimore. Found at the new headquarters of Biohabitats, Inc., the living wall is a vertical garden dotted with semi-tropical and tropical plants typically used for interior plantscaping. It includes a variety of plants, including peace lily, croton, and ficus. It adds grace and beauty to the renovated office space and inspires workers, but it is more than just an aesthetic focal point. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cutting-edge application of an old science called biofiltering.

In nature, many pollutants are broken down and turned into harmless byproducts by microorganisms like bacteria and fungi, which are found in and around the root systems of trees and plants. Biofiltering is the general term given to the multiple plant and microbial processes that enact this conversion, which are also key components in plantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; production of oxygen. Scientists have controlled pollution using biofiltering for decades, traditionally in treating waste water and eliminating unpleasant odors created by industrial processes. Now, however, the concept is being expanded to new realms. The vanguard of the movement to apply biofiltering to control indoor air quality is Dr. Alan Darlington of Guelph, Ontario, who has spent the last eleven years developing the science behind his living walls. It is only in the past few years that Darlington has sought to commercialize the living wall (known as a Naturaire System). He founded the company Air Quality Solutions in 2001 and has installed several large walls up to 1500 square feet in size (over 50 feet high and 30 feet wide) in universities and commercial spaces in Canada. A classic example of the growing

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

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Welcome to Village lofts. New condominiums in the heart of Baltimore’s favorite neighborhood, with plenty of places to shop, dine and satisfy your caffeine cravings. here, it’s all about convenience. a short walk to Johns hopkins University and The Baltimore Museum of art. a few minutes drive to the hippodrome. and your home is simply beautiful. Private balconies with city views, nine foot ceilings, and gourmet kitchens with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. add private garage parking and ground level retail for a positively charles Village lifestyle. From the upper $300’s. call today for an appointment 410.243.0324. sales center on site at the corner of 33rd st. and st Paul.

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Biohabitats president Keith Bowers decided to install the living plant wall as a symbol of the company’s motto: “Restore the Earth and inspire ecological stewardship.”

trend in natural capitalism, Air Quality Solutions overlaps business and environmental interests by better satisfying customers’ needs, increasing profits, and helping solve environmental problems all at the same time. Darlington’s living walls are essentially gardens built upwards, with a few key differences. First and foremost: There’s no dirt. Vines and other types of plants are rooted into a substructure made of foam and reinforced with a compound typically used by mining companies to secure their mineshafts, over which a sheet of fabric is laid. Water trickles down this structure, nourishing the plants and eventually falling into a pool at the base of the wall, where it is sent back to the top by a small pump. The lack of dirt is essential to the effectiveness of the living wall, as bacteria on the exposed roots of the plants metabolize air impurities such as the volatile organic compounds leached from paint and plastics. It also illustrates why just having more plants around the office doesn’t have the same effect, and it makes the wall a less messy proposition. So how does it work? Traditional buildings are sealed so that cold air in the winter and hot air in the summer can be shut out, thereby making the temperature more stable and controllable. The problem in a sealed system is that not only is the air locked in, but so are the contaminants. The air inside buildings accumulates pollutants over time, which get circulated through the building by the HVAC system—hence the onset of sick building syndrome. To reduce the percentage of pollutants in the air, standard HVAC systems draw in fresh air from the outdoors.

In Darlington’s system, a living wall is attached to the HVAC system and acts as a filter. By running the building’s air supply through the living wall, the contaminants are controlled and broken down, while the plants themselves manufacture “fresh” air by acting as a repository for excess carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. As a result, the HVAC system requires less air from the outside, making it more efficient and cheaper to operate. The living wall represents an industrial redesigning of biological models. It is an entirely self-sustaining system that creates zero waste other than the occasional pruning. Biohabitats brought the living wall to Baltimore last September, just prior to moving into its completely renovated office in October. When designing the new space with architecture firm Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Biohabitats’ president Keith Bowers had wanted an inspiring office space for his ecological restoration and conservation planning company. When it came to creating the office environment, Bowers wanted to live up to the company’s motto “Restore the Earth and inspire ecological stewardship.” Biohabitats has contributed to and guided environmental and ecological recovery in Baltimore and around the country since the early 1980s, and Bowers felt it was important that the company follow its motto not just through its work, but in its own practices. Working with Furbish Company, a sustainable building contractor, Bowers was able to utilize green materials, sustainable building practices, and eco-friendly technology like the living wall. For Bowers, the decision to install the living wall was not difficult. With a company full of engineers, ecologists, biologists, geologists, landscape architects, and people who love the outdoors, bringing in a wall of plants that would inspire employees promised a high return on investment. Tim Burkett, operations team leader, says, “Our firm’s greatest asset is its people, so it’s important to ensure that our staff is happy and to provide a creative, enjoyable work environment.” And while this may sound well and good for an eco-friendly company, it’s actually worth investigating for all companies since happy, healthy workers translate directly into higher profits. In an article on productivity and health that appeared in the September 1997 issue of Indoor Air: International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health, researchers William J. Fisk and Arthur H. Rosenfeld estimate potential U.S. annual savings and productivity gains of $6 billion to $19 billion from reduced respiratory disease, $1 billion to $4 billion from reduced allergies and asthma, $10 billion to $20 billion from reduced sick building syndrome symptoms, and $12 billion to $125 billion from direct improvements in worker performance that are unrelated to health. While Baltimore boasts the first living wall built in the U.S., Air Quality Solutions’ installations are popping up in every direction. Not only is Air Quality Solutions expanding to office buildings and shopping malls around North America, Darlington’s technology may soon provide air quality solutions down in the recesses of mines or up in space where renewable air is less prevalent or nonexistent. ■

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out there

Q & A with Astrophysicist Mario Livio Mario Livio, PhD, spends much of his day observing the heavens as a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and translating deep science for regular people in lectures and in popular books. His new book is The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry.

photo by Adam Schoonover

What’s the latest news from Hubble? [In January] there were announcements all over the place. First was a new image of the Orion Nebula, which is spectacular, beautiful to the eye. It’s almost like an impressionist painting. And it gives us a front-row view of how stars are forming. There are three thousand stars in the one image. Most are young stars, most never seen before Hubble. We’re seeing brown dwarfs, which are called “failed stars” because they don’t have quite the mass to start up nuclear fusion the way the sun and other stars do. So they’re dimmer. A lot of science will come out of that one image. Another study looked at Polaris, the North Star. We knew Polaris had two companions because of the way it moves in space, but this was the first time we’ve actually seen one of these companions.

Incredible. Another one looked at galaxies deep in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, in particular galaxies that were interacting, in the process of merging. And this is all just one week. It’s typical—science comes out of Hubble all the time. How is looking at Hubble images different than looking through other large telescopes—or looking through smaller ones? Well, with the bigger ones, you don’t look with your eye. The eye is not nearly a sensitive enough instrument. Hubble can “read” images that we never could see even in the optical spectrum. Hubble is above most of the Earth’s atmosphere, so it isn’t prone to the blurring that large on-the-ground telescopes have, so it has the better resolution. Some ground telescopes are bigger, and have new adaptive optic techniques that work on infrared, but they don’t work on optical. It’s just Hubble. Just Hubble? Yes. Hubble literally brought the universe home to people. When they think of science, of astronomy, they think of Hubble. It’s everywhere—on posters

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A comparison between the image of the Orion Nebula taken in 1995 (left) and the image recently shot by Hubble. It shows the turbulent star factory that lies at the center of the Orion constellation.

in textbooks, the cover of a Pearl Jam CD, the cover of an English reader in Japan. After the Orion announcement, all our computer terminals here slowed down, because so many people were accessing the servers to see the new images. In January 2004, when there was a danger it wouldn’t be serviced, we got thousands of letters from all over. A nine-year-old girl offered to send in her lunch money to “save the Hubble.” Clearly we are having an impact, in education and in excitement. Yet the telescope still is in danger? It needs another servicing. The NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, says that for the shuttles, Hubble is his top priority. So if the shuttles return to flight successfully, it will be one of the missions. Right now they’re not flying. They’re thinking shuttles could fly soon, sometime in the spring or fall. So we’re now hoping that servicing will take place around 2008. If yes, the two new instruments that are ready to go can be installed. And Hubble could go at least five more years after servicing, easily. If no, we

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expect it might die, sometime between 2008 and 2010, especially as the gyroscopes and batteries go. Was it your work on deep space or something else that drew you to write about symmetry in your latest book? It was a combination of the characters involved and of the fact that symmetry is so central to everything around us, from the arts and music and so on, to the way we perceive things, but also to the laws of nature, which is the thing I really tried to get at. It took generations to resolve the quintic equation—the equation referenced in the title of your book—but then science and math breakthroughs seemed to speed up, into the present day. Are we really learning so much so fast? There is no question that things are in some periods of time moving faster. You look at the beginning of the twentieth century and almost everything we know of modern physics was kind of born there.

There were at least two revolutions—quantum mechanics and general relativity—then. In terms of astronomy and astrophysics, there is no question that new generations of telescopes in space and on the ground have really revolutionized the field. But at the same time, you could argue that at this point we are a little bit at an impasse in terms of the basic theory. You know, string theory has been around for at least two decades, and for example, experimental tests of this theory are still slow coming. The experiments are slow because the technology wasn’t there? The experiments are slow because they require building these incredible accelerators, which are kilometers in radius, and cost billions and billions of dollars, so that takes time. But it’s very, very possible that in the 2007 to 2008 time frame, when these machines start to work, that there will again be some incredible era of discovery. Hopefully that will indeed be the case.

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in review

OPERA Dead Man Walking March 11 at 8:15 p.m. March 15 at 7:30 p.m. March 17 at 8:15 p.m. March 19 at 3 p.m. One of the most interesting and ironic things about the current debate over capital punishment is that advocates on both sides use biblical texts and Christian theology to bulwark their respective cases. It’s “an eye for an eye,” sure, but whatever happened to “thou shalt not kill”? After a certain amount of debate, the whole problem gets reduced to an argument about theology: Which texts are more important, and why? Dead Man Walking, an opera created in 2000 by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally, does something similar: It boils the death

BOOK Our Time Is Now: Young People Changing the World Sheila Kinkade and Christina Macy Pearson Foundation, 2005

penalty down to a few very complex questions about religion—in this case, the idea of redemption and how it relates to justice. This month, under the artistic direction of Michael Harrison, the Baltimore Opera Company will present a production of Dead Man Walking at the Lyric Opera House, in cooperation with six other opera houses around the country that together commissioned the work. The opera, like the 1995 Tim Robbins film, is based on the novel of the same name, written by Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who spent time as a spiritual advisor to death row inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. She ended up counseling Patrick Sonnier, a man convicted in the brutal rape and murder of two teenage lovers, whose journey towards redemption she would find life-changing. With the recent execution of the allegedly reformed former Los Angeles gang leader Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the opera seems very timely. “I think Dead Man Walking is particularly relevant to any area where the death penalty is pending or imminent,” says Harrison, general director of the Baltimore Opera. Harrison says that he is personally opposed to capital punishment on the grounds of Christian doctrine, but hastens to add that the BOC’s production of Dead Man Walking is anything but a morality play. In the opening prologue, the composite characters Joseph DeRocher and his brother Anthony brutally murder two teens, an image that serves as a counterbalance to the protagonist Sister Helen, who is the main character in the story. Jake Heggie, who wrote the music, says that although the death penalty is the backdrop that heightens everything to a matter of life and death, the opera itself is about love and redemption. “That sort of internal transformation you go through when

you have a crisis of faith in anything—and it doesn’t have to be religion—there is music that is innate to that experience, because there is inspiration when you find your way to the other side,” he said on the phone from his home in San Francisco. Indeed, Heggie was inspired to write extremely powerful music that is at times touched with bits of Southern vernacular folk, blues, and pop themes. His aria “This Journey ” is a stirring contemplation by Sister Helen, set to a lush, melodic orchestral accompaniment, which includes echoes of gospel music and old Negro spirituals. At other times, he dashes intensity into the drama of the plot by scoring jarring harmonies that seem lifted from a Stravinsky ballet. “I care about the music that serves the drama of the moment,” he says, “as opposed to creating a landscape that is music unto itself.” And in the end, the music and the message are both all the more relevant and accessible to the audience. Both composer and librettist have done a wonderful job of framing the issue, as well as the unconventional love story that ties the plot together, with a sense of gravity that is hard to miss. Heggie says that when Sister Helen heard that he was working on Dead Man Walking, she called him and said, “Jake, I don’t know boo-scat about opera, so you’re gonna have to educate me. But tell me you’re not going to write any of that atonal stuff, are you? I mean, people are gonna be able to walk away from it humming a tune, aren’t they?” The idea also was, presumably, that people would walk away from it thinking a bit more about the issues. The creators of Dead Man Walking achieved both goals, and in spades.

For those of us who gripe that the next generation is full of youths attuned only to their own needs and their iPods, reading Our Time Is Now: Young People Changing the World is like eating crow. The thirty-one young people profiled in this book created by the International Youth Foundation are toiling mightily to improve life. A college sophomore establishes an international nonprofit that helps the poor get eye care. A 20 year old in India rescues a polluted river. Seven Dutch children, ages 6 to 11, start a fund-raising group to build a classroom in Africa. A young woman in Kenya works with teenage mothers and teaches young girls about reproductive health. Feeling sheepish yet? It’s difficult not to when reading about the young do-gooders in Our Time is Now. Desmond Tutu penned the book’s heartwarming foreword, and the subsequent profiles are grouped into categories and interspersed with quotes from a diverse mix of politicians, religious figures, advocates, journalists, and celebrities. At the end of each profile, the subject or subjects offer a concise list of steps they took to succeed. Telling the stories of twenty-three visionary projects in 174 pages peppered with photos and

highlighted quotes is tough work. The quotes that don’t pertain to the person or group profiled are at times wasted space. A frustrating example of this is a quote from Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who now heads the group Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. The quote appears at the end of the profile of Seinep Dyikanbaeva, a disabled 20-year-old woman in Kyrgyzstan who, with her mother, runs an advocacy group for disabled children. More information on the two women would have been a more interesting use of space. Still, Our Time Is Now has more positives than negatives. And it does go a long way toward restoring faith in the next generation. We’re leaving them a mess, but the young people profiled here are well equipped to tackle anything. The book is available locally at The Ivy Bookshop (6080 Falls Road; 410-377-2966). For information on the book, go to www.pearsonfoundation. org/IYF/ourtimeisnow. For more information on the International Youth Foundation, go to www.iyfnet.org.

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in review

BOOK Beasts of No Nation Uzodinma Iweala HarperCollins, 2005

BOOK D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself Edited by Ellen Lupton Princeton Architectural Press, 2006

“I am not bad boy. I am soldier and soldier is not bad if he is killing.” So says Agu, the child narrator of Uzodinma Iweala’s tautly explosive first novel, Beasts of No Nation, set in an unspecified region of West Africa. Following the outbreak of civil war, Agu’s mother and sister are rescued by United Nations peacekeepers just before their village is ransacked and torched by rebel soldiers, who then slaughter Agu’s father and enlist the young boy in their army in return for his life. This guerrilla mob, high on “gun juice” narcotics and led by a manipulative, brutal commandant, undertakes a rampaging odyssey through the countryside, maiming and killing and recruiting more young boys like Agu along the way. Iweala’s decision not to name the West African nation allows readers to slot in whichever hellish civil war zone is uppermost in their minds; Agu’s singular experience thereby becomes a conduit for the universal. Nor is the reader told Agu’s age, but he seems on the brink of adolescence. “All we are knowing is that, before the war we are children and now we are not,” he says. Despite his despicable actions, Agu is a child, and the book packs its emotional wallop within his childlike descriptions. “This darkness is so full like it is my mother’s hug,” he remembers. Agu escapes from reality into dreams of his family, of his parents who loved him, took him to Sunday school, and planted the fear of God and divine retribution into his young, unformed soul. Agu’s battle between his

conscience and his instinct for self-preservation lies at the heart of all this darkness. Beasts of No Nation contains scenes of stomach-churning brutality and sexual violence, yet at no time do these feel gratuitous. Iweala takes us there because he must, while creating a unique, fresh voice for Agu’s dual history as victim and perpetrator. Mob violence demands that to stay alive, one must do unto others as the mob would do unto you. “… I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die,” says Agu, and “I am not wanting to die.” His need to belong, his yearning for family, and his fear of ostracism and death make him willing to take part in the most horrendous crimes, despite the tearing ache of his conscience. Too often politicians dodge the word genocide; Iweala dodges nothing, deliberately sacrificing subtlety in exchange for a physically palpable immediacy. Through this choice, Iweala bludgeons the reader with facts that are normally shamefully avoided. The question he raises is this: Now that we know that this is what the lives of some children are like, what are we going to do about it? Beasts of No Nation heralds the debut of a fearless new literary voice. His readers will be eager to see what other dark corners of the human soul this 24-year-old native of Washington, D.C., chooses to illuminate next.

“Design is an instrument for packaging ideas and making them public,” writes Ellen Lupton, editor of D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, an innovative how-to design handbook for anyone interested in creating everything from tee shirts to baby clothes, business cards to invitations, books to blogs, and much more. Created by the students and faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art graphic design MFA program (of which Lupton is the founding director) with guest contributors and interviews from national designers, D.I.Y. is an impressive collection of philosophy, history, and hands-on tips. In the first chapter, “Why D.I.Y.?” Lupton writes: “Current technologies—from digital fonts and the Internet to full-service copy centers—make it possible for nearly anyone to produce their own graphics.” The chapter also delves into the origins of the do-it-yourself design movement, citing such influences as the emergence of desktop publishing, the Internet, and a wariness of big name brands. Even Martha Stewart gets a nod for her do-it-yourself empire of homemade crafts and hospitality. Moving from theory to tangibles—the how-to portion includes twenty-seven chapters on creating specific designs like CD packaging, photo albums, and stationery. Each chapter jumps out of the box with creative and artistic approaches to design, whether it’s housewares or embroidery. In Mike Weikert’s “Brands” chapter, he lays out the concept,

development, marketing, and distribution of Small Roar, the line of baby clothing he created with his wife. Alissa Faden’s “Flyers” chapter features her designs of lost-cat flyers. She illustrates how your public postings can effectively grab the attention of a passerby. In one example, a flyer features a photo of a cat with the line “My cat is a typical male. He is often lost and always too proud to ask for directions.” One of the most appealing aspects of the book is the layout itself. Each page is a vibrant and smart mix of text, photographs, and artwork, with contributors not only filling roles as authors and designers, but also as models for the array of D.I.Y. apparel. This is one do-it-yourself book that will actually inspire you to do it yourself. Get a head start and try your hand at designing your own products by visiting the D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself exhibition in conjunction with the book release. It runs through March 12 at the Pinkard Gallery at MICA’s Bunting Center (1401 Mount Royal Avenue). A book party and reception will be held at the gallery March 2 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and a Family Day will be held at the gallery March 4 from noon to 3 p.m. For more information, call 410-225-2300 or visit www.mica.edu.

—Susan McCallum-Smith

—Jason Tinney

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what i’m reading

by susan mccallum-smith

“I always feel a little guilty enjoying true crime, as I become a voyeur into someone else’s worst nightmare.”

Books sidle onto my reading list from two quarters, the “want to reads”—including, currently, John Boyne’s eagerly anticipated children’s book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Alice Mattison’s short story collection In Case We’re Separated—and the “should reads.” The books I should read include titles that come to my attention after the authors have been lauded as “literary and worthy.” The Piano Teacher was one such book. Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 and, as I’d never heard of her, I choose to read this, her most famous work. It was truly awful, peopled with characters so selfish and manipulative that my dogged perseverance to get to the last sentence was propelled only by the hope that the two protagonists might accidentally throttle one another during one of their sadomasochistic encounters. And before that sends scurrying to the bookstore, let me Summer Camp 06you- Urbanite warn you that it contains some of the least erotic sex 9.125 x 2.625 scenes ever written. Jelinek is a phenomenal stylist 0106.094 with a wicked sense of humor, but if a writer’s characters are so unsympathetic that all I want to do is beat them around the head with a rolled up newspaper, then what’s the point? If a compelling and erotic love story is what you’re after, then I recommend Marguerite Duras’ gem, The Lover, which I’m ashamed to say I just recently got around to reading. The Lover, like many of Duras’ works, is apparently autobiographical, although she had the common sense to term them

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fiction. Duras died in 1996, much lauded by her countrymen. Chic, mysterious, militant, intellectual, obstinate, alcoholic, Duras encapsulated a combination of attributes that the only French seem capable of accepting and celebrating in a woman; if she had been Scottish she may just have been branded cranky and crazy. Donald H. Wolfe’s gripping and mildly sleazy book about the murder of Elizabeth Short in 1946 Los Angeles, The Black Dahlia Files, was near the top of my “want to read” list, and it didn’t disappoint. I always feel a little guilty enjoying true crime, as I become a voyeur into someone else’s worst nightmare. I salve my conscience by choosing crimes that occurred at least fifty years ago. It’s a small distinction, I know, but it makes me feel better while I’m tilting the grizzly photographs under the light of the lamp to get a closer look. Despite all the fuss and bother in the press, I’m not reading James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. Truth is, I admit, a slippery commodity and dependent on point of view, but honesty is not. If something is made up it’s called “fiction.” Some may find this diffuse, wobbly line between what is true and what is not a little persnickety and old-fashioned. But in these days when truth is increasingly under siege, what could possibly be more important? —Susan McCallum-Smith is Urbanite’s literary editor.

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The model cities are constructed out of recycled materials like egg cartons, cardboard, and construction paper.

DDG’s Turner watches the presentations and likes what he sees. “I think they are doing very well,” he says. “All the kids are enthusiastic and know their stuff. I think our particular group has a lot of actionpacked cities.” And he adds, referring to the competition itself, “If I had this when I was this age, I might be an engineer.” By 11:45, all of the Lemmel groups have presented; all that’s left now is the awards ceremony. The students gather in the museum’s theater. A group of Lemmel girls locks arms and waits in anticipation. The specialty awards are handed out first. The award for the Best Bridges and Highways goes to Lemmel’s Paradise City. Lacey takes the stage and holds the plaque above the hoots and hollers and applause of her classmates. The next award, Most Environmentally Friendly City, goes to Asylum, and the Most Creative City award goes to Townsville— two other Lemmel cities. The Lemmel students are elated and not shy about their enthusiasm. They are no longer seven teams in competition; they are now one school rooting for one another. Sadly, though, it will be the last time that the Lemmel students will take the stage to collect a prize. The first place prize goes to E. H. Markle Intermediate, a Pennsylvania school that received special permission to participate in the Maryland event— they will be going to Washington, D.C. The students file out of the theater. Some take it in stride, trying to be positive as they pack up their models. Others are clearly disappointed. Dominelli helps his students pack up their models and says, “I thought this was going to be our year. The kids still did great. I think they benefited from it, and we’ll be back next year.” A mother steps up to Williams and asks him to console one of the students, who stands next to her model in tears. Williams points out to the young lady, a student who barely spoke a word in class before she began working on the project, that she gained something more valuable than a trophy when she got up on the stage and presented her city. Williams is right. And he leaves no doubt that Lemmel will be back next year. “They’ll learn. They’ll grow from it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We did our best,” he says. “We’re going to break through.” ■

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5. .50% * 5.875% * . (5 590% APR)3

0 POINT

(5 968% APR)4

0 POINT with a 2% grant

call tOdaY and BEcOME a HOMEOwnER tOMORROw!

1-800-638-7781 morehouse4less.com A MORTGAGE PROGRAM OF CDA MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Michael S. Steele Victor L. Hoskins Shawn S. Karimian Governor Lt. Governor Secretary Deputy Secretary

The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a 1% discount point, $201.50 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower. 2 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a no discount point, $217.00 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower. 3 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on no origination fee, a no discount point, $227.33 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower. 4 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted above represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on a no origination fee, no discount point, $242.83 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower. * Mortgage Loan Fees may include appraisal, credit report, processing, document preparation, an underwriting fee, flood certificate, tax service, wire transfer, and other fees. Please note that the actual APR may vary depending upon the Mortgage Loan Fees the participating lender charges the borrower. Rates are subject to change. 1

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clipper mill is life in constant motion. of course, more than 50% have already moved. Move right into Millrace Condos at Clipper Mill, a truly colorful community with undeniable character. Live within the wooded Jones Falls Valley, close to everything you love and need in the city: eclectic shops & eateries, the light rail & I-83 and of course, the park. Plus, you’ll have every modern convenience inside & out, like 9’ ceilings and designer lighting, Verizon fiber optics (FIOS), secure parking and Baltimore’s most remarkable community pool. Granite, stainless & hardwood available on select residences. Talk about immediate gratification. From the upper $200’s. Stop by our Sales Center or call 410-243-1292. Artwork by Paul Daniel, resident artist at Clipper Mill

Project by Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse. Transforming America’s Cities Neighborhood by Neighborhood. Sales by Builders 1st Choice MHBR# 4533

urbanite march 06

27 With a Grain of Salt Visit Ma Petite Shoe in Hampden (832 West 36th Street, 410-235-4332; www.mapetiteshoe.com) for the delectable Barcelona Bar mentioned by our writer. Specialty salts are available around town at Ceriello Fine Foods (410-532-1840; www.ceriellofine foods.com) and Neopol Savory Smokery (410-4337700), both in Belvedere Square. The website for Salt Traders (www.salttraders.com) offers information about specialty salts, along with recipe suggestions; visitors to the site can also purchase salts online. Fran’s Chocolates, based in Seattle, offers caramels made with specialty salts through their website (www.franschocolates.com). What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), by chemistry professor and syndicated Washington Post columnist Robert L. Wolke, includes an entertaining and informative scientific essay on salt. Mark Kurlansky’s book Salt: A World History (Penguin, 2003) tells the intriguing history of the mineral. Read more about Archaea and Jocelyne DiRuggiero’s research at the University of Maryland at www.life.umd.edu/CBMG/faculty/diruggiero/lab.

47–63 What’s Next? The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the TwentyFirst Century (Gardners Books, 2005), by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, discusses the results of globalization on the world. Richard Florida’s The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent (HarperCollins, 2005)

talks about the effect on America of the loss of creative talent to other countries. Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures (Harvard Business School Press, 2004) discusses how individuals can solve problems creatively and innovatively. In A Whole New Mind (Riverhead Hardcover, 2005), Daniel H. Pink suggests that those who think with the right side of their brain will dominate the workplace. Michael H. Shuman’s book Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age (Routledge, 2000) is a grassroots approach to economics and regional economies. Victor Papenek’s classic book Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (Academy Chicago Publishers, 1985) is about responsible, sensible design. Massive Change (www.massivechange.com) encourages all to use design to solve real-world problems and includes resources for how to accomplish this in your community. The CEOs for Cities website (www. ceosforcities.org) has more information about the “young and restless” trend as well as the future of cities. Smart City is a weekly public radio program that explores the ideas and trends that are shaping our cities (www.smartcityradio.com). The Next American City magazine gives insight into the issues and developments affecting U.S. cities (www.americancity. org). Charles Landry’s book The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators (Earthscan Publications, 2000) is a call for innovative planning and imaginative problem solving in urban environments.

79 Q & A with Astrophysicist Mario Livio Keep up with the continuing journey of the Hubble Space Telescope, including a peek at the impressionistic composite image of the Orion Nebula mentioned by astrophysicist Mario Livio, via its official website www.hubblesite.org. A mural-sized copy of the image is on indefinite exhibit at the Historical Electronics Museum, near BWI airport, at 1745 West Nursery Road in Linthicum; the museum is free and open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays (410-765-0230; www.hem-usa.org).

photo by Kevin J. Parks/Mercy Medical Center

resources

For more information on Mercy Medical Center’s Weinberg Center, see page 37.

Images, news, and details of future experiments and public forums are available at www.stsci.edu, the site for Hubble’s on-Earth “director,” the Space Telescope Science Institute, located on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Livio’s latest book, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry (Simon & Schuster, 2005), was one of Discover magazine’s top science books of 2005. Livio’s earlier books include The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (Broadway, 2003), which describes myths, truths, and real-world examples of the “divine proportion;” and The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos (Wiley, 2000), a review of current theories of the workings of our universe.

photo courtesy of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore

coming next month:

The Architecture Issue With Guest Editor

Carol Coletta host of the radio program Smart City and president and CEO of CEOs for Cities

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urbanite marketplace

breathe books 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.

Fells Point Ofﬁce 410-675-5500 701 S. Broadway Baltimore, MD 21231

Specializ ing in C ontainer G ardens & U rban Landscaping Commercial & Residential Design - Installation - Maintenance www.baltimoregarden.com 4007 Falls Road Baltimore, MD 21211 410-366-9001

Buy premium quality seafood DIRECT FROM THE MANUFACTURER!

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“Give the Gift of Enchantment, Give a Book.” A u n iq u e b o o ksto r e ca fé ce le b r a tin g co m m u n ity with a n e n ch a n tin g b le n d o f lite r a tu r e , g o o d fo o d , a n d g r e a t n e ig h b o r s . 4337 Harford Road 410-444-4440 www.redcanoe.bz

Sacred Art Journeys The Temple of Sacred Art is a vessel for nourishing creativity. Designed for both seasoned artists and those who have no formal art training, this visual art practice opens the gates to personal and mystical expression. We offer private instruction and group classes in Baltimore, and a national teleconference series.

For information e-mail kirsten@templeofsacredart.com call 410-578-1660 or visit www.TempleofSacredArt.com

urbanite march 06

Direct Pine Furniture Importers. Specializing in distressed, olde wood reproductions. Natural hand rubbed and painted ﬁnishes.

www.annapolisfurniture.com Annapolis 410-295-7463 Baltimore 410-633-7224 Easton 410-770-6240

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STAFFING

MBE & WBE Certiﬁed Members of the Better Business Bureau Phone 410-308-9050 Fax 410-308-9055 www.allproplacement.com jobs@allproplacement.com

Stressed Out? Let Us Help. 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 Since 1973 5209 York Road #B12 410-532-2GROW (2476) By Appointment Only

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eye to eye

Denise Tassin Day Care This work is part of a larger, ongoing environment. It is constructed of objects collected from everyday ephemera. The artist sees her work as a narrative connected to the pattern of life’s daily activities. She says, “I’ve begun to make both an emotional and physical record of a single life ... In a way, I’ve begun to collect myself.”

2006 6 x 15 x 12 inches Acrylic house paint, model train figures/figurines and doll house furniture on ceramic mask

urbanite march 06

Immaculate perception.

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Good morning.

Dora is wearing our Halter Leotard, available in five color combos, online and 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

Made in Downtown LA Vertically Integrated Manufacturing

Baltimore Retail Location:

urbanite march 06

Federal Hill 1125 Light St. Phone: (410) 244-7260