A lot of us put our heart and soul into making our homes our own. But these soon-to-be homeowners are putting in a lot more than that. Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake and Bank of America volunteers worked on building five homes in South Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood. A few of those volunteers will soon own the homes they’re building.

 

Baltimore Sheriff Sam Cogen endorsed Sheila Dixon for mayor, saying the administration of Mayor Brandon Scott has been “dysfunctional” and difficult to work with. Cogen’s endorsement means the city’s two elected law enforcement officials are backing Dixon, following Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates’ endorsement earlier this month.

Izzy Patoka was only 8 years old when he became his parents’ interpreter. Like many Jewish refugees who fled Europe during the Holocaust, the Patokas didn’t speak English. So whenever an official-looking document came in the mail, they would ask their son to translate and to explain. “I always felt that I did not live up to what my parents expected because I was not a lawyer or a doctor at eight years old,” said Patoka, who is now chair of the Baltimore County Council.

Since it opened Sept. 15, the Meritus Crisis Center has seen 204 patients. Dalton Jones was one of them. “They are amazing,” he said of the staff at the six-bed inpatient Crisis Center. “They basically saved my life.” Meritus Health opened the facility to support the needs of those struggling with addiction as part of its mission to improve the health of the community.

A pro-Palestinian protest ended peacefully at the Johns Hopkins University early Tuesday morning, as organizers packed up their encampment apparently to avoid police intervention. “This is not the end,” an organizer said as students and others took down their tents and put away the supplies overnight. Organizers said they would be back in the morning.

For Baltimoreans of a certain age, the former Greyhound bus station on Howard Street is a place that triggers memories – as a starting point for distant travels, the first stop for visitors arriving in town, the only downtown landmark with illuminated dogs on the side of the building. For U. S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, it was a place to get a job.

In the stirring political symphony that currently envelops Maryland’s Republican Party, the looming presence of Robin Ficker, emblematic of the Dan Cox/MAGA contingent, presents a disturbance that challenges the established figure of Larry Hogan in the quest for the U.S. Senate nomination. Echoing the sentiment of Buffalo Springfield’s iconic anthem, “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear,” the political landscape of Maryland is indeed rife with uncertainty, as Ficker’s emergence stirs the pot of conventionality.

In 2004, The City of Chicago completed the transformation of 25 acres of surface parking lots and rail tracks into a world-renowned public park. Now Chicago’s beating heart, Millennium Park was born from a vision and leadership. As the story goes, Mayor Richard Daley was sick of seeing a sea of parked cars from his dentist’s office that overlooked downtown.

Staff at the Maryland Department of Health and related agencies said at a recent Maryland Medicaid Advisory Committee meeting that they’re going to have a “busy” interim period as they work to conduct over a dozen new reports and studies prompted by bills that came out of the 2024 legislative session. “A lot of those bills that ended up passing did have a lot of reports as their main components,” Chris Coats, a health policy analyst with the Maryland Department of Health, said Thursday.

With the passage of time since the tragic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, we come to fully appreciate the vulnerability of our supply chain and how vital the Port of Baltimore is to maintaining it. As the community scrambles to clean up the wreckage, divert cargo and keep transport as normal as possible, it’s important for corporate citizens and state leaders to step up to the challenge.