Every Thursday afternoon like clockwork, a group of teens in orange aprons huddles around a collection of brightly colored bikes next to a skate park at the city’s Inner Harbor. Two of them are snapping the front derailleur of a blue two-wheeler back into place so the rider can change gears. Another group is swapping a torn brown leather seat for a freshly covered black one.
They teach Baltimore youths to fix bikes — and change perspectives in the process
Anne Arundel wants to balance access to the Chesapeake Bay. Critics call it rationing.
I was lost in a thicket of pawpaws and towering bittersweet vines at South River Farm Park. Lisa Arrasmith and Mike Lofton were walking me to the water’s edge, picking a path through public land across the South River from Annapolis. It was overgrown and littered with flotsam from hundreds of surging storms. His knee was dodgy but holding up.
Dan Rodricks: Abandoned dogs and mostly happy endings
Everybody likes a happy ending, at least once in a while. So you will be pleased to hear that Katherine Carver’s book on abandoned dogs is full of happy endings — that is, lots of adoptions. Most of the dogs she photographed and profiled found new homes. But Carver’s book, “Abandoned: Chronicling the Journeys of Once-Forsaken Dogs,” is not all warm and fuzzy.
Maryland bridges among nation’s busiest for ship traffic, according to study inspired by Key Bridge collapse shows
Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and Bay Bridge are among the nation’s top 10 bridges with the most ships passing through, according to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers. The research, which aimed to find which bridges are at risk of a catastrophic collapse, was sparked by the March 26 collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge.
Police want to hide their radio communications. The public should have a say.
Across Maryland, law enforcement agencies are making dramatic changes to their communication practices, and they’re not aimed at increasing transparency. One by one, county sheriff’s offices and city police departments are moving their radio communications from open frequencies that anyone can tune into to closed, encrypted ones that only police can monitor.
Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December
Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service, and additional money was added to replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
‘It should have been done by now’: Sen. Cardin says Key Bridge funding likely pushed past election
Two members of Maryland’s congressional delegation said on Friday that it’s now unlikely that Congress will pay for 100% of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rebuild before the election. Speaking at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference in August, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin said Congress was on its way to fully funding the rebuild after the Senate overcame certain hurdles.
Medicare policy on supplemental oxygen has forced some patients to retreat from life
My sister called me in tears after her first supplemental oxygen delivery. It was July 2013. At the time, she was a 41-year-old mother to a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old, and worked part-time as an occupational nurse practitioner at the University of Maryland. We have a rare lung disease called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), and because of the resulting lung damage, called bronchiectasis, we were both prescribed supplemental oxygen.
The Key Bridge collapse: Six months later, six families are still grieving
Mariela had been fasting for about 36 hours, her way of asking God for a miracle. She was wracked with uncertainty about whether the man she’d spent half of her life with, the father of her four kids, the romantic who wrote her gushy love poems, was alive. As she waited in a police station for that miracle, they came to her with news so crushing she felt it in her chest. (Photo: Kaitlin Newman/The Baltimore Banner)
‘Homicide’ actor talks ‘the greatest character I have had the opportunity’ to play
I’ve spent the last month time traveling back to the ’90s in a marathon rewatching all seven seasons of my favorite show, “Homicide: Life On The Street,” finally streaming on Peacock. Filmed largely in and around Fells Point, it’s a sometimes grim but achingly hopeful love letter to Baltimore. Taking it in again, all these years later, I realized I’d missed the characters like they were dear friends, none more than tragically cocky hot shot Detective Mike Kellerman, a former arson squad detective whose meteoric rise and spectacular fall are a focus in seasons 4-6.