Around Maryland

The head of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts once pledged publicly to “dim the lights a little” on Baltimore’s beloved outdoor arts festivals. City residents will find out next month what that means for Artscape, a supersized extravaganza that has been the centerpiece of the city’s festival season for four decades. When Donna Drew Sawyer, BOPA’s chief executive director, unveils the details of the 2023 Artscape at an Oct. 20 news conference, it will cap an at-times intense battle over the future of the festivals that has been fought in government offices, at public meetings and behind the scenes for the past six months.

Austin Voth’s time with the Orioles has taught him a great deal about who he is as a pitcher. Last week, he headed to Bel Air to see if the organization could help to answer another question. “Am I being the best version of myself,” Voth wondered, “or is there another version of me that I can be?” On the third floor of MedStar Health’s Bel Air campus, he took the first steps toward finding out. Instead of performing his between-starts bullpen session at Camden Yards, Voth worked through each of his pitches off the mound at the Orioles’ new pitching lab. Opened this summer in partnership with MedStar Health, the lab will help the team optimize its pitchers’ deliveries, for both performance and injury prevention, through the use of motion capture video and other tools.

Earlier this year, a youth at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center was assaulted by several other kids: kicked in the face and head multiple times, and hit with a trash can and hygiene container as he was lying defenseless on the floor. Meanwhile, staff at the facility were delayed in responding to the assault because they were initially provided with the wrong unit location. The targeted youth was transported to the hospital to treat extensive injuries to his face and eye, as well as missing teeth.

Maryland and Virginia are two of the best places to be a teacher while D.C. is one of the worst, according to a new report. WalletHub ranked Virginia as the third best state for teachers in the nation, with Maryland not far behind in ninth place. In contrast, the District ranked 49th out of 51 total entries. The report looked at two main categories to determine its rankings: “Opportunity & Competition” as well as “Academic & Work Environment.”

Red Cross crews from Maryland are en route to Florida to provide help as Hurricane Ian nears. The Red Cross said it’s working night and day to set up the relief operation and ensure tens of thousands of people in the potential path of this storm have access to emergency shelter. Water, cots and food join pallets upon pallets of blankets as part of a shipment of emergency supplies that are crucial to the Red Cross response in Florida. “The Red Cross is staging people and supplies in preparation of potentially housing up to 30,000 people,” said Misty Bruce, executive director of the Red Cross Central Maryland Chapter.