Around Maryland

It’s 10:30 a.m. and the pre-K students at Curtis Bay Elementary School were lining up for lunch. Across a metal counter that rises to their shoulders, they cautiously slid compostable trays, staring wide-eyed at the staff who place cheeseburgers and smiley-faced “emoji fries” on their plates. “How can you not love ‘em?” asked cafeteria manager Patricia Newman, a 27-year veteran of the school system who attended this school as a child. As the kids teetered toward their lunch tables, trying not to spill, Newman made a note on a clipboard to ensure that every student grabbed a piece of fruit or a vegetable, as required by federal guidelines.

The brother of Hae Min Lee submitted notice to the Maryland courts that he intends to appeal the decision last week to overturn the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, the subject of the hit podcast “Serial.” Steven Kelly, the attorney for Young Lee, filed notice Wednesday of his intent to appeal the decision to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. The Baltimore Banner obtained the notice.

Industrial facilities dumped at least 94,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including PFAS, into Maryland’s waterways in 2020, according to a report released Wednesday by the Maryland PIRG Foundation. The startling and sobering report, “Wasting Our Waterways,” takes statistics from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory for 2020 and puts the health of Maryland’s waterways in the context of broader national environmental trends. “Our children deserve a safe and healthy future,” said Maryland PIRG State Director Emily Scarr.

Maryland telephone users may have to grapple with the area code “227” as early as next year because available numbers with familiar area codes such as “301” and “240” are running out, officials said Wednesday. In a statement, the Maryland Public Service Commission said “227” will serve the same geographic area as “301” and “240” after it approved a request from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) last month.

Welcome back to “Let’s dish.” This week, I’ll recommend an Ellicott City spot for soup dumplings and give you the rundown on a Black-owned vegan restaurant planning to merge with a bookstore in Waverly, as well as a new seafood restaurant preparing to fill the hole left by Clyde’s in Columbia. But first, let’s prep for Ravens game day. Chicken wings are required eating for any football game in my book, but especially when the Ravens are playing the Buffalo Bills. Ahead of this Sunday’s matchup, I went on Twitter to ask readers where to eat wings near M&T Bank Stadium.

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.

In a swift swoop, former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin picked up young Aden, who gazed at the various patches on the man’s collared blue jumpsuit. Noah, Aden’s older brother, watched the encounter as dad and mom snapped a picture. The family joined the elite astronaut, scientists, the European and Italian space agencies and a mob of media for an evening in Laurel to watch a NASA spacecraft collide with a 525-foot asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, known as DART, is one of the first missions that attempted to change the path of an asteroid by slamming into it at 14,000 miles per hour. Scientists will use results to develop future protections against asteroids that are potentially harmful to Earth.