Around Maryland

On a rainy Wednesday evening at a public hearing about a proposed public garden — Howard County’s first — there seemed to be an elephant in the room. About a dozen or so people spoke and offered ideas to the county’s garden focus group last month about what native plants they want to see when the garden, to be located on a former plantation along Route 97 in the western part of the county, comes to fruition.

When he’s breaking — sometimes called break dancing, by those who aren’t in-the-know — Coleman “Church” Caldwell, 32, feels a mix of anxiety and freedom. Dancing surrounded by a circle of fellow breakers, called B-boys and B-girls, in a formation named a cypher is “an opportunity to show yourself.” “It’s kind of like speaking a different language that everybody can understand,” said Caldwell, who lives in Anne Arundel County. “It is truly poetry in motion.”

Hagerstown Police Chief Paul Kifer acknowledged this week that the city had a “rough couple of weeks” recently with two homicides and even more shootings. One homicide or one shooting is too many, Kifer said. Kifer talked about the shootings and homicides that occurred in late July and early August during interviews with The Herald-Mail at National Night Out at Fairgrounds Park on Tuesday evening and in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Montgomery County’s recently appointed school Superintendent Thomas Taylor is excited about the coming school year. At the weekly briefing held by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, Taylor declared, “This is going to be a great school year!” Taylor said the school system’s goal has been to fill 900 positions for the new year. Currently, 160 full-time slots remain open and 100 part-time slots are unfilled. But he added, “that’s tremendous progress,” noting that a week ago, the full-time vacancies totaled “a little over 200.”

The Maryland Board of Public Works retroactively approved a contract Wednesday that allowed the state to provide financial assistance payments to workers displaced by the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. “That first morning when we were down there with the divers, when we asked them about what they could see, the answer we heard from almost all of the divers was ‘about nothing,’ because they couldn’t see a foot past in front of them because of the amount of debris that was in the water,” Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, said at Wednesday’s meeting in Annapolis.

U.S. News and World Report released its annual list of healthiest communities in America and Maryland has six in the top 300. Howard County ranked the highest coming in at No. 20. Montgomery County was also high on the list at No. 56. Carroll County ranks No. 156, Frederick County No. 223, Harford County No. 264 and Anne Arundel County ranks No. 300.

“flows. flip. daring.” The Frederick County Division of Fire & Rescue Services used just three words to pinpoint an injured person’s location and rescue them by the Monocacy River about a week ago. Fire and Rescue and the Department of Emergency Management have used a word-based location tool called what3words for the past few years to find people who call for help.

A soon-to-open museum in downtown Salisbury is set to receive a financial boost. The Maryland Heritage Area Authority has awarded a $35,800 grant to the Museum of Eastern Shore Culture at Salisbury University to help with interpretation and accessibility. The award is earmarked for audio guide software, iPads and adjustable stands, material for sensory-friendly exhibits, interpretive signage in gallery spaces, a braille labeler and materials for a community art project, and to design and build an accessible reception desk.

Charm City wants to know if Artscape is cursed. The superstitious among us are secretly wondering if some festival organizer stepped on a crack in the pavement or walked under an errant ladder. All we know is it’s just been one thing after another with Artscape these last few years. A witch’s coven could not be summoned and requests for comment went unreturned.