Commentary

It was common, in those days, for the Morgan State University choir to assemble on short notice. In a time before widespread cellphones, the scattered vocalists had pagers — a 911 message from choir director Nathan Carter meant to get ready to perform quickly. Thaddeus Price can’t remember the exact sequence that led him and the choir to Camden Yards on July 13, 1993.

Until last week, Joppatowne High School wasn’t especially well known outside Harford County. It is small, with fewer than 900 students, and serves a working-class, majority-minority community. Nearly three-quarters of students there are classified as economically disadvantaged. The most recent newsletter sent home by school administrators featured a warning to follow the county’s restrictions on student cellphones in school (they have to be deactivated during instruction time).

Who you consider the winner of the consequential first presidential debate between former president Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris is likely based on who you liked before the two even took the stage tonight in Philadelphia. But after watching the two spar on ABC, I would give the win to Harris, mostly because she managed not to tell wild bold-faced lies about her opponent’s positions, and because she maintained a silently strong visage that evoked Gen X’s favorite fictional lawyer and mother — “The Cosby Show”’s Clair Huxtable.

Today, the strip of River Road that was the subject of a recent ruling by the Maryland Supreme Court is known to most visitors for its cheap gas, fast food and hulking apartment complexes. But tucked between an 18-story condominium building and an auto repair shop is a tiny white church with a long history. When the Macedonia Baptist Church opened more than a century ago in Bethesda, its presence there was far from incongruous.

Two brothers with big dreams were among the more than 15,500 children identified as homeless in Maryland’s public schools last school year, 1.7% of the student body. Together with their parents, they lived in Anne Arundel County, one of the state’s wealthiest jurisdictions, showing homelessness can happen anywhere. “I never imagined in a million years that we would be homeless,” their mother told me. “Life suddenly changed for all of us. We lived out of bags and suitcases.”

Few horrors in the world rival the pain, fear, shame and guilt felt by children who are sexually abused by adults who have been entrusted with their care. For decades, hundreds of children, if not thousands, in Maryland’s juvenile detention facilities were sexually abused and raped by staff hired by the Department of Juvenile Services.

Just days before what might be the only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, business leaders and local officials here at the Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce luncheon were not eager to talk about the choice before the country. They gathered on a sunny Thursday afternoon to hear from their Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Madeleine Dean.