Commentary

At the end of 2022, the Montgomery County Council approved the building of a median, dedicated lane for the Flash Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route along US 29. This approval brought the promise of an authentic BRT system for county residents one step closer to reality, albeit progress is still slow for riders and for the demands of tackling the climate crisis.

I was at an old fire hall in Ferndale, at a meeting of an old Democratic club. U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin was coming to the well-established club to talk but was late. He spent the day on the road, chatting with elected officials in Annapolis, making appearances and meeting with constituents. Ferndale was the final stop on his itinerary. The clock was pushing 9 p.m. when Maryland’s junior senator rolled through the side door of the little red-and-white building. He looked tired.

“Women deserve better than abortion,” the man stated firmly, before sitting back down next to me in the crowded Maryland senate hearing. He was a member of one of the many “pro-life” groups that testified on March 8 in Annapolis against Senate Bill 798: Declaration of Rights – Right to Reproductive Freedom. I caught a glimpse of his phone background, which was a beautiful, smiling picture of a young girl, likely his daughter.

Though an urban waterway, hard by transit systems, the waters of the Jones Falls attract wildlife. (Baltimore Sun) A few years after the Civil War, a man named William Moody Chase created a stereograph, a three dimensional photograph, of a place called Otter Rock, somewhere along the 18 miles of the Jones Falls as it flows through Baltimore County into the city. We can assume that Otter Rock was so named for good reason: Otters were once common in a river that, 150 years later, we associate more with pollution than with wildlife.

SPOILER ALERT: This column contains key plot points for a 420-year-old play that’s been made into a movie more than 50 times. I know there may be people who aren’t familiar with every moment of “Hamlet,” William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy about betrayal, political corruption, twisted family dynamics and madness.

This week’s unseasonably cold temperatures have made the swift approach of the Preakness Stakes seem unreal. Yet, there it stands on the calendar: The Kentucky Derby runs this Saturday and then, two weeks later, Baltimore takes the national spotlight with the 148th running of the Triple Crown’s second leg on May 20.

In recent weeks and months, multiple states have passed legislation targeting academic freedom and independence at public colleges and universities. States incuding Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, North Dakota and Texas have gone after tenure, one of the most significant protections of academic freedom and independence in institutions of higher learning.