April 5, 2023: Sun-streaked skies and the glorious length of a warm spring break evening downtown. Meanwhile, Baltimore Police Department officers descend, and the public fearfully condemns a “swarm of people” at Pratt Street and Market Place. Businesses are ordered to close early and helicopters circle with threatening speaker calls to “disperse.”

There is DNA evidence from at least 1,295 sexual assault cases sitting in a storage facility in Baltimore County. Every one of those slides of DNA represents a woman who walked into GBMC hospital, said she was raped, and endured evidence being taken from her body on what was likely the worst day of her life. These DNA slides date back to the 1970s.

2023 is proving to be a challenging year for Montgomery County food farmers. As recession fears take hold and the impact of inflation is felt by more and more people in our community, local farms that sell direct to consumers like us and often rely on a Community Support Agriculture (CSA) model are feeling the impact.

 

Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet fame advisedly said, “just the facts, ma’am”. So, here are the facts. The U.S. has warmed 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970 and the annual rate of warming is accelerating. The frequency of billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. has increased from once every 4 months in the 1980s to once every 3 weeks (after accounting for inflation).

The accidents occur with dreadful regularity on Forest Drive in Annapolis. A longtime Naval Academy employee died in January while crossing an intersection near her home. Weeks later, a bicyclist was killed just after turning at a busy intersection. This month, a kid running across to the McDonald’s was hit by a car and critically injured.

Rep. Andy Harris, the Maryland Republican who strives to be on the wrong side of everything, has developed the same bizarre obsession with gender identity and trans rights as the higher-profile demagogues within his party. Harris, an anesthesiologist, presented himself at recent congressional hearings as an outraged doctor come to save civilization from the Biden administration, the American Medical Association and other organizations that support health care for those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.

Dementia in its various forms is rarely satisfied with only one victim in a family. In mine, it has claimed both parents, though only Mom has been afflicted. Dad suffers inconsolable, near-debilitating grief that has made him, too, barely recognizable as the person we have known our entire lives. In the more than 50 years I can recall, I never saw Dad cry. He now sobs regularly, often choking on his words and unable to finish a sentence.

Injustice happens in empty courtrooms. If any proof of the validity of this maxim were needed, one need only read the 21-page report “Inside Prince George’s County Bond Hearings” just released by Howard University’s Movement Lawyering Clinic.

With Earth Day 2023 having just passed, it brings to mind how we are dealing with the Earth – more specifically, how we are making use of our land resources. How we use land and how we control the use of land have been contentious matters over the years. The application of zoning, the use of laws by units of local government that govern how real property can and cannot be used, first took hold in the late 19th century.

Listen to Tonya Aikens, President and CEO of the Howard County Library System, discuss the proposed Howard County Lakefront Library.