Commentary

As a physician, I am thankful that my colleagues and public health collaborators took a laser-focused approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the intention to save as many lives as possible. It is within this context that I consider with curiosity why our nation’s urgency to bend the curve on obesity pales in comparison to our dedication to eradicating COVID-19.

Let’s take a walk to the water for Earth Day. There’s a trail hidden in Eastport, a charming and expensive Annapolis neighborhood. It’s on Boucher Avenue, which may or may not be named for the Tory rector of St. Anne’s Church who escaped a crowd of angry rebels by holding their leader at pistol-point while galloping away on his horse. Pink flowering trees obscure the entrance. There’s no sign, except for one notifying you that the all-seeing eye of Neighborhood Watch protects this spot.

“BYE DAN,” blares a banner unfurled over Route 50 in Maryland. Daniel Snyder tentatively agreeing to sell the Washington Commanders, a once-beloved team that he wrecked, has rightly led to an outpouring of relief across the D.C. region. The NFL franchise’s new owners should aim not just to win again but to unite people across racial, class and partisan lines — as the team did before.

Roman Welzant, who claimed to have been tormented for years by neighborhood teenagers, shot two of them one winter night in 1980 as they threw snowballs at his house in Eastwood, just over the city line in Baltimore County. Welzant, who was 68 at the time, killed one of the teens and seriously wounded the other. Six months later, a jury in Towson felt sorry for Welzant and found him not guilty of second-degree murder. But 18-year-old Albert Kahl was dead over snowballs, and his mother cried out in the courtroom: “You all have Albert’s blood on your hands. Mr. Welzant, you’re a killer.”

Almost a full decade after the Frederick County Board of Commissioners went out of existence, its ghost continues to haunt Winchester Hall, tying the hands of current officials and forcing excessive growth on the county. As in Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” our problem is not so much the ghost of the past as it is the ghost of the future. Decisions made by those commissioners still require county officials to approve projects that they know the county is unprepared for.

Six roadway workers were killed last month when a driver traveling at high speed collided with another car on the Baltimore Beltway, Interstate 695 (”Where is the rage (and policing) over deaths on Maryland’s roads?” April 19). The force of the crash sent the vehicle barreling into a highway construction zone, causing the vehicle to flip. The video from a nearby Maryland Department of Transportation camera makes it clear no one in the pathway of that car had any chance to survive.

This past September, Baltimore City issued an all-too-familiar boil water advisory to residents of West Baltimore, a region of the city with historically and predominantly Black communities. A potential E. coli exposure meant residents had to boil their tap water for at least a minute before consumption. Months after the contamination incident, residents remain concerned about the water quality.