Commentary

There is much trouble in the world. The war in Ukraine rages on one year after the Russian invasion. Washington politics have become so polarized that loose talk of a “national divorce” is not wholly dismissed, and relations with China are tense. It’s enough to make one yearn for the kind of conflict where opponents not only shake hands before the contest, but can embrace each other after — where the rules are clear, mutually agreed upon and strictly enforced.

Hundreds of thousands of our Maryland friends, family, and neighbors are about to experience a major reduction in their access to food. On March 1, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is ending emergency allotments that have helped 1 in 8 Marylanders — or about 800,000 people — avoid hunger for the last three years. Families receiving these benefits are about to lose, on average, $177 a month — a reduction that is certain to lead to more hunger at a time of rising costs.

It is not a group anyone wants to join. The Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is made up of people who have experienced clergy sexual abuse during their childhoods. The group was first introduced to me as a support for my husband, who is a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest that occurred when he was 5-years-old. My husband participates in a peer group, and we have attended two national SNAP conferences.

I don’t know if the Baltimoreans of 1914 were scandalized by it — hard to tell from a distance of 109 years — but the wealthy family residing in the stone mansion at 1301 N. Charles Street in Mount Vernon contributed mightily to the city’s diet of gossip at the time. There were lavish parties, a secret divorce and an equally secret marriage of a 57-year-old attorney to his 30-year-old stenographer, and a debutante’s romance with an Italian count.

Gov. Wes Moore’s decision to reduce funding to Maryland’s Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today or BOOST program, which spends tax dollars to underwrite private school education for selected K-12 students from low-income families, has drawn the kind of criticism that administration officials must have anticipated.

Many of the babies who wanted for infant formula during the U.S. shortage in 2022 have moved on to solid foods. But a year on from the events that left shelves empty for months, the possibility of a repeat disaster remains. Last year, hundreds of members of Congress rushed to address the most immediate impacts of the shortage — and to advance short-term fixes. But lawmakers have yet to tackle the issues that matter most: the extreme concentration of the formula market, and regulators’ inability to safeguard the U.S. formula supply.

It’s easy to let your imagination run wild when it comes to the unidentified flying objects now making frequent appearances over North America. At least one object was reported to be cylindrical, eerily suggestive of past imagined visitors. “The cylinder was artificial — hollow — with an end that screwed out!” wrote H.G. Wells in “The War of The Worlds.” “Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!” Maybe the Martians really are coming.