Commentary

Yana Karp, a native of Ukraine, arrived with her young son in Baltimore 33 years ago, on Thanksgiving Day. They had dinner at the Pikesville home of a relative who had emigrated a decade earlier. “We sat down at the table,” Karp recalls, “and learned how to celebrate this American holiday — hold hands, say words of gratitude and eat turkey with cranberry sauce, which was a new and quite unusual taste for our palates.”

After the shooting at the LGBTQ Club Q in Colorado Springs, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), gun rights advocate and representative for her state’s 3rd Congressional District, tweeted the following: “The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful. This morning the victims & their families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.” In her tweet, Boebert left out the “news” that a lone gunman entered an LGBTQ space and began shooting, killing five and injuring at least 25.

Teachers see some wild behavior in their classrooms. I hear about it all the time — students getting into fights, cursing and smart-mouthing authority figures. Recently, I got to chat with Joyce Abbott, the Philadelphia teacher who is the namesake for the ABC hit TV show “Abbott Elementary,” which was written and produced by Philly’s own Quinta Brunson, who also stars in it. Abbott was Brunson’s sixth-grade teacher. The mockumentary-style comedy series is about life in Philly’s public schools but often ends on a heartwarming note. The reality, of course, is often different. In Philadelphia, the teacher shortage has reached dire proportions; at the beginning of the school year, hundreds of positions were unfilled.

With winter coming on, Washington Gas is offering its Maryland customers rebates if they buy new gas appliances, including home heating equipment (up to $805) and water heaters (up to $460). What they don’t tell you is that this is a terrible deal. Customers will be able to get far bigger incentives if they wait until January and buy electric equipment instead. Under the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Uncle Sam will provide tax credits of up to $2,000 per year for electric heat pumps that provide both heating and air conditioning as well as heat pump water heaters. For lower-income customers, the incentives are even greater — up to $8,000 for a heat pump — and will be available as up-front rebates.

Since the red sandstone “Castle” was completed in 1855, the Smithsonian has been a fixture on the National Mall. First envisioned by Pierre L’Enfant, the Mall has come to embody both the nation’s character and ideals. What started as a marshy lowland has become the most-visited place in the National Park System, inviting people from across the country and around the world to better understand American democracy, and to experience the history and culture of this richly diverse nation. The challenge ahead is to reimagine a Mall that tells the full American story.

I promise not to mention Donald Trump in this column. I’ll refer to him as “Florida man,” as the New York Post did the other day, after he claimed that he will again run for president. (I say “claimed” because it’s hard to believe anything Florida man says.) A point the pundits have missed in discussing Florida man’s waning influence: It really started a year ago, when he failed to get Republicans in Congress to kill the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill.

People living in the Baltimore area can only marvel at this month’s opening of the Silver Line, the $3 billion, 11.5-mile extension of the Washington, D.C., Metrorail from Reston to Dulles International Airport and beyond to Ashburn. The project was four years delayed and substantially over budget, but the boost to already-affluent Loudon County is unmistakable.