Commentary

Every month, families across Maryland brace themselves for the familiar frustration of paying their electric and gas bills. Over the last few years, these bills have climbed significantly, often outpacing inflation. Meanwhile, utility companies have led consumers to believe their hard-earned money is needed to make the electric grid more reliable and robust.

The election of a woman president would have been the final infiltration, the last incursion into the tribal-magic male inner circle. You could call it a busting of the hardest glass ceiling. You could call it the ultimate wresting of control of the clicker, the thermostat and the wheel. Of course, one pantsuit in the Oval Office would hardly have been compensation for the whole imbalance, every crummy dollar-and-cents difference, or sexist exclusion.

Maryland is often promoted as “America in Miniature,” a phrase first coined 85 years ago. It’s an acknowledgment not only of the state’s diverse geography from mountains to waterfront (lacking only a desert) but its diverse population and economy as well as its important role in U.S. history. Yet rarely has the state felt less representative of the rest of the nation than it does today.

This column may not be what you expected. Columnists thrive on controversy, but I found virtually no controversy about state Superintendent Carey Wright’s first year on the job. I searched hard, conducting over 20 interviews, but, to almost all, she’s off to a resounding start. Here’s a small sampling of what I was told.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the rampant meme asking whether most women would choose to be trapped in the woods with a bear or a man. The consensus seemed to be fairly pro-bear, because, as an expert pointed out, a bear usually won’t go out of its way to mess with you unprovoked. The same sadly can’t be said for humans.

As I have every election night since 2016, I mixed myself a very stiff cocktail, turned off my phone and went to bed. At that point, there wasn’t anything I could do about the outcome of any races, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay up doomscrolling. When I turned my device back on just before midnight, the phone lit up with a torrent of messages that can best be described as wildly disparate.