America’s seniors are getting a new tool in the war on cancer: a new blood test to detect colorectal cancer received full Medicare coverage the same week as its FDA approval. It is a boon to patients, and a validation of the work that U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) continues to champion after almost 30 years.
A small milestone passed recently in Baltimore County. Hopefully, at least for most families, it went unnoticed. As of now, any driver who fails to stop for a stopped school bus in the county that has activated its flashing lights will be issued a $250 ticket. Well, at least in most instances. Prior to the start of the school year, automated cameras were installed on 80% of the vehicles in the Baltimore County Public Schools fleet.
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.
For hundreds of years, a certain breed of patient gardeners has mastered the skill of bonsai, carefully restricting and nurturing trees that would otherwise get to be 50 or 100 feet tall, so that they would fit on a desktop as an object of wonder. The viewer is filled with awe and astonishment at how someone could achieve such a feat. It is not without great skill and effort, as such a restricted environment is fraught with great peril for a tree.
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.
Growing concern in Baltimore over the safety of dockless vehicles such as electric scooters and bikes is understandable considering the spate of recent crashes including one that caused the death of a 16-year-old in Upton who was riding with a friend last month when their moped collided with a Jeep or the death of a 31-year-old scooter rider who was struck in East Baltimore last July by a car driven by a teen.
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