Commentary

I never knew minding my own business would cause such animosity from others. It was the summer of 1996, and I stopped at a local rest area in South Carolina, while en route to Atlanta to watch the American basketball team compete in the Olympics. As I started to offer one of my daily Muslim ritual prayers on the grass, two glass bottles were thrown at my legs, with someone yelling, “Get the [expletive] out of here, you damn terrorist.”

They swooped in as soon as they heard, grabbing anything they could use as a shield. “Random stuff from the average mom-mobile,” one of the crusading moms said. “Yoga blankets, oversized sweaters, beach towels” — anything to hide the mangled, bloody images that antiabortion protesters were waving at kids’ faces outside their Maryland schools. “It felt like an assault on our school,” said Jennifer Domenick, a parent of 17-year-old twins at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md. “High-schoolers are carrying so much these days that it was completely inappropriate for these protesters to target a high school campus.”

Everyone has seen materials hauled away from building construction sites, roadway projects, and even natural disasters. But perhaps, they may not have considered what happens to all of the concrete, asphalt and trees that are hauled away and how it might be affecting the environment. Warren Edwards, superintendent for Talbot County Roads Department, had an idea for dealing with this challenge while also developing a revenue stream to assist his department in meeting some of its goals for roads in the county. His idea was to build a repurposing center to sell repurposed concrete asphalt, soil, wood chips and trees accumulated by his department’s projects, as well as the excess materials generated by others, including local governments and contractors.

Few individuals are as powerless as the mentally ill patients housed Spring Grove Hospital Center, the historic, publicly owned Catonsville psychiatric care facility that has endured decades of neglect. This month, for the bargain price of $1, Spring Grove was sold to the University of Maryland Baltimore County, with the approval of the Maryland Board of Public Works, under what might generously be described as a plan severely lacking in detail and outside scrutiny. The deal was consummated over the objections of mental health groups, who were nonetheless assured that Spring Grove would continue to operate as is for at least the next decade and perhaps a decade more, under a lease-back arrangement by UMBC.

Given recent concerns about ethics in Baltimore City Hall — including those surrounding the legal defense fund of City Council President Nick Mosby and his state’s attorney wife, Marilyn Mosby — it was more than a little cheering to get word this week that at least one serious proposal to fix a lingering ethical concern in city government has arrived. The proposed charter amendment introduced by Councilwoman Odette Ramos seeks to correct a glaring problem involving Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming.

Maryland sports fans are in a good spot. The state already boasts retail gambling and is expected to launch mobile sports betting sooner rather than later. It’s helping lead the way for other states to do the same; for example, sports betting isn’t yet available in Texas, but it could be in the next few years and fans will be able to make use of Texas sports betting bonuses and platforms. Once mobile sports gambling is live in Maryland, bettors will be able to place wagers on the hometown Washington Commanders from wherever they please.

I was born in July 1956 in Silver Spring, Maryland. When I was 6, my parents told me that I was adopted. There was a storybook about adoption gently explaining what it meant. I remember thinking, “but you’re my parents.” My parents also said “don’t tell anyone.” They feared I would be stigmatized. Times were different then. It felt weird when people would say things like, “you look just like your mother.” Aside from being white, I didn’t look anything like either of my parents.