Commentary

I panhandled on a street corner when I was a teenager. No squeegee. Just a bucket with a hastily scribbled sign asking for cash. I wasn’t alone — there was a group of teens, scattered among four medians at a busy intersection. We went from car to car, window to window, seeking money to fund our public school’s debate team trips. Most weekends, we did pretty well. I don’t remember any threats, any arguments or, frankly, any concern for 16-year-olds dancing and dashing through traffic on a busy Saturday morning. Did we have a permit? A license? Nope. Most of the time we didn’t even have adult supervision.

Prosperity is perplexing for the airline industry. And vexing for passengers. This summer, Americans have invaded airports like it was the evacuation of Saigon. Cancellations are getting an extra boost from climate change, and our frustrations are mounting. You might think this misery is tied to the industry’s return to normal levels of indifferent service. But we aren’t sustaining pre-pandemic flight levels. Domestic airlines are on track to be 150 million “enplanements” behind 2019 this year, according to one estimate. That’s a lot of people going nowhere.

In Baltimore County, conventional wisdom has long been that voters wanted a tough-as-nails state’s attorney to, if possible, stand astride the city-county boundary like a Colossus and warn criminals that they aren’t welcome in the suburbs — and that murderers would be put to death. For several decades, this was the role filled by Sandra A. O’Connor, who earned a reputation for seeking the death penalty more often than her counterparts in any jurisdiction in Maryland. It continued to be the philosophy exhibited by her successor Scott D. Shellenberger, who started his career as a law clerk for Ms. O’Connor and took over the state’s attorney role in 2006.

The winds of change blew like a hurricane through the Frederick County political establishment in the July 19 primary. Both the county government and the county school system are undergoing dramatic changes. Old names will be wiped away. New names will be poised to take their place in the governing bodies of our community. When this election year ends, we will have a new county executive and at least three new members on our seven-member County Council. A fourth council member, M.C. Keegan-Ayer, also has lost — by three votes — but we are waiting on whether she requests a recount that could change the result.

I thank a Baltimore Sun reader who goes by the pseudonym of Curious George for telling me about a certain work of art hanging in a gallery near Patterson Park. But I’m afraid it’s not as “controversial” as he might think. “Is the artwork riddled with bullet holes a problem?” Curious George asked in an email with “controversy” in its subject line. Obviously wise to the notion that controversy provides superb material for newspapers, George suggested that I visit the Creative Alliance and have a look. So, I headed to that good gathering place on Saturday, driving and walking through the busy and thriving neighborhoods of a city that too many other correspondents believe to be hell on Earth — so dysfunctional, violent and corrupt as to make a trip here impossibly risky.

Late summer gives Republican state Sen. Michael Hough plenty of reason to sweat — and it has little to do with the weather. To win the county executive’s race in an increasingly purple Frederick County, where registered Democrats now outnumber Republicans, Hough will likely need to position himself as a moderate. Although that may be asking too much for even a savvy career political operative as Hough, who before becoming a state senator spent years as consigliere to a RepublicanMaryland state senator turned West Virginia congressman in Alex Mooney (Hough currently works in Washington as Mooney’s chief of staff).

The central fact about the democratic world today is that it is leaderless. Twenty-five years ago, we had the confident presences of Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Tony Blair — and Alan Greenspan. Now we have a failing American president, a timorous German chancellor, a British prime minister about to skulk out of office in ignominy and a chairman of the Federal Reserve who last year flubbed the most important decision of his career. Elsewhere: the resignation of Italy’s prime minister, a caretaker government in Israel, the assassination of Japan’s dominant political figure.

Journalists are finally putting a long-overdue spotlight on the veterinarian shortage affecting millions of Americans and their beloved pets. The problem, however, goes beyond the wrenching experience of not being able to find treatment for your dog or cat. If you eat meat, got the COVID vaccine or hope that one day there will be a cure for cancer, then you too will be impacted by the shortage, as veterinary medicine is also used to maintain the health of food production animals, oversee the responsible use of lab animals in clinical trials, and conduct cancer research that benefits both animals and humans.