Commentary

Do Maryland’s stewards realize that they are investing $8.3 billion to procure electricity with a probable market value of $3.3 billion? Decarbonization is an unprecedented challenge in both its political and system engineering complexity. America’s engineers have used science to build some amazingly complex systems, but their methodology is incompatible with Maryland’s political management structure. While policymakers are skilled at representing the will of the people, they lack the discipline required to set rational goals and the experience to develop complex systems.

As maternal mental health advocates, we appreciated Jennifer Wadsworth’s May 10 Health & Science article, “Rise of perinatal and postpartum depressions.” This problem demands urgent action. But the health-care system responses mentioned must be the beginning, not the end, of reform. Well before the coronavirus, millions of pregnant women and mothers faced domestic or community violence, poverty and the denial of health care, food and child care, among other threats. Under those circumstances, anxiety, depression and other “disorders” are best understood as normal responses to very real dangers.

As we are progressing further into the 21st century, more and more businesses are moving their operations online. The days when eCommerce was a novel idea are long gone, and almost every major business has an online presence. As this trend continues, the competition for market share will become increasingly fierce. In order to remain competitive in 2022 and beyond, eCommerce businesses will need to overcome several challenges. The eCommerce industry is booming and is only going to continue to grow in the next few years.

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.