Commentary

The National Guard has been activated, state police are on high alert, snow trucks are positioned to thwart the invasion, and Capitol Hill is full of unmarked cars parked in strategic spots and waiting. A crisis has erupted overseas. But these measures — and the millions of dollars they will cost us — have nothing to do with Vladimir Putin. Bob Bolus and his four trucks are coming.

I can’t imagine being employed as a bank teller and accepting check No. 6602, for $175,000, drawn on the PNC Bank account of a Maryland woman named Myrle Bratcher and made out to a Chinese technology company. I can’t imagine that any teller presented with this check in a JPMorgan Chase branch in New York City on or about March 2, 2021, would process it without first asking a manager if the check looked legit.

Two major events are taking place during March. First is the rescheduled 34th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Awards Dinner, which will take place at 6 p.m. on March 11, at the BWI Westin Hotel in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. The next major event, scheduled for March 29, is the Fourth Annual Michelle Obama Awards that honor women of various racial backgrounds that have made a significant contribution to Anne Arundel County. The Martin Luther King awards dinner will h

U.S. District Court Judge Lydia Griggsby made the right call this week in quickly striking down a map proposed by the Baltimore County Council, which was a textbook violation of the Voting Rights Act. With this ruling, the County Council now has a golden opportunity — in addition to a legal obligation — to create a fair map that allows for more equitable representation and greater civic participation. And they have an opportunity to craft a map that reflects today’s rich diversity of Maryland’s third largest jurisdiction.

When I was a teenager, my mother told me that her father had been a philosophical anarchist who wrote articles about anarchism for a Yiddish-language newspaper in the early 20th century. He died when I was a little girl, so I never had an opportunity to discuss his political beliefs with him. Wondering what philosophical anarchism was, I did some research and decided that I was an anarchist, too. The “philosophical” part meant that my grandfather didn’t believe in using violence to reach the utopian goal of a stateless world. As a pacifist I agreed. For me anarchism was a benign, unachievable substitute for religion that I sentimentally clung to for many years.

The Maryland Environmental Human Rights Amendment is a bill being heard this session in the Maryland General Assembly. It is being sponsored by Delegate Wanika Fisher in the House and Senator Will Smith in the Senate. House Speaker Pro Tempore Delegate Sheree Sample-Hughes is a co-sponsor.

The Anne Arundel County Green Infrastructure Master Plan gives us a chance to leave a conservation legacy of natural spaces forever connected to each other and to our communities. My own conservation story started years ago when my husband and I purchased 50-plus acres of forest, farm fields, and wetlands along a quiet road in Lothian. With such a diverse habitat, wildlife was everywhere. Especially important were the birds as we continued to pursue our hobbies of birding and bird banding.

Let me start with this: Overhead power lines are not only ugly, they’re vulnerable to collapse in storms. Ten years ago, after Hurricane Sandy caused power outages across a large swath of the country, a question appeared in this space: Why not bury power lines? Why not put them out of harm’s way and out of sight? Take a minute to look at it and the system seems archaic — heavy black wires strung from pole to pole along miles and miles of roads, in rural and suburban areas as well as city neighborhoods.