Commentary

The Frederick County Board of Education is creating another work group to study once again the old issue of what time schools should start their day. As the novelist Erica Jong once wrote: “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” Frederick County high schools start too early. So do middle schools. That’s a fact.

Ben Cardin, Maryland’s senior senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chose not to run for re-election, opting to retire after serving in Congress since 1987. In this, the first in a series of exit interviews, Cardin, a Democrat, talks about U.S. foreign policy and the nation’s standing as a democracy and global power. The interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

The most consequential moments of history are not always decided at the tip of a spear, the edge of a sword or the barrel of a gun. On Sunday afternoon, the future of the United States turned on a seven-paragraph statement signed by the 46th U.S. president in which he announced he will not be seeking a second term in office. Fellow Democrats had urged 81-year-old Joseph R. Biden Jr. to take this action.

More than half of states are registering “high” or “very high” levels of the coronavirus in wastewater testing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Nationally, emergency department visits due to covid are increasing. On Wednesday, the White House announced that President Biden tested positive with his second coronavirus infection. As with his first bout, he is experiencing mild symptoms and has started Paxlovid treatment.

It’s all about the gaze. When we look at someone, what do we see? Are we taking in the truth of that person, or is our vision tainted by our own assumptions about what matters about them? If that stranger is not the kind of person we usually consider, why do we claim the authority to write the definitive version of their story?

I’m standing across the street from the apartment where I lived, back in 1983, in this city’s River West neighborhood. The street looks substantially the same, though I’m sorry to discover that Harry’s Chapel, the tavern that used to be two doors down, where a 12-ounce glass of Miller High Life on tap sold for a quarter, is gone.

Last week’s jaw-dropping $1 billion donation from billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University, enabling tuition-free medical school for most students, probably kicked off a lot of celebrations from Homewood to Name-Your-City-Here. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine was already ranked among the nation’s best (second only to Harvard University, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings).