Commentary

Earlier this month, I went down for an obligatory day of jury duty, expecting to be sent home at the end of another eight-ish hour experience that gives new meaning to tedium. I’ve been doing this every few years for 40 years, and my previous experiences were always the same. I was never selected, which was the only part of it that ever made me happy.

You don’t need a flooded basement to be concerned about the growing impact of climate change these days. Maryland’s winters have gotten milder, the heat waves more intense. There’s worsening coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion into freshwater aquifers around the Chesapeake Bay. On the other hand, the state isn’t exactly a hotbed for climate deniers either.

When President Joe Biden came to Baltimore to survey the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, he made a promise all of Baltimore and the region desperately needed to hear. “We’re going to move heaven and earth to rebuild this bridge as rapidly as humanly possible. And we’re going to do so with union labor and American steel,” Biden said, adding that he had a “simple reason: They’re the best workers in the world, and that’s not hyperbole.”

It doesn’t take an ancient mariner or even an engineer third class to recognize something is seriously amiss when FBI agents show up at the site of a devastating maritime collision. That’s what happened Monday when federal authorities raided the Dali, the giant container ship that struck and quickly collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month.

It is very welcome news that two of the most intractable issues threatening the continued vitality of the city’s downtown historic district are both moving forward after years of delay and inaction. First, the long-vacant Asiana restaurant, which has sat like a missing tooth in a broad smile on North Market Street, appears to be finally moving toward a solution.

A hot new buzzword among pro-housing advocates is “single-stair point access blocks.” Activists and legislators in several cities and states are advancing legislation that would allow low-rise, small-footprint multifamily buildings to be built with just one staircase shared amongst the units, rather than the two currently required by nearly all building codes in North America.

There is an interesting history between abolitionist Harriet Tubman, organizer of the Underground Railroad, and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. In 1856, Harriet Tubman helped an enslaved black woman named Tilly escape slavery by boarding a steamboat docked near what is known today as Pier 4. The steamboat was en route to Delaware, and scholars describe it as her most complicated and clever escape attempt.

It is fair to question whether any new version of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed March 26 following a collision with a cargo ship, should continue to bear the name of the man who wrote the lyrics of the national anthem but who also enslaved as many as a half dozen people during a time when the shameful practice was flourishing in America.