Commentary

A contractor turned to alcohol after his wife died. A single mom with two children welcomed food from a stranger. A certified nursing assistant and her working teenage son couldn’t afford a rent increase. They were among those who experienced homelessness in Maryland last year, totaling nearly 6,000 one winter night, according to an annual federal count.

“In solitary, they are trying to break you without realizing that most people in [prison] are there because someone else already tried to break them.” That’s how Paul Torres, a returning citizen who spent 90 days in solitary at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles described his experience in solitary confinement to me last August.

April is Autism Acceptance Month, a time to learn, reflect and (I hope) act with and on behalf of the many people who have autism. Despite the increased number of people known to be living with autism, less well-known is just how difficult it can be for them to access beneficial care. Given the somewhat recent changes in the definition of what constitutes autism, an accepted description (from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) states that autism is a condition that results from differences in the way that a brain develops.

For those who feel like Baltimore has endured more than its share of bad news in recent months — the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge providing the biggest example but hardly the only one — the Greater Baltimore Committee may have provided just the timely antidote you need. The business advocacy group recently compiled a “Baltimore Region Investment Scorecard” to survey for the first time how, through various measures, the Baltimore area is doing in terms of investment, job growth, deal-making and tax revenue.

“Just enough of me, way too much of you.” This quote from the chapter on overpopulation in political humorist P. J. O’Rourke’s “All the Trouble in the World” popped into my head after a pair of recent articles in The Frederick News-Post. The first, a piece about how the county’s added just over 20,000 people to its total population over the past three years, prompted the usual chorus of complaints about how we’re growing too fast.

It always takes a while for the dust to settle after the Maryland the General Assembly wraps up its annual 90-day legislative session, especially after the flurry of activity in the waning days. This is the normal rhythm to state lawmaking. Big promises, slow slog, frantic final hours and then bragging rights.

Content warning: This column contains details about suicidal ideation. On the day the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, my father called me around 6:45 a.m. to see how I was doing. I was asleep and missed the call but woke up to his text about a half hour later. “The Key Bridge is gone. Are you OK?”

If you’re a daily commuter across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, you probably find nothing awesome about it; the bridge is just part of a tired routine, 4 miles of the drive from Kent Island to Sandy Point and points beyond, then back again. But many others, who only cross the bridge once a year, still find the whole thing amazing (or terrifying), a wonder of engineering and a monument to human audacity.