"Baltimore had always been seen as an explosive city, hypersensitive to the shifting currents of politics. The present crisis was no exception. While most Baltimoreans felt that Lincoln should keep his hands off the South, there was also a smaller contingent of Confederate zealots there who were more than willing to go to war over it. Sending Northern troops through their hometown was like putting a lit match to a powder keg."
The Baltimore Riot of 1861, also known as the Pratt Street Riots, underline Maryland's
complex and often tragic part in the US Civil War.
[more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
on Mar 8, 2013 -
11 comments
Two retired women, Lyn Zwerling and Sheila Rovelstad, have initiated and implemented a program called Knitting Behind Bars at a prison in Maryland. They approached every prison in the area with their idea for a knitting class, and all the prisons refused except the last one, where the prison authorities skeptically agreed to let them try it. And the program has been a success. As the
Baltimore Sun reported,
"Men literally beg to get in. There's a waiting list.... They want it so much, in fact, that they're willing to be good in order to do it. [Prison warden Margaret] Chippendale has noticed lower rates of violence among the men who knit. "It's a privilege to be in that program," Chippendale says. "It's something that matters and they don't want to do anything to be removed from it." One prisoner, who was serving time for stabbing someone and who was busily knitting a hat, told the reporter, "My mind is on something soft and gentle," he said. "My mind is nowhere near inside these walls."
[more inside]
posted by orange swan
on Jan 4, 2013 -
70 comments
Baltimore Ravens linebacker
Brendon Ayanbadejo, one of the NFL's few vocal advocates for legalization of gay marriage, donates two tickets to his team's season opener to a Marylanders for Marriage Equality fundraiser. Maryland state delegate
Emmet C. Burns writes a
letter asking Ravens management to silence Ayanbadejo. Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe
responds with epic smackdown.
posted by googly
on Sep 7, 2012 -
175 comments
The Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail is America’s first water-based national historic trail. It consists of the combined routes of Smith’s historic voyages on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries in 1607-1609. Designated by Congress in December 2006, the trail stretches approximately 3,000 miles up and down the Bay and along tributaries in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Apr 16, 2011 -
5 comments
Public gatherings restricted? Check. Shutdown of independent businesses? Check. Lockdown on traffic and transportation in the area? You bet. Lawmakers in Baltimore trying to curb the city's homicide rate (already 108 this year) have come up with some
"desperate measures" of questionable constitutional legality, including heightening police presence in order to lockdown streets in "emergency areas." It has been called, "partial martial law" by some, and one has to wonder if the city of Baltimore may not do better to take a page from
The Wire's Hamsterdam for a solution to their inextricably linked drug and homicide issues.
posted by dead_
on May 17, 2007 -
60 comments
This year, Maryland has been on a path to become the first state to abolish capital punishment, and a bill to repeal the death penalty will be voted on in committee within days.
Exonerated death row inmates have been campaigning fervently in support of the bill (including Kirk Bloodsworth, a Marylander who was the first death row inmate ever to be proven innocent by DNA)--and the exonerated are joined by a gamut of other voices that one might not normally expect in the debate.
Murder victim family members are vocally supporting abolition.
Law enforcement officials, including prosecutors, wardens and police chiefs, are vocally supporting abolition. The Baltimore city council – which presides over the lion’s share of Maryland’s violent crime -- is
unanimously in support of abolition. Even Maryland's governor, Martin O’Malley, has taken a bold stance in support of abolishing executions, going so far as to publish
an op-ed, "Why I Oppose the Death Penalty," in the Washington Post on the day of the abolition bill’s hearings in Annapolis. And, last but not least,
the public is more than 60% in support of replacing the death penalty with life without parole.
So why are
so many legislators still supporting death penalty?
Even if the bill doesn’t pass in this session, it seems like Governor O’Malley
has nothing to worry about for having come out ahead of the legislature on this issue. It’s the legislatures—in Maryland and elsewhere—that are falling behind, as
the entire country backs steadily away from capital punishment.
posted by snortlebort
on Mar 15, 2007 -
91 comments
Half-Life meets Matisse in a virtual reconstruction of the apartment of
Etta and Claribel Cone. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the sisters amassed one of America's foremost collections of modern art. Today, many of the pieces can be viewed in the
Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. As part of the 50
th anniversary celebration of the museum's acquisition of the collection, the
Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County designed a
digital walkthrough of their apartment so that visitors could see the art in its original context.
posted by Aaaugh!
on May 4, 2003 -
5 comments
Criminal profilers are racist for not thinking a black man could fire a rifle well enough to be the sniper.
They didn't think a black person could be smart enough" to pull off three weeks of terror, driving into very public places, hitting his mark, then eluding all the local, state and federal officers. Wow.
posted by BirdD0g
on Oct 30, 2002 -
26 comments
Hundreds of people with criminal records in Maryland may have been allowed to purchase guns illegally this year because the state temporarily stopped conducting background checks for the FBI.[More Inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood
on Oct 16, 2002 -
18 comments
"Dear policeman, I am God" found inscribed on a Tarot card. This latest clue in the Maryland sniper case will no doubt be tested and thoroughly investigated, although it was reported that it could be the work of prankster. If you have read the interesting post below by stevis ("I am who I am") of a Florida man who was legally denied the right to call himself "God", doesn't it make you wonder if the human desire to personify or impersonate God is a manifestation of the desperation for control over others, but not for the better? God, after all, wants you to surrender your life to the almighty. Or (mental illnesses aside) is it much more complex than that?
posted by taratan
on Oct 9, 2002 -
69 comments
From The Slow Wheels of Justice [Department] we read that "there have been persistent complaints of excessive force by officers of Prince George's County Police Department, Maryland over many years. Cases of concern include police shootings; deaths in custody from dangerous restraint holds or other force and unresisting suspects mauled by police dogs....In November 2000 the US Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the police department to determine whether it engaged in a "pattern and practice" of brutality and racial discrimination....However, after 20 months of investigation, the Justice Department has not yet issued any public findings or recommendations to the police department."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Aug 30, 2002 -
7 comments
Do you want fries with that house? Not content with a normal McMansion, the Banner family of Potomac, Md. upgraded four years ago from a 4,500 square foot house to a 8,500 square foot house. Its six bedrooms and nine bathrooms now comfortably accomodate the house's two adults and two children. The unusually ironic NYTimes (reg req.) article does not spare us the absurdities of this arrangement, a growing trend in wealthy suburban enclaves. Interior decorators must now "supersize" furniture to fill up a cavernous "media room". Entire wings of the house sit unused for months, because the suburban rich entertain others at home no more often than their middle-class counterparts.
Suppose you had a $500k income and a completely empty 2 acre zoned lot in Potomac in which to live. What might you build there?
posted by PrinceValium
on Jun 20, 2002 -
52 comments
Three Dead From Southern Maryland Tornado. This is the kind of news story you skip because it doesn't happen in your state. It didn't even register to me until I realized that one of my daily reads -
Moire - lives in La Plata. The twister went through her front yard. Her account of the storm and its aftermath is pretty powerful. Were any other bloggers involved? (It's my first post; be gentle.)
posted by web-goddess
on Apr 29, 2002 -
16 comments
Rioters complain about tear gas. [Bloominton Hearald-Times, link expires after a week] After Indiana University lost to Maryland in the NCAA finals, drunken fans rioted in the streets forcing police to use tear gas. It was stupid enough to start a riot, but rioters complained that the police offered no warning before deploying tear gas after rioters pelted the police with beer bottles and prevented the fire department from putting out fires in the middle of the street.
"They could have easily done that," Raggs said. "If they would have said, 'You have 10 minutes, then we are going to use the tear gas,' people would have gone away."
Personally, I think the police showed an amazing level of restraint considering that about half of the state troopers on the scene got hit by flying glass.
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Apr 3, 2002 -
23 comments
Governor of Maryland married his deputy chief of staff; she resigned (effected immediately) from her $103,588 position on Friday, the day the couple were married. I'm sure boss/subordinate relationships go on all the time, but isn't it a problem when the boss is the governor of a state? I'm not one to focus on the personal lives of politicians, but this does raise my eyebrows. What do you think -- should state employees be subject to a dating policy simply because they work in the government? Or is this no big deal?
posted by jennak
on Jan 29, 2002 -
26 comments
Maryland Rescuers Find a Kitten and Look for Justice "In an act of cruelty that recalls last year's road-rage death of a California pooch named Leo, a driver in Poolesville dropped a 10-week-old kitten into the middle of busy Route 107 on Christmas and then took off. Somehow, the animal was not hit by traffic. But in its fright, it darted toward the curb and into a storm drain. And there it likely would have died if not for the lengthy effort of several do-gooders -- one of whom crawled 30 feet through a storm pipe to grab the two-pound bundle of fur. That's an unquestionably happy ending. For chief rescuer Ellie Truman[e], though, the ending won't be complete until the man who abandoned the kitten so egregiously is identified and charged." (Even the Washington Post loves kitten stories!)
posted by Carol Anne
on Dec 29, 2001 -
7 comments
The Baltimore Sun has a series of articles that explore the possible failure of
Columbia, MD to live up to expectations after 30 years.
posted by rorschach
on Dec 28, 2000 -
20 comments
