WYPR

January 20th & 21st, 2012, on The Signal…

We drop in at a local country music bar to hear the twang of honky tonk musician Arty Hill, whose new album, “Another Lost Highway,” brings a little Nashville flavor to Charm City.

We talk to the editors of “68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City,” a new collection of essays, archival photographs, and deeply personal oral histories about the riots that took place in Baltimore following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Marcia Woolfson Ray builds sculpture from Dog Fennel and cornstalks; Ellen Durkan forges tempered steel into sci-fi meta-fashion; and Ed Hough strums the guitar in the band Smooth Kentucky.  These three artists are as different as can be, but they’ve got one thing in common:  This week, they each earned a thousand-dollar B Grant from the Baker Artist Award website, and we pay them a congratulatory visit.

A preview of the upcoming Charm City LGBT Film Festival, a showcase of the best and newest queer films from Baltimore and around the world

Time again for Midday on the Law, our look at legal matters in the news with attorneys (and wife and husband) Julie Rubin and Jim Astrachan. On today’s docket: The Maryland Court of Appeals says newly-arrested defendants who can’t afford a lawyer must be provided one during bail hearings; a Howard County judge throws out a drunk-driving case that she said was linked to a police quota system for citations, and the Baltimore Housing Authority has property seized to settle a debt.

Rev. Mark Kiyimba, an LGBT rights activist and founder of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Uganda, recently left his country, fearing for his safety after he led opposition to a proposed anti-homosexuality bill there. Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but the new bill would impose much harsher punishments including life imprisonment and even the death penalty for some homosexual acts. Kiyimba is currently traveling across the United States to raise awareness of the persecution LGBT Ugandans face every day.

Gregg Bernstein returns to Midday to talk about his first year as Baltimore’s top prosecutor and his plan to overhaul his office with a “community prosecution” approach.

Analysis of the New Hampshire presidential primary results with our guests:  Heather Olsen, of the Prince Georges County Republican Central Committee; Tonya Tiffany, of the Maryland Conservative Action Network; and Melissa Deckman, political science professor at Washington College.

As many as 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, the most frequent cause of irreversible dementia in adults. Many times it falls on those closest to the afflicted person to provide care when confusion sets in. In his book, “The 36-Hour Day,” now in its 5th edition from Johns Hopkins University Press, Dr. Peter V. Rabins breaks care-giving into simple steps to help those faced with caring for a loved one with dementia. The book, originally published in 1981, was the first of its kind and is considered the definitive guide to caring for people with dementia.

Maryland lawmakers head back to Annapolis this week for the 2012 General Assembly session. WYPR reporter Joel McCord and senior news analyst C. Fraser Smith will be in the studio to discuss hot topics that legislators will tackle this year, including a possible gasoline tax increase, legislative redistricting, same-sex marriage and more. Plus: A look at Maryland Congressional races in 2012 and the Republican presidential primary campaign.

Science contributor John Monahan returns to talk about the search for the elusive "God particle" and why physicists are excited about it; Also joining us: Andrei Gritsan, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University's Department of Physics and Astronomy and a scientist working on the particle project at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Also, hybrid sharks, biofuel from recycled paper and the mystery of El Chupacabra solved.