Community Calendar

Back for its second year, Abbott and the Big Ten Conference are hosting the We Give Blood Drive competition to entice students, alumni, fans, and community members to rally around their Big Ten school to donate blood, save lives, and address the country's ongoing critical blood shortage.

From August 27 to December 5, anyone eligible to donate blood can do so anywhere, anytime in the U.S. to count for their school. The school with the most donations at the end of the competition will receive $1 million to advance student or community health.

New this year, everyone who donates or attempts to donate blood throughout the competition will receive an exclusive, limited-edition, Homefield-designed T-shirt specific to their school. To receive the shirt:

1. Show up to donate
2. Submit your donation (or attempt to donate) at BigTen.Org/Abbott or by texting DONATE to 222688 (ABBOTT).
3. Click the link sent to your email
4. Use your redemption code
5. Your shirt will be shipped to the address of your choice. 

Last year, the University of Nebraska won, and is using the funds to advance student health on campus. The University of Maryland is competing this year and will host several blood drives on campus and in the surrounding area throughout the competition. To find a blood drive near you, please visit: https://bigten.org/abbott/maryland

The Town of Colmar Manor, in collaboration with local organizations “Operation ARTS Foundation” and “We Are Limitless Studios” are leading their Streets of Solidarity Mural & Neighborhood Revitalization Project. Brandon Bell, Chyna Mae and Renee Ackerson designed a unifying message for Colmar Manor and are teaching 10 upcoming artists how to paint murals through their guidance. These 10 local artists will receive a stipend for their participation, in addition to gaining invaluable experience, mentorship and merchandise. The word “solidarity” refers to people coming together to stand in support of one another and in this project we are working together to unify the neighborhood through art. This community-driven project was funded by a grant award from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development of $81,500. This 5,000 sq. ft. roadway mural will engage local residents in painting a vibrant message of cultural unity and anti-gun violence at the 4 road intersections of 38th Ave, 37th Ave, Newmark St, and Newton St, that is also adjacent to Colmar Manor’s historic Dueling Grounds site. Local residents and commuters please note important dates and traffic pattern changes from 9/2 - 9/25 and plan your travel accordingly to avoid transportation delays. If you are interested in learning how to paint murals and would like to volunteer with us from 7am - 8pm, Monday through Friday, please RSVP to the event page on Facebook. Join us in transforming a historic site into a symbol of peace and resilience!
Road Closures will be from 9/2- 9/25 but may end earlier.
Expect delays at the 4 road intersection of 38th Ave, 37th Ave, Newmark St, and Newton St.
For updates visit colmarmanor.org.
Event Page For Volunteers: https://www.facebook.com/events/1312333913928503/

Consistently rated the best local scavenger hunt since 2016!

Puzzling Adventures are a cross between a scavenger hunt, an adventure race, and an informative self-guided walking tour. Each adventure consists of a series of locations that you are guided to where you are required to answer a question or solve a puzzle to receive your next instruction. Compete as a group, individually or create multiple teams and race each other. Almost all of our adventures are designed to be wheelchair and stroller friendly and all are carefully crafted to be entertaining and informative with something to appeal to all ages. Complete the adventure as quickly as possible to win first place or take your time and enjoy the journey. Price is per team, not per person. Groups can be any size, but small groups are recommended for the best experience.

Enter the code EVENTPASS on the payment page for a $10 discount!

Most locations are available daylight hours every day.

At VLP, we honor lifelong learning and understand the importance of starting early and making it fun. We hope you join us for our return to in-person Tots Tuesday Storytime for toddlers & preschoolers!

September 10 - December 6 (closed October 17 & November 26 -29)
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Opening reception Wednesday, September 10, 7:30 p.m.

How have recent upheavals—from the pandemic to global conflicts, amplified by media—reshaped our private lives? How do personal memories become collective history? In a world forever changed, how do we find our way forward? Elaine Qiu’s awe-inspiring installation of painting, video, and sound invites visitors into a multi-sensory exploration of communal consciousness, connection, and healing in a fragmented, post-pandemic world.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

On View: September 12 - October 11
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

In her work, Yaniv draws on patterns from nature and images from daily life, altogether forming landscapes which blur the line between the real and the imagined, the organic and the artificial, the chaotic and the orderly. For this exhibition, she takes her inspiration from Patrick Svensson’s "The Book of Eels," a mix of natural history, memoir, and metaphysical musings, fusing scientific mysteries with lived experience. The eel is born in the Sargasso Sea, a place of legend but also a fundamental part of the ocean, encompassing two million square miles in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. A sea within a sea, it is enclosed only by several large rotating ocean currents. This large installation is a collaboration with the Department of Dance, and considers, in multi-modal ways, life and loss, journey, metamorphosis, complexity, and culture-nature (endangered).

Reception September 11 following the 6:30 p.m. lecture and dance performance.

On September 11, 12 and 13 experience dance and sculpture in dynamic interplay just before the Inertia dance performance.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

On View: September 12 - December 6 (closed Oct. 17 & Nov. 25 - 29)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

The work in this exhibition compresses and expands expectations of depth as moderated by a post-image visual culture. The artists adhere to neither medium nor dimensional restrictions, but manipulate the viewer’s relationship to the image as a temporal document, compressed and fractured, through the singular eye of the lens. This expectation, no longer warranted in the age of computer generated images, becomes a fallacy of both the eye and of the language used to comprehend it. The image is untethered from representation and logical spatial association. Spatial continuity and discontinuity run amok in playful fracture--the work pushes and prods the amorphous opening left in the wake of this rupture; what was flat is unmoored of grounding, what was solid is now compressed.

Reception September 11 following the 6:30 p.m. lecture.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

The Jewish Community Services Memory Cafe is the 3rd Tuesday of each month at The Edward A. Myerberg Center, 3101 Fallstaff Road, Baltimore 21209. The JCS Memory Café offers a supportive and welcoming space for individuals with memory changes and their care partners. This is an opportunity to participate together to build support networks and engage in personal enrichment. Please join us for refreshments, conversation and meaningful programs. Contact Amy Steinberg at 410-843-7457 / [email protected] for more information.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Ukraine’s Peace Prospects,” a look at the chances of ending a long and brutal conflict and keeping Russia from invading its neighbor again, with Michael Kimmage, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, former U.S. State Department planner for Ukraine and Russia, and author of Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.

Throughout his second term President Trump has been driving for an end to the war in Ukraine, in recent weeks making a big diplomatic push through meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various European officials in the White House.

Will such efforts bring lasting peace? Will the outcome be easy for Ukrainians to stomach and will it deter Russian aggression elsewhere?

Hear such questions tackled by Dr. Michael Kimmage, a leading expert on that region who has been giving insightful and prescient Profs and Pints talks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since even before it began.

We’ll start by examining the historical roots of the conflict going back to the end of the Cold War in 1991. We’ll look at how Russian initiated the first phase of the war—annexing Crimea and invading Eastern Ukraine—following Ukraine’s 2014 “Maidan Revolution” or “Revolution of Dignity.”

You’ll learn why the first attempt to end this conflict—a series of agreements negotiated in Minsk, Belarus in 2014 and 2015—did not result in any lasting peace. Dr. Kimmage will explain Putin's motivations for going into Ukraine again and sketch out the course of the latest conflict from Ukrainians' brave defense of Kyiv to the twists and turns of the war across many different battlefields. He’ll show you how Russia has been unable for a long time to make any real progress but the costs to Ukrainian civilians have been impossibly high.

This talk will conclude with a deep dive into the Trump administration’s efforts to change the conversation about the war and bring about peace. It will lay out the reasons why the war is likely to continue for a long time and explore what it means to have a sprawling, bloody, unresolved conflict at the heart of Europe. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: An area of Kyiv following an April 2025 Russian missile and drone attack. (Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Wikimedia Commons.)

David Bach is one of the hardest working jazz keyboardists/pianists in the region with a long list of awards, accolades and credits from nearly 30 years as a professional musician and bandleader. His band, The David Bach Consort was the winner of the Jazz Discovery Showcase on BET/Viacom which led to millions of people being exposed to David’s exciting music. He is a recipient of the 2019 Maryland Entertainment Hall of Fame and the winner of Maryland Music Awards “Best Jazz Artist” in 2016. Over the years, David has recorded and toured the world as a solo artist and a sideman for several major artists including Enrique Iglesias, Thievery Corporation, Fishbelly Black, and has recorded with Everything But the Girl and the Basement Boys.