Maryland Morning

A few weeks ago we looked at a new set of laws that went into effect in Maryland that would allow certain misdemeanors, as well as crimes that are no longer criminalized to be shielded from public view, or in some cases expunged. The law could impact tens of thousands of people who’ve been charged with or done jail time for these types of crimes. As Sheilah Kast reported last month, carrying a criminal record can adversely affect nearly every aspect of a person’s life, such as employment and housing and the right to vote. Last month, Sheilah introduced us to Danielle, whose police record has made her search for work a struggle. Danielle hopes getting her record expunged changes that.

The fifteenth Baltimore Running Festival officially opened last night. The big events begin tomorrow when the marathon and half marathon launch from the Inner Harbor. Lee Corrigan, president of Corrigan Sports Enterprises joins Tom to discuss this year’s low registration and running for Baltimore pride.

A week from Sunday, The Baltimore Museum of Art will unveil its new 4.5 million dollar Center for People And Art, which will open with an exhibit entitled Imagining Home.  Gamynne Guillotte is the Director of Interpretation and Public Engagement at The BMA. On the opening day of the Imagining Home exhibition, the museum will also host a Home Movie Day in which non-filmmakers will submit moving images from their family’s archive. Two of the organizers of that event join us as well: Dwight Swanson co-founded The Center For Home Movies. Siobhan Hagan is an audiovisual archivist at the University of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library. She’s assisting with the Home Movie Day Project at the BMA.

Runners from around the world will gather in Baltimore for the 15th annual Baltimore Running Festival. The Marathon, the Half Marathon, the 5K race and various other events attract runners old and young; those who are in shape and a few who discover, rather quickly, that they’re out of shape. Dr. Pam Peeke joins me in the studio. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the author of several books, including the national best-selling book, Fight Fat After Forty, and her latest, The Hunger Fix.  You can find a very simple online calculator here to determine your fitness age.

Tom Hall and his guests discuss highlights of the first Democratic debate of the 2016 presidential campaign season. Dr. Sheri Parks, the Associate Dean for Research, Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Programming in the College of Arts and Humanities, and Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland; Michael Fletcher, reporter at the Washington Post; and Richard Cross, a former press secretary and speech writer for former Maryland Governor Bob Erhlich weigh in with their thoughts. Cross blogs at Cross Purposes, and writes editorials for the Baltimore Sun and other publications. 

Su Friedrich is an acclaimed filmmaker who, since the 1970s, has been making films that blend narrative, experimental and documentary forms. Her films deal with issues like feminism, family, sexual identity and gentrification.

Tomorrow night, Ms. Friedrich will be showing her 2012 film, Gut Renovation, at Normal’s Books and Records in Baltimore. The nomadic film group, Sight Unseen, hosts regular screenings of experimental, poetic and nonfiction cinema, and they are the hosts of this event. Su Friedrich joins Tom today on the line from Brooklyn. 

Tom Hall sits down with WYPR's news experts Kenneth Burns and Fraser Smith to discuss the latest headlines including motions made for the trial of the death of Freddie Gray, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake at the The National Press Club, and the upcoming Democratic debate. It's all a part of Maryland Morning's News Round-Up.  

Paul Simon has been writing songs since the 1950s, and he’s still at it, writing with a command of his craft that places him with the likes of Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, Lennon, McCartney, and the handful of others we might place at the pinnacle of the songwriting art.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland has an exhibition that chronicles Paul Simon’s amazing career and his unparalleled contribution to the world of music. It’s called, simply, Paul Simon: Words and Music. Marvin Pinkert is the Jewish Museum’s Director, and he joins Tom in the studio.

How accurate is history? Ever. Even primary sources are no substitute for having lived in the same time, breathed the same air as the people who made history.

A Ph.D. candidate experiences living, breathing history, nearly two-century-old history, firsthand in Robert O’Hara’s audacious, time-shifting play, Insurrection: Holding History at Annex Theater.

  The Man Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world. It's given to a work of fiction written in English and published in Britain. When the prize was begun in 1969, nominees were limited only to writers in Britain, Ireland, Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth countries around the globe. Two years ago, the prize changed its rule to allow writers from across the English speaking world, including Americans, to be considered by the panel of judges. 

Last spring, Freddie Gray was apprehended near the Gilmor Homes public housing project in Sandtown Winchester, one of Baltimore’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.  His death while in police custody focused a lot of attention on Sandtown, and the many challenges that residents there face, including the conditions at the Gilmor Homes.   

Recently, several women who live there said they were assaulted by maintenance workers who demanded sex in return for doing repairs in their apartments.  Yesterday, producer Jonna McKone and I went to the Gilmor Homes, and we met Perry Hopkins.  He’s an organizer with Communities United, a group that advocates on behalf of the residents.   

  On Sunday afternoon, the Orioles wrapped-up their 2015 season with one last winning streak. But even after sweeping the New York Yankees, the birds finished the season in Baseball purgatory- at exactly .500. While we did technically avoid a losing season, O’s fans and analysts alike view this past year as a disappointment, after getting to the American League Championship Series just the year before.

And just down the road on Russell Street, the Ravens are in unfamiliar territory: tied with the Cleveland Browns for last place. With the likes of Terrell Suggs, Marshal Yanda, Dennis Pitta and Steve Smith Sr on the DL, the Ravens 1-3 record makes for their worst season start since 2005.  Maryland Morning Sport’s Guru, Mark Hyman, joins Tom to discuss. 

We turn now to a local gardener and historic consultant who has written a book about the neighborhood of Guilford, in North Baltimore.  Originally the country estate of the founder of the Baltimore Sun, A. S. Abell, since 1913, it has been one of Baltimore’s most beautiful and affluent neighborhoods.  Ann Giroux lives in Guilford; her book is part of the Images of America series which includes books on many other neighborhoods and institutions in Baltimore and beyond. 

We begin this morning with a conversation about what two of Maryland’s leading institutions are doing to address the longstanding problems in the struggling neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the violence during the riots last April.

In 2011, Tom's daughter, Miranda, served in the  Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Anchorage, AK. Unrelated to the work she was doing in a chronic care facility, she was invited to participate in a series called Arctic Entries, where people from Anchorage were asked to tell a personal story in front of an audience. Seven story tellers told seven-minute stories; a local band performed, and the money they raised from ticket sales went to a local non-profit organization. The idea for Arctic Entries originated in Baltimore.

10 years ago, Jessica Henkin and Laura Wexler founded the Baltimore Stoop Storytelling Series, and it has become a staple of the performance season here in Charm City ever since. Tonight, The Stoop will launch their 10th anniversary season with a collection of story tellers assembled under the rubric, Beginnings and Endings: Stories about birth and death, creation and destruction, sparks and flame-outs. The curators of these proceedings, Jessica Henkin and Laura Wexler, join Tom today in Studio A.

As Baltimore and the rest of the country brace for the trials of the six officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray last spring, the frayed relationship between African American men and the police are front and center in people’s minds. Tom's guest now is Gracie Xavier, a photographer with a background in psychology and social work, who took her lens and her artistic eye to one of the iconic locations in the Black community, the barbershop, where she explored perceptions of Black male identity, from the perspective of some of the men themselves, and the culture at large.

An exhibition of the photographs that grew out of that endeavor opens Friday night at Gallery CA on Oliver Street in Baltimore’s Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Gracie Xavier is currently living and working in Detroit, and she joins Tom on the phone this morning from the Motor City.

Our first guest this morning is Congressman John Sarbanes, a democrat who represents Maryland’s 3rd congressional district. Last year he introduced legislation that would change the way congressional campaigns are financed.

His bill is called the Government by the People Act, and he joins Tom on the phone to talk about it.

The Baltimore writer Lia Purpura has published a new book. It’s a terrific collection of poems called It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful. Lia is the writer in residence at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She has won Fulbright, Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and three Pushcart Prizes among other awards. Her poems, including some of the ones in this new collection, have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and elsewhere.

She’ll be introducing her new book tomorrow night at the Ivy Bookshop in North Baltimore. Lia Purpura joins Tom in the studio. 

Is war inevitable? That’s the central question raised by Jen Silverman’s raw, hard-hitting play, Phoebe in Winter. Granted, this is one of those immense philosophical questions that can make for a dull, didactic play.

But director Genevieve de Mahy’s exceptional production at Single Carrot Theatre is never less than fascinating – a first-rate contribution to the Washington-based Women’s Voices Theater Festival. 

The top-level jobs Leon Panetta has held in government comprise a ridiculously long list. Most recently, from 2011 to early 2013, he was secretary of defense. That followed two years as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the mid-90s he was President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff, following a stint as director of Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, which was logical, because Panetta, who had represented Monterey, California in Congress for 8 terms, chaired the House Budget committee for four years.

Rather than guessing what part of all that experience will show through when Leon Panetta kicks off the Baltimore Speaker Series tomorrow night, Sheilah asks him. Leon Panetta is joined Sheilah on the phone last week.