Baltimore21201.Com

Great Bones Found on Charles Street

If you were walking up Charles Street last weekend to visit Baltimore's 91st annual Flower Mart in Mount Vernon, I hope you took a moment to look in - and visit - Meredith Gallery in the North 800 Block of our favorite street.

Meredith's current - and impressuve - exhibition features the work of Len Dougherty.

Fur-Nature: Art Furniture Inspired by Nature. Check out the bones that I've discovered.

This amazing piece of hand-worked wood is called Jurassic Lounge. It's crafted from ash with a suede pillow. And I love it.

If only I had a roof-top deck. I'd try to commission a set of four - crafted in teak with waterproof microfiber pillows.

Have you ever seen such great lines?

Get LIT in Baltimore! - Part 2

I posted a note on Sunday about getting LIT in Baltimore by way of an email from Carole Evitts. Here's the follow-up...

Spring 2008 brings a lot of good things to the mid-Atlantic. One of the best promises to be this year's 5th Annual CityLit Festival. Rub elbows with, and learn from, some of the best in the literature scene on April 19th at the Enoch Pratt Free Library (downtown on Cathedral Street). 10AM - 5PM. Think: Laura Lippman, Manil Suri, Dan Fesperman, Carole Boston Weatherford, Michael Olesker, and dozens of others. This event is free to attendees and free to exhibitors. Put on your thinking caps, you Lit-Types!

President and CEO of the CityLIt Project, Gregg A. Wilhelm, wants us to know that: CityLit Project nurtures the culture of literature in Baltimore and throughout Maryland. Programs include free public events, registration-based writers' workshops and conferences, a rock-n-read concert that targets the 18-34 crowd (which represents the steepest rate of decline in reading), and efforts to get youth to dig reading and writing as creative, expressive arts.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (OK, too much late night TV. Way too much.) Gregg Wilhelm is too modest. Here are just a couple of quotes from those in the know:

“CityLit Festival is one of my favorite events of the year. The energy and creativity that CityLit Project brings to it--and to each of its programs--is worthy of the library’s support, and the entire community’s support.”
Dr. Carla Hayden
Executive Director
Enoch Pratt Free Library

“We value the content CityLit Project has provided the Baltimore Book Festival over the years. In a city rich with a variety of creative arts, Baltimore is fortunate to have CityLit as a champion of the literary arts.”
Bill Gilmore
Executive Director
Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts

“After searching for a way to become involved with the local literary community, I found exactly what I was looking for— it’s the nonprofit CityLit Project. At the happy hour, it was apparent that CityLit and JMWW are achieving their mission to nurture the culture of literature.”
Corinne Levinstein
Writer

Baltimore! Get Lit! REALLY, Get LIT!

A couple of days ago I wrote about the sad state of the iffy, dicey, and generally lame media releases that arrive on my desk after January and continue to arrive until the sun warms us up a bit and Baltimore's collective community spirit brightens. I was a tad-bit blue as I wrote that last post because we haven't had a decent snow storm this winter -- and, nothing makes me happier (and nothing warms ME up) more than a Baltimore snow-day.

Just then, I received a wonderful email notice from Carole Evitts. I read it, and I smiled, and I felt much warmer and a whole lot more positive. I felt the sunshine. (But, still no decent snow for 2008 was in the forecast. Rats...)

Here's the sidebar: I consider the Evitts' family one of the smartest and most productive and giving literary families in current-day Baltimore. Here's a very condensed Evitts' snapshot: Carole's husband, author, professor, and truly nice guy, William J Evitts PhD, has been a fixture at Johns Hopkins University for a long, long time. Evitts' son, Michael, is the amazingly knowledgeable voice of Baltimore's Downtown Partnership. Their daughter, the award winning writer Elizabeth Evitts, was editor of Baltimore's slick, glossy -- and intelligently written magazine -- Urbanite. The magazine for Baltimore's Curious. I hear that Elizabeth is now setting up her own shop as most high-level, creative Baltimorians tend to do.

Oh yes, and then there's Carole A Evitts. When I was introduced to her a couple of years ago by way of a project for the Historic Charles Street Association, I knew that we'd met a decade or so before. We worked it out and sure enough... Carole and I were working on Zoomerang together way back in the late 1980s. We decided that, yes, Baltimore will always be a small town where friends live, leave, return, and reunite.

Stay tuned for the announcement from Carole that turns smart Baltimore smarter and more positive each year... and GET LIT!

Oh and by the way, if you want to learn about the Civil Rights Movement (and the Baltimore riots) in our city from folks who lived here and lived those events, click here for a PDF: Baltimore Riots. It is a must read.

After January Each Year: The Ho-Hum Press Releases Hit Baltimore

Odd, but true... Take this urgent message from the Live Baltimore Home Center:

Need a makeover? Want to be on national TV? Then head down to the Harborplace Amphitheater on Monday, February 18, where one lucky person will be "glambushed" live on TV during the CBS Early Show. [Say now, that sounds like a good time to be had by all.]

The Early Show's Dave Price will be LIVE in Baltimore on Monday morning. All Baltimoreans are invited to show their support by joining him as part of the show's audience from 5:30 - 9:00 a.m. One lucky audience member will be selected for a makeover by designer to the stars, Bradley Bayou - author of "The Science of Sexy." WJZ-TV's Ron Matz will also be broadcasting live. We want to show support for the CBS Early Show and proudly represent the city of Baltimore, so come out and don't miss your chance to be on national television. 

[They've got to be kidding, right?]

And, this just in from "The Insiders Club" at 1st Mariner Arena:

WWE PRESENTS BACKLASH - Sunday , April 27^th AT 7:45 PM

As a member of the 1st Mariner Arena Insiders Club [I'm on their mailing list, yes. But, I had no idea that I was a member of anything so very special...] you are invited to take part in an exclusive presale for WWE Presents Backlash, at 1st Mariner Arena on Sunday. Attendees must be 14 years of age.

[Oh swell, let's round up all of our young teens and head out to see this smart little package. Oh and yes, the best tickets are $175 each...]

He doesn't look like another Hanna Montana so I think I'll hold-off on this one and not stand in line.

If you've ever read this blog before, you know that I'm a rah-rah, full-on supporter of Baltimore and 21201. It just gets creepy on the PR front around this time of year. Stay tuned for some of the truly worthwhile notices of late winter.

And, if you see huge guys walking around downtown Baltimore in tights... well, consider yourself warned. It's not altogether pretty.

Male Midwives? I Had No Clue!

I wasn't around Baltimore in the 1800s. Still, I had no idea. Apparently I need to head up Charles Street tomorrow for some continuing education from the folks at JHU's Homewood Museum.

They say, "The early 19th century was a pivotal time in maternal care as female midwives gave way to male midwives and obstetrics emerged as a major medical specialty. Cribs, cradles, silver baby bottle nipples, forceps, early medical books, and other period items on display offer a look at practices, traditions, and politics concerning childbirth and childrearing in early Maryland, particularly those of Baltimore families like the Carrolls of Homewood."

The event was organized by students in the Introduction to Material Culture course taught fall 2007 at Homewood as part of the JHU Krieger School’s Museums & Society Program. The course and focus show were made possible by the late Anne Merrick Pinkard.

While I'm considering about all of this, I'm kind of creeped-out thinking of the silver baby bottle nipples. That, somehow, just seems so wrong. It's not like they were serving up mint juleps or anything.

The Walters Art Museum Director, Gary Vikan, Tells Stories

And, what entertaining and extraordinary stories they are. Vikan joined forces with Baltimore's NPR station, WYPR, a few months back and is hosting a weekly feature, Postcards from The Walters. It's broadcast Monday mornings at 9:35. However, you don't have to be tuned-in to listen.

The Walters website has a link to WYPR where the previous months audio postcards are archived.

I first learned of Vikan's natural story-telling ability when he made a presentation on branding Baltimore at one of the Baltimore Architecture Foundation's lunchtime forums.

I wrote him a note to thank him for his funny, clever, and informative talk. (It takes some on-stage savvy and bravado to get a room full of architecture enthusiasts laughing out loud. He has that savvy and more.) A few weeks later he invited me to lunch. That's when I truly learned what a story-teller he is. Just click here - Postcards from The Walters - and you'll be hooked. You'll also find out why the first Walters in Baltimore wasn't a museum at all. It was a bath house! Yep, a bath house.

"Visit My Baltimore" is Gaining Steam - And, in a Good Way with Videos

When Baltimore's GET IN ON IT campanign launched last year I was dubious. And on national television, so was Jay Leno (he laughed at the concept and the $500,000 paid to San Francisco-based Landor & Associates), Regis Philbin (he was so puzzled and confused by the concept he couldn't even say the phase), David Letterman was even less kind. Even Baltimore's very own William Donald Schafer, former Mayor and Maryland Govenour, rang in through his spoksperson saying, "I've seen some dumb ones in the past, but this is the dumbest." Was he thinking of an earlier attempt to brand Baltimore as: THE CITY THAT READS?

So when the GET IN ON IT people announced that they were opening up a section of their site so regular folks could upload videos about what makes Baltimore special to them, I was even more dubious. What would the citizens of Charm City post that the rest of the country could make fun of?

Apparently I shouldn't have been concerned at all. Here's just one example of the clever videos that have been posted.

Take a look at some of these little gems. Many are so delightful that they could take us back to the Charm City days.

And then, wonder along with me if all of Baltimore wouldn't have been better served by calling on locals to produce these kinds of things and offering a purse of $50,000 to each of the ten best rather than sending off half-a-million bucks to a company based out west.

I'm betting that even John Waters would have entered. And, wouldn't that have been a wonderful thing?

Oh yes, if you haven't seen this tribute to William Donald Schafer you should. Yep, it's biased in his favor just as Schafer's support and promotion of Baltimore is biased to the Nth degree in our favor.

I'm Totally Humbled. I Didn't Know this Author: Jabari Asim

Once, every so often... when I'm feeling way too smart for my own good and full-of-myself, I read an email that makes me feel small and not very bright. That was certainly the case last week when I received an email about the 2007 Book Festival in Baltimore's Mount Vernon.

One of the featured authors is Jabari Asim. And I wondered, "Who's that?" Well, it turns out that Mr. Asim has a backgound & a profile that I should have known.

Per the Baltimore Book Festival notification:

"Jabari Asim is the new editor-in-chief of The Crisis, the NAACP's flagship publication founded by W.E.B. DuBois in 1910. For the past 11 years he has been an editor at The Washington Post Book World. He is the author of several books, including Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on Law, Justice and Life, Daddy Goes to Work, and The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and children."

I've never met this man, this author. However, I intend to. Reading his bio and reading through his website make this fellow a must visit. The reviews of his latest book are stellar.

Make plans to attend the 2007 Book Festival. I'll see you there.

150 Years of the Peabody Institute - Audio Now Online

An email arrived today announcing the Peabody's 2007-08 Concert Series. The run of presentations is impressive and the box office opens tomorrow, August 29th, at 10AM.

There are 15 concerts in the series and subscribers may choose 5 for $50 - just $10 per concert. Does it get better than that? Not to my way of thinking.

While I was visiting the Peabody's website to look at concert details, I noticed that the audio of "150 Years of the Peabody Institute" is online.

According the JHU & the Peabody:

"Featuring readings of historic documents and interviews with Peabody students, alumni, and faculty, as well as local community leaders, the documentary is a sound-rich celebration of one of America's most prestigious conservatories of music. Jeffrey Sharkey, Director of the Peabody Institute, also speaks of present day Peabody and leads listeners to future successes of the Institute."

Even if you can't make the 2007-08 season, spend an hour listening to this audio documentary. It's wonderfully done and was first heard a couple of months ago on Baltimore's National Public Radio Station, WYPR.

Great Weather & Great Crowds for Baltimore's ArtScape 2007

With friends in tow, ArtScape turned out to be a day of fun within all the trappings of a traditional street fair. Photos of the event are posted on Baltimore21201.Com's Gallery Page. And, here's the direct link.

I hadn't been to ArtScape in quite a few years. With the annual event scheduled in the dog days of July, walking hot pavement and breathing what Frank Roylance at the Baltimore Sun calls "hot, gelatinous air" while smelling the smoke of pit beef mixed with the perfume of deep fried anything-you-can-imagine just isn't my cup of tea.

Yesterday's perfect weather actually made ArtScape's World-'O-Food smell darn good.

Alas, there wasn't a seat to be had in the tents for foodies - and I don't eat while walking. Jacob had a lemonade, Erin had a mammoth snowball, and Steve and I had a beer.

Once ArtScape pulls in a greater number of traditional artists (working in oil, acrylic, watercolor, bronze... artists offering original pieces) all will be right with the fair.