Like Riding a Bike

After a tumultuous first year that included temporary suspension of service, Baltimore Bikeshare is expanding. According to an announcement in its most recent membership newsletter, Bikeshare will add nine locations around the city, bringing the total number of stations to 50. The new locations include two in South Baltimore, two in East Baltimore, and four in Mt. Vernon/Station North. Installation of the new locations, which will also include a new downtown station at the Charles Center metro stop, will begin December 15.

The locations are:

• Charles Center
• Chase Street and St. Paul Street
• 1200 Maryland Avenue
• North Avenue and Maryland Avenue
• St. Paul Street and Madison Street
• Light Street and Ostend Street
• Charles Street and Fort Avenue
• Betty Hyatt Community Park (near Broadway and East Baltimore Street)
• Perkins Homes (1400 Gough Street)  

Maryland Goes Anti Antibiotic 

Maryland farmers raising animals for consumption will have to abide by stricter criteria when administering antibiotics to a member of their flock or herd thanks to a newly enacted state law. Passed by the state legislature earlier this year, the so-called Keep Antibiotics Effective Act, prohibits dosing healthy cattle, hogs, and poultry with broad-spectrum antibiotics in order to promote growth, a common industry practice that scientists warn has contributed to the rise antibiotic resistance. Now, in order to administer an antibiotic to an animal, farmers will need the express approval of a licensed veterinarian. Furthermore, the law outright bans agricultural use of some medically precious antibiotics. In enacting the law, Maryland becomes only the second state (after California) to place limits on antibiotic usage in livestock. 

However, prominent public health officials charge that the law does not go far enough. Firstly, the law does not apply to farming operations classified as small, which, in this case, means farms selling fewer than 200 cattle or pigs, or 60,000 birds per year. Secondly, in a recent oped in The Washington Post, Ellen Silbergeld, a food systems expert at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, notes that while the bill requires veterinarian approval it does not require that veterinarian to confirm the presence “of disease in the herd or flock before animals can be treated with antibiotics.” Given these parameters, she says it would be easy for a cooperative veterinarian to write an unneeded prescription based on risk factors—or the threat of disease—rather than the actual presence of disease. 

“Given the crowded conditions characteristic of factory farms, it would not be difficult for a veterinarian to conclude that every animal stands a reasonable risk of contracting a disease,” she writers. “This situation is analogous to how a pediatrician might conclude that every child who attends day care should take antibiotics on a daily basis throughout childhood simply because they have an increased risk of contracting strep throat.”

First Day Hikes

For those looking to start 2018 off on the right foot (so to speak), the Maryland Department of Natural Resources has posted a list of New Year’s Day hikes at 32 state parks. Hike times, distances, and difficulty levels vary (but most are easy to moderate). Local options include ambles through the historic Jerusalem Mill Village section of Gunpowder Falls State Park, a 2-mile jaunt around North Point State Park, and easy excursions into both the Avalon and McKeldin areas of Patapsco Valley State Park. More information can be found on the DNR’s website.   

Park Places

Earlier this month, it was announced that Baltimore City’s parks received $7.6 million from the state for fiscal year 2018. The funds, which come from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, are earmarked for 10 projects around the city’s green spaces. The largest chunk of funding ($2.4 million) is allocated for the renovation/rebuilding of the Cahill Fitness and Wellness Center in Leakin Park. Other line items include $500,000 for a new artificial turf multipurpose playing field, scoreboard, lighting, fencing, and ADA-compliant pathways in Clifton Park; $300,000 for upgraded lighting, an expanded community garden, and renovated park entrances and pathways in Patterson Park; and $300,000 for improved trailhead access to the Jones Falls Trail in Druid Hill Park. The city also received $1.5 million for general activities such as “continued maintenance, planning, volunteer support, and operations.” Details on the various projects can be found in the city’s grant application, which is available as a PDF here.     

Hopkins Cuts Coal

The Johns Hopkins University is joining the global movement to cut financial ties with fossil fuel companies. On Friday, December 8, the university’s board of trustees voted to withdraw its investment holdings in companies that produce coal for electric power as a major part of their business. The new policy also prohibits future purchases of shares in companies that earn more than 35 percent of their revenue from electricity-generating coal. Studies have shown that burning coal for electricity produces more greenhouse gas emissions per unit than any other fossil fuel. In embracing the new edict, Hopkins joins a growing list of academic institutions, state and local governments, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, and businesses that are jettisoning investments with fossil-fuel-burning energy giants. The University of Maryland announced a similar pledge last year, but its directive went even further, eliminating investment in any coal, oil, and natural gas companies.  

Turtles Rescued 

In our continuing sea turtle coverage, the National Aquarium took in a group of 30 sea turtles in November after the aquatic reptiles fell victim to cold water temperatures off the coast of Cape Cod. The turtles arrived suffering from a range of ailments, including pneumonia and blood chemical imbalances, which can arise when the water temperatures drop rapidly and the turtles become “cold stunned.” Cold stunned season typically last from December through April, but a chilly New England fall caused an early onset. The group of turtles is largest ever taken in by the aquarium, which is a member of the Greater Atlantic Region Stranding Network, a network of zoos, aquariums, and conservation groups along that East Coast that respond to animals in peril. Aquarium employees had fun with their newest charges, naming each turtle after a breakfast food. Resultant names include Waffles, Bacon, Flapjack, and Benedict.      

By now, the whole world knows that American actress Meghan Markle will marry Britain’s Prince Harry in May. Congratulations to the happy couple.  

Also by now, many outlets have pointed out that Markle is not the first Yank to marry into the ranks of royalty. Previous trailblazers include fellow actress Grace Kelly (Monaco) and socialites Lee Bouvier (Poland) and Marie Chantal-Miller (Denmark/Greece). Plus, as we all learned from Downton Abbey, marrying American heiresses was all the rage among the British upper class in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as venerable British families sought new American fortunes to prop up their money pit estates. In other words, there’s a long precedent of transatlantic marriages, for any number of reasons, including love. 

But what many may not know is that two Baltimore women are among the more colorful members of this elite tradition. 

The first, Elizabeth “Betsy” Patterson Bonaparte, was the daughter of a prominent Baltimore merchant who, at one point, was the second richest man in Maryland.  

In 1803, Betsy, who was known for her style, vivacity, and beauty, married Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jérome. The marriage was plagued almost from the start. Napoleon disapproved of the union and urged his brother to annul it. When the couple sailed for Europe in 1804, Napoleon forbid Betsy—by then pregnant with the couple’s only child—from disembarking. Her husband pledged to procure Napoleon’s acceptance, but was unsuccessful and quickly gave up, abandoning his pregnant young bride. Betsy found sanctuary in London, where she gave birth to a son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte (called Bo), in 1805. But save for one brief encounter in 1817, she never saw her husband again. (She was granted a divorce from him in 1815 by special act of the Maryland legislature.)

But don’t cry for Betsy. The irrepressible heiress returned to Baltimore where she successfully managed her family’s estate and remained a figure of fascination, even making a return visit to Europe at one point where she was warmly welcomed by high society. She died in 1879 at the ripe old age of 94 and is buried in Green Mount Ceremony where her tombstone reads: “After life’s fitful fever she sleeps well.” 

The second—and even more controversial—Baltimorean to infiltrate European royal society was Wallis Simpson, who fell in love with the man who would become King Edward VIII in the early 1930s, and nearly toppled the British monarchy in the process. 

Simpson was born Bessie Wallis Warfield just over the Pennsylvania-Maryland line in June 1896. Her father died of tuberculosis shortly thereafter and she grew up in Baltimore, bouncing from one address to another with her widowed mother. For a period of time around 1905, she and her mother lived in a room at what is now Hotel Brexton on Park Avenue in Mt. Vernon. Thanks to generous relations, including her uncle and one-time Baltimore postmaster Solomon Davies Warfield, she attended the elite Oldfields School in Sparks-Glencoe, where she excelled socially and academically.    

When she became the mistress of then-Prince Edward in 1934, she was already on her second marriage. That marriage, to British shipping magnate Ernest Aldrich Simpson, would end in divorce in 1937, by which time Prince Edward’s father, King George V, had died and Edward had ascended to the throne. The new king marrying an American of no particular fortune or lineage was already an undesirable prospect, but, as the head of the Church of England, the king marrying a twice-divorced American of no particular lineage and fortune was out of the question. In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne, telling the British public in a radio address that he “found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.” 

Though the story was spun as one of gallantry and love, the reality was much more complicated, with Wallis and Edward—now dubbed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor—living as glamorous exiles the rest of their lives. And while there does seem to have been a genuine bond between the two, royal watchers have long gossiped that the relationship was unhealthy with Wallis acting as a domineering mommy/mistress figure to the feckless, resentful Edward. It has also been said that the Duke and Duchess were Nazi sympathizers, which further tarnished their reputations. (For interesting portrayals of the Duke and Duchess, see Netflix’s The Crown or the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech.)

So, you know, maybe it’s a good thing Meghan’s from California and not Baltimore. We don’t seem to have the best track record with royal weddings.      

BeLeaf 

In our city’s ever-evolving effort to become a “cleaner, greener” version of itself, the Flowering Tree Trails of Baltimore initiative is the beautiful, fragrant next step. The effort—organized by a coalition of city governmental departments, environmental groups, and volunteers—aims to plant 6,000 flowering ornamental trees along 39 miles of Baltimore trails. In the spring, when they flower, the trails will be visually connected and become a source of splendor for residents and tourists alike. 

“In time, our city could be as famous for its Flowering Tree Trails as Washington, D.C., is for its cherry blossoms and New York is for the High Line,” says the initiative’s website. The plantings, which can range from—crabapples and cherry trees to dogwoods and silverbells—will contribute to the city’s goal of increasing its tree canopy from 28 percent to 40 percent by 2037. That is the level of coverage the U.S. Forest Service recommends if Baltimore wants to improve its air quality. The first trees went into the ground on November 11, during a ceremony in Druid Hill Park. Organizers estimate that, when all is said and planted, the initiative will cost somewhere in the low seven figures. Fundraising efforts are underway.

Bay Watch

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen has introduced legislation to increase funding for a program that helps farmers prevent agricultural runoff from entering the bay. According to the Chesapeake Bay Program “agriculture is the single largest source of nutrient and sediment pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay.” The bill, officially titled the Chesapeake Bay Farm Bill Enhancements Act of 2017, would triple funding—from $100 million to $300 million—available to farmers for mitigating practices such as constructing secure manure storage, installing cover crops, practicing no-till farming, and maintaining forested stream buffers. 

Van Hollen’s bill has already garnered multiple sponsors, including one Republican, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. According to The Washington Post, Congressman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott of Virginia’s 3rd District will introduce an identical bill in the House, but is still gathering support. Separately, Congress continues to debate 2018 funding levels for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup program—a six-state, $73 million agreement to curb pollution that President Trump has proposed eliminating.   

Sewer Followup

When last we checked in with Baltimore City’s $1.6 billion plan to upgrade its failing sewer system, the city was locked in a dispute with water quality advocacy group Blue Water Baltimore over the scope of the federally mandated consent decree. Blue Water Baltimore wanted the work to continue until water quality met a certain benchmark, even if that meant performing repairs and upgrades outside the purview of the initial agreement. The city—and the federal government—argued that this was not feasible or necessary. In October, a federal judge sided with the city and federal government. The first phase of the project, which will address 83% of sewer overflows, is supposed to be completed by January 1, 2021. All remaining work is to be completed by 2030. The consent decree can be viewed in full here.  

Park Places

• The ribbon cutting of a redeveloped baseball field in West Baltimore provided the setting for a classic Orioles reunion last week as Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, and Brooks Robinson gathered at the newly dedicated Eddie Murray Field at BGE Park. The park, a project of the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, now features a synthetic turf baseball diamond, dugouts, a backstop, and a digital scoreboard. The field is located behind James Mosher Elementary School and will host after- school programming in addition to James Mosher Baseball—the oldest continuously operating African-American youth baseball league in the country.
• Users of the Stony Run trail that snakes through many of North Baltimore’s most coveted neighborhoods had cause for celebration in early October. After nearly 10 years and $1 million in investment, two footbridges opened creating the final linkages in the trail that runs between Roland Avenue and North Charles Street from just below Northern Parkway to Remington.  
• In October, the state announced it will allocate $23 million to protect parcels of farmland, forest, and open space in 17 conservation districts around the state. The funds are part of the Rural Legacy Program, a program of the state Department of Natural Resources, that works “to preserve large, contiguous tracts of land and to enhance natural resource, agricultural, forestry and environmental protection while supporting a sustainable land base for natural resource based industries.” This year’s recipients include the Manor and Piney Run areas in Baltimore County, and the Deer Creek area of Harford County. 

Babies in a Half Shell: Turtle Power!

In late September, the National Park Service announced that a nest of loggerhead sea turtles successfully hatched on Assateague Island National Seashore. The approximately 100 hatchlings emerged from one nest site in the Maryland Over Sand Vehicle zone and successfully made their way out to sea. This is the first successful hatch of loggerhead sea turtles on Assateague, though other attempts have been noted in recent years. The species generally does not nest north of North Carolina. Bill Hulslander, chief of resource management for the National Seashore says, the hatch “underscores the increasing importance of undeveloped beaches along Assateague Island to sea turtles and other federally threatened and endangered species.”

The world is a scary and uncertain place. But some things remains pure and good—like baby penguins! 

The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore announced today the two latest additions to its award-winning Penguin Coast exhibit. The African penguin chicks, hatched on October 13 and 14, respectively, are the first hatchlings of the 2017-2018 penguin breeding season. One chick is being raised by its parents (male and female penguins take turns caring for their young) while the other is being raised by zookeepers because it wasn’t gaining sufficient weight. 

“The chicks will stay behind-the-scenes in the Penguin Conservation Center for a few months until their juvenile feathers have grown in and they pass their swimming lessons,” says Jen Kottyan, the zoo’s avian collection and conservation manager.

Zookeepers are especially excited about this breeding season, as it marks 50 years since the zoo began working with the endangered penguin species that is indigenous to South Africa. Over the intervening decades, the zoo has hatched more than 900 African penguins, many of which have been given to other zoos to increase species diversity in breeding programs. The two latest hatchlings represent numbers 988 and 989, and several more eggs are incubating.  

“If our penguin pairs hatch eleven more healthy chicks this season, then we will hit the 1,000 mark, enthuses Kottyan, adding, “We really have high hopes of hatching at least eleven chicks, if not more, this season.”

We’ll be rooting them on. The world can never have enough cuteness. 

In many ways, Terry Virts is just your average native Marylander. He loves the Orioles and fondly recalls growing up in Columbia during the 1970s and ’80s. How is he not like the average Marylander? Well, as a retired astronaut and one-time commander of the International Space Station, he has spent 213 days in space, which he documented extensively in thousands upon thousands of hi-def videos and still photos. Since retiring from NASA in August 2016, he has spent his time organizing his images and career recollections into a book, the newly released View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World. While in town on his book tour last week, he stopped by Baltimore’s offices (where he geeked out about our Orioles-themed décor) and answered our questions about growing up in Columbia, working with the Russians, and thinking he might die in space.

*This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

The book just came out last week and is the result of your 16-year career with NASA, including your stint on the International Space Station, during which you took the most photos anyone has ever taken from space. That’s what they told me, yeah. When I landed, they were like, ‘Ugh. Finally, you’re back on Earth.’ Because they told me I took 319,000-plus pictures. 

Were they ever like, ‘Maybe hold off taking pictures for a day or two?’ Oh, totally. And it wasn’t just fun pictures. Like sometimes, if you’re doing an experiment, they want three different views. If you’re filming experiments, that payload stuff would kill all the downlink so there’s no time to get your fun stuff down. We had RED, this Hollywood-quality camera. Jim Cameron told me he used it to film Avatar. The RED camera was the worst. My last week I was like, ‘You know what, I took enough stills.’ So I got the RED out, and they had always warned us to be real judicious with it because it uses so many gigabytes. But I just filmed away, and they were like, ‘Oh my God!’ But you know what, a week later they had it all down, and they made the most popular UHD highlight reel. It was a couple years ago when UHD was new. It’s amazing. And they’ll have that forever. Yeah, it was like, ‘Sorry. You’ve got to download it.’

So tell us something about space that the average person doesn’t know. So it’s nothing like Star Wars. The Wookiees are not that loud in real space. The Storm Troopers are actually nice guys. [Laughs]

Well, tell us about floating. In space, you move with your hands and you carry things with your feet.

Why? Because you have to grab onto handrails to push yourself around. The way we’re designed: Hands are fine motion and feet are [mimes pounding his feet]. You can do that [mimes jumping], but you’re going to shoot up to the ceiling.

What are the annoying parts about being in space? Well, floating is super annoying. Like, anybody can move over there and get to the door, but to end up at the door [facing it with your hand near the handle], you have to push and rotate at the correct number of degrees per second and your brain has to figure out that it’s going to take five seconds to get there and I need to rotate 10 degrees.

How long does that learning curve take? The first couple of days, it is pretty steep. After a week, I was still not there. After two weeks, I was good but I wasn’t [at my peak]. It probably took me a month before I was good, and I got really good. 

What about sleeping in space? Yeah, you get sunrise and sunset every hour and a half, unless you’re in high beta [orbit]. I went through a week with no sunsets. 

It’s like living in Scandinavia in the summer or something? Right or Antarctica in the winter. It’s just constant sunlight. So you close the windows and you don’t know what the sun is doing and you set your alarm to GMT [Greenwich Mean Time]. 

Why GMT? Because it’s the International Space Station and the bus and the subway system [in Russia] does not run in the middle of the night. So we had to pick a time that was close to their normal work hours for their mission control people. Going GMT is close, it’s a couple hours difference. We didn’t just cave and use Moscow time. So it kind of saves face for us. [We can say] ‘Okay, GMT, that’s official.’ But the real reason is the Moscow subway schedule—so I’ve been told. I was still in the Air Force when the [ISS was launched]. 

Speaking of the Russians, you were up on the ISS with how many others? Five others. There were three Russians, two Americans, and an Italian.

This was in 2015, which, even then, was a tense time in U.S.-Russian relations. How did that affect your working relationships? It was great. It was the highlight of my mission having my Russian crewmates there. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them. We all knew that these things were happening on Earth and we would just consciously, actively say, ‘We’re going to ignore the politics and focus on staying alive.’ Because on the other side of the window is vacuum and death. In a universe of a lot of bad stuff happening, the space station was a good example of how people can work together. 

Can you give an example of something political that threatened to divide you? Well, [the U.S.] put sanctions on Russia. And when that happened, the ruble got devalued in half. So my cosmonaut friends were calling home asking their wives, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ And I’m the guy that did it, and I’m commander, so that could have been very divisive. So I made a very active decision to spend time with them, have dinner with them, to talk. And actually, the cosmonauts are paid in dollars—that’s just the way their contract is—so in the long run, their salaries doubled.

And then [the U.S.] had an orbital rocket that blew up here in Virginia, a Russian Progress rocket blew up, and a Space X rocket blew up. Three rockets in eight months. When the Progress blew up, it was the Soyuz [Russian spacecraft] rocket after [the one that delivered me to the ISS], so they wanted to do an investigation before they launched the next crew to replace us. So we didn’t know how long we were going to be stuck in space. And we were very flexible. Every day I would say, ‘Okay, guys, tell us your rumors,’ because I didn’t want rumors. I was like, ‘Let’s get ’em out. What is everybody hearing?’ And the Russians had the best because it was their rocket. I would talk to the station program manager [at NASA] and he was great. He was just like, ‘Here’s what we know. The reality is, it’s their rocket and they’re going to decide.’ I was like, ‘Okay, I can deal with that.’ There have been other examples when crews got delayed—or they didn’t even get delayed; they had threats of delays—and they were like, ‘Arggghh!’ But we were very positive. And our international partners get paid by the day. When they get extended, they get paid even more. The folks were not that upset about having to stay longer. 

You were born in Baltimore, grew up in Columbia, graduated from Oakland Mills High School. What are your memories of growing up in Columbia? I lived in Lanham and Gambrills first. I didn’t move to Columbia until fourth grade. My fourth grade teacher just found me on Facebook. He remembered stuff. He was like, ‘There was this trip to D.C. and you bought a prism, and you spent 15 minutes explaining how a prism works.’ I remember that but it’s crazy that he remembers that.

So obviously you had an aptitude for science. Yeah, math and science were my strong suits. 

What was your experience going through Columbia’s public schools? It was amazing. The public school system then, that I went through, was rated one of the, I think, top 10 in the country. First of all, it was a multi-racial place. It was kind of weird because I didn’t really think about when I was growing up because I had friends of all [backgrounds]—a Korean guy, an Indian guy. We had everything, and it just wasn’t a big deal. And academically, it was amazing. I got to take Calc 3 in high school and had French every year, seventh through twelfth grade. I became a French minor. I became an astronaut because of my French experience. Madame Micka, I talk about her in my book. She was my French teacher in high school. 

What do you mean you became an astronaut because of your French experience? There are 100 test pilots who are great, but I was the guy who had done an exchange at the French air force academy, and I had international foreign language [experience]. For something like being an astronaut that’s so competitive, you want to have something that makes you stand out, and that made me stand out. No one ever tells you why they picked you, but I just know in my heart that it wasn’t only math and science, it was also the language side of things that got me in. 

You really did want to be a pilot from a young age. There’s a cute picture of you in the book standing on the wing of a plane. Where do you think this love of flying came from? The first book I ever read was about Apollo. It was one of those picture books for kids and I was in Lanham, and I can remember it. It just stuck. My mom was a secretary at Goddard [Flight Center in Greenbelt] and my dad and my stepdad both worked at Goddard. But they weren’t pilots. It was satellites, not human space flight. 

But you were around the culture. Yeah, they would bring home pictures. I remember when Viking landed on Mars I got pictures from Mars. They would get, probably, posters from books they could bring home. They would just bring stuff like that home and my room was just covered with airplanes and stuff. And every summer I’d get Astronomy magazine and, the day it showed up, I would sit there and read the whole thing. 

Do you think a human is going to go to Mars? I’m sure, eventually. I hope sooner rather than later, and I hope America leads it. If we don’t, other countries will. The thing about humanity is that nothing is static. Just ask the Portuguese, ask the Brits, or ask the Chinese. They decided to build a wall, and for 1,000 years they just wallowed in themselves and they didn’t grow. The whole world did this [mimes expanding] and China was behind the wall. So America had the 20th century, right? That was our century. But that doesn’t mean the 21st century is going to be our century unless we decide to make it so.

 What is the most dangerous situation you’ve ever encountered in spaceflight? There’s a whole chapter in the book about it called “Emergencies in Space.” There was an ammonia leak. We’re sitting there, minding our own business, and the alarm goes off, and we pop our heads out. Samantha, my Italian crewmate, we’re looking at the panel. I see ‘ATM.’ There are three kinds of emergencies: There’s fire. There’s an air leak. And there’s toxic atmosphere, which is ammonia inside the atmosphere. Ammonia is the coolant. So cars have radiator fluid, the station uses ammonia. That’s how it stays cool—on the American side. The Russian side uses sugar water. It’s not as efficient. It’s not as good a coolant, like ammonia, but it’s sugar water. Ammonia kills you dead.

So I go, ‘ATM?’ It was such a big deal that I just couldn’t process it. So we put on oxygen masks, run down to the Russian segment, and close the hatch because the Russian segment is safe. And then you’re supposed to take all of your clothes off because if there’s ammonia in your clothes, its poisonous, and then you go through another hatch. But we didn’t take our clothes off. No one smelled anything. We were like, ‘We’re probably fine.’ And the ground was kind of mad at us about that. Thirty minutes [later], the ground goes, ‘Hey, just kidding, it was a false alarm.’ So we’re just like, ‘Ugh.’ It just kills the day’s schedule. So we get back and we’re putting things away because we had just dropped everything and the CAPCOM [the Capsule Communicator] calls up and says, ‘Execute ammonia response now. This is a real thing. This isn’t a drill.’ It was this super intense voice. We were like, ‘Crap!’ We put the masks on, we go down, we close the hatch, we don’t take our clothes off. We do the whole thing. We get a sampler out. Okay, the air is good. Twenty or thirty minutes later we take our masks off and we’re like, ‘huh.’

What I knew had happened was the computer [activated] the alarm automatically. I knew there would be a crowd of engineers looking at every little bit of data. What I assumed had happened was, after the first alarm, they went, ‘Nah, that’s not really a leak. Tell them it’s not.’ And then they [continued] to watch the data and it [looked] like it was still leaking and they said, ‘Yeah, that’s a leak. It’s a small one, but it’s a real leak.’ And then they called us back. Since I’ve worked in mission control for years, I knew what was going on; they didn’t tell us this. And then we sat around for hours on the Russian side and the Russian deputy prime minister called up in the middle of sanctions and all these bad things and says, ‘Hey Americans, you can stay as long as you want. We’re going to work together.’ This was the same guy that had said we could take a trampoline to the space station after the U.S. had put sanctions on Russia. The same guy who was having a Twitter battle with, I guess, Obama at the time called up and said, ‘Hey we’re going to work together and get through this.’ So it was a great, great, great example international cooperation in space when things were really bad down here.

So we spent the day like, ‘So, there’s a small leak on the station.’ What’s going to happen if it continues to leak is the station pops. It just gets over-pressurized and the metal explodes—unless they vent it. They could vent it and then there’s no air and ammonia stuck to the walls. So we’re like, the station’s dead, and we’re going to stay on the Russian segment for a few weeks—with the one pair of underwear because all my clothes are over there—and then go back to Earth and the station will go into the Pacific. And then I went and took a nap. I was like, ‘I don’t have anything else to do. I’m going to take a nap.’ And then they called up and said, ‘Just kidding, it was a false alarm.’ [Laughs]

But then when we went back to the American segment they said, ‘But just keep your masks on just in case.’ So my crewmate and I, we put our masks on and we had these samplers and we were floating around and it was like this surreal alien movie. There were things floating around—we just abandoned stuff and left—so it was like being the first person on this ghost ship in space. And then everything was fine. That’s a story that no one knows and it’s an amazing story.

So, essentially, you got told it was a false alarm twice? Yes. And there have always been false fire alarms, and there have been a few false air leak alarms, but there’s never been a false ammonia alarm.

Ever? That’s the one and only ammonia alarm. The ammonia alarm is a big deal. That’s the one you don’t want to get. They sent a text to my family at four in the morning. The text is in the book. My wife got it and she gave it to me for the book. In general, space flight sucks for families. It’s just hard. Everyone’s always like, ‘Oh you’re so lucky your dad’s an astronaut!’ My kids are like, [rolls eyes]. We were watching the NBA five or six years ago and my daughter, she was probably like 10 at the time, and we were watching the Heat and they were in the finals and she just looks at me and says, ‘Dad, why can’t you be more like LeBron James?’   

In The Air

On Wednesday, Governor Larry Hogan directed Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh to sue the federal Environmental Protection Agency for allowing coal plants in five upwind states to emit harmful chemical compounds that pollute Maryland’s air. The move is the culmination of a nearly yearlong standoff between the EPA and Maryland over a part of the Clean Air Act known as the “Good Neighbor Provision” that “requires EPA and states to address interstate transport of air pollution that affects downwind states’ ability to attain and maintain [air quality standards].” Last November, Maryland filed a petition requesting that 19 coal plants in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia adopt stricter controls to prevent ozone-causing emissions. The EPA never responded to the petition, which asked that the plants employ already existing emission capture technologies every day during the summer months, when the released chemical compounds are more likely to react with heat and sunshine to form the ground-level ozone that triggers Code Red and Code Orange air quality alerts. 

“We know for a fact those power plants have the existing control technologies . . . but for whatever reason, they’re not running them every day during the ozone season,” Ben Grumbles, Maryland’s Secretary of the Environment, told The Sun in 2016. 

Thanks to a 2015 regulation, Maryland’s own power plants must use emission capture technologies every day during the summer. Maryland is also part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a coalition of nine northeastern states that have taken action to curb emissions from power plants through cap-and-trade programs. But rules and attitudes differ from state to state, and the lawsuit aims to bring upwind states in line with Maryland’s practices. 

“We’re not asking for anything that we’re not already doing in Maryland,” Grumbles said. 

Bay Watch

Speaking of the EPA, the agency and some of its landmark initiatives remain under assault from the Trump administration and some Congressional Republicans. As was widely reported earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 federal budget would slash funding for the EPA by about a third and eliminate the Chesapeake Bay Program, a regional effort to rehabilitate the bay that dates back to 1983. Though it is unlikely that the final budget that emerges from Congress will feature such drastic cuts, the administration has already demonstrated a willingness to back up its rhetoric, announcing last month the cancelation of an annual EPA grant to the Bay Journal, a nonprofit news outfit that has covered the Chesapeake Bay since 1991. The administration is also challenging an Obama-era interpretation of the Clean Water Act that expanded the types of waterways protected under the legislation.  

This month, House Republicans passed an amendment introduced by Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte that would keep the Chesapeake Bay Program nominally in tact but hobble its reach by striping the EPA of its ability to penalize states that did not meet cleanup goals. 

Though the Chesapeake Bay Program began under the Reagan Administration, its initial progress was uneven because the seven jurisdictions that make up the bay’s watershed (Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia) were allowed to create and enforce their own disparate compliance standards. Then in 2010, the Obama Administration brokered an enhanced agreement—often referred to as a “pollution diet”—that stipulated how much pollution each jurisdiction could discharge into the bay each day. Under the new agreement, the EPA could penalize states that failed to meet their pollution reduction benchmarks. Since then, bay advocates have reported modest but steady signs of improvement, such as an increase in aquatic grasses and smaller than expected dead zones each summer.     

According to The Sun, however, Goodlatte called the initiative an effort to “micromanage” and “hijack states’ water quality strategies.” 

The measure, attached to a larger funding bill that would fund the federal government from December through September 2018, passed largely along party lines, though some bay state Republicans, including Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, joined Democrats in rejecting the amendment. 

Fatberg Ahead! 

This week in ew: Baltimore City’s Department of Public Works announced it had discovered a giant mass of congealed fat, antibacterial wipes, and other materials lodged in a sewer main underneath North Charles Street near Penn Station. The accumulation—dubbed the “fatberg”—caused a sewer overflow on September 21 that spewed about 1.2 million gallons of sewage into the Jones Falls. Since then, most of the fatberg—which was blocking approximately 85 percent of the 24-inch pipe—has been scrapped off and disposed of in a city landfill. The Department of Public Works is using the occasion to remind residents not to pour fats, oils, and grease down the drain or flush disposable wipes.

Pipe Dreams

Even without fatbergs, Baltimore’s sewers have enough problems. Most of the sewage pipes that run underneath the city are over a century old, and they regularly fail causing backups in homes and spills in local waterways. It’s a long-acknowledged problem, and in 2002 Baltimore City entered into a consent decree with the EPA to upgrade its wastewater system by 2016. That deadline came and went with little progress made. State and federal agencies then agreed to modify the original agreement, and, last month, Baltimore officials announced a $1.6 billion plan to repair the aging wastewater infrastructure by 2030. The pact would require the city to finish upgrading its Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant by 2021 and implement a program that compensates residents for sewage backups in their home, among other items. 

But Blue Water Baltimore, a local water quality watchdog nonprofit granted third-party status in the consent decree last year, said the new version “lacks full accountability standards,” and has asked a federal judge to reject the agreement. Specifically, the group wants the agreement to allow for additional repair projects should water quality monitoring indicate a need.

“Blue Water Baltimore’s top concern is that the consent decree be an enforceable, science-based plan to eliminate sewage overflows and improve water quality, as required by the Clean Water Act, not just a static list of projects,” said Angela Haren, the nonprofit’s Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper and Director of Advocacy. The city contends that Blue Water Baltimore’s demand is beyond the scope of the consent decree’s narrow purview.  

Park Places

Here’s an update on recent developments at green spaces near and far. 

• A $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, will breath new life into a circa 1930 campground in Gwynns Falls Park. The campground—an old Girl Scout facility—will see renovations to its existing pavilion and stone amphitheater and the addition of water and electrical service, lighting, kitchen and storage areas, composting toilets and showers, and extra camping pads. Gwynns Falls Park is also getting a new visitor center and a renovated Cahill Recreation Center, which is adjacent to the campground. Both of those projects are funded by the state.   
• As of June, the drained fountain and cold concrete blocks of the old McKeldin Square are gone, replaced by an expanded lawn and young trees. The $4 million overhaul of the plaza at the corner of Pratt and Light streets is just phase I. Phase II will add a water feature, as well as signs and a memorial honoring Theodore R. McKeldin, the former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, for whom the park is named.    
• Earlier this month, the state Board of Public Works approved the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ acquisition of land for a new state park. The newly secured 2,009 acres in Garrett County are spread over three parcels near the town of Kitzmiller, and two of the parcels border Potomac State Forest. The tracts include a riparian forest, three brook trout streams, approximately 1,700 acres of mixed forest, and critical wetlands and bird habitat. The property will be open for biking, camping, fishing, hiking, and hunting. 

Animal Collective

The past few months have brought a raft of odd animal news. Here’s a rundown of our favorite stories about local creatures, great and small. 

• A female blue crab with two oysters growing on her shell near her eyes was pulled from the Chesapeake Bay in June. 
• Last week, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced the discovery of New Zealand mudsnails in the Gunpowder River, the first confirmed finding of the tiny invasive mollusks in Maryland waters. Maryland DNR is asking that people using the river take care not to spread the snails to other waterways by decontaminating clothing and equipment used in the river. A list of helpful tips can be found here.  
• In late June, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science asked Chesapeake Bay users to report dolphin sightings via the center’s Dolphin Watch website. Each sighting will be logged on an interactive map allowing researchers to learn more about the aquatic mammal’s numbers and habits. Dolphin season in the Chesapeake Bay continues through October before cooler water temps send them south.
• By far the cutest story you’ll read all day: Earlier this month, the Baltimore City Public Schools’ board of commissioners approved new guidelines for service animals in its buildings. In addition to dogs, the new rules also allow for miniature horses, provided they are housebroken and under their handler’s control. 
• Towson University took a cue from savvy farmers everywhere this month when it employed a herd of goats to munch unwanted vegetation in its 12-acre campus arboretum. This is the fourth consecutive year the university has hired the goats from Harmony Church Farm in Harford County to tackle its overgrowth.    
• On Wednesday, 7-Eleven gifted the Baltimore Police Department’s mounted police unit with a 4-year-old draft horse named Slurpee. The black Percheron replaces the original Slurpee—also a gift from 7-Eleven—who retired to a farm in Pennsylvania earlier this year at age 17. (No, really, he is at a farm.) We look forward to hearing the clip-clop of Slurpee No. 2’s hooves on Baltimore’s streets for years to come.  

Fall Foliage

As October approaches, so too does leaf-peeping season across the region. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources releases weekly fall foliage status reports that can help you locate peak color across the state. This week, change is just beginning in the mountains of western Maryland, which the DNR says are still 75 percent green. If you’re heading out that way to leaf-peep, we recommend you check out our guide to 10 great nearby mountain getaways for tips on where to stay, eat, and play. Happy peeping! 

Wednesday was a big day in Clifton-Berea, a disadvantaged neighborhood in East Baltimore that usually doesn’t receive a lot of attention unless there’s a tragedy, like the six homicides the neighborhood has experienced already this year. 

But this week’s commotion was of a celebratory sort, as residents, educators, and public officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the neighborhood’s new Fort Worthington Elementary/Middle School. 

The school is the first building completed as part of Baltimore City Public Schools’ (BCPSS) ambitious 21st Century School Buildings Program. The program—a partnership between BCPSS, the Maryland Stadium Authority, the city, and the state—dedicates $1.1 billion toward the renovation or reconstruction of at least 23 city school buildings within the next decade. Funded in part by Baltimore City’s 5 cent bottle tax, the initiative aims to modernize learning facilities throughout the city, many of which suffer from unreliable heating and cooling systems, antiquated amenities, and even unsafe drinking water. The new Fort Worthington, which can accommodate up to 700 students in grades K through 8, was completed on time and on budget at a cost of $37 million.

The new school’s opening heralds a victory for public education advocates who lobbied for the 21st Century School Buildings Project and its atypical funding model. Normally, school districts use capital improvement funds to pay for construction and renovation on a per-project basis. But BCPSS’s capital improvement funding is so anemic—and its need is so great—that an alternative financing model was sought.   

“If we had had to wait for [capital improvement funding] money to get new schools, we’d be getting, like, one school every two years,” explained Sonja Santelises, the CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, who we profile in our September issue. 

The 21st Century School Buildings Program’s $1.1 billion in funding allowed BCPSS to launch several projects at once, and now those projects are coming to fruition. One other school, Frederick Elementary, located in Southwest Baltimore, will open this month. Two others—John Eager Howard Elementary School and Lyndhurst Elementary/Middle School—are slated to open in January 2018. And more schools around the city are in various stages of construction. Information about the 21st Century School Buildings Project, including status reports on the other schools, is available at the 21st Century Schools website.   

On Wednesday, community members oohed and ahhed as they streamed into the gleaming new facility filled with natural light, vibrantly colored furniture, and tech-equipped classrooms. 

RaShawn Stanley, a rising seventh grader at Fort Worthington who spoke at the ribbon cutting ceremony, says she loves the new school and thinks that it will provide an improved learning environment. “It’s hard to learn when your school is broken down and you have so many distractions around you. So this will be better,” she said.

In addition to new classrooms, there’s an art room, band and music rooms, a guidance center, a media center with an attached video production studio, and a technology lab. The 102,000-square-foot school also houses spaces that can be used by the community, including a health suite and indoor and outdoor recreation and play areas. 

“Take a moment to look at where we are,” said Cheryl A. Casciani, the chair of the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners. “You are in a Baltimore City public school and it is beautiful. And that is what our children deserve.”

Santelises agreed, telling the crowd in the school’s new blue-and-white gymnasium that the project “says we are not educating [students] for a past. We are educating [them] for a future that many of us adults will never see.” 

With that in mind, scroll through the slideshow below to see images of the brand spanking new Fort Worthington Elementary/Middle School.   

When news broke earlier this month that the popular Obama-era initiative Let Girls Learn may become a casualty of the most recent round of federal budgeting, one Baltimorean was especially jarred. As the former director of policy for former First Lady Michelle Obama, Krishanti Vignarajah helped the administration launch the initiative in 2015. We caught up with the Woodlawn High School graduate—who now runs her own company, Generation Impact, and is expecting her first child (a daughter)—to talk about the status of Let Girls Learn, and why it’s worth saving.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Let Girls Learn and how does it work?
It’s an initiative that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama launched in March of 2015 to support adolescent girls’ education, at home and abroad. We ultimately had seven agencies integrally involved, ranging from the State Department and our development agency, USAID, to the Department of Labor, Peace Corps and the Department of Agriculture. 

Let Girls Learn supports girls’ education in three different ways. The first is through governmental support, everything from the building and renovation of schools to “second chance programs” for girls who’ve dropped out, to science and tech camps that bring together teenage girls from around the world. But we also appreciated that the U.S. couldn’t do it alone, and so we built an international coalition of governments ranging from Japan and Pakistan, to South Korea and the United Kingdom. But . . . even an international coalition of governments couldn’t solve a problem as large as nearly 100 million adolescent girls out of school worldwide, so we partnered with about 100 private sector companies and organizations, ranging from IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Girl Scouts, and Lands’ End, to universities like Georgetown and Cambridge to help us support girls in completing middle and high school.

What was your involvement in the creation of Let Girls Learn?
Mrs. Obama had been really quite moved by the Boko Haram kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria. So she raised the question of what could we do to address this heartbreaking situation of girls getting kidnapped simply for going to school. Obviously, for both the President and the First Lady, the issue was personal, both because each of their success stories was in part driven by education, but also being the parents of two daughters, the incident hit close to home. We recognized that there was some ongoing programming that the U.S. government already supported, but that there was clearly a need to step up our efforts. So, I basically tried to figure out how could we address the issue of girls’ education, in a real and enduring way.

Why focus on girls not boys?
The reality that we see, both at home and all across the world, is that girls often fall behind—particularly when it comes to middle and high school. And so you end up seeing in some places dramatically lower completion and graduation rates for girls compared to boys. What we realized is that there’s no smarter investment in the future of America than investment in girls’ education.

How so?
When you talk about diverting resources from young girls, you’re really talking about divesting from the next generation of America’s leaders, the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and astrophysicists. And they’re coming from everywhere—small towns, inner cities. They’re going to be the daughters of immigrants and working-class parents. So that’s why we knew that this was a priority. The investment in these girls is not just an investment in them, but an investment in their families, communities, and countries. We know, for example, that . . . for each additional year of high school, a girl’s earning potential goes up as much as 25 percent. Another example: Girls who attend school have healthier families. A Lancet study, for example, found that increasing girls’ education was responsible for more than half the reduction in child mortality between 1970 and 2009. I could go on and on.

So what does it cost the U.S. government per year to run this program?
We ended up investing $1 billion. Unfortunately, even that large amount is still far from what’s needed, because the tragic reality is that we still have 130 million girls out of school around the world.

One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. For comparison’s sake, what are some other budget line items?
So, for example, our HIV/AIDS funding through PEPFAR, which President Bush created, receives about $7 billion. The State Department budget is about $50 to $51 billion, while the Defense Department budget is about $600 billion.

In terms of soft diplomacy, is Let Girls Learn one of the best investments we can make? You know, winning hearts and minds and all that.
Absolutely. [Secretary of Defense] General [James] Mattis has said this, ‘If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.’ In some cases, it’s pennies on the dollar compared to the other investments we make. But you absolutely get the best bang for your buck.

As of today, it is unclear what the status of Let Girls Learn is. Initial reports suggested it was cut, then the State Department released a statement saying that the program will remain intact, but may get rebranded.
As you can imagine, I sort of scrambled to try to find out what was happening and what was potentially on the chopping block. I’ll tell you I think there is a lot of confusion about what exactly is being contemplated. In my mind, what is absolutely clear is that educating the next generation of women cannot become a casualty of partisan politics.

Do you worry that the Trump administration is just trying to avoid bad publicity here and fully intends to quietly end the initiative?
I realize that there’s always a chance with a new administration that an initiative like Let Girls Learn could have a bull’s-eye on it because it was so closely identified with the [former administration]. But . . . it would just make no sense. President [George W.] Bush, for example, launched the Millennium Challenge Corporation as a new approach to development and to substantially increase HIV/AIDS funding through PEPFAR. When we came into the White House, we realized the importance of these programs and actually increased funding for them. And the idea that something is bad just because it’s what a prior administration has done is at odds with the legacy of the White House.

On Thursday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) introduced the Keeping Girls in School Act, which aims to preserve some aspects of Let Girls Learn, should the Trump administration decide to jettison the initiative. 
Of course, I appreciate any effort to safeguard the significant achievements we made through Let Girls Learn. But it’s too bad if we need legislation to protect an initiative intended to ensure girls get an education—this issue should be above the fray of politics.

What if the Trump administration decides to keep the program but rebrands it? Why would changing that name and that brand be such a loss?
We launched Let Girls Learn in over 50 countries around the world. And as you can imagine, when Michelle Obama says ‘Let Girls Learn,’ people hear it and it means something. We had successful public service announcements that we put out that had everyone from Meryl Streep to John Legend making the case to let girls learn. Likewise, when we launched a social media campaign asking people to respond to the question ‘What did you learn in school?’ we got an overwhelming response. It ended up trending number one [on Twitter] domestically and number three internationally. We had everyone from David Cameron to Prince Harry to Beyoncé all supporting this cause. To rebrand and remove all of that would threaten to take away all of the awareness we’ve raised.

So, you’re saying there’s a lot invested in the brand already. It’d be like trying to rename Nike or something.
It’s like relabeling Coca-Cola and instead calling it Brown Fizzy Water. If you think there’s no cost to that, you’re failing to appreciate what Coca-Cola has built.

*If you have experienced or are experiencing sexual abuse, help is available through the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Please call 800-656-HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. 

**Be aware, this post includes spoilers for the Netflix docu-series The Keepers.

**This post has been updated with new information regarding the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s participation in the documentary, Maskell’s status as a priest following the abuse allegations, and the number of plaintiffs in the 1994 civil suit.   

On April 19, the trailer for the new Netflix documentary series The Keepers was released, and since then a heavy foreboding has hung in the air. What, everyone seems to be wondering, will the seven-part series reveal? Its intersecting subjects—widespread sexual abuse at South Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School in the ’60s and ’70s and the 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a 26-year-old nun, who many say was planning to reveal the abuse—are about as explosive as can be.  

For its part, the Archdiocese of Baltimore spent the week trying to get ahead of what it acknowledges is an unfavorable portrayal in the series. The church is represented in the documentary only through its answers to six written questions submitted by the filmmakers. Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine admits the archdiocese declined filmmakers’ invitation to appear on camera, but insists that there was no nefarious motivation behind the decision. In fact, he says church officials would have welcomed the opportunity to participate in a more robust written correspondence. “I have my doubts about why they would not have had more questions for us,” Caine said Friday morning, after staying up all night to watch the series. “There was certainly a lot presented in the documentary that warranted additional questions that would have given us an opportunity to provide additional context for it. So I’m disappointed that we were given very few questions. Because, at the end of the day, it’s information you want. It doesn’t have to be on your terms. In other words, if you want to put us on camera to try to embarrass us by asking us questions we can’t answer, [we decline], but we’d be happy to research and get back to you.” Caine notes that The Archdiocese has created a microsite addressing the documentary’s release, which includes a FAQs page and a statement from Archbishop William E. Lori that was sent to the archdiocese’s entire email list earlier this week. 

Meanwhile, others see the documentary as a validation of the victims and those who have worked to tell their stories. On a Facebook group dedicated to solving Sister Cathy’s 47-year-old murder, Cesnik’s sister, Marilyn Cesnik Radakovic, wrote that, “This is a very difficult documentary to watch, but this documentary is about courage, and I hope this display of courage is felt by all that view this.”

In any case, the wait is now over. As of 3:01 a.m. today, The Keepers is available for streaming. Before you watch though, here are some things to know. 

1. This Has Been a Long Time Coming

Though Cesnik’s murder and the abuse scandal at Archbishop Keough have gone decades without the kind of international attention this series brings, these are not unknown events. Cesnik’s disappearance was front page news in November 1969, and made headlines again when her body was recovered from a secluded industrial area in Lansdowne in January 1970. After that, however, the trail seemed to grow cold and her death—from blunt force trauma to the head—was theorized to have been the result of a robbery gone wrong. But her memory lived on with her pupils. Over time, her death became something of an urban legend at the all-girls school, which was renamed Seton-Keough High School in 1988 and will close in June 2017 due to declining enrollment. 

2. The Story Was Kept Alive by a Dedicated Few 

Cesnik’s murder investigation heated up again in the ’90s when two women—both Archbishop Keough alums—brought a $40 million lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Baltimore and a priest named Father A. Joseph Maskell. The suit claimed that the plaintiffs had been subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and that the church had covered up Maskell’s depravity. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleged that Maskell had been joined in the abuse by other clergy, police officers, a local gynecologist, and at least one politician. The plaintiffs were then known only as Jane Doe and Jane Roe, but the women have subsequently revealed themselves to be Jean Wehner (Doe) and Teresa Lancaster (Roe). Attorneys for Wehner and Lancaster located more than 30 people—both men and women—who were willing to testify against Maskell in the suit. Read more about the lawsuit in the award-winning 1995 Baltimore magazine article “God Only Knows”.  

In the mid-’90s, headlines about the lawsuit sparked the interest of two other Keough alumnae, Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Fitzgerald Schaub. Though neither experienced any abuse themselves, they were moved by the stories of the victims and the memory of their late teacher. With help from numerous others, they began conducting their own unofficial investigation. Several years ago, the duo began a public Facebook group, which recently surpassed 1,000 members. They also run a website where people can submit anonymous tips.

These four women—Wehner, Lancaster, Hoskins, and Schaub—will be at the center of The Keeper‘s narrative. 

3. The Lawsuit Was Dismissed, But The Archdiocese of Baltimore Has Since Compensated Victims

The lawsuit was dismissed in 1995 after a judge ruled that the suit had been filed outside the statue of limitations for juvenile abuse cases. (Wehner maintains that she only recovered memories of her abuse in the early ’90s, long after the statute of limitations had expired. Lancaster and many other victims say they always remembered their abuse but were too scared to go public. This spring, Maryland extended, from age 25 to age 38, the length of time victims of childhood abuse have to sue offenders.) Father Maskell was interviewed by police and had his priestly powers revoked by the archdiocese in 1994, but he was never charged with a crime. Before the civil trial could start, however, Maskell quietly moved to Ireland, where he found work as a psychologist, sometimes even treating adolescents. According to the archdiocese’s FAQ, “the Archdiocese learned in 1996 that Maskell was living in Ireland . . . [and] informed authorities in Ireland about Maskell’s history and attempted to contact Maskell in writing on numerous occasions.” Maskell eventually returned to the Baltimore area, where he lived in archdiocese-affiliated facilities until his death in 2001. Beginning in 2002, his name was added to a list of clergy credibly accused of abuse published on the archdiocese’s website. In addition, the Archdiocese acknowledges it has paid “over $97,000 in counseling assistance and over $472,000 in direct financial assistance to those who may [have] been abused by Maskell,” including Lancaster and Wehner.

4. Sister Cathy May Not Be the Only Murder Victim

It seems likely that the series will delve into theories connecting Cesnik’s murder to the death of three other women: 16-year-old Pamela Lynn Conyers, whose body was found in Anne Arundel County in 1970; 16-year-old Grace Elizabeth “Gay” Montanye, whose body was found in 1971 in South Baltimore; and 20-year-old Joyce Malecki, who disappeared just days after Cesnik and whose body was found in Fort Meade. Because Malecki’s body was discovered on federal property, the FBI had jurisdiction over the case. It is unclear, however, if the FBI investigated the case at that time. Maskell knew the Malecki family because they were parishioners at St. Clement Church in Lansdowne, where he lived and ministered for a time in the ’60s and ’70s. With the permission of the Malecki family, Schaub filed a Freedom of Information Request in August of 2014 for all files related to a 1994 FBI/Baltimore County homicide joint task force into Malecki’s death. So far, Schaub has received no files, but did receive a reply from the FBI in April stating, “Your request . . . is . . . still awaiting assignment to a disclosure analyst for processing. The current estimated date of completion for the request is October 2017. However, given our current workload and staffing levels, it may be a very long time before you begin to receive material from this request.”    

5. Maskell’s Body Was Exhumed In February For DNA Testing

In dramatic fashion, news broke on May 4 that Maskell’s body had been exhumed from a Randallstown cemetery in February and that DNA samples had been taken from it that would be compared to physical evidence from Cesnik’s murder scene. Then, this week, barely 48 hours before the premiere of the documentary, test results revealed that Maskell’s DNA did not match DNA found at the crime scene. “For now, we’ve pretty well reached the end of the road when it comes to forensic evidence,” Baltimore County police spokeswoman Elise Armacost told The Sun. “Our best hope for solving this case at this point lies with the people who are still alive. And we hope that someone will be able to come forward with conclusive information about the murder.”

Anyone with information about Cesnik’s murder is encouraged to contact the Baltimore County Police Department’s Homicide Department, Unsolved Case Squad. Information about the murder of Joyce Malecki can be submitted to the FBI’s Baltimore field office.

Bay Watch 

Spring has brought with it a flurry of good news about the bay. First, using sonar technology, scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center found that the Choptank River has more river herring in it than previously suspected. Then, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources found that reproductively viable female crabs are at their most plentiful since 1990 and that the amount of underwater grass in Maryland’s portion of the bay reached a record high of 59,277 acres in 2016. Furthermore, in late April, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation seeded 3 million baby oysters in the Patapsco River, hoping to return oyster shoals to the urban waterway. All of these rehabilitative milestones indicate that federally overseen pollution control programs are stabilizing the bay after decades of environmental decline. And though it briefly looked like funding for those measures would be threatened by the Trump administration’s proposed EPA budget cuts, Congress decided to maintain program funding for the coming fiscal year. 

Following such a streak, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science issued a report this week awarding the bay one of its highest-ever health grades. Though on its face an unimpressive C, the grade represents drastic improvement since the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science began evaluating the bay in 1986 and a 1-point improvement over last year’s score. As with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation scorecard—another important third-party bay evaluation—the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science grades the bay in several categories and then aggregates those scores into an overall mark. 

“I really believe we’re at a tipping point,” Nicholas DiPasquale, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program office in Annapolis, told The Sun. “Once you reach a point where you’ve overcome the inertia of the system, these indicators start building on each other.”

A third regional water quality scorecard, this one measuring the health of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and its tributaries, will be released on Monday by Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore. 

On Your Bike 

National Bike to Work Day is next Friday, May 19, and the Central Maryland Metropolitan Council has collected a handy list of nearly 40 official events on its website. The events range from bike safety checks to commuting convoys led by experienced cyclers and designed to introduce newbies to the ins and outs of bike commuting. Though Baltimore City is hosting the greatest number of events, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Carroll, and Harford counties are represented, too. Bike to Work Day grew out of National Bike Month, which began in 1956. It promotes the benefits of cycling, which include physical fitness and reduced vehicle emissions and air pollution. 

In The Air 

Speaking of reduced vehicle emissions, The Sun has a good rundown of where the Baltimore region stands in terms of air quality. In short, the Maryland Clean Air report found that, overall, air quality was better in Baltimore in 2016 than it had been in previous years, but that ozone levels ticked up. Ozone is ground level smog created when particles from vehicle and power plant emissions interact with sunlight. It can be harmful to humans—particularly the very young, very old, and very sick—and is the cause of the Code Orange and Code Red air quality alerts that are sometimes issued. 

“We’re making clean air progress with strong partnerships and steady investments, but more is needed regionally and nationally to sustain our pace and protect our health,” Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said in a statement. “Marylanders’ hearts, lungs and waterways will benefit from smart actions at home and in upwind states to keep improving our air quality.”

Birdcam Season Soars 

And now, as they say, for something completely different. Naturalists from all over the world delight each year in the Chesapeake Bay’s springtime birdcams—and this year is no different. The Chesapeake Conservancy hosts live streams of three of the most popular:

The peregrine falcon cam atop 100 Light Street in Baltimore City, which is capturing the growth of four furry fluffballs.

The great blue heron rookery on the Eastern Shore

And the osprey cam on Kent Island 

There is also another osprey cam, this one following a nest with three eggs at Severna Park High School

Follow along as the birds raise their families and the chicks eventually fly the nest. Happy spring and happy birding! 

Before he was a war hero, a congressman, a senator, and the youngest man ever elected president, John F. Kennedy was just your average really, really, really ridiculously good-looking rich kid, goofing off with his friends at the 1940 Maryland Hunt Cup. The storied steeplechase, which began in 1894 as a competition between the Elkridge and Green Spring fox hunting clubs, will be run for the 121st time this weekend.

As old home movies show, young JFK—then a 22-year-old Harvard senior—enjoyed the race and its subsequent ball with Harvard classmates Cammann Newberry and William C. Coleman. The privileged trio—who went by the nicknames Big Moe (Coleman), Middle Moe (Kennedy), and Little Moe (Newberry)—are seen frolicking in the muddy Maryland countryside with friends and family, and indulging in some exceedingly dapper horseplay before the big soiree.

Ostensibly, young Kennedy found himself in the Worthington Valley countryside that weekend at the invitation of Coleman, whose family were prime Maryland WASPs. 

If JFK looks comfortable in such hifalutin company, it is no wonder. He had already experienced more in his 22 years than most do in a lifetime. Much of this was due to his father, Joe Kennedy. By the time JFK was 10, his father had amassed one of the country’s great fortunes. In 1940, the elder Kennedy was serving as the U.S.’s Ambassador to Great Britain, having already completed stints as a banker/Wall Street broker, liquor importer (some say bootlegger), Hollywood producer (including a torrid affair with Gloria Swanson), and founding chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under FDR. Famously ambitious, Joe Kennedy wanted his children to have full access to the highest echelons of society, something that had been denied him in his own youth because of his Irish-Catholic ethnicity. As a result, his nine children lived luxurious—if peripatetic—lives, flitting between expensive boarding schools and family residences in Bronxville, NY; Palm Beach, FL; and, of course, Hyannis Port, MA.

The flip side of this life of leisure and glamour was JFK’s precarious health, which started in childhood and continued all his days. He is seen in the footage drinking milk, which was prescribed by his physicians for chronic digestive issues. Kennedy also suffered from Addison’s Disease, a malfunctioning of the adrenal glands, which kept him very slim. Later in life, he would endure bouts of sometimes debilitating back pain, among other ailments.

But all that seems miles away in this video of exuberant young things larking about in the picturesque Maryland countryside. Seen here, JFK certainly appears to the manor born. With his preppy good looks and irresistible charisma, it’s easy to believe that, in 20 years, he’d make history as the nation’s first (and so far only) Catholic president.

Some interesting historical footnotes: 

• The winning horse in 1940 was Blockade, one of only a handful of horses to win the race three times. Like just about everyone involved with the Maryland Hunt Cup, Blockade boasted a pedigreed lineage. His sire was the famous thoroughbred racehorse Man o’ War.

• Also shown in the documentary is JFK’s favorite sister, Kathleen—or Kick, as she was known. Kick lead her own remarkable life. Defying her devoutly Catholic mother, Kick would marry an English (and—gasp!—Protestant) aristocrat named William Cavendish. Though Cavendish would die in WWII, had he lived, Kick would eventually have become the mistress of Chatsworth, one of the U.K.’s premier estates. For reference, if you’ve ever seen the 2005 Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice, you’ve seen Chatsworth. It’s used as Mr. Darcy’s Pemberly. Like her husband, and so many of her brothers and sisters, Kick would meet a tragic end herself. She was killed in a plane crash in 1948 at the age of 28. 

• JFK is seen smoking a cigar, an indulgence he continued for the rest of his life. 

• At least one JFK biography says that, on this same weekend, JFK was in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the wedding of Frances Ann Cannon, one of his first serious girlfriends. How he managed to attend both that ceremony and the Hunt Cup festivities is unclear.  

• When JFK would return to Harvard, he would receive his grade for his honors thesis, Appeasement at Munich (The Inevitable Result of the Slowness of Conversion of the British Democracy from a Disarmament to a Rearmament Policy). Expanded, edited, and renamed Why England Slept, the book would become a bestseller and help launch JFK’s political career.

• Had history unfolded differently, JFK could, conceivably, still be alive today. May 29, 2017, will mark his 100th birthday.  

When the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, America’s natural landscape seemed under siege. There was not yet an EPA, and key environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were in their infancies. The previous year, in Ohio, an oil spill—and decades of unchecked pollution—caused the Cuyahoga River to catch fire, and not even for the first time. Here in Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation was just two years old. We’ve come a long way since then—or maybe we haven’t—but one thing is for sure, it’s always a good idea to spend some time in nature. So whether that means a hike in the woods, attending a street festival, or rolling up your sleeves for a stream cleanup, we’ve got an local Earth Day event to help you connect with Mother Earth. 

Cleanup Events 

Patterson Park hosts a park cleanup beginning at 9 a.m. Participants should meet at the white house prepared to mulch trees, pick up trash and leaves, garden, and edge walkways.

Oregon Ridge Nature Center marks Earth Day with a “Love Your Mother Earth” celebration with trail cleanup and a tree-hugging contest complete with prizes. Event is free and runs Saturday and Sunday from 1-3 p.m. 

Carrie Murray Nature Center in Leakin Park will host an all-ages “Clean up the Gwynns Falls Trail” event on Saturday from 12-2 p.m. 

Civic Works, a local job-training and sustainability nonprofit, invites volunteers to its campus in Clifton Park for several Earth Day activities from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Volunteers can help mulch pathways, plant new trees, remove invasive plants, build a pollinator garden, or assemble decorative mosaic stepping stones.    

Druid Hill Park will host its monthly 4th Saturday workday from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Come prepared to clear debris/leaves/trash off the paths and mulch a garden (in preparation for next weekend’s Charm City Bluegrass Festival). 

Pigtown will host its 5th annual Bloom the Boulevard on Saturday from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Attendees are invited to help collect litter, plant flowers and trees, and spread mulch along the 700-1300 blocks of Washington Boulevard. Participation will earn you a $10 credit toward your city stormwater fee, and there will be an after party at Cheat Day Bar & Grill.

Blue Water Baltimore, Baltimore City’s watershed watchdog group, will host several events, including a cleanup at Herring Run Park on Saturday, from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and a make-your-own rain barrel workshop at Herring Run Nursery from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.  

Many of these cleanup events are part of Project Clean Stream, a bay-wide effort to collect 100,000 pounds of trash from local waterways by June 9. Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay has an interactive map that lists all area cleanup sites and events. 

And next weekend, on April 29 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m., is the Mayor’s annual Spring Cleanup. Participating residents can earn credits toward their stormwater fee. Communities and individuals are encouraged to register by calling 311.   

Plant Sales

Concurrent with Pigtown’s Bloom the Boulevard, the neighborhood will host its annual Flower Sale offering annuals and perennials for gardens or planters. Everything is under $7. 

Herring Run Nursery is Blue Water Baltimore’s native plant nursery, and a great local resource for eco-conscious gardeners. In honor of Earth Day, the nursery will be giving away native species of trees to its customers on Saturday morning (while supplies last). There will also be 250 native species of trees, shrubs, vines, flowers, and plants for sale. Hours are 10 a.m.-3 p.m. 

Festivals

University of Maryland Baltimore is throwing its 2nd annual Neighborhood Spring Festival, Saturday, April 22, 2017, on the 800 Block of W. Baltimore Street, from 11a.m.-2 p.m. Festivities will include live music and dance performances, taekwondo and outdoor zumba, local food and craft vendors, and Earth Day activities, as well as free health and dental screenings, HIV and Hepatitis C testing, mental health resources, and legal advice. 

Hikes 

Scenic Rivers Land Trust and the Anne Arundel County Department of Recreation and Parks are partnering for the 12th Annual Walk for the Woods on Saturday. From 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., the public is invited to the Bacon Ridge Natural Area in Crownsville for feature guided hikes, educational programming, and a chance to explore the county owned property that is not always open to the public. The event is free and dogs are welcome after 10 a.m. Rain date is Sunday, April 23. 

Kids

After the grownups finish tidying up Patterson Park, kids can convene at the playground at 10 a.m. for fun and games. 

Francis Scott Key Elementary/Middle School in Locust Point will host a free Earth Day Mommy and Me class on Saturday from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. The event is geared toward children ages 2-5 who are not already enrolled in the school. There will be a craft, snack, and playground activities. 

What’s your role in the organization? I am the Director of Advocacy and the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, so I run our waterkeeper program. I started full-time in January.

What’s a waterkeeper? Overall, a waterkeeper is an advocate for clean water, someone who really is a watchdog for our watershed. I honestly don’t think there is one cookie-cutter model for how to be a waterkeeper. I happen to be an attorney. You don’t have to be an attorney. We see people who have more of a background in science. But the person who holds the title waterkeeper really is the spokesperson for those waterways. We are part of an international organization, the Waterkeeper Alliance. There are over 300 waterkeeper organizations in 35 different countries.

So what does Blue Water Baltimore’s waterkeeper program do? We have a couple of scientists on staff and we go out [into streams and the harbor] to do water quality sampling. We post all of the data that we get on a website called Harbor Alert. The general public can go online and learn about the water quality. Then we also have an advocacy program, where we work directly with government agencies. We work in Annapolis on legislative initiatives and then, in some cases, we bring lawsuits that hold polluters accountable when they’ve broken the law.

The waterkeeper program is just one of many programs Blue Water Baltimore runs. What are some of the other initiatives? We also have an urban forestry program where we go out and plant trees. We run the Herring Run Nursery that sells native plants. Stormwater—or rainwater that comes down over hard surfaces and washes chemicals and trash directly into the harbor—is a big problem. So we often work with faith-based organizations, places of worship, churches, schools, to help them design rain gardens and install less asphalt, things like that. All of our volunteer and education outreach programs are free. We have a calendar of different volunteer events.

You mentioned working in Annapolis. The state legislature is in session right now. What are Blue Water Baltimore’s legislative priorities for this session? We really focus on the main threats to the greater Baltimore area: stormwater runoff, sewage spills, and trash. Trash is a huge source of pollution in Baltimore, and there are steps that we can take to reduce that trash. One is the bill that’s in front of the legislature right now to phase out what’s called expanded polystyrene [aka Styrofoam food packaging]. It’s the second-most collected form of trash that we see in Mr. Trash Wheel and Professor Trash Wheel. The first is cigarette butts.

Why polystyrene? What’s so bad about it, aside from its abundance? Not all trash is created equal. [Polystyrene] is almost impossible to clean up because when it gets wet it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. Those tiny pieces have chemicals in them and they absorb 10 times more chemicals than other forms of plastic. So what you end up with are tiny little toxic balls of polystyrene that really never leave the environment. The marine animals do eat them and then absorb the toxins and then if we fish and we eat them it can come back to us. There’s a lot of interest in this, the idea of the traceability: Do the chemicals bio-accumulate and then get passed to humans? Frankly, as a mother, I would just follow the precautionary principle. If I had the option to feed my child a fish that ate plastic and one that didn’t, I would choose the one that didn’t. I don’t have to wait for a study to tell me.

What’s the chance of the bill passing? It’s hard to speculate. We have a lot of great bipartisan support. It’s been heard in two committees, so we’re expecting a vote. It is important to note that [polystyrene] laws are in place in Price George’s County and Montgomery County, so Baltimore is really the remaining large populated area in Maryland that doesn’t have this. The bill that would really just level the playing field across the state.

In some ways, it’s curious that we have the trash problem that we do. The vast majority of Baltimoreans probably would say they love the harbor and the bay, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into action and behavior. What’s the disconnect? Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t necessarily understand the way our storm drain system works. We’ll see some folks who are trying to be helpful sweep trash down into the storm drain and assume that the storm drains go to a collection system, but that’s not true. We have a three pipe system underground in Baltimore. We have a drinking water pipe. We have our sewage pipe, and then we have our storm drains and storm water collection pipe. And our storm water collection system literally goes, untreated, directly into the harbor. So it takes all of the trash, all of the chemicals that get washed down from cars on the road. So a lot of it, I think, is an education campaign to try to get people to understand how the system works.

How do you reach people who think that this is boring, do-gooder stuff? It’s a multi-pronged approach and we try to meet people where they are. We try to get them to understand that it does affect us all. So some people might not be concerned that the trash is getting into the harbor, but if they learn that their children in school are being served hot lunches on these expanded polystyrene trays and the EPA has found that [those trays] leach styrene, which is a suspected carcinogen, into the food, then they might care very much because they care about the health and safety of their children. I think it’s trying to identify what issues are important to people and helping them to understand that the work that we do really does touch every aspect of your life, even if you don’t necessarily go out and fish and swim.

How much of a problem are sewage leaks in Baltimore City? We hear about them all the time. It is a huge problem. As I mentioned, Baltimore does have a three pipe system, so there is a separate pipe for sewage, but it is extremely old and the pipes do burst a lot. In 2016 there were 484 reports of sewage overflows in Baltimore City, so that’s more than one a day. It was something like 11 million gallons of raw sewage. We also have many instances of raw sewage backing up into people’s basements. The city is currently working on upgrading its sewage system.

Right. The city was supposed to have it done by 2016. The city entered into a public consent decree agreement with the EPA and Maryland Department of the Environment [MDE] in 2002. They were supposed to have completed the work by 2016, but they failed to meet that deadline and they’ve asked for an extension. Blue Water Baltimore, along with some partners, submitted very robust comments regarding that consent decree in 2016, and we actually filed a motion in court to formally intervene. That motion was approved, so we are now considered a third-party intervener to that case. We are currently in confidential settlement negotiations to work that out.

Negotiations for what, exactly? The negotiations are for a new set of plans, which include not just deadlines but interim deadlines, water quality monitoring, there are a lot of specifics. So that’s currently being worked out and we’re happy to have a seat at the table. Ultimately, all parties share the same goal, which is to clean up the sewage as soon as possible.

What has been the hold up on the city’s part? Is it mismanagement? Is it a lack of funding? Because it’s before my time I wouldn’t want to speculate. It’s certainly a sensitive topic.

Turning to national news, the Trump administration’s proposed 2018 federal budget would eliminate funding to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup program, which doles out grants and coordinates cleanup efforts among the six states and District of Columbia whose waterways feed the bay. What effect would this move have on the bay, which is finally showing signs of improvement? Obviously, that’s a serious concern. I think it’s important to note—not that I’m not alarmed by it, because I am—but that budget is largely symbolic and expresses the direction and priorities of the new administration. That in and of itself is very concerning. That said, it really is Congress that sets the budget, so all hope is not lost yet. But without having strong federal leadership to get all of the different states to enforce and comply and meet the benchmarks that they need, reaching our goal will be much more difficult.

It’s not just the Chesapeake Bay Program that would be cut. The EPA itself would sustain deep cuts. Furthermore, Scott Pruitt, the EPA’s new administrator, doesn’t believe the EPA as we know it should even exist. In general, how bad a time is it to be a clean water advocate? The news coming out of Washington every day is certainly bleak. And yes, it can be very overwhelming at times—just the number of threats that we have to clean water. It’s a unique situation. But again, I think it just underscores how much more important it is to focus on the local level and the changes we can make here—and there’s a lot we can do.

“The ‘water year’ begins October 1. That’s when water use drops after the periods of higher use from late spring through summer, meaning precipitation can go toward replenishing the water supply,” explains Jay Apperson, the deputy director of communications for MDE. “Snow that gradually melts into the ground is particularly good for recharging groundwater.” The Baltimore region has recorded 5.79 inches of precipitation thus far in 2017, 2.07 inches fewer than average. The drought warning triggers more frequent testing and evaluation by the MDE, and Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles says, “Water conservation and efficiency are always smart—especially during extended periods of reduced rainfall.”

In addition to seven stages of music, Firefly—which bills itself as the largest music and camping festival on the East Coast—is about the experience. Hammocks are strung from trees and attendees are encouraged to camp, either with a BYO approach or through event-sponsored accommodations. Popular attractions, including the Dogfish Head Brewery, a farmers market, yoga lessons, and a headphone disco are all returning, as well.

General admission, camping packages, and VIP tickets go on sale today at 1 p.m., available through the Firefly website.

Field Notes is a monthly roundup of environmental news from around the area. If you have a story you’d like considered for a future Field Notes, email mamy@baltimoremagazine.net. Put “Field Notes Suggestion” in the subject line.

Bay Watch

When is a C- a cause for celebration? When we’re talking about the Chesapeake Bay’s health grade. Late last week, the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation released its report on the bay’s overall health in 2016, granting the estuary its highest grade since the foundation began issuing reports in 1998.

The report divides data into three main categories—pollution, habitat, and fisheries—then grades various indicators within each category to calculate an overall score out of a possible 100 points. This year’s overall score was a 34, which equates, in this specially weighted grading system, to a C-.

Except for a slight decrease in the amount of forested buffers, the bay showed improvement or remained steady across all sectors. Especially notable is the 10-point jump in the health of the blue crab population and the continued hardiness of the rockfish population, which garnered an A-, the scorecard’s highest individual grade.

But while things have improved, there is still a long way to go to reach that 100-point A+ (which would be like restoring the bay to how it was in the 1600s). Particularly troubling are the pollution scores, with nitrogen and phosphorus levels still earning F and D grades, respectively. (Excess nitrogen and phosphorus contribute to algae blooms that block sunlight and create dead zones in the bay. Certain algal blooms can be toxic to humans and pets, as well.)

The largest sources of nitrogen and phosphorus are agriculture runoff (particularly chicken manure and fertilizers), car and power plant emissions, sewage plant discharges, and suburban and urban stormwater runoff. Attempts to curtail the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff have resulted in controversial measures such as the Bay Restoration Fee (the so-called “flush tax”) and the much-maligned Stormwater Utility Fee (aka the “rain tax”).

But along with a suite of other actions that have been folded into a federally coordinated multi-state initiative called the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, there is a view that the oft-maligned fees are having a positive effect.

“We believe the Bay is reaching a tipping point,” the report’s introduction states. “As this report shows, the evidence is there. We are seeing the clearest water in decades, regrowth of acres of lush underwater grass beds, and the comeback of the Chesapeake’s native oysters, which were nearly eradicated by disease, pollution, and overfishing. . . . The bottom line is our report provides hope and promise for the future.”

Full report here.

So, That Was Christmas

And what have you done? Left your tree in the corner, dropping needles by the ton.

Don’t worry, Baltimore City Department of Public Works will be collecting Christmas trees with your regularly scheduled trash pickup throughout the rest of January (excluding Monday, January 16, because of Martin Luther King holiday). All tinsel and ornaments must be removed before pickup. Or, if you want to divert your tree from the landfill and turn it into free mulch for future garden projects, bring it to the the Southwest Citizens’ Convenience Center at 701 Reedbird Ave. in South Baltimore, Monday through Saturday (excluding the MLK holiday), from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Residents should bring their own containers for the mulch. DPW also would like to remind everyone that wrapping paper and many packaging materials are eligible for standard curbside recycling. An extensive list of recycleable items can be found here.

Baltimore County is also collecting old Christmas trees, beginning this week. Detailed instructions can be found here.

Anne Arundel County regulations can be found here.

Howard County runs a free mulch program similar to Baltimore City’s, as well as curbside pickup and recycling drop-off. Details are here.

Legislative Briefing

Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan announced his environmental priorities for the 2017 session of the Maryland General Assembly, which starts Wednesday at noon and lasts for 90 days.

Hogan wants to spend $65 million over three years on a variety of programs that focus on “targeted investments and market-based solutions to protect and preserve Maryland’s environment and natural resources.”

Forty-one million of the $65 million he has earmarked comes from a 2012 settlement with Exelon Corp. and must be invested in Tier 1 renewable energy projects. (Tier 1 renewables include solar, wind, and certain biomass and waste-to-energy methods.)

The rest of the $65 million would be distributed among four initiatives: increased tax credits and rebates for electric cars and charging stations, a $3 million investment in the state’s green jobs-training program, $7.5 million for a new clean-energy startup incubator at the University of Maryland, and up to $10 million in funding for a pollution credit-trading program.

But as The Sun pointed out in a recent editorial, those pet projects might not get much traction in the Democratic-controlled legislature. Instead, the General Assembly might focus on its own green agenda, which includes possibly overriding Gov. Hogan’s veto of a measure that would have boosted the state’s required quota of Tier 1 renewable energy from 20 percent to 25 percent by 2020. The legislature and the governor are also due for a reckoning about hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking. The controversial practice, in which a solution of water and chemicals is blasted into bedrock to release deposits of natural gas, is under a moratorium in the state while officials investigated its potential environmental impact. (It has been implicated in water and air pollution, as well as drilling-induced earthquakes.) But the ban expires this year and Hogan and the legislature will need to decide whether or not to allow it and, if so, how strictly it should be regulated.

Energy Star

Kudos to Columbia’s Wilde Lake Middle School. When the newly constructed school opened last week, it did so as the state’s first “net-zero energy” school. This means that, over the course of a year, the $33 million building will generate as much energy as it uses. The energy efficiency is achieved through both low-tech and high-tech means. There’s the school’s 2,000 solar panels, geothermal heating system, and lights that automatically dim when conditions are sunny.

But, as Scott Washington, the Director of School Construction for the Howard County Public School System, said in a video update on the project this fall, “Number one is the building orientation and envelope. That means how the building is situated on the site, as well as the envelope that the building is made out of—the roof structure, the wall structure, how insulated they are.”

The school also boasts an “energy kiosk” in the main hallway, which allows students to see, in real time, how much energy the building is using and generating. The school replaces the 48-year-old Wilde Lake school, which will be razed to make room for new playing fields and a bus loop.

Great Vertical

Time to add another entry into the city’s ever-growing register of urban farms.

Last month, a trio of organizations led by a Canadian agriculture technology companysigned a letter of intent to start a vertical farming operation in East Baltimore. The triumvirate is led by a Canadian agriculture technology company Arcturus Growthstar Technologies Inc., which procured financial backing from the Columbia-based venture capital firm CBO Financial to lease 25,000 square feet of indoor space from the local nonprofit Volunteers of America Chesapeake. The farm will grow greens like lettuce, basil, oregano, and cilantro in a climate-controlled environment and will offer agriculture job training to ex-offenders participating in Volunteers of America Chesapeake’s workforce re-entry program.

The $6 million project joins other agriculture and food system-related ventures popping up throughout East Baltimore. In the parking lot of the American Brewery building, another vertical farm, Urban Pastoral, grows greens in a LED-light-laden shipping container. Down the road, Walker Marsh raises cut flowers for market at Tha Flower Factory, a half-acre parcel where vacant rowhomes once stood. And in late September, the long-awaited Baltimore Food Hub broke ground at its 3.5-acre site at the corner of East Oliver and North Wolfe streets. The $23.5 million project, spearheaded by American Communities Trust and local workforce nonprofit Humanin, will eventually host job-training facilities, communal incubator space, and an excess of land to be dedicated to urban farming.

Nature News

Have you ever seen the alarming photos of what a supermarket produce section would look like without bees? If not, here you go:

So we all get that bees are critical agents in the food chain, right? Well then, one local beekeeper has some bad news for us.

Bill Castro, who runs Bee Friendly Apiary out of his home in Southwest Baltimore, says more than 56 percent of managed honeybee colonies in Maryland were lost in 2016. This follows a three-year average loss of 54 percent.

“This means that beekeepers in Maryland spend over $1.13 million every year to replace approximately 7,600 lost registered honeybee colonies,” writes Castro in an email. “If managed honey bee losses are this high, how do we think that wild native bee populations are fairing?”

The statistic Castro cites comes from Bee Informed Partnership, a collaborative effort among academic institutions, agriculturalists, scientists, and apiary owners to better understand honey bee declines in the United States. The troubling figure reinforces worries about worldwide losses from so-called Colony Collapse Disorder—an inexplicable dying off of hives—that researchers theorize is caused by pesticide use, parasites, and loss of habitat. However, recent stories indicate that the problem may not be as dire as previously thought.

In any case, local bee populations seem to be among those still suffering.

One step the average citizen can take to help the bees is to stagger garden plantings, so at least some flora is always blooming throughout the season. Bees begin foraging in early spring and continue until late fall. However, many garden plants and agriculture crops bloom only in the spring or fall, leaving the bees with little to sustain them the rest of the year.

Your local garden center can probably help you pick plants preferred by pollinator, which include bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and several other insects. Or, if you want to be super eco-friendly, Herring Run Nursery in Baltimore City can provide expertise in creating a pollinator garden using only plant species native to Maryland.

BGE took a small but symbolically significant step toward pollinator preservation in mid-November when it announced a partnership with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to return approximately 200 acres of utility-managed land in state parks to natural meadow habitat.

“This partnership benefits the state, our customers and, most importantly, the pollinators that are vital for a healthy environment,” said Derrick Dickens, vice president of Technical Services for BGE. “Changing the way we manage these electric rights of way will encourage the return of pollinators and native ecosystems, while still ensuring that power lines are safely maintained.”

Sustainability Shorts

After discontinuing its composting drop-off program for several months while it overhauled its system, Real Food Farm is once again accepting food scraps at its Clifton Park location. The farm’s new system—developed in tandem with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Urban Farm Plans—follows a co-op model that asks participants to take a one-hour training course before joining and then volunteer one hour per month to maintain membership. Once joined, members can drop off kitchen scraps any time and take home finished compost to fertilize their own gardens. If residents would like to participate but don’t have time to volunteer, Real Food Farm also accepts compost via Compost Cab, a collection service that operates in the Baltimore and D.C. metro areas.

Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of all food in the U.S. goes to waste, ending up in landfills where it decomposes and emits methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than carbon dioxide. Composting is one way to divert unused food from landfill. Gleaning—the process of collecting excess food in order to feed food-insecure populations—is another. There are several local organizations that facilitate gleaning, including Gather Baltimore, Hungry Harvest, and the Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network.

Visiting Laureate

On Wednesday, the famed poet, environmentalist, and farmer Wendell Berry spoke at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health about finding hope and sanctuary in a simple life lived in harmony with the natural world.

“I can’t give anybody hope,” said Berry, who spoke as part of a celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the school’s Center for a Livable Future. “Hope has to come up out of you … To find something worth hoping for is a very good place to start. There are things worth hoping for, there are good people, this is still a very beautiful world.”

A recap of the talk, which was led by journalist Eric Schlosser, can be found here.

Pugh bested Republican Alan Walden and Green Party candidate Joshua Harris, who received 9 percent and 10 percent of the vote, respectively. Former mayor Sheila Dixon also mounted a challenge as a write-in candidate after narrowly losing the April democratic primary to Pugh and received 23 percent of the vote.

“To all of my opponents out there . . . there’s room under this tent for all of us,” Pugh said. “So let’s work together. Let’s move our city forward, not backward. Let’s become more inclusive, more diverse. Let’s create businesses, expand business, and create opportunity. Let’s get people working in Baltimore. I look forward to working for all of you.”

Overall, turnout was up from the last mayoral election, in 2011, when Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was elected to her first full term, reaping 84 percent of 45,000 votes cast. (Rawlings-Blake assumed the mayor’s seat in 2010 after Dixon was forced to resign amidst a scandal in which she was found to have misappropriated gift cards meant for the needy.) After that election, the city moved mayoral elections to coincide with the presidential election cycle—and Pugh’s margin of victory surely benefitted from an engaged electorate. Many polling places throughout the city reported long lines, several even experienced technical problems, and many residents were still waiting to vote until 9 p.m. tonight.

Though Pugh’s victory is not surprising in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1, some wondered about the strength of her winning coalition, especially after her slim margin of victory in the April primary. But today’s results indicate widespread, if not necessarily enthusiastic, support.

Also in attendance at the Radisson Hotel was Locust Point resident Sophia Silbergeld, who supported Pugh in both the primary and general elections.

“She has had a ton of experience,” Silbergeld said. “She has the city’s best interest at heart. She said this is the job she has always dreamed of and that’s the kind of mayor we want to have.”

In Northeast Baltimore, restaurateur Shawn Lagergren cast his ballot for Pugh. Though he supported Pugh in the primary, he also said his preference was solidified by a dearth of other viable candidates.

“I wasn’t going to vote for Sheila Dixon,” he explained. “It just didn’t look good for her with the scandals that had happened prior to this. I don’t think she should be back in.”

Cassandra Bridgeforth of Lauraville was even more frustrated with the options.

“I voted for Catherine Pugh. I hated it,” she said. “They gave me choices of the same old crap, or the same old crap, or the same old crap. At least show me new crap. [But] the other [candidates] just didn’t look like they had the power to be it. So I just held my nose and voted for Pugh.”

Pugh, a resident of Ashburton, is a former journalist, talk show host, and dean and director of Strayer Business College. She earned a BS and MBA from Morgan State University and runs CEPugh and Company, a marketing and public relations firm. She also co-owns a consignment shop in Pigtown called 2 Chic Boutique. Look for more on Pugh in the January issue of Baltimore magazine, on newsstands December 21.

If elected, Pugh has vowed to strengthen penalties for possession of a loaded handgun; enhance crime prevention programs like Citizens on Patrols, Neighborhood Watch, and Safe Streets; and establish an Office of Returning Citizens to help ex-offenders re-enter society.

She also has voiced support for increased funding for after-school and youth job programs, a return of Baltimore’s public school system to city control, and firing controversial Baltimore City Housing Chief Paul Graziano.

In addition to the mayor’s race, all 15 seats on the City Council were on the ballot this year. Many longtime incumbents chose not to seek reelection, providing opportunities for new faces on the council, which usually sees very limited turnover. Below is a list of all official entrants in City Council races. Bold type denotes the winner and an asterisk indicates a new council member.

President

Sharon Black – Unaffiliated

Susan Gaztanaga – Libertarian

Connor Meek – Green

Shannon Wright – Republican

Bernard C. “Jack” Young – Democrat (incumbent)

District 1

Zeke Cohen – Democrat*

Matthew McDaniel – Republican

District 2

Brandon M. Scott – Democrat (incumbent)

Gregory Yarberough – Republican

District 3

Ryan Dorsey – Democrat*

G. Andreas “Spilly” Spiliadis – Green

District 4

William “Sam” Broaddus III – Republican

Bill Henry – Democrat (incumbent)

District 5

Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer – Democrat *

District 6

Sharon Green Middleton – Democrat (incumbent)

Richard Thomas White Jr. – Green

District 7

Leon F. Pinkett III – Democrat*

Tamara Purnell – Republican

Nnamdi Scott – unaffiliated

District 8

Joseph Brown Jr. – Republican

Kristerfer Burnett – Democrat*

District 9

John T. Bullock – Democrat*

Kenneth Earl Ebron Jr. – Republican

Jamie Latear Frierson – Green

District 10

Christine Digman – Republican

Amanda E. Maminski – Green

Edward L. Reisinger – Democrat (incumbent)

District 11

Eric Costello – Democrat (incumbent)

District 12

Frank W. Richardson – Unaffiliated

Ian Schlakman – Green

Dan Sparaco – Unaffiliated

Robert Stokes Sr. – Democrat*

District 13

George Johnson – Republican

Shannon Sneed – Democrat*

District 14

Thomas T. Boyce – Republican

Mary Pat Clarke – Democrat (incumbent)

David Harding – Unaffiliated

The exhibit is part of the aquarium’s move toward a more conservation-minded approach to its mission that includes relocating its Atlantic bottlenose dolphins to an outdoor, seawater sanctuary by 2020.

“As the highest honor for new exhibits, this award recognizes the National Aquarium’s innovation and commitment in designing a dynamic, immersive habitat that provides the best in animal care and public education to help connect people with nature,” said Keith Winstein, chair of the AZA’s Honors and Award Committee.

We couldn’t agree more and offer our hearty congratulations to both the zoo and the aquarium. But if you suspect that this post is mostly an excuse to post cute penguin videos, well, you’re right.

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One event is held per day, starting with timed envelope stuffing on Monday, a lobby obstacle course on Tuesday, a costume change competition on Wednesday, and continuing today with a speed-reading of Hamlet’s famous monologue before wrapping up tomorrow with a time scenery change competition on the stage at Everyman.

Some of the events, like the obstacle course and Friday’s scene change, are hosted at Everyman, while the others are conducted by the individual staffs at their respective theaters and shared via Facebook Live videos, which have generated thousands of views already.

“I’ve been filming the events and we’re having lots of people from different departments participating, so it’s generating a lot of excitement internally as well as building some great camaraderie with other theater companies in town,” says Lisa Lance, the public relations manager at Center Stage. “I think there’s a healthy sense of competition but everybody’s having a lot of fun with it.”

Indeed, the videos emit a contagious sense of high-spirited hijinks as coworkers cheer each other on and engage rivals with quasi-ironic posturing and trash talk. But there is real affection underneath the bravado, maintains Horan, who used to work at Center Stage as a box office manager before accepting his current position at Everyman.

“We’re all trying to elevate the theater scene together . . . and we’re all friends,” he says.

The event will wrap up on Friday when all the participants will head to Westside restaurant Forno for happy hour, a final medal count, and a closing ceremony that Horan jokes will be “a high five in a sort of ’80s freeze-frame kind of way.”

As for whether or not this is a one-off, Horan says he doesn’t know for sure, but he’s already dreaming big.

“Maybe if we do it again, it will be even bigger.”

The man at the end of the human chain who slips and is nearly swept away himself is Jason Barnes, the owner of All Time Toys, another Main Street business that was caught in the flood.

According to WBAL, Barnes, who had just purchased the toy and collectibles store two months ago after working there for 10 years, was working when the water virtually erupted through his basement door.

“He went ahead and started to exit the basement as his door imploded in and all that water came rushing in,” Barnes’ stepfather Chris Penning told WBAL. “As he went upstairs, he knew virtually all of his inventory was gone and everything he dreamed of for the last 10 years was quite possibly lost in all this.”

Barnes, who had once dreamed of writing stories about superheroes, then saved 29-year-old Jamie Knight from the floodwaters.

Interviewed the next day, Knight told a reporter how grateful she was for the heroics of Barnes and fellow rescuers.

“Thanks a lot, man,” she said. “I really owe you. I wish I could repay you somehow.”

A list of Ellicott City businesses damaged by the flood reads like a Chamber of Commerce roll call, including restaurants such as Portalli’s Italian Restaurant, The Rumor Mill Fusion Bar & Restaurant, and Bean Hollow coffee shop; boutiques such as Sweet Elizabeth Jane and Craig Coyne Jewelers; and businesses such as Insight180, a branding agency, and Shoemaker Country, a family-owned furniture-making business.

The extent to which each business is affected will likely vary depending on its position along the steeply sloping Main Street and whether or not the business owner had flood insurance. Some on higher ground are hoping for the best, but most business owners have not yet been able to survey the damage as officials barred access to Main Street while emergency crew worked Sunday and Monday to clear the approximately 180 vehicles and other debris left behind after the waters receded. Determining a monetary value for property lost in the disaster could take months.

On Sunday, Gov. Larry Hogan and Rep. Elijah Cummings toured the downtown with Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman. Kittleman’s spokesman Andrew Barth told Baltimore that “like most people,” the governor “was shocked by the severity of the damage. There are just big, empty holes there.”

Retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski also visited Monday morning, saying, “I have never seen devastation like this.”

Speaking at a press conference after her tour of the destruction, Mikulski said that officials “are working as Team Maryland from every level of government” to aid in the recovery process. Indeed, the county and state have already declared the site a disaster area, and U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin attended a community meeting about the flooding Monday evening.

The storm has already become politicized, with one Maryland lawmaker suggesting the severe storm may be a result of climate change and others pointing out the inadequacy of storm management systems in towns and cities all over the country.

At the Monday evening community meeting, County Executive Kittleman told the overflow crowd that he believed the disaster could not have been prevented, but acknowledged that he has tasked the Howard County planning department with drafting a master plan to address flood-prone areas.

“It is an opportunity to make some changes,” he said. “Make no mistake, we will rebuild.”

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Baltimore City Businesses Hit, Too

Though Ellicott City was hit the hardest, North Baltimore also saw devastating effects after the Jones Falls jumped its banks and flooded Woodberry’s Meadow Mill complex with more than 13 feet of water, leaving cars in the parking lot stacked on top of each other.

The converted industrial property—which houses local businesses such as La Cuchara and Nepenthe Homebrew, as well as production facilities for Stone Mill Bakery and Mouth Party Caramel—has seen similar devastation occur during major floods throughout the years, the most recent being in April 2014.

Anticipating significant damage, Stone Mill Bakery owners Alfie and Dana Himmelrich instructed their staff to evacuate before the storm hit. Fortunately, the crew was able to move its delivery vehicles and necessary equipment to higher ground and, after an intense day of cleanup, the bakery is back up and running.

“We had been through it before, so we knew what to do,” Dana says. “Especially for businesses like us where we bake everything fresh daily, being down for any length of time is damaging, so the sooner you can get back up, the better.”

Neighboring business Nepenthe Homebrew, a shop that sells specialty beer-making tools and ingredients, wasn’t as lucky. After locking up at 6 p.m. Saturday, husband and wife owners Brian Arnold and Jill Antos returned to their store Sunday morning to find it completely wiped out. The flooded space was riddled with ruined merchandise and shelves that had toppled over—a sight which they had seen before in the aftermath of the 2014 flood.

“Our first thought was ‘Not again,’” Arnold says. “This time, it happened really suddenly.”

Nepenthe saw $100,000 worth of damage two years ago, and though an exact estimate has yet to be made, its owners anticipate that the destruction is worse this time. Though this has happened once before, Arnold explains that complex commercial leases are tough to negotiate, so moving wasn’t an option.

“Our shelving somehow managed to stay upright the first time, so we were able to salvage some of the merchandise from the top shelves,” Arnold says. “But we’ve been expanding inventory over the past two years, so now there’s more that we’ve lost.”

Arnold says that, though the destruction is severe, the outpouring of support from the community has been overwhelming. A GoFundMe page supporting cleanup efforts has raised more than $8,000 in one day. Neighboring Hampden restaurant Le Garage has also pledged its support, launching its own initiative to raise funds. Throughout August 7, Le Garage will donate a portion of all Restaurant Week prix fixe and beer flight sales to Nepenthe’s fundraising campaign.

“The debt of gratitude that we owe people who have helped, donated, and even just sent well wishes, is bottomless,” he says. “Last time, I remember standing on the banks of the river just watching the water and sobbing because we had no idea what to do. This time, I went straight home, posted on social media, filed a flood claim, put together a to-do list, and got to work. We didn’t have that emotional reaction until we started getting messages from people.”

Adds Dana Himmelrich: “In times like this you see how people come together to help however they can, and that was really evident yesterday. If there is a bright side to be had, it’s that.”

See a full list of fundraising events and opportunities to help rebuild the flooded areas.

After inhaling some free Kind bars and juice—Pimlico wisely assumes you probably haven’t had time to eat breakfast yet—we set off in our group with Anita, a 25-year veteran of the Maryland horse racing industry, leading the way. We started inside the empty grandstand, the shades drawn on the betting windows, the linoleum floors gleaming under the pallid light. Overall, it felt like being in a high school cafeteria after hours, eerily peaceful and sterilely atmospheric. Of course, Pimlico’s aging facilities have long been a source of frustration for racing officials, who say they need to offer more VIP accommodations if they are to keep the race economically viable. Though it may not happen soon, Pimlico will hopefully see some sort renovation in the future. That’s probably for the greater good, but there is something appealingly barebones—and so very, very Baltimore—about the spartan facilities as they stand now—an almost defiant unfussiness that we’d miss, even as we’d rejoice at the prospect of reliably functioning restrooms.

The first stop on our tour was a chat with Bobby, a former jockey who displayed equipment ranging from feather-light silks to a racing saddle that was about as substantial as a leather belt. He regaled us with tidbits about jockey life (“I now have an office in the corner there with a desk and a phone. It’s a lot safer.”), showed us the vests jockeys wear to prevent cracked ribs in the event they get trampled, and passed out pairs of goggles to the kids in the group. (Jockeys often wear goggles to keep the dirt out of their faces.)

Then it was outside to the four “back lot” barns, including the Preakness Barn” from which Exaggerator emerged, all tacked up and heading to the track for his exercise. We watched forlornly as he disappeared in the other direction but perked up when we spied Satire, Nyquist’s “lead pony,” who travels and works out alongside him, providing stability and companionship. Satire, a former racehorse himself, was getting hosed down after the morning’s workout and his handler took some time to answer our questions about the horses’ bond.

“Would Nyquist notice if Satire wasn’t there with him?” we wondered.

“Oh, yeah,” came the emphatic reply.

So racehorses have besties, too.

After that, it was around the corner for a visit with Mike, the state blacksmith, who handles shoeing needs at Pimlico. He showed the various types of horseshoes one can attach to a hoof and then demonstrated the size difference between a racehorse shoe and a draft horse shoe—it’s a big one!

Speaking of draft horses, our next stop was the stalls of the Budweiser Clydesdales who are scheduled to appear at Preakness. Well, to be accurate, some of the Budweiser Clydesdales are in town. As we learned, Budweiser maintains several teams, plus a few horses who stay at the company’s farms in Missouri and are taught special tricks for commercial and film appearances. Other trivia: Clydesdales weigh about 2,000 pounds and ingest about 30 gallons of water, 50 pounds of hay, and two to five quarts of feed per day.

Once we finished gawking at the Clydesdales, we were lead into another of the “back lot” barns, this one housing racehorses that make up what Anita called, “the bread and butter of Maryland horse racing.” In other words, you’ll probably never know their names, but they’re out there all the same, winning low-level stakes races and keeping the gears turning in Maryland’s storied thoroughbred racing industry. A jockey named Marco allowed the kids in the group to feed peppermints to a dark bay colt named Grandiflora and a pretty chestnut filly named Sazerac Girl and then we departed, heading back to the grandstand.

Back inside and out of the rain that was now gently but steadily falling, we visited the jockey’s locker room and lounge where we saw racks upon racks of brightly colored racing silks, a scale for weighing in before the race (horses are assigned a weight limit and jockeys can not exceed it), and a and ping-pong table for blowing off steam.

Then it was down to the paddock with its cushioned flooring and open stalls, where the horses wait before being called onto the track. “A hothouse environment,” is how Anita described the space on race days. “Having done this, I can tell you that it’s pretty nerve-wracking to be in here with a dancing 1,000-pound animal on the end of a shank,” she noted.

Out of the paddock, we retraced our steps through the still empty grandstand back out to the apron overlooking the track where horses were still being exercised in the steady drizzle. In all, the tour took a little over an hour, though Anita said she usually does it faster.

“I was talking a lot today,” she said apologetically.

“No, don’t apologize,” said one older man with our group. “I didn’t think we’d get to see this much!”

Sunrise at Old Hilltop tours are available from 6 a.m.-9 a.m. through Friday. The last tour departs at 8:45 a.m. Tours are free and on a first come, first served basis. Reservations are not accepted. More information is available on the official Preakness site.