I wake up with a fever of 102 in the middle of a global pandemic. The first thing I should do, of course, is get tested for coronavirus. Not just for me, but everyone I have been in contact with recently—my husband, son, parents, and co-workers—but this doesn’t happen. My initial symptoms are insignificant. A few days earlier, on March 13, my head felt warm and buzzy, but perhaps I’m being paranoid? Maryland has just closed schools and encouraged people to stay at home and to social distance, and my son and I take walks around the neighborhood with our dogs. By Sunday March 15, I feel strange, but not terrible. I suspect a fever but none of our thermometers are working, so my husband orders batteries from Amazon, because there are no thermometers in stock at any of the drugstores near my house. I spend an hour combing through our bathroom closet, throwing away dozens of expired medications.

On Monday, the batteries have arrived. I officially have a fever of 102. I shiver, sweat, and ache in every bone and joint. I have no appetite, no sense of taste or smell. I am so tired I stay in bed all day. The only escape from this misery is sleep. I call my primary care physician who asks if I have been out of the country within two weeks (I haven’t) and if I have come into contact with anyone who had tested positive (nope). He asks if I have a sore throat, cough, or shortness of breath, then the primary symptoms of coronavirus besides a high fever. (I do not.) I ask if I can get a COVID-19 test and am shocked to learn that I do not qualify.

In the middle of an exponentially expanding outbreak, when thousands are dying daily, and the only tool we have to track and contain this virus is a test, a person with a 102-degree fever does not qualify? What kind of absurd, dark comedy am I living in? My doctor’s instructions are to stay home, hydrate, take Tylenol for the fever, and rest. He says to call him if my current symptoms worsen, or if I develop respiratory issues.

My husband moves into the guest room and forces me to drink Pedialyte several times a day, which is disgusting, but I can’t taste it anyway. I sleep for several days, rarely getting up, and when I’m awake, I read articles about the virus and our government’s lack of a coherent response that infuriate and terrify me. I think I’m getting worse, I tell my husband. He tells me to stop reading the news.

I didn’t know then that COVID-19 symptoms fluctuate wildly, that there will be periods where I feel almost normal and want to eat actual food or spend time out of bed, potentially infecting my family. Over and over I think, finally, the worst is over, only to have the fever return.

My husband and son have no symptoms, so we assume that I have the regular flu, an unfortunate coincidence, since both of them had gotten flu shots and I didn’t. After a nasty few days, it seems I am on the mend. On Wednesday, March 18, I read a novel and watch a movie with my family, sitting a few feet away from them. But that night, I feel a pinching in my lungs, a dry cough when I try to inhale, as if someone had tightened a belt around my chest. I can’t take a full breath.

I wake up at 3 a.m. with a stabbing pain in the left side of my chest. Is it my heart? Are my lungs collapsing? I can feel the steam rolling off me, and I’m lying in a puddle of sweat. I lie in bed for a while longer, wondering if I’m dying from COVID-19, and worse, if I have infected the people I love. At this point, it is just the beginning, but I don’t realize that yet.

Thursday morning, I receive a flurry of texts from friends and colleagues. Am I better yet? How am I doing? Have I gotten tested? Have I talked to my doctor? Have I seen the latest idiotic thing our president has said? Do I still have a fever? It feels like a personal failure to tell all of them that, no, I am not better, and yes, I still have a fever.

“I wake up at 3 a.m. with a stabbing pain in the left side of my chest.”

I call my doctor that morning, the minute his office opens. My sickness has gone respiratory, I tell him, thinking that now I will finally be tested. I have shortness of breath and a cough, in addition to the fever, which shoots up every time the Tylenol wears off. I am so weak, so tired, and in so much pain. I am shocked to find out that I still do not qualify.

On Sunday, March 22, eight full days since I first fell ill, I awake to a splitting headache coupled with new dizziness. Am I getting worse? Or is my body just overtired from fighting this thing? My doctor’s office is closed, so I leave a message. I’m surprised to get a call back that afternoon. He is clear and decisive. It’s time to go immediately to the emergency room.

It has been a week since I last left my house, a week since I’ve driven my car. St. Joseph Medical Center is the closest hospital to me, and when I get there, the ER parking lot is surprisingly empty. I park, hop out, and almost turn back after reading the sign in the window: “At this time, we do not have COVID-19 testing available for all patients.” There is a sad looking plastic tent and some caution tape in front of the main entrance. I enter through a side door, pressing the button with my elbow, trying not to touch anything.

Inside, there are two receptionists wearing masks and zero patients in the waiting room. “My doctor told me to come,” I wheeze from behind my mask. “He wants me to get a chest X-ray for pneumonia.”

Behind closed doors, they quickly identify me as a COVID-19 risk and everyone who visits me is encased in plastic masks and garments. They take vials of my blood and photos of my lungs. Within a few minutes, the ER doctor is telling me I have pneumonia, a common effect of COVID-19. He says my lungs look “very bad.” He says I am midway between the early and late stages of coronavirus symptoms, with the latter being a total collapse of the lungs. He wants to aggressively treat me with IV antibiotics, Azithromycin, for viral pneumonia, and asks if I want to be part of a clinical trial for use of Plaquenil, aka hydroxychloriquine, an anti-malaria drug that may or may not help but the president is touting as “very promising” on the news. At this point, I’ll take anything, although studies now show that the drug has made coronavirus patients worse and, in some cases, caused permanent heart damage.

The doctor wants to test me for COVID-19, but he is only allowed to if I fail two other tests first, so we begin. After 45 minutes, my flu test is negative. An hour later, my viral panel is negative, too. They then give me the COVID-19 test and tell me I should have the results in 48 hours. The doctor wants to admit me to the hospital.

Cara Ober spent a lot of time in bed, separated from her family. Her dog, Mr. Big, was her sole source of companionship. -Courtesy of Cara Ober

My room is clean and quiet, and I appreciate the rest. It’s a comfort to know that professionals are monitoring my heart and lungs and I’m not going to die alone in the middle of the night.

A respiratory specialist visits me four times a day to administer an inhaler and test my lung functioning. A doctor visits once a day; I have no idea what his face looks like, but he gives me his cell number. He texts me from Eddie’s the next day and offers to bring me snacks, which is endearing beyond any normal scale of bedside manner. I have nurses who are so kind and generous that it brings me to tears. I realize they are risking their lives every time they enter the room.

After three days, my breathing begins to improve, and my doctor and I discuss an exit strategy. I still have not received my test results. He tells me I am potentially contagious for two weeks after my last fever and instructs me to behave as though I have been confirmed positive no matter what.

On Wednesday, March 25, I am discharged from the hospital. It’s cold and drizzly and surreal as I walk to my car, still sitting in the ER parking lot, which is still mostly empty. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed, and my husband and I have hatched a plan for me to quarantine in our bedroom with the dog, and for him and my son to essentially live their lives as far away from me as they can in the same house for the next two weeks.

I am still exhausted and have no appetite. I am getting migraine-level headaches every afternoon, but I can inhale completely, with just a small amount of coughing and I have an Albuteral inhaler to help my lungs. My pneumonia is on the mend. This time, I know better than to expect a speedy recovery. COVID-19 lingers and changes, flickers away, and returns with unexpected force. It is brutal and almost calculating, and this fluctuation in symptoms and false sense of improvement encourages its spread.

“I have nurses who are so kind and generous that it brings me to tears.”

A week and a half later, on April 3, I get a phone call from my ER doctor. My results have finally been faxed in and my test is positive, confirming that I was indeed infected with COVID-19. He says I no longer need to be quarantined from my family, a great relief, but I still tire easily. My senses of taste and smell have returned and I can finally breathe deeply. I am thankful.

Weeks later, the entire planet is still under lockdown, gripped with dread and fear due to the wide spread of COVID-19. I want to feel like my old self, but I know that I do not. As is true of most of the negative impacts of COVID-19, my current health situation could have been avoided if we had made well-informed decisions from the start. I did not need to get this sick, the same way our country could have prevented an economic collapse.

American capitalism has trained us to think we have control over our own lives, to the point where even serious health issues are a mind-over-matter problem to be quickly solved, but the coronavirus pandemic has revealed this to be a complete fantasy. We are not in control and we are not prepared and the U.S. healthcare system—or industry, as it actually is here (there are shareholders and payoffs, are there not?)—is not set up to care for people when they need it the most.

I worry about how long this is going to last, not just the risk to life and health but also to our economy, our culture, to the world as we have known it. All we have right now are our decisions and the impact of these choices. I wish I had said no to the clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in the hospital, but I was scared and sick and desperate.

We all need to make better decisions. We need to hold our leaders accountable. We need to make sure hospitals are properly funded and those who work at them are supported and protected. We need to offer all Americans healthcare, which is not tied to their workplace, because jobs disappear during a health crisis and this further destabilizes our collective way of life.

Until then, I’ll be walking my dog with my son again, slowly but surely, grateful for every breath of fresh air.

Adam Jones needed one last fix. In January, a few hours before the Ravens’ shocking playoff loss to the Tennessee Titans and a couple weeks before he and his family would relocate halfway around the world, Jones strode into Abbey Burger Bistro. As usual, the former Orioles star—who had just signed a two-year, $8.2-million-dollar contract to play in Japan’s Nippon Professional League—ordered the SimplyAJ10. A colossal kitchen-sink creation (think Kobe beef, pepperjack, avocado, bacon, and jalapeños on an English muffin) that he concocted and that’s named after his heavily followed Twitter account, it has been a permanent item on the menu ever since 2012, when the outfielder led the O’s to their first playoff appearance in forever.

Although Jones is gone and the Birds have fallen flat on their face, Abbey Burger is still going strong.

“He’s good people,” says Marigot Miller of Jones. Seated at a quiet booth in Abbey Burger’s newly opened Mount Washington restaurant, the 39-year-old owner and mother of two—Raegan and Liliana—describes how Jones was instrumental in putting the restaurant on the map. How he started coming in after games during that 2012 season and how his brainchild burger eventually became a fixture. How MTV soon caught wind of it and came to Fed Hill to film Jones devouring the thing for an episode of Off the Bat. How, even today, after 11-plus years in business and numerous menu iterations, the Simply AJ10 remains a popular menu item at one of Charm City’s most popular establishments. But Abbey Burger’s success story is less about Baltimore’s Jones and more about America’s jones for patty perfection.

Legend has it that the hamburger was invented in 1891 by a German cook who lived in the town of Hamburg. Around that same time, according to a different tale, brothers Frank and Charles Menches begat the burger when they ran out of sausage at a county fair and used chopped beef as a stand-in. Others claim that the hamburger hatched in 1900 at a New Haven, Connecticut, joint called Louis’ Lunch (not for nothing, the Library of Congress supports this story). Regardless of which account you believe, there’s no denying that Americans—with an assist from iconic chains such as White Castle and McDonald’s—fell hard for hamburgers. It’s a love affair that refuses to flame out.

“It’s still the favorite entrée for lunch or dinner in the United States,” says Bret Thorn, senior food and beverage editor at Nation’s Restaurant News. “Americans could eat hamburgers all day long.” Since the turn of the millennium, the Yankee obsession has reached new heights. In 2001, acclaimed French chef Daniel Boulud opened Bistro Moderne, a midtown Manhattan spot that featured a sirloin patty stuffed with short ribs and foie gras (still on the menu today, it goes for a cool 35 bucks). Just like that, the gourmet burger boom was off and running.

“It’s still the favorite entrée for lunch or dinner in the United States.”

Like most culinary crazes, the haute hamburger took time to penetrate American cities not named New York or Los Angeles. Early in 2008, when native Baltimorean Russ Miller was looking to open his own Federal Hill restaurant in the building formerly known as Sky Lounge (where he’d been a manager), he enlisted the help of pal Patrick Morrow. A self-made chef who was working a couple doors down at Ryleigh’s Oyster, Morrow suggested to Miller that gourmet burgers—a trend that hadn’t really reached Charm City yet—were the way to go.

That summer, the two friends hightailed it to Manhattan for a one-day burger crawl that included stops at seven well-known haunts. They hit JG Melon on the Upper East Side. Then down to the West Village, where they sampled Corner Bistro. From there, it was a short walk to The Spotted Pig. That’s when Morrow had his light-bulb moment. “Hands down the best burger I’ve had,” he says. “Ever.”

By the time Morrow and Miller drove home to Baltimore that night, they knew exactly how they wanted to do business. Unlike some kitchens that use broiling (no crispiness) or grilling (only crispy where the grill bars touch the burger), they would employ a flat-top griddle to allow for maximum searing and therefore maximum texture. Every patty would be hand-formed, and every patty would weigh in at exactly seven ounces. Oh, and one more thing: “We knew we wanted a checklist,” says Morrow, who designed the original menu and still serves as a consultant but has no ownership stake in the restaurant. (When asked what his title he is, he says simply, “Russ’ friend.”) From the very beginning, the menu’s itemized checklist—which today boasts 94 different options (from grilled pineapple to spicy crème fraîche) across eight different categories—included exotic meats like lamb and bison. It also featured foie gras, which didn’t go over very well with animal-rights supporters.

When Abbey Burger first opened its doors in November 2008, an angry throng of PETA activists was waiting outside. They didn’t like the idea of fowl being force-fed through a tube. “They were at the front door with bullhorns,” says Marigot Miller, who holds a master’s from Loyola in early childhood special education and back then was busy plying her trade as an autism consultant. Although she performed the occasional odd job around the restaurant, she had no intention of becoming business partners with her then-fiancé, Russ. More than a decade later, foie gras is long gone from Abbey Burger. As for Marigot, that’s a different story.

Shortly after her second daughter was born in October 2013, the longtime vegetarian went all-in on the burger biz. Maybe it was the meat cravings she’d had during pregnancy. (Her favorite burger today is the build-your-own bison with goat cheese, mushrooms, jalapeños, and spicy crème fraîche on an English muffin.) Or the fact that, a few months earlier, Abbey Burger had opened a second location in Ocean City. Regardless of the reason, the bottom line was that the Millers weren’t just spouses anymore: They were co-workers.

“Working with your husband is challenging,” says Marigot, who handles front-of-house duties such as customer service and staffing, while Russ focuses on back-end tasks like finance and maintenance. “All of our stresses are the same stresses. I don’t know how many times I told him I quit. But we’ve come into a nice balance.” That’s not to say there haven’t been other obstacles.

In the famously fickle F&B industry, gold mines can become land mines in an instant. Trends like Beyond Meat, or like Popeyes’ chicken sandwich breaking the internet, have taken a bite out of the burger biz. The highly publicized Freddie Gray incident—not to mention the current COVID-19 crisis—continues to aftershock Baltimore’s retail community, restaurant and otherwise. And let’s not forget about location, location, location: Abbey Burger’s Ocean City spot, which at 7,500 square feet is roughly triple the size of the other outposts and has an extremely seasonal appeal, has been something of a money pit. But the most challenging thing for the Millers—more than food fads or urban flight or tourist traffic—is family.

“It was much easier before kids,” says Marigot. Seated at that quiet booth in Mount Washington, she wears a necklace that Russ gave her for Mother’s Day that has two interlocking silver rings, each bearing the name of one of their daughters. Even when they’re not with her, they’re with her. Which is a good thing, because these days, with four locations up and running and a fifth slated to open this summer in Havre de Grace, together time is at a premium.

Although there’s more flexibility during the week—when Marigot serves as Girl Scout leader and runs the Miller Family Shuttle with nonstop service to and from school—the weekends can be tricky. Most Fridays and Saturdays, at least one parent is working until midnight. This past October, in what could be the most telling sign of all, the Mount Washington store had its grand opening on Raegan’s sixth birthday.

“Everything always goes over time and budget. We just wanted to get open,” says Marigot. “But we had lots of friends and family there, and we sang happy birthday, so she felt good about it.” She pauses. “Besides, now I won’t forget when the birthday is for this place.”

The restaurant itself didn’t receive any gifts that day, but it has earned numerous awards over the years. In 2013, in a list of the best burgers in the country, USA Today singled out Abbey Burger as Maryland’s lone representative. Last year, the national newspaper named it the best place to get a milkshake in the Old Line State. But perhaps the highest of all the honors is that, after nearly a dozen years, it’s still around.

The recession came and went. So, too, did competitors like Elevation and Smashburger. Meanwhile, Abbey Burger keeps chugging right along, with its flat-top griddles and a prep cook who answers to the name of Maestro and is responsible for hand-forming every patty. And that checklist.

“You see more checklists now,” says Marigot, bemoaning the fact that rivals such as Kooper’s and Red Robin have also waded into the make-your-own market, while also acknowledging that Abbey was hardly the first to go that route. “Nobody’s totally reinventing the wheel. It’s still a burger, and burgers are a staple in America. They’re not going away.”

By the looks of things, neither is Abbey Burger.

On a 30-degree day in January, heads of butterhead, red oak, and tropicana green-leaf lettuce are soaking up the sun in a balmy 75-degree greenhouse so close to 695, it’s visible to drivers approaching the Francis Scott Key Bridge. “It’s pretty dreamy in here,” says Nicole Baum, director of partnerships at Gotham Greens, as a blue divider lifts and the aroma of fresh pesto welcomes us into the “basil room.”

Unlike companies like Amazon and FedEx that have recently brought industry back to the grounds of the old Bethlehem Steel Plant with their distribution warehouses in Sparrows Point, Gotham Greens arrived and built a farm. An indoor, soil-free, tech-forward, 100,000-square-foot one.

Started on a Brooklyn rooftop in 2011, the New York City-based company is one of a hearty group of businesses now growing vegetables indoors in Baltimore year-round, turning the city into what could be, given its proximity to so many markets, a Mid-Atlantic hydroponic produce hub.

From small-scale, DIY endeavors to massive, state-of-the-art operations like Gotham Greens, these businesses say they’re increasing access to healthy, local produce while eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient losses, and food safety concerns inherent in shipping, say, California romaine across the country to the East Coast. They also see their controlled-environment agriculture as important to food security in the era of climate change.

How they will affect the region’s food system, however, is still uncertain.

“I used to be a hacker for the Feds,” says Larry Hountz from inside his brick rowhouse off Patterson Park, where he sits on a leopard-print stool, offers guests velvet slippers, and talks about the farm he operates in his spare bedroom upstairs.

Those computer skills helped him build City-Hydro in 2013, where he now grows dozens of varieties of microgreens out of his own home. A traumatic brain injury suffered in a car accident had made focusing at a computer difficult, and urban farming seemed like it could provide opportunities for both healing and business. When he looked into indoor hydroponic systems fit for city living, though, he didn’t like what he found. “It was a lot of non-food-safe plastics and fertilizers and just things that didn’t make sense to me,” he says.

Hydroponic farming is generally done indoors. It involves placing plants in trays or towers, with the roots dropping directly into water instead of soil. Liquid nutrients are added to the water, LEDs are used for lighting, and the environment is climate-controlled for ideal growing conditions.

Hountz and his wife, Zhanna, bought their own materials, including grow lights, green plastic trays, and wire racks. Then they researched and tested designs until they landed on an efficient way to produce their seedlings, which require little space and grow to maturity quickly. He decided to sell directly to local chefs, who love microgreens for their concentrated flavor and delicate appearance. In their 10-by-15-foot room, the trays are stacked vertically, with water the only input, no pesticides, and energy-efficient lights above each.

In January, micro leeks for Cinghiale were sprouting out of coconut husk pads below micro peas headed to The Pendry and Foraged. But the farm has been significantly scaled back since its most productive days. After news coverage thrust their surprisingly simple, yet effective, system into the spotlight, the couple shifted the bulk of their business to selling the system they invented to other eager growers. “This week alone, I think we sold 60,” Hountz says, showing off a tower of boxes behind the kitchen filled with supplies that needed to be unpacked and assembled for customers. “We import a million coconut pads a year.”

They also offer free trainings and post YouTube videos for individuals who want to build their own farms instead of buying them, and as people from across the country visit the house to learn and report back with success stories, Hountz sees little need for what he considers big, corporate growers. “The only way we’re going to feed people [around the world] is with small, individually owned farms,” he says. “This works, and we have the people out there to prove it.”

While some hail hydroponics as an exciting new farming frontier, others are worried about the implications of growing without soil, like on the nutritional value of the vegetables produced. In the hydroponic production of full-size produce, however, growers feed their plants tailored fertilizers, which can lead to higher levels of some nutrients compared to soil-based farming.

Research also shows nutrient levels in all vegetables degrade over time, and produce sold in East Coast grocery stores is typically shipped long distances, especially during winter. Because hydroponic growers can harvest year-round in any locale, they are technically able to get fresher greens to consumers more quickly.

But skeptics like farmer Dave Chapman, executive director of the Real Organic Project, say soil is a complex ecosystem, home to fungi and microorganisms that interact with plant roots in ways not yet fully understood. “We are not smart enough to get the nutrient balance exactly correct,” he says. “The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know.”

How these farms will affect the local food system is still uncertain.

Then there’s the environmental impact. Hydroponic systems vary considerably, so it can be hard to make comparisons. Local distribution, no matter the farming method, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation. Hydroponic farms generally use significantly less water and require less space, and therefore land, to produce more food. They do, however, require some energy use for systems such as lighting and climate control. Traditional outdoor farms, of course, work off natural light, but they often pollute the environment via man-made fertilizers and pesticides used to control variables and inefficiencies inherent in nature.

Organic outdoor farmers, however, have long confronted these challenges without chemicals, in ways that benefit the environment. “Organic farming is based on healthy soil,” Chapman says, back to its earliest roots, which in turn, farmers and experts say, leads to healthy plants. “The slogan is ‘feed the soil, not the plant.’”

Recently, he and other farmers have been at odds with corporate hydroponic growers who lobbied for their crops to be eligible for USDA organic certification simply based on the absence of added chemicals. Operations like Gotham Greens avoid that debate altogether: Instead of calling their produce organic, they simply state that they do not use pesticides.

In the end, some see ultra-automated, large hydroponic farms as threatening to those that are small and family-run. Others view them as an exciting way to replace the sprayed greens from far-flung places that sit on supermarket shelves.

Somewhere in the middle is Jon Shaw, a local farmer whose name comes up in most conversations surrounding hydroponic produce in Baltimore, which may be surprising to those who know him as the organic guru behind Karma Farm in Monkton.

While Shaw and his son, Nat, fully believe that soil’s magic leads to the incredible sweetness of their winter carrots, they also see hydroponic growing as complementary to their outdoor organic production. “It became clear to us that the winter was our weakness,” says Nat, who runs the farm’s hydroponic operations. “It seemed like this perfect marriage to combine hydroponics with the outdoor farm to have local, seasonal food all year.”

Like Hountz, Nat is a tech-savvy tinkerer who built proprietary systems for Karma Farm after discovering the made-to-order versions didn’t quite work as advertised. In his basement farm, where he was growing multiple basil varieties in January, he’s like a scientist showing off the gadgets in his lab, complete with timers, pumps, fans, dehumidifiers, and beneficial insects released to deal with harmful pests.

He also tends to two hydroponic farms inside shipping containers. One sits next to a Karma barn and is filled with specialty herbs like borage and cilantro, growing in vertical towers. The other is on the grounds of Sandlot, chef Spike Gjerde’s outdoor beach bar at Harbor Point, and it’s equipped to produce trays of leafy greens, which can be eaten at many restaurants, including Woodberry Kitchen.

For the Shaws, perfecting the shipping containers was a long process. Many growers find these systems difficult to master due to design flaws and the sensitive calibration of technology. So far, greens, herbs, and microgreens are the only vegetables that hydroponic farmers see as efficient enough to grow to make a profit. “It took us about two and a half years to figure out what we could grow and what will sell consistently,” Jon says.

In West Baltimore, a new, 3,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse that’s under construction is all about training farmers. Public charter school Green Street Academy specializes in workforce development for “green careers” and is already home to an orchard, chicken coop, fish farm, pollinator meadow, and hoop house for vegetables.

But one challenge to educating young people in agriculture has long been the school year, which is out of sync with the growing season, says JJ Reidy, CEO and co-founder of Urban Pastoral, a local sustainable development company that’s helping Green Street build agricultural infrastructure. A greenhouse that continues to operate through the winter will give students the chance to participate in every part of the growing process.

“We should be able to do 25,000 pounds of leafy greens a year,” says Reidy, who plans to purchase them for Molina and Stem, his restaurants inside R. House in Remington. He also points out that the recent growth of hydroponic farming in Baltimore means that there will likely be more internship and job opportunities available for kids. “Indoor agriculture is a burgeoning field,” he says.

“We should be able to do 25,000 pounds of leafy greens a year.”

Across from T.J. Maxx and Petco in Nottingham, a looming gray building looks like a warehouse for storing boxes, but a worker wearing a hard hat and orange vest opens an unmarked metal door and points inside. “It’s the future of farming,” he says with a grin.

One thing is for sure: it’s futuristic farming. Started in New York City in 2015 with a mission to reduce some of the environmental impacts of agriculture, Bowery, another indoor farm setting up shop in Baltimore, now grows greens and herbs—purple bok choy, baby kale, wasabi arugula—at two farms in New Jersey.

During a winter visit, the Baltimore operation was barely up and running, but it was already clear that when founder-CEO Irving Fain says, “We stack our crops vertically from the floor to the ceiling,” he is not speaking metaphorically. The design, kept tightly under wraps, involves a dizzying grid of levels, stairways, and robotic parts moving around on their own. Fain declined to share the size of the farm or how much it cost to build, but Bowery has raised about $175 million total to date. He, too, chose the Baltimore County location for its access to markets and transportation.

“In this surrounding area, there are about 25 million people that we could serve with this farm,” he says, noting that Nottingham used to be an agricultural area. “This fulfills the mission we talk about—getting fresh food efficiently and sustainably to our population.”

Fain envisions a scalable model that would allow him to build Bowery farms that distribute locally in cities all over the world, and he emphasizes the importance of the sophisticated operating system that involves sensors, cameras, and algorithms that are constantly tracking and adjusting the plants and their environment.

“It’s like our central nervous system,” he says. “We’re collecting millions of data points in real time, and that data impacts how our crops are growing.” The company also digitally tracks each plant from seed to shelf, which reduces the possibility of an untraceable food safety scare.

While the scale and sophistication may inspire awe, the light human touch needed to operate the whole thing is apparent as well. When it’s fully up and running this spring, Bowery’s farm will create about 80 local jobs.

Gotham Greens’ farm will also employ about 60 people locally. But inside, it has less of a space-age feel, primarily because the company uses the sun instead of LEDs as its main source of light, and thus, plant energy. The space is vast, with leafy greens snuggled up to each other in rows as far as the eye can see, but it looks more like a turned-up version of a typical greenhouse. The technology used to irrigate, deliver nutrients, and move rows from seed to harvest is barely visible.

Since its launch in 2009, Gotham expanded within New York and also built farms in Chicago and Providence, Rhode Island. The Baltimore farm is the seventh, coming in around $11 million to build, and an eighth will be up and running soon in Denver. With each new location, the scale has grown, from the original 15,000 square feet to this newest iteration, which is six times the size with more advanced systems in terms of sensors, data, climate control, and automation.

CEO and co-founder Viraj Puri says the company was especially interested in Sparrows Point because urban revitalization is a part of the company’s larger goals. “We’re not single-handedly changing neighborhoods and cities,” he says. “But we are helping to raise the profile of some of these areas, to attract other businesses, and be a catalyst for additional urban renewal.”

Produce from Bowery and Gotham Greens will be sold throughout Maryland and surrounding states at various grocery stores, such as Whole Foods for the latter, and both will also court chefs throughout the region. As for small, local farms, Jon Shaw isn’t worried. “We have a relationship with restaurants. . . they want to be catered to, they want specialized [products],” he says. “And I think there’s a really strong inclination from chefs that buy locally to buy from soil-based farms.”

Plus, Fain says, “When you look at the demand for local food right now, it far, far outpaces the supply.”

If chef Greg Nalley hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer in 2001, we might not have Nalley Fresh, the local fast-casual chain known for its build-your-own salads, bowls, and wraps. His prognosis was bleak. Nalley, who was 40 at the time, had late-stage prostate cancer and was told by doctors at a Baltimore hospital he had missed the window of opportunity for surgery.

After another opinion, he decided to take a chance on a radical prostatectomy at GBMC, followed by 18 months of radiation. Nineteen years later, he is cancer-free and getting ready to open a new Nalley Fresh in Towson in March, his 11th store. “It was a tumultuous time,” recalls Nalley. “It gave me the strength and courage to do something challenging and adventurous.”

The Ruxton resident has come a long way from his small-town South Carolina roots, where he bounced around several colleges and worked for his father’s concrete pumping company. There was one constant: He liked being in the kitchen—and that’s where he found his passion. His grandmother, Ina, was his muse, though he points out that his mother was a good cook, too. “But it was my grandmother who got my creative juices flowing,” he says.

In true Southern fashion, Nalley remembers Sunday suppers with local, seasonal vegetables, cooked with ham hocks, black-eyed peas, biscuits, and coleslaw. He often helped Ina cook these sumptuous meals, using recipes from The New York Times and spiral-bound church cookbooks.

A family friend, Herman, often showed up for those dinners, and Nalley can still picture the older man layering each food on top of the other instead of leaving it in its own place on his plate. It’s a memory that inspired him to open his first Nalley Fresh in 2011 on East Baltimore Street. Admittedly, Chipotle was another influence.

But first came Harvest Table, a breakfast and lunch restaurant in Locust Point, which Nalley opened a year after his cancer diagnosis. “After the cancer thing, I was happy to have creative control,” Nalley says. He eventually started serving weekend brunch in addition to the sandwiches and made-from-scratch soups he offered during the week. He whipped up creative dishes like pancakes piled with shredded chicken, pear salsa, and crème fraiche, or biscuit halves stacked with grits, scrambled eggs, and smoked maple bacon. “I went back to my days of Herman and South Carolina and started making layered dishes,” he says. “I loved the yin-yang flavors.”

Nalley first arrived in Baltimore in 1991. By the time he turned 30, he realized he needed to follow his cooking instincts, and so he went north to pursue his chef credentials at the now-closed culinary school Baltimore International College. He was one of the older students, but they accepted his college credits, and that was all he needed to make the move. “Man, I really got to do this,” he thought. “I sold my house and gave my dog away.” Soon enough, he found his stride.

Around this time, he also found his future wife, Amy, in Atlanta, through a mutual friend. The two continued a long-distance relationship until Nalley graduated from BIC and they were married. “I’m not a foodie at all,” Amy says with a laugh. “I’m a candy eater.”

The Nalleys, who now have three adult children, live near Towson with their two dogs: Oliver, a friendly mutt, and Gunner, an aloof black Labrador retriever. “A typical blue blood,” Greg jokes.

Between the attached garage and main house is his “flavor lab,” where he conjures up new ideas for Nalley Fresh. The cozy brick anteroom is filled with racks of spices—mason jars with gumbo filé, the Ethiopian mix berbere, sumac, wasabi powder—as well as cold cases toting preserved lemons, and shelves of cooking accessories, including an Instant Pot, Nalley’s favorite appliance. He captures his thoughts on a white board. “The place doesn’t have customers and employees and a time clock,” he says. “It’s just music and me.”

On a recent weekday, Nalley—whose gray hair bolts up in Guy Fieri fashion—talks about his plans to introduce a new ingredient to the stores every week and has jotted down combinations for salad dressings: cranberry-citrus and honey-lemon-thyme. He’s also thinking about offering afternoon snacks, maybe cheese platters and fruit cups. “The challenge is, ‘Can I make it with healthy components and still make it taste good?’” he ponders.

His knife collection, lined up like scalpels in an operating room, calls for attention and includes a roughly made blade that belonged to his great-grandfather and another one dating to 1905. It was given to him when he left a 10-year stint as executive chef at the Maryland Jockey Club in the ’90s. “A lot of prime rib has been cut with this,” he says, wielding the aged cutlery.

Before that, Nalley also sharpened his skills at the Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City in his novice cooking days, mastering kitchen stations like prep, broiler, and sauté. But he knew early on that he wasn’t interested in working at a fine-dining establishment long term. “I wanted to have a family and be there for soccer,” he says. “I didn’t want to work nights.”

Nalley relies on several books in the flavor lab for inspiration, including his grandmother’s well-used Woman’s Club Cook Book, published in North Carolina, and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. He devoured the late chef’s restaurant tales in two days when he first read it. “It rocked my world,” he says. “It’s about flawed people who find their way in the culinary world.” This particularly resonated with Nalley, a recovering alcoholic. “I had a chance to find my way.”

Around the room are several other knickknacks. A photo of him with a just-caught mahi-mahi captures a fishing hobby he’s enjoyed since he was a kid. A blackboard is neatly printed with the words: “Welcome Food Network . . . Chopped!” He was a contestant on the show in 2016, winning his first round before being eliminated in the second challenge. “The experience was just enough,” says Nalley, explaining that he was also dealing with Lyme disease at the time.

None of his children are pursuing cooking careers—Devon, 25, is a nurse; Grace, 23, a fashion stylist; and Cooper, 21, an undergraduate student. But it was the kids who dragged their dad to Chipotle when they were younger and paved the way for the Nalley Fresh concept. “I was fascinated with the point-and-pick system,” Nalley says. “I thought I could do the same thing with an international flavor profile and a healthy twist, keeping in mind that I could make picky people happy.”

Soon, Nalley Fresh was born, giving customers a dazzling array of ingredients to choose from, including proteins like Old Bay shrimp, herb-roasted salmon, and tofu, to make their salads, wraps, or bowls. Some patrons didn’t quite understand the process when the first store opened downtown. “One guy ordered pastrami on rye,” Nalley says, chuckling. “I explained what we do; you customize your order. It was a learning curve for both of us.” Soon, there was a line out the door, even in winter, and he realized he was “onto something.”

Hunt Valley was the next location in 2012. After that, Nalley partnered with Phil and Brad Hoag, who were local Burger King franchisees. The father-son duo was looking for another investment and liked what he was doing, says Nalley. They now have a licensing agreement, not a franchise deal.

“I knew my limitations,” Nalley says about the collaboration. “I’m a gut guy …They brought instant credibility to my brand.” The partnership, which opened six locations, also allowed Nalley to get back in the kitchen, developing most of the recipes himself.

In total, Nalley Fresh now has 11 stores across Baltimore and Maryland. Some are open for lunch and dinner daily while others offer breakfast and lunch, or just lunch during the week. His newest location will be on West Pennsylvania Avenue in Towson. He is hoping to expand further still and is currently looking for new partnerships in other states.

Last year, a Nalley Fresh opened in Concourse A of the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport with daily hours from 4:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., his most round-the-clock location.

“I felt there was a need to have healthy, nutritious, delicious food there,” says Nalley, and after six months, the store had attracted 173,000 customers. He works with Toronto-based Firkin Group of Pubs at the airport and is planning to open other airport outposts with the restaurant company around the country.

Between planning for the future, creating recipes, and hanging out with his family, Nalley has to find time to relax, and these days, he does so by picking up the harmonica. He became enamored with the instrument when he and a friend heard a musician in a Virginia bar in the 1980s. “Afterward, I bought some harmonicas, eight-track tapes, and cassettes,” he says. “I listened to Muddy Waters over and over again.”

Nalley’s love of the blues has grown over the years, and if he gets a chance, he’ll sit in with various bands. Baltimore contributor Rafael Alvarez, also known for his Orlo & Leini stories, witnessed a performance during a road trip in 2018.

“Knowing that Greg loves the blues and Southern food, I invited him to go to Mississippi,” Alvarez says. “In Clarksdale, we hit a club called Red’s and walked into a show by a young man who calls himself Kingfish.” The guitarist-singer just so happens to be one of the fastest rising stars for the musical genre.

Nalley asked if he could play harmonica with him, and Kingfish agreed. “And blow, Nalley did,” Alvarez recalls. “I think he impressed the authentic bluesmen, who are probably used to white boys claiming they can play.” Of course, food also fueled their escapade. The pair feasted on crawfish and blood sausage along the way.

At this stage of his life, Nalley appreciates what he’s accomplished, crediting his 2001 diagnosis for giving him the courage. “I’ve been very fortunate,” he acknowledges. “I’ve been given third and fourth chances.”

He believes in giving others chances, too, hiring employees who are overcoming issues with drugs, alcohol, or the law, or who have special needs. “It’s challenging but gratifying,” he says. “I do it for me.”

No one has ever described  Jack  Young as an orator. Standing at a podium slapped with the city seal next to a basketball-size crater on North Collington Avenue in February, Young  takes all of 90 seconds to introduce his “Mayor’s 50-Day Pothole Challenge” before handing things over to Department of Transportation director Steve Sharkey.  

“One of my top priorities is to clean up this city . . . I encourage all residents to report potholes  to 3-1-1  so that  together  we can improve city roadways,”  he says,  reading from notes for the television cameras and promising to fill 5,000 potholes  in  just under two months. And that’s it, other than fielding a couple of softballs from the media. Which is not to say the man  who assumed Baltimore’s highest office after Catherine Pugh was  forced to resign over corruption  charges  is an individual of few words.  Grabbing a shovel, the former City Council president immediately starts chatting up the asphalt crew. 

To his credit,  Young later seeks  out the only neighbor on the block who turned out for this photo opp.  She  informed  him, of all things, that the city’s big street sweeping trucks came by  too  often—“four times a week”—often  leaving potholes in their wake.  Young had never heard this complaint before in  Baltimore,  and  he asked the woman if she spoke for her community. She assured him, in fact, she  did. (“I go to meetings.”) “Okay, we’ll move the sanitation trucks,” Young responds with a wry glance toward Sharkey. “I’m sure some other neighborhoods could use them.” 

Young  may not be the most gifted public official in front of a microphone. The  entire city can recite his gaffes—“I’m  not committing the murders, and that’ s what people need to understand”—but  no one can deny he has a sense of humor. Or that he doesn’t love the city and look out for its workaday  people. He  seems to have half of East  Baltimore on  speed-dial. 

“I could use him on my crew,” cracks one of the  Department of Public Works  crew leaders patching North  Collington. “Seriously, the mayor doesn’t put on any front. He’s the same with everyone.” 

The night before the launch of  the  pothole challenge, the University of Baltimore School of Law hosted a symposium:  “The City Charter: Does  It  Work for a 21st Century Baltimore?”  Former mayor  and current UB  president Kurt  Schmoke, Johns Hopkins University professor emeritus Matthew  Crenson, City Council president Brandon Scott, former mayor Sheila Dixon, City  Councilwoman  Mary Pat Clarke, and City Councilman Bill Henry, who is running for comptroller, debated potential structural changes to the City  Charter. It was wonky stuff ranging  from  ranked primary voting to changes in the makeup of the Board of Estimates. Some of the proposals have been introduced before the City Council and could ballot referendums this fall.

Young was not there. Nor was he  really  missed. The panel discussion thing isn’t his strength. If Baltimore voters decide in June they want  Young in office for the next four years, it won’t be because of his  strong debate  performances, bold vision, or  charisma. But because they want someone who will listen  and fill their potholes.    

His ascendance to the mayor’s office has been anything but jackrabbit fast. Or likely.

Bernard C. “Jack”  Young got his nickname because he was as quick as a  jack rabbit  as a kid. It stuck, even if it did eventually get shortened. “I  had to have it legally changed to get ‘Jack’ listed on the ballot because people don’t  know  me by anything else,” he says  with a  smile  at  his campaign headquarters at the corner of North Charles Street and North Avenue. He is 65 years old, married for 40 years, father of two, grandfather to four, and proud product of Old Town.

One of 10 kids born and raised by a blue-collar dad and stay-at-home mom (who is 91 today), he delivered the  News-American  and worked in a  local  supermarket as a teenager. He did not attend college, but  instead went to  work  first for the DPW at the Sisson Street dump—“the smell gets to  you”—and then got jobs  in the cafeteria and mailroom at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Eventually, he moved over to radiology, first as a file clerk, later advancing to an administrative post where he oversaw the department’s transition from film to digital imaging.  Not that he was always happy as an East Baltimore employee with the way he was treated by Hopkins’  higher-ups.

His  ascendance to the city’s highest office has been anything but  jackrabbit fast. Or likely.  

The similarities between  Young and  Clarence “Du” Burns,  the last mayor to come out of East  Baltimore, are  remarkable. Like  Young , the self-made “Du”  did not attend college, was  known  by his one-syllable nickname, and rose to office from the City Council president’s chair when William Donald Schaefer won the governor’s race. Constituent service was more than a matter of pride to  Burns;  like  Young,  it was in his  lifeblood. Both  loved the City Council, its craziness, daily battles, and real human contact, without the security detail.  Both  started out slowly as  interim mayor and were initially  homesick for their old job. 

Young, however, seems to have gotten his feet underneath him  quicker  than Burns, and has appeared more intent on utilizing the full potential of the city’s  powerful mayoral system. It’s not a coincidence that Young’s first involvement in city politics was handing out flyers for Burns to earn a few bucks. He knew  him  from Dunbar High School, where he went and where  Burns worked as a locker room attendant.

“Du talked to us about getting things done for people,”  Young says, explaining his inspiration for getting into politics more formally in the late 1980s, when he pulled night and weekend duty on the staff of then-City Council president Clarke. “You  could see not all politicians did that, but  that’s  what I wanted to do.”  Young then ran for a state committee position, which he eventually won.

At  42, he was tapped by the establishment Democratic powers-that-be—the start of so many political careers in Baltimore—to fill a City Council seat vacated by Anthony Ambridge in the spring of 1996. He won the seat in his  own right that fall, before much of  the  current City Council had  finished high school. 

Young hasn’t lost an election since. He has spent decades now showing up at neighborhood association meetings, writing down phone numbers, and keeping his word with constituents. (The  notable exception, of course, is  that he  said he  would not seek election for the mayor’s office after assuming the job on an interim basis.) Even as mayor,  Young is still  plugged in—perhaps too plugged in—to the day-to-day concerns of average Baltimoreans. Among everything else  going on in the city, he remains  a walking 3-1-1 call center. (Over the course of an hour-and-a-half interview, he showed off  a recent photo of an illegal trash dump texted by a voter, a crime tip from a concerned citizen, and a phone call from  a  contractor looking for temporary workers.) 

“He  is basically a  moderate,  politically,”  says  Clarke,  referring to  Young’s general policy  leanings, “but when it comes to people in  pain,  he  is a left-wing progressive.”  

He still has his  Dunbar High School I.D. and has  been the  de facto  Mayor of East Baltimore for years. 

“I paid  Jack  $2,000 a year as a staffer while his ‘real job’ was still as a clerk at Johns Hopkins, and he worked tirelessly for me on going to meetings and doing constituent service,” says Clarke, who has endorsed  Young.  “He’d pass on issues to our office and he followed up, making sure they were being taken care of,”  she  recalls with a chuckle. “If not, he wanted to  know  why.” 

In the end, his focus inevitably comes back to two things: “Crime and grime.”

When  Martin O’Malley left Baltimore for the  Governor’s Mansion in 2007, his departure set in motion a game of musical chairs at City Hall that shows no end in sight. To recap: then-City Council president Sheila Dixon assumed O’Malley’s job as mayor. Dixon then backed Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for City Council president. (For what it’s worth, Dixon  admits  Young had the backing among fellow members to become council president at the time, but she asked him to step aside so she could fulfill a promise made to Rawlings-Blake’s late father, Howard “Pete” Rawlings, the respected former  chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee in the House of Delegates.) 

Three short years  later,  when Dixon resigned after pleading guilty to stealing gift cards intended for impoverished families, Rawlings-Blake moved up the ladder and became mayor.  But instead of supporting  Young  to replace her as City Council president, she put  forward  her own candidate to take her position.  This time,  knowing he had the backing of the majority of council members, he played his hand.  Young says his relationship with Rawlings-Blake,  who chose not to run for reelection in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent  uprising, was never the same. He’d  made room for her  to skip the line, but didn’t return the favor. “I felt betrayed,” Young says. “I did. I’d been a team player.” 

Pugh, as if anyone needs a reminder,  resigned last May.  She  was recently sentenced to three years over fraud and tax evasion charges related to her  Healthy Holly children’s book  scandal,  and  here we are.  For those counting, that’s four mayors in the past 10 years with a good chance of a fifth new mayor winning the primary election later this month.  We all know Sheila Dixon happens to be running again as well.

For months after Pugh’s resignation,  Young maintained that he was only a placeholder and would not run for a  full  term. He sounded sincere, but it was a shaky promise all the same. Meanwhile, the musical chairs has continued.  Young did everything he could to hand the City Council president’s keys to ally Sharon Green Middleton. But he lost a  hard-fought backroom battle to  35-year-old Brandon Scott, who pulled the  young City Council  his way.

Naturally, Scott  used his new platform to  launch  his own bid for  mayor. It’s a crowded field of, get ready, 24 in the Democratic  primary, with at least a half-dozen viable candidates and several others capable of grabbing votes.  Political appointments to vacant seats may still be handled the old-fashioned way—with a combination of patronage and arm-twisting—but gone are the days when  Young was coming up and the local Democratic clubs decided who could run for office and  who needed to wait their turn. 

Initially, this year’s Democratic primary  looked like it would shape up along similar lines to  the 1987  race when Burns faced a  young, rising star named Kurt  Schmoke.  Young, it was thought early on, would need  all of his nearly $1-million war chest to stave off a challenge from Scott. “There was the perception that  Du  was part of the older establishment and  Schmoke  would make  the  public schools  his priority, which Schaefer had largely ignored,” says  Crenson, the retired Hopkins professor and author of  Baltimore: A Political History. “In many ways, there is the same perception of Jack, now, being part of the older establishment.”

For  Young,  that  means it’s a challenge  to run on experience given the record  of corruption and dysfunction in City Hall, including now the comptroller’s office, the police department,  DPW, DOT,  and  Office  of Information and Technology—all  beset by mismanagement, scandal, and leadership turnover in recent years. 

But then the race splintered in to  pieces. 

In an early March Sun/UB/WYPR poll, four candidates—former Mayor Dixon (16 percent), Scott (10 percent) former state Deputy Attorney General Thiru Vignarajah (10 percent), and former police spokesman T.J. Smith (9 percent) were all grouped close to the five-point margin of error. Well-funded new candidate Mary Miller, a former T. Rowe Price executive and Obama administration treasury official, came in fifth (7 percent), followed by Young (6 percent), and state Sen. Mary Washington (5 percent). Washington, a progressive leader in the General Assembly, has since dropped out of the race, saying she intended to devote her efforts to serving her constituents during the coronavirus pandemic.

Each candidate essentially has  a  narrow  lane.  Vignarajah, the former prosecutor, promises to “stop the bloodshed” in his television ads.  Scott promotes a more holistic agenda, including looking at all city expenditures through  a racial equity lens. Dixon admits to making “a mistake” and says  the city was safer and moving forward under her tenure.  Smith,  personable  and polished on camera,  says he understands how to reform the police department.  

In addition,  a well-funded new candidate,  Mary Miller, a former T. Rowe Price executive and Obama  administration  treasury official, has thrown her hat in the ring.  

Pugh won the  Democratic primary in  2016,  and,  for all intents and purposes, the  mayorship,  with just 36 percent of the vote.  This month, there  is a good  chance that  the  future mayor may win office with less than 25 percent. Whoever  does get voted in, victory will come with more skepticism than mandate. 

For his part,  Young admits  that  he ran himself ragged after Pugh  first took sick leave and then resigned. (Loyal to the end, he still calls her  a  friend.)  He overcompensated, he says, trying to keep up the appearance that the city’s basic functioning, such as it is, wouldn’t come to a halt.  That said,  Young possesses unique and instinctive, if  underrated, political skills. Close observers of City Hall  dynamics  marvel at his ability to reward allies and punish foes. (Recall,  for example,  how  he  removed former City  Council woman  Rikki Spector  from most of her committee assignments after she voted against two of his bills.)

His aforementioned gaffes—he linked climate change to volcanic eruptions, or vice versa, it wasn’t exactly clear, at a   mayoral forum—also tend to overshadow genuine accomplishments.  (More recently, he urged residents to stop shooting each other because the city is going to need all its hospital beds to deal with the corona virus). He  established the city’s Children and  Youth Fund  and opened local  recreation  centers on Saturdays for the first time since the 1970s. He also helped break the logjam of legislation and lawsuits around  Pimlico  and the Preakness Stakes, which now look like they will remain in town. 

Young also  bristles at the contention by some that he doesn’t possess the idea s to move the city forward. That said, in the end, his focus inevitably comes back to two things. 

“Crime and grime,” he says. 

Whether voters, even those who  know  him well, give him four years  in charge to tackle those things is an open question.  With primary date now pushed back to June 2, the spread of Covid-19 virus does provide Young, who has requested the National Guard deploy in the city to provide humanitarian assistance in partnership with local agencies, an opportunity to demonstrate crisis management and leadership ability.

On a recent late afternoon,  the dozen-plus folks waiting outside the  Henderson-Hopkins  elementary  school  for a bus to Annapolis on Baltimore Day—a chance for voters to see their delegation in action—each  said they knew  Young. Almost all had met him more than once  over the years. To a person, they expressed their appreciation for Young  stepping up in wake of Pugh’s resignation. None, however, were  committed to voting for him.  Most said they were undecided. 

“It’s just time for someone  younger,” says  one senior woman, a member of the Berea community association. 

Her friend, also a member of the Berea association, thought  Young hadn’t had enough of  an  opportunity to make an impact yet as mayor. “I’m not saying I’m going to vote for him, though,” she adds. 

If Baltimoreans felt  the city was humming along , Young’s chances of winning a full term would  be better. 

A  Democratic insider, who admires  Young, put it this way: “If  you  need someone to put their finger in a dike,  Jack’s  your guy,” he says. “I’m just afraid  Jack’s going to run out of fingers.” 

Dozens of spirited fifth-graders file into Park School’s lower-school library at 8:45 in the morning. They fan out across padded benches along the back wall or plop down on a map-of-the-world rug covering the floor. Chatting in clusters of two and three, some discuss books they’ve brought along; Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Baby-Sitters Club are particularly well represented. A girl leans across her friend to comment on the Splendors and Glooms book held by a boy sitting nearby: “I thought that book was amazing,” she says. “You’re going to love it.” His cheeks simultaneously dimple and redden.

All talk ceases when Laura Amy Schlitz appears, clasps her hands behind her back, and surveys the group. The silence is so abrupt and complete you might wonder what sort of power Schlitz wields over these children. She certainly doesn’t appear intimidating with her flowing purple dress, billowing scarf, and long, white hair pulled back from a moon-shaped face. She exudes a peculiar, fairy godmother-like benevolence and wouldn’t look out of place strolling through a Renaissance Fair. She’s been known to wear a tiara.

A Park librarian since 1991, Schlitz writes the phrases “trial by fire” and “trial by combat” on a white board that’s propped next to her and begins to talk about forms of medieval justice. The former, she says, involves handing the accused a red-hot piece of metal. If the burn heals cleanly, innocence is declared; an infected wound connotes guilt. Trial by combat, she explains, involves knights battling for the honor of the accused.

After that brief introduction, Schlitz launches into a fairy tale, Sir Hermit of the Forest, which revolves around trial by combat. “There was once a knight named Sir Berengar,” she begins. “He was courageous, courteous, and good to look at.”

Her telling is no simple recitation. From memory, Schlitz gives a nuanced performance that steadily builds momentum over the ensuing 20 minutes. After a theatrical pause, she signals a scene change by raising her voice, and her facial expressions and hand gestures underscore important plot points. When the knight pets a tamed deer, for instance, she glances away and smooths the air with her right hand.

Sharen Pula, a fifth-grade teacher at Park for 43 years and close friend of Schlitz’s, looks on, whispering: “Laura does this sort of thing every day. She exudes enthusiasm for learning, and we all benefit.”

The children are captivated. No one fidgets. With each passing minute, they lean into the story a little more. When it ends, they applaud. The librarian wields a simple power—the power of story.

Schlitz’s supreme storytelling skills are also put to the page at bookstores all over the country. The acclaimed author has racked up accolades and awards over the past 10 years. She has become a bit of a celebrity, albeit a reluctant one, at Park School, where posters of her book covers adorn the library walls, and articles about her are mounted around the entrance doors. An issue of School Library Journal features Schlitz on the cover; a newspaper headline declares, “Park School Librarian Wins 2nd Newbery Honor,” a reference to her Splendors and Glooms, which elicited the blush-inducing comment.

Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! won the 2008 Newberry Medal.

Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village won the 2008 Newbery Medal, an award honoring “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” It vaulted her into the company of fellow Newbery winners such as Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web), Louis Sachar (Holes), and Marguerite Henry (Misty of Chincoteague).

Schlitz calls the awards “glorious bolts from the blue.” Her books are mostly the product of “ingenuity and spit,” she says.

At Park School, Schlitz’s office is packed with objects both bookish and playful. A bookcase includes volumes on favorite travel destinations such as Venice and Greece, a few New Yorker cartoons are taped to the door, and figurines of William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens stand along the window ledge that looks out over the library.

Schlitz—who lives in Loch Hill with her beloved cat, Susannah—is mostly a self-taught writer. She’s taken a few writing courses, but steers clear of “how to” books. “I learned to write by telling and reading stories,” she says, between bites of dark chocolate from a tin stashed in her desk.

Her upbringing, she believes, was ideal for nurturing a budding writer. She grew up in northern Baltimore County, when the Hunt Valley area was known mostly for its cornfields. Her mother stayed at home until Schlitz entered the fifth grade, at which point she got a job as a secretary and, for a time, as a stable hand. Her father practiced law and clerked at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Schlitz and her older brother, Paul, bickered like many siblings, but sparked each other’s imaginations, too. “We played elaborate games,” she recalls. “We had a universe of stuffed animals, and we gave them all distinct personalities and interactions.”

Their parents frequently read to them and stocked the house with books. They visited the library so often, they received an award for being the family that checked out the most books. Schlitz was a particularly voracious reader, tearing through children’s classics such as the Little House series, The Black Stallion, and Beezus and Ramona.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess—in which a rich and pampered Victorian girl loses all her money and gets treated like a servant—touched her deeply. Desperately hungry, the character finds some money to buy food but gives most of it to a beggar child, “because she still thinks of herself as a princess,” says Schlitz. “That book managed to scare me, move my heart, and thrill me, all at the same time.”

Schlitz’s family visited the library so often, they won an award for checking out the most books.

By the time she graduated from Hereford High School, she had discovered theater and wanted to be “the world’s greatest actress,” or at least her generation’s version of Oscar Wilde. “Hereford High was kind of anti-intellectual, so it was not a good fit,” she recalls. “I was a pretentious young person, and most people there considered my vocabulary loathsome.”

Schlitz went on to Goucher College, which proved to be a better fit. She created her own major, aesthetics, because it allowed her to take classes in her favorite subjects: literature, art history, philosophy, and music.

After graduation in 1977, the dream of an acting career didn’t pan out, and Schlitz started working at the Fells Point branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. All Pratt children’s librarians, at that time, were expected to tell children’s stories. Schlitz took to it quickly and amassed an impressive repertoire.

When a friend asked her to write an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast for the Children’s Theater Association, Schlitz leapt at the opportunity. She finished the script in a whirlwind 10 days and even appeared in the production. “I thought everyone would finally notice what a great actress I was,” she recalls. “Instead, they told me, ‘You know, that was a really good script.’ It made me realize I wasn’t really an actress; I was a writer.”

Her first foray into fiction was a romance novel. Written under the pseudonym Chloe Cheshire, A Gypsy at Almack’s was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1993. Publishers Weekly called the book a “sprightly, amusing tale of manners and romance” and praised its “well-rounded characters, witty dialogue, and vivid descriptions.” It sold relatively well.

Schlitz then spent four years writing a historical novel set in Venice. St. Martin’s kept it under consideration for 13 months but, ultimately, decided against publishing it. Schlitz was heartbroken.

By that time, she was working at Park and had begun writing monologues for students studying The Middle Ages. Each piece was meticulously researched and written from the perspective of a child living in that era; they included a plowboy, shepherdess, a falconer’s son, a glassblower’s daughter, and a beggar. “I wrote them for the kids to inhabit the characters and better understand the history,” says Schlitz.

“It’s a different way of approaching literacy, becoming those people,” says Sharen Pula. “To do that, the students need to really understand the words Laura has put together. The language is sophisticated and sometimes archaic, but her monologues are so well constructed. The writing is so pure.”

Friends, including Pula, encouraged her to submit them for publication, but Schlitz, still smarting from the rejection of her Venetian novel, was skeptical. “Nobody goes into a store and requests a book of monologues about the Middle Ages written from the point of view of children,” she points out. “They’d rather have a dinosaur book.”

“She tackles big topics with books that have literary merit, but always makes it fun.”

Despite such doubts, she put together a manuscript and tried again. Candlewick Press, a prominent publisher of books for kids, snapped it up, and Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! established Schlitz as a new, and welcome, presence in children’s literature. The New York Times dubbed her “a master” of the genre, and Kirkus gushed: “Schlitz takes the breath away with unabashed excellence in every direction.”

She has since written four other books, all published by Candlewick. They are a diverse bunch, from Dickensian thriller (Splendors and Glooms) and historical fiction (The Hired Girl) to biography (The Hero Schliemann) and a picture book for young children (Princess Cora and the Crocodile). “Laura’s oeuvre continually expands because her interests are so wide,” says Elizabeth Bicknell, Candlewick’s executive editorial director. “She tackles big topics with books that have literary merit, but always makes it fun and enjoyable. She understands what children will like.”

That understanding is rooted in Schlitz’s work at Park, where she can see, firsthand, what children enjoy. In fact, she sometimes reads works in progress to her young audience to gauge what sort of reactions they get. “It gives me an edge,” says Schlitz, who admits to extensive revisions. “I can see how the plot and certain elements work, because it’s right there on the children’s faces. If they’re squirming, I know I’ve written too much on that page. They’re basically telling me, ‘Come on, let’s move things along.’”

Despite all her success, Schlitz has no plans to retire. She enjoys the routine of going to work and returning home to write. The writing, these days, takes more disciplined effort, and she has less time for old hobbies such as playing folk harp, making marionettes, and quilting. She has a new book, written in verse, in the pipeline at Candlewick, which will likely come out next year.

Schlitz pulls a blue leather notebook from a handbag and turns to a random page covered with her nearly indecipherable script. It’s a brand-new story that could become her next book project. “This is just the beginning of my first draft,” she says, before glancing at the clock.

It’s nearly 11:15 in the morning, time for recess duty. The story will have to wait, and Schlitz returns the notebook to her bag. She slips into a long overcoat and heads to the playground to join the children.

Just inside the brick-and-stone school building on Falls Road, a dozen 5-by-3-foot black, red, and white canvas portraits, painted in the style of former president Barack Obama’s famous “Hope” campaign poster, hang from the walls of Western High School’s lobby. They form a hall of fame of sorts, reflecting the eclectic backgrounds of some of the most recognizable alumnae of the first and oldest all-girls public school in the country.

The likenesses smile back at you. There’s award-winning actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith and Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s longtime radio sidekick; along another wall, former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore Ceasefire founder Erricka Bridgeford, and Maryland state Senator Jill Carter, who is in awe of her inclusion.

“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” says Carter, who is among those running for late Rep. Elijah Cummings’ U.S. Congressional seat. In a nod to Western’s diverse history, Carter is on a wall alongside the images of American Jewish leader Henrietta Szold and Claribel Cone, one half of the sister duo responsible for the renowned Matisse collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

A reasonable person might assume that the portraits of these notable alums were always supposed to be placed inside the school’s main entrance—so the roughly 1,140 current Western students and 100 staff members could be inspired by this Baltimore school’s legacy. But initially, the portraits were intended to hang outside. As it happened, last fall, ahead of Western’s high-profile, on-campus 175th anniversary celebration, the school was forced to put up plywood boards to cover a dozen windows—scheduled for repair—along the school’s visible three-floor façade.

“Boarded up,” says Carolyn O’Keefe, Western Class of 1974, the outgoing and passionate leader of the recently launched Western High School Foundation, which is rallying to raise money to keep the school’s proud history and record of accomplishment alive. “Do you know what that means in Baltimore City? It means it’s shut down.”

In an effort to spruce things up, she connected with Hampden artist Jess Pfohl and commissioned the images. But in the weeks before they were completed, workers from the city arrived and finally started installing vents for a new air conditioning system in the spots where wood covered the windows.

“So we ended up putting the paintings inside. It’s more permanent that way, anyway,” O’Keefe says. “We made lemonade out of lemons. That’s sort of always been the Western way.” Now, however, there is a plan in place to make more than lemonade.

“This school has such a rich story. That’s why this effort is important.”

Western High School first opened Nov. 1, 1844, four years before the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in a tiny one-classroom building on North Paca Street. Over the next half century, as the city’s population grew, the college preparatory school moved to five different locations before landing at its current home, which opened in 1967 as part of a state-of-the-art, joint complex shared with the then-all-boys Polytechnic Institute. (Poly, which remains a next-door neighbor, went coed in 1974.)

Then as now, the schools share an auditorium, courtyard, cafeteria facilities, and sports fields while functioning separately when it comes to academics and classrooms. Both attract kids from across district boundaries. Both require admission and remain among the best places for city kids to go to high school. Both, of course, rely on school system funding, which Western could always use more of to help cultivate the next generation of “Accomplished Alumnae,” as the school’s famous graduates near the front doors are identified.

Public records show Western’s budget for 2019 at nearly $7.4 million, or $6,500 per student, about the same annual per-student figures as Poly and fellow elite public schools City College and Baltimore School for the Arts. For years, however, those three schools have also received private funding from separate foundations and stakeholders supporting their missions. City College, for example, raised $2 million for a new library at the school several years ago. In addition to their public school system funding, the Baltimore School for the Arts raises one-third of its total budget through their fundraising partner, the BSA Foundation.

Western, until this year, hasn’t had a similar fundraising arm—despite a spirit of sisterhood and appreciation for empowering generations of young women of different backgrounds. In the 1960s and 1970s, in particular, according to alumnae, when Western was nearly half black and half white, the school possessed a unique sense of identity. “I was a bit outraged,” says O’Keefe, referring to when she learned that City College, Poly, and Baltimore School for the Arts had organized, functioning private fundraising efforts behind them and Western did not. The first alumnae fundraising meetings, held in the school’s library, were two-steps forward, one-step back—20 people one night, 10 another. But gradually, through word-of-mouth, a 16-person campaign committee was formed. Finally, a formal announcement on the new Western High School Foundation and its efforts was shared at the start of the yearlong 175th anniversary celebrations in November.

“The school has such a rich history,” says Belinda Conaway, a former Baltimore city councilwoman and current registrar of wills, and another face immortalized in the paintings. “That’s one of the reasons why this effort is so important, so we can make sure we can fill in where the school system doesn’t.”

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education named Western a “Blue Ribbon” winner, and it has been acclaimed for its accelerated college prep program, where students can finish four years of high school work in three and then spend 12th grade taking advanced placement and/or college-level courses. At the same time, its reputation—not to mention finances—suffered a blow when an ex-principal admitted in 2015 to stealing more than $50,000 from the general student fund to pay her own personal bills.

Over the decades, despite its solid achievements in the classroom, there hasn’t always been a great deal of communication from the various administrations running the school to alums. That finally changed five years ago, when Michelle White, a 1993 Western graduate, took over as principal. She immediately went to work to reconnect with alumnae, posting on social media and organizing phone calls with fellow graduates “to think about how they could share their time, talent, and treasure with Western,” White says.

From there, a new booster club was born, which has helped with smaller needs such as books, equipment, trips, school furniture, and connecting students with internships. But White says she and others also recognized a need to raise money for larger, longer-term projects, like renovating the school library and providing consistent college test preparation (so the school can keep up its 98 percent advance-to-college rate). White foresees other improvements to their now 53-year-old main building, including simple things like landscaping and signage, and maybe even a dove (the school mascot) statue outside the building, which many drive past without even knowing it’s home to one of the most storied public schools anywhere.

By day, O’Keefe serves as the director of development for Roca, an organization helping at-risk young men in the city, and before that she worked in PR roles in the high-end jewelry industry, making her a natural fit to lead Western’s public fundraising campaign. She’d been itching to get involved with the school since moving back to Baltimore after years spent in Boston and New York. The notable 175th anniversary of Western’s founding represented a timely opportunity to put out a call to her fellow graduates—as well as others who support all-female education.

O’Keefe and the Western High School Foundation’s goal is to raise something close to $200,000 by November 2020, when the school’s milestone year is over. In other words, if 1,000 people donate a symbolic $175, they feel they’ll be well on their way to providing the support that will enable future students make it to any college or career they want.

“There was the sense of freedom . . . to express your independence.”

“We have a great legacy. We’re warm, safe, and have great spirit here,” O’Keefe says. “But we also have ambitions to bump it up in terms of the girls’ academic success and future. We’re going to do big things.”

Not surprisingly, perhaps, there’s been a little pushback about more pressing needs at other schools, which, for example, have dealt with chronic heating and air conditioning problems in recent years. That said, like other city schools, Western hasn’t had a major renovation since it opened.

“I get that,” O’Keefe says. “We have to be better about targeting people that care about Western. We don’t want to be a burden on [the average taxpayer or other public school parents]. We get that we attract some of the better students in the city, and we appreciate what you all are doing and your challenges. So we have to do this a bit on our own.”

Dr. Julie Seely, a medical director in northern Virginia who graduated from Western with O’Keefe in 1974, was the first person to donate to the campaign.

“We’re out to prove that just because you live in Baltimore City doesn’t mean you can’t be on your way to success,” says Seely, also the author of the historical memoir The Skinny House, about her African-American grandfather. “That’s ridiculous.”

Later, flipping through a collection of Westward Ho! yearbooks, O’Keefe begins to point out more familiar faces.

There’s future bestselling author Laura Lippman in 1970s alongside O’Keefe in a Hi-cology (a mash-up of high school and ecology) club picture. And Nancy Streeks (later Grasmick), the blonde-haired class treasurer who would become the Maryland State superintendent of schools. There’s also Robin Quivers, with close-cropped black hair, wearing a pearl necklace. Her bio doesn’t explicitly indicate she’ll one day work alongside America’s most successful shock jock in New York, but it does list a few related activities—Glee Club, Tutor, Campus Crier Representative, Ticket Committee, and Decorating Committee.

The school’s historic diversity is apparent on the throwback pages, too. “Back then, we were roughly 45 percent white, 55 percent black, something like that. It was really great,” O’Keefe says, turning through other yearbooks, which in more recent editions show a student population that’s 96 percent black. “We really got to know each other in a very fun way.”

Everyone has their own memories, but they share common themes. Seely, whose father was a Morgan State professor, recalls taking two buses to school from northeast Baltimore, and that it was well worth it to prepare her for college at Wellesley. “I was introduced to so many concepts, friends, subjects, and really a sense of competition among women. It was a wonderful academic sorority,” she says. “It changed my life. My father was academic at heart. He knew it wasn’t how big your house is, it’s really the education you get.”

Jill Carter, who went on to Loyola University and became a journalist, a lawyer, and then a legislator, sounded a similar tune. “Everybody knew Western girls had class,” she says. “And there was the sense of freedom there. Your ability to express your independence, that may be common now, but I don’t think it was necessarily the case back then. There was no other place to go but Western.”

White recalls a similar feeling of validation while a student at Western. “I want them to access the college of their choice,” she says. “I want them to feel empowered to cultivate their gifts, their talents, to explore new interests, to know that they have the room and support to do whatever it is they want to do.”

Already this year, O’Keefe and the fundraising group have arranged for writing coaches from Harbor East-based Laureate Education to help Western’s juniors write their college application essays. And representatives from Baltimore-based architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross have been on site to dream up plans for new outdoor features.

On a recent afternoon at Western, as an end-of-period bell rings and students file into a busy hallway, O’Keefe pokes her head inside the open doorway of Ms. Clay’s English classroom. A few students linger, so O’Keefe—someone used to asking for money and definitely not afraid of putting herself out there—asks the girls if they know “Dear Western,” the school’s alma mater.

“I don’t know it all, but I know the chorus,” one student replies.

Then the high schooler, along with her teacher Ms. Clay and O’Keefe—it’s not clear who started—begin to sing.

To you, Western High School,
We pledge our faith and loyalty,
To serve your name in love and honor
And to follow your standards faithfully,
For e’er we’ll remember your motto so true;
We’ve received light, let us give light –
A lesson well learned from you.

“This makes me proud,” O’Keefe says, soon bounding with energy and pointing out her old locker on the way back toward the school’s lobby, where those eclectic portraits portend a bright future for Western students already here and those to come.

The Big Baltimore Kite Festival
March 28. When the teams from Creative Alliance and Friends of Patterson Park came together to plan the 2019 Big Baltimore Kite Fest, they shared a vision for a throwback to the simple spring days of flying kites in the park—no stages, beer gardens, or food trucks needed. The nostalgic concept, combined with the fact that festival happened to fall on the first sunny day in March, brought more than 6,000 people and their high-flying kites to Patterson Park. Heather Keating, one of the festival’s leaders, says the goal for this year’s event is to have as many different colors and types of kites in the sky as possible. “It’s a day to leave the screens at home, bring a picnic to the park, and enjoy a lovely day of running around and trying to get your kite to fly,” Keating says. “It’s one of the best ways to experience Baltimore.”—KP. Patterson Park. Noon-4 p.m.. Free.

Annapolis Oyster Roast & Sock Burning
March 21. Yes, this event takes place outside of Baltimore. No, the distance shouldn’t stop you from participating in one of our region’s most beloved spring rituals. For decades, locals and visitors alike have stripped off their winter socks to fuel a beach fire at the Annapolis Maritime Museum, signifying the start of barefoot boating season. While your mid-calf socks scorch on the pile, slurp down all-you-can-eat oysters, dance along to performances by The Eastport Oyster Boys and Naptown Brass Band, and celebrate this time-honored tradition that benefits the museum’s education programs. Annapolis Maritime Museum. Noon-4p.m.. $15-85.

SHAN Wallace: 410
To June 28. As part of The Baltimore Museum of Art’s initiative to provide greater recognition for women artists and leaders, the historic museum will roll out nine solo exhibitions by female-identifying creatives this month. One of the featured artists is SHAN Wallace, a Baltimore-born photographer who describes the work in this four-month show as her “love letter to the beauty, complexity, and resilience of her hometown.” After viewing Wallace’s black-and-white shots in the Contemporary Wing galleries, make plans to attend her portrait sessions at Lexington Market, where she will be leading workshops for rising photographers throughout the next few months. The Baltimore Museum of Art. Time varies. Free.

Movers and Shakers
March 4. Over the past few years, the Stoop Storytelling Series has teamed up with a bunch of local organizations, including Baltimore, to bring dynamic live storytelling to audiences across the city. This month’s show is no exception, thanks to its partnership with Women in Business at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, which invites brave souls to jump onstage to talk about their personal experience with breaking barriers, fighting oppression, and smashing the status quo. Whether you have your own story to tell or just want to hear tales of people standing up for themselves, this event at the Hopkins business school is sure to leave you feeling inspired. Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business. 5 p.m.. $10-15.

Bull & Oyster Roast
March 7. Name two things you can sinfully slurp without shame—oysters and beer, of course! Show your support for the Baltimore Museum of Industry during this annual food-tastic fundraiser, with an open bar, live music, and plenty of freshly shucked oysters and pit beef. After you’re full, enter to win raffle prizes and giveaways from various auctions, play games, and make a donation to benefit the museum’s award-winning educational programs. The Baltimore Museum of Industry. 6 p.m.-10 p.m.. $75-750.

Baltimore Old Time Music Festival
March 13-14. Back by popular demand, this music fesitval will take over Creative Alliance for the second time for a weekend full of swingin’ performances by old-time musicians, singers, and dancers. Virtuosos and musical amateurs alike are invited to the Highlandtown arts center to listen to historic harmonies and tunes of times past from musical groups such as The Foghorn Stringband, Bill and The Belles, and Amythyst Kiah. Don’t forget to dust off your boogie shoes so you can show off your square-dancing skills during the final leg of the festival. 3134 Eastern Ave.. Times vary. $13-150.

The Band’s Visit
March 17- 22. Treat yourself to a night out at the theater to see this 10-time Tony Award-winning musical about a band of musicians who get stranded in a small Israeli town. As the band brings the boring village to life with its striking sound, audiences will watch in awe at how a brief encounter changes the desert town forever. Snag tickets to see the Hippodrome’s latest show, which is almost guaranteed to charm you with its sultry score and delightful simplicity. The Hippodrome at France-Merrick PAC. Times vary. $51-119.

Berta, Berta
March 17-30. Everyman Theatre has never shied away from plays that confront controversial topics, and the latest show to take over its downtown stage is no exception. Berta, Berta examines the problem of mass incarceration in the United States through this 20th-century love story that’s set in Mississippi. After committing a heinous crime, Leroy is given one last chance to reunite with his former lover, Berta. The show, inspired by the prison work song “Berta, Berta,” navigates the limits of love, anger, and forgiveness and will have audiences fascinated until the final scene. 315 W. Fayette St.. Times vary. $25-69.

Zoo Bloom
March 21. It’s official: Spring has sprung. Break out of winter hibernation and celebrate the start of a new season with tons of outdoor activities for both visitors and the Maryland Zoo’s furry family. During this one-day-only event, spend the afternoon snacking on sweets from Charm City Cakes, learning more about animals that live on farms and in Maryland, and feeding the animals spring-themed treats. The Maryland Zoo. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.. Free-$21.99.

Lower Dens
March 21. Back in September, we reviewed local indie darlings Lower Dens’ latest album, The Competition, and said it might just be their most powerful project yet. Hear what all the fuss is about during the acclaimed group’s one-night stop at the Ottobar, featuring deeply personal songs such as “I Drive” and politically charged anthems like “Young Republicans.” Pack the Remington club to give these local music heroes the hometown show they deserve, and prepare to dance the night away. 2549 N. Howard St.. 8 p.m.. $20.

As R. Eric Thomas, a senior staff writer at Elle.com and author of the daily humor column, “Eric Reads the News,” breezes into the To Bean or Not to Bean coffee bar at Baltimore Center Stage, it feels like all pop culture and political gossip should grind to a halt, at least for the two hours he sits here. After all, if something schadenfreude-worthy happens and Thomas isn’t there to report it, did it really even occur? It’s safe to say that Thomas’ reputation—hilarious, quick-witted, dialed in—precedes him. In person, however, he’s chill, polite, and so unindulgent he takes his coffee black.

He apologizes for being a few minutes late, he was on deadline. But then again, he’s always on deadline. One day he’s waxing poetic about the hotness of Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and another day it’s “George Kent’s Gigantic Impeachment Nalgene Has Me Quid Pro Quenched.” He’s weighed in on The Crown, White House holiday décor, and whether or not Maxine Waters is reclaiming her time. The universe seems to be handing him lots of material these days—and opportunities. His play for Single Carrot Theatre—Safe Space—is being staged at Clifton Mansion, and his book of essays, Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, just hit bookstores.

Not bad for a kid from Baltimore who, after dropping out of college, bemoaned he’d never make it as a writer and thought opportunity existed only beyond Charm City.

Thomas grew up in Upton, in the western part of the city. If you’ve seen The Wire, you’ll recognize that they filmed Omar’s grandmother’s house right across the street from his childhood home. (That meant extras sitting on his stoop killing time and free bagels from craft services.) But that was just another part of his complicated identity: black, gay, and Christian. “I’ve thought about that a lot,” says Thomas, and it’s something he delves into in his book. Despite communal pressure, he’s always seen his identity more as an intersection than a collision. “People would say, ‘You have to choose,’” he says. But he never saw it that way: “I don’t feel internal conflicts between identities because I’ve never known what it was like not to be all these things.”

That included his school life. Every morning, Thomas would wake up in his blighted neighborhood but spend his days at Park School—a nine-mile jaunt, and a world away. The progressive day school sits on a 100-acre campus, and, as Eric and his mother made that drive from fourth grade until he graduated high school, the landscape would transform from abandoned houses and trash to fields, horses, streams, and woods. The backdrop wasn’t the only thing changing. With so many of his fellow students being Jewish, Thomas started spending weekends attending religious coming-of-age celebrations.

He told his parents, “I would like a Bar Mitzvah, please.” He had his party theme picked out (films) and even knew what the favors would say. (“I Had a Reel Good Time at Eric’s Bar Mitzvah.”) “That’s not a possibility for you,” his parents patiently told him. But all these experiences were shaping him. Thomas was always observing, storing, and note taking. “I don’t think I have the most advanced level of thinking about different societal issues,” he says modestly. “But I have read a lot of people who are very, very smart about those things. I have always believed through storytelling and through the way my parents raised me, you’re allowed to have a perspective, and you are allowed to have an opinion.”

And while that might seem like a direct path to exactly what he is now doing, it wasn’t. During one of Thomas’ darkest times he had dropped out of college, moved back home, and was waiting tables at The Hard Rock Café. He felt despondent.

“I absolutely thought nothing in my life was ever going to go well,” he admits. But even in that dark period, Thomas still noticed points of light: interactions with customers, the flair on his uniform, the walk to and from work. The Hippodrome Theatre had just been built, and there were high hopes of a bustling theater district that would follow. Thomas still views the city as one of unfulfilled promise. “This is a city full of bubbles. I don’t think the bubbles are necessarily a bad thing,” he says. “There is so much magic and activity right at the skin of the bubble where it meets another bubble.” The problem is that the friction between the tension and the magic never seems to create anything, he says. “There are huge separations.” He escaped to Philadelphia, promising himself he would never come back to Baltimore. “Not even to be buried,” he jokes.

“You’re allowed to have a perspective, and you’re allowed to have an opinion.”

It was there that he met his husband, David Johnston Norse, who had received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and was working as a pastor at Broad Street Ministry through AmeriCorps. They met when Thomas was hosting The Moth, a live storytelling event. Norse thought Thomas was “too famous” for him, and what’s more, he was pretty sure that Thomas didn’t know “how to hit on a pastor,” he cracks. Finally, months later, they went on their first date—closing down a restaurant and then walking around Rittenhouse Square, where Norse mentioned several times what a great time he had and that they should “definitely do it again” just to get the point across that he wanted to see Thomas again.

The two married in October of 2016, and Norse began job hunting using what Thomas describes as a Tinder-esque website where pastors and churches are matched. “He was coming up with matches from Ohio and a Dakota,” says Thomas. “I’m all about an adventure but had never thought about what I looked like in another space. I didn’t want to be a unicorn. I didn’t want to be the only gay people on our block. I didn’t want to be the only interracial couple we knew.”

Then Norse matched with the Maryland Presbyterian Church in Towson. And Thomas was going home. He was skeptical, but he also knew they had to do it. Even he had to admit the timing was uncanny. His part-time writing gig for Elle.com—born out of a Facebook post during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that went viral—was becoming more frequent. They wanted him on staff full-time—so he wouldn’t have to look for a new job. He could write from anywhere, and New York was still a quick train ride away.

Thomas and Norse moved back to Baltimore in September of 2018. By November, Thomas had landed his book deal. He still can’t believe where life has taken him. “The column was this beautiful, happy surprise for me—because, all of a sudden, people were not only saying, ‘I can see you and I can hear you,’” says Thomas. “But they were saying, ‘The things that you think, I also think.’” It was a level of acceptance that had been missing from his existence.

And even though he sees the voice of his writing as a heightened version of himself (he compares it to a late-night television monologue), “I see the column as a step toward authentic relationships with strangers who don’t want to feel alone.”

And while self-worth certainly shouldn’t be weighed in “likes” and shares, his words and style caught on. Strangers would approach him on the Amtrak train as he made his way to New York to check in with his editor. “We have a group chat where we talk about your columns,” someone gushed once, pulling out his phone to show him (and, of course, ask for a selfie). At opening night of Center Stage’s Miss You Like Hell, a fellow theatergoer approached him, “You’re Eric from the internet, right?” It’s remarkable to Thomas. “I sit in our house”—they now live in Remington—“alone most of the time, so my lived experience is sort of isolated.”

To go places and have people know you is a “strange experience,” he admits. It’s one he loves but has grappled with. “Particularly after the election, I had a dim view of people who tried to capitalize on ‘resistance culture.’ I don’t ever want to be somebody who is profiting off this idea that we have to participate civically,” he bemoans. “But I do think there is a space for writing humor in this time. There’s always been a space for writing humor about the news even in the worst times.” The difference now, he says, is that “there’s also a space for making a community.”

That’s also the idea behind his book: relatable, honest, funny essays with a tinge of sadness (he speaks honestly about having had suicidal thoughts in a chapter that also touches on Kanye West and a car barreling through his parents’ house like the Kool-Aid man) but with a happy ending because that is Thomas’ life right now. The teen who swore he’d never return to Baltimore is now living his best life here: married and working as a full-time writer.

“What’s so beautiful about this book is a reclamation of what it means to be ‘other.’”

While his family—parents, siblings—read advance manuscripts of Here for It, Norse waited until the galley was out, until it felt like a real book. “He just kept laughing,” says Thomas, who had to force himself to stop asking, “What part are you on?” over and over again. Says Norse, “I know he’s hilarious and I know his depth, and in his column there are so many references to literature and pop culture and music and theater and television—but there’s also these other depths of a more serious or more intellectual Eric that folks are going to experience through the book.” His book editor, Sara Weiss, agrees, anointing him “David Sedaris-esque.”

This book, says Weiss, is a new side of him. “He’s just as funny and just as joyful, but he’s showing himself off in a vulnerable and richer way than what his Elle columns allowed,” she says. Thomas dives deep into “otherness and redefining what otherness is,” says Weiss. “Eric has always been in a space where he has felt ‘other.’” But he always makes a choice to choose hope and find joy. “What’s so beautiful about this book,” says Weiss, “is a reclamation of what it means to be ‘other.’”

And while there is no crystal ball for what the future holds for politics and all the voices that have benefited—Randy Rainbow, Andy Borowitz, and, yes, Thomas—it seems that his influence has longevity. (From Project Runway recaps to Peloton ad shaming to the Kardashians, whatever you’re hearing about, Thomas has already dissected with expert precision and the perfect meme to have you cackling in your office.)

And that staying power will continue as long as he continues to keep it real. After he turned in an early draft of his book, Weiss returned it with a simple note: “You are writing toward a specific reader who doesn’t understand you. You don’t have to do that.” Says Thomas, “That was stunning to me.” There were places where he was holding back or overexplaining himself. With that burden gone, he was able to just be himself. “I am really glad to not have to explain myself anymore,” he says, “I spent a lot of life explaining myself. Why I was real. Why I exist.” He’s over that. Now he’s able to take all those tidbits—big and little—from 37 years of being an observer and use them for good.

All of those lifelong intersections mean he’s relatable to a wide swath of humans. But his face is gentle, and his hands are steady when he smiles and says, “I don’t have to represent everything. I just have to represent myself.”

Our stomachs crave tradition. Perhaps none is as cherished by Americans as eating leftovers the day after Thanksgiving, but in a rowhouse restaurant in a small enclave of East Baltimore on November’s last Friday, it’s souvlaki and moussaka that Dr. Laura Sterni seeks, not stuffing or mashed potatoes.

Nicholas Georgalas is working the grill at Samos, ensuring that Sterni and his other loyal customers feed their Greek fixes. In a city whose culinary scene has evolved immeasurably since Georgalas opened what was then a tiny carryout spot in 1977, his eatery—like Ikaros and Zorba’s, the others that make up Greektown’s Big Three—continues to thrive, despite dwindling numbers.

For the past 30 years, The Big Three was The Big Four. On Christmas Eve, the Acropolis Restaurant served its last roast leg of lamb. Owner George Avgerinos closed it after selling the business. His father, Dimitrios, opened it in 1987 and ran it until his death in September. As Baltimore went to print, there was no word on the new owners’ plan for the space.

How has the remaining trio survived? The restaurateurs who run these relics of a bygone era are men of many years and few, heavily accented words, but those words, like the ingredients in their time-tested dishes, each serve a distinct purpose.

“Greek cuisine is pretty simple,” Georgalas says as he uses tongs to flip a skewer of chicken, onto which he adds a dash of salt, pepper, and oregano. “Lemon, olive oil, garlic, onion. We don’t use too many elaborate things. When I first opened up, I had a vision of selling burgers and hot dogs to American people and souvlaki and gyro to Greek people. But we sell our ethnic food to everybody. Everyone wants spanakopita.”

Samos’ customers place to-go orders at a counter in front of the open kitchen, yet there’s no menu hanging over it nor printed ones within grabbing distance. It’s telling that, for the most part, they’re not needed.

“I’ve been coming here since medical school,” says Sterni, the director of Johns Hopkins Pediatric Sleep Center. “I walk in, and they know what I like.”

People from the neighborhood, the rest of the city, the suburbs, and up and down the East Coast have been coming to Greektown for dolmades, pastitsio, and loukaniko for decades. They are drawn not only by the authenticity of dishes crafted by first-generation immigrants, but by the knowledge that no matter how much time elapses between visits, the stuffed grape leaves, baked ziti with meat sauce, and grilled sausage with feta, peppers, and onions will taste exactly the same as it did the last time.

Delicious.

“I trust my ancestors’ experience,” says Xenos Kohilas, the owner of Ikaros. “We have a very strict mentality. We do Greek cuisine. We don’t change it, we don’t alter it, we don’t cut corners. I do not know any other way.”

Greektown’s restaurants provide a palpable sense of place.

Inside, the dining rooms show their age. Newspaper and magazine reviews that hang on the walls faded long ago, decors are dated, menus are worn. Yet after a bite of spinach, onion, and dill baked in phyllo dough pie, or a dollop of garlicky eggplant dip on a piece of warm bread, none of that matters.

Whether the flavors spark a memory of a long-ago meal back home or fantasies of a country not yet visited, Greektown’s restaurants provide a palpable sense of place. “The restaurants are a vessel to sustain the Greek style of life,” says Charles Village resident Minas Konsolas, who lived in Greektown when he first came to the United States from Greece in the 1970s. “Of course, now Greektown is not the only place where you can find a good Greek restaurant. We have The Black Olive and Ouzo Bay and things like that. Greek restaurants are opening around town. The attraction to go back to Greektown is always the connection to the culture itself. It sort of takes you to a different world.”

Baltimore’s Greektown has never been inhabited solely by Greeks.

“The very first residents were German,” says Rafael Alvarez, a writer who has chronicled the neighborhood and resided in it for 30 years. His grandfather moved into the house where he currently lives in 1935. “There were always Greeks in Greektown, but the huge influx did not occur until after World War II, when civil war broke out in Greece.”

The neighborhood was officially known as Highlandtown, but the locals called it The Hill then. Georgalas arrived from the Greek island of Samos in 1967. He was 18 years old. “It was dominated by Greek people, but it was laced with Italians, Polish, some Germans,” he recalls. “People were proud of their marble steps, polishing them, make them nice and white. Everybody looked after each other. There were a lot of Greek stores. You could buy things for weddings, baptisms. There were barber shops and little grocery stores selling feta cheese.”

Ted Kohilas opened Ikaros in 1969, and six years later, his brother, Xenos, moved from island of Ikaria in the Aegean Sea and joined him at the restaurant. The late Dimitrios “Jimmy” Avgerinos arrived in the neighborhood in 1970, landed a job as a cook, and opened Acropolis in 1987. John Kritikos moved from Karpathos to Greektown, where his father and brother lived, in 1982. He started working at Zorba’s in 1989 and bought the place two years later.

The restaurants have served as important anchors in the neighborhood. While they’ve seemingly remained frozen in time, the world around them has changed. Today, Greektown’s residents are decidedly less Greek. Like many immigrant populations, as second- and third-generation Greek families began acquiring more wealth, many left the city for the suburbs. Xenos Kohilas estimates that when he arrived in the mid-’70s, Greektown (which did not become the neighborhood’s moniker until the 1980s) was home to roughly 500 Greek families. That figure stands at around 150 now, he says.

Xenos took over Ikaros when his brother retired. In 2012, he moved it to its current location at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Ponca Street. “I had the option to stay in Greektown or to go to the county,” he says. “But even though the Greeks moved out of the neighborhood, the feeling of the Greeks is here.”

Today, Greektown’s strongest pillars are the same two that have anchored communities around the globe for centuries: God and food. As long as St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church remains, the restaurateurs are confident their establishments will be blessed as well. The church, Alvarez says, is what makes the area a “village.” And the villagers need places to eat.

In the back of Zorba’s dining room, there’s a window through which customers can watch a rotisserie packed with pork butts rotate over a charcoal grill. Every so often, a drip of juice falls from the kontosouvli, as it’s known in Greek, sending a sizzle and small puff of smoke through the kitchen and a shiver down the spine of the carnivores on the other side of the glass.

It tastes as good as it looks, but Zorba’s is perhaps best known for its grilled octopus. Kritikos buys only the highest-grade octopus and grills it for five to 10 minutes. You can tell when it’s perfectly done, he says, by its softness to the touch.

“People go to Greece and come back to me and say, ‘How do you make the octopus so good?’” he says, as a proud smile spreads across his face.

The dish is a favorite of Jesus Romero, a self-described lover of Greek food. He doesn’t have to travel far to get it—his Mexican restaurant, Charro Negro, is located across the street.

You don’t have to be a social scientist to see that the demographics of Greektown are changing. Next to the Greek Village Bakery sits El Merengue, a Dominican restaurant. Its next-door neighbor is the Greek Town Grill, where the chicken tikka masala is as popular as the chicken souvlaki. Pearl Regmi, a native of Nepal, bought the carryout restaurant two years ago.

“You can walk down Eastern Avenue and you might hear someone saying something in English, and then Greek, and then Spanish or Korean,” says Liam Davis, president of the Greektown Neighborhood Association. “That, in turn, impacts the food scene. There’s a vibrancy here.”

According to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, Greektown is the most diverse part of the city, with 42 percent Caucasian residents, 35 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent African-American.

Although some residents undoubtedly harbor resentment toward the newcomers and yearn for the days of old, for the most part, people seem to get along.

“People go to Greece and come back and say, ‘How do you make the octopus so good?’”

“It’s always been a very immigrant-friendly community,” says Jason Filippou, former director of the Greektown Community Development Corporation. “The Greek and Latino communities have naturally bonded because there are many similarities. It makes sense for it to be welcoming in general because of the history of the neighborhood.” (Incidentally, when asked his preferred Greek restaurant, Filippou politely declines to cite a specific spot, instead listing his favorite dish at each: Zorba’s lamb chops, the calamari at Ikaros, and Samos’ gyro.)

“Greektown is now Spanishtown, but for me, nothing has changed,” Kritikos says. “I like to be friends with everybody. The more people in the area, the better.”

Romero has owned Charro Negro for 11 years. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, his bar and restaurant are filled with people watching a soccer match between Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain. Cheers and groans erupt while they sip beers and eat beef tongue tacos. “It’s Greektown, but now I see lots of Latinos,” Romero says. “The Greek people still own the buildings, but we are happy with those guys. They have accepted the Latinos very well, and I think they know we are building the economy in this town. Maybe 80 percent of our customers are immigrants. The food is authentic Mexican food. We cook everything from zero. This is the flavor from Mexico City. That’s the taste from our moms.”

If you changed the accent and “Mexican” to “Greek,” you can imagine similar words coming out of Jimmy Avgerinos’ mouth when he bought Acropolis. He died on September 19 from aortic stenosis. He was 73. “This was his dream,” says his son, George Avgerinos, who started as a dishwasher at the restaurant when he was 12 and ran it after his father’s death until selling it. “This was his life. That’s why he came to America.”

While his family carried on his legacy, it wasn’t easy, says Avgerinos, who plans to continue catering using the name Acropolis. Business was down about 20 percent since the unrest in 2015, his clientele was aging, and he was putting in six to seven days a week at work since his father passed away. In a Facebook post announcing the closing, the family called the decision “bittersweet.”

“When people want to come for an authentic meal, they come to Greektown,” Avgerinos says. “It’s not trendy, but they know they’re going to get straightforward, great food.” That’s what’s kept Sterni, who lives in Towson, tethered to the neighborhood. Her relatives from New Jersey used to stay with her on Thanksgiving, and they’d make the drive into the city to eat at Samos the next day. She doesn’t have the house- guests anymore, but here she is, holding a bag of gyros, souvlaki, and moussaka. Some traditions are worth preserving. “Turkey,” she says as she wishes the staff happy holidays on her way out the door, “can wait.”

When Melissa Hyatt stepped up to the podium to address her family, friends, and fellow officers for the first time as the police chief of Baltimore County, she realized that the microphone was set about four inches too high. Wearing her signature spit-shined shoes and tight, low bun, Hyatt tried to pull the microphone down to her 5-foot-2-inch level, but it wouldn’t budge. With the crowd waiting under the warm June sun, Hyatt shrugged, made a “Who cares?” hand gesture, and started her speech anyway.

After all, she had worked too hard for this moment and this position—as not only the county’s new police chief, but its first woman to hold the title—to let anything ruin it. With her badge close to her heart, pinned to her uniform by her father, and more than two decades of local law enforcement service behind her, she finally felt ready to lead the 1,900-person police department. And nothing, not even a stubborn microphone stand, would hold her back from delivering the speech she’d been shaping since she was a young girl.

“Common problem I have,” Hyatt cracked as Major Dennis Delp helped lower the mic. Then, with all eyes on her, she took a deep breath and started again.

When Hyatt was 3 years old, she told her parents, Sidney and Elaine, that she was going to grow up to be a police officer. Sidney, a retired major from the city’s Baltimore Police Department, remembers his youngest daughter climbing onto his lap to read his paperwork on DWIs and traffic statistics. Before she was in kindergarten, she knew the correct way to pick up Sidney’s police hat—one hand on either side, never touching the patent visor—and asked detailed questions about the department’s policies. And as she grew older and became known around the police station as “Major Hyatt’s daughter,” she began to understand the weight of her father’s work.

When Sidney served as a duty officer, he was one of the first people notified when another cop was injured or killed in the line of duty, and Hyatt, now 44, remembers the family’s home phone ringing with grave news on the other side of the line. “I could see, even when I was young, the impact that the death of an officer had on an entire department and community,” she says. To help make sense of the losses, Hyatt began writing poetry, and, although she blushes at the mention of this today, she still remembers the names of the officers she wrote about 30 years ago. “It was always something that I took to heart,” she says.

As the years passed, Hyatt stayed steadfast in her goal of joining the BPD. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 1997 and was one of the inaugural recruits to the Maryland Police Corps, a federal effort to enlist college students to law enforcement. Hyatt says she never imagined starting her career anywhere other than the station where she sat on police motorcycles as a young girl or interned as an undergrad. “There was never a doubt in our minds that Melissa would end up there,” Elaine says.

But Hyatt’s first years on the job weren’t always so easy. There were times when Hyatt knew she was being judged for being a “legacy,” as officers grumbled that she only got her position because of her dad’s tenure. “People look at you a little closer to see if you’re living up to their reputation,” she says. “While I knew I had my dad’s support, it was important to me that I did things on my own.”

“She competes with all of those big fellas, and she leads the way.”

Determined to make her own way in the department, Hyatt grinded through those first years by working as hard as she could. She developed a reputation for staying calm under pressure and refusing to let anything break her cool, composed demeanor. Not even the district’s lack of a women’s locker room fazed her; she changed at home and came ready to work.

Over time, Hyatt moved up through the district’s ranks, serving on squads such as the bicycle unit and the mobile enforcement team before reaching her ultimate goal: the SWAT team. “I figured out that in those situations, the more chaotic it was, the more time slowed down for me,” she says. “When everything slows down, it gives me the ability to make decisions in tough situations.”

Within four years, she became the first female sergeant on the Baltimore Police Department tactical team, where she coordinated operations at hostage and barricade scenes. “Her mother and I used to laugh, because when they showed a local SWAT team operation on television, there were all of these big, tall guys, and then all of a sudden, the camera would drop to show this little thing,” Sidney says with a laugh. “It made us so proud. She competes with all of those big fellas, and she leads the way.”

If you want to understand Hyatt—what she cares about, how she makes decisions—look no further than her resume. She led a tri-district initiative against violent crime; she became a deputy major, a captain, and a lieutenant colonel. When the city erupted in April 2015 following the death of Freddie Gray, who died of spinal cord injuries while in police custody, Hyatt, who was serving as the police commissioner’s chief of staff at the time, pulled away from her post to help direct department resources across the city. During her final years with Baltimore City, she oversaw all nine districts as a colonel and chief of patrol, took command of the agency’s homeland security and training division, and served as the chief of the department’s special operations division. “I loved the camaraderie that builds between officers from constantly not knowing what comes next,” Hyatt says. “I loved the adventure of it, I loved being out on the street; it made me happy.”

As the city’s police department waded through the controversial aftermath of the Baltimore Uprising—including a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of its policing—Hyatt became the highest-ranking woman on the force. But when her responsibilities were reshaped in anticipation of the mandatory changes laid out in the DOJ’s consent decree, she decided to retire from her home of more than 20 years. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” she says simply.

In April 2018, for the first time in her career, Hyatt transitioned into the private sector as the vice president of security for Johns Hopkins University and Medicine. (“My goodness, the number of suits I had to buy,” she remembers.) No stranger to controversy, Hyatt served in that role as the school lobbied for its own armed police department, a widely debated move that raised concerns from students and the surrounding community about racial profiling and over-policing. Hyatt testified in favor of the measure, asserting that the new police force would help make the university and its neighborhood safer, and oversaw security operations during a sit-in that resulted in the arrest of seven protesters.

Although Hyatt was proud of the strides her team made at Hopkins, she couldn’t deny that she missed police work, especially the daily grind of responding to calls with fellow officers and the adrenaline rush that came with making decisions in a risky situation. “I quickly began to realize that I hadn’t done everything that I wanted to do in law enforcement,” she says.

“A police department has to reflect its community; it benefits everyone.”

As luck would have it, Baltimore County police chief Terrence Sheridan announced that he would retire by mid-2019. Hyatt applied for the highly sought-after position. “We listened and watched and waited,” Elaine says. “We knew that this was a dream for her.”

In early May, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. told Hyatt that she was his nomination for the job, a moment she describes today as surreal. “After a whole career in law enforcement, you get to a certain point where you think, ‘Well, if I were ever in charge. . .,’ and then, all of a sudden, you gulp and realize that you are in charge now,” she says with a laugh.

After a unanimous confirmation from the Baltimore County Council, Hyatt was sworn in as the 14th Baltimore County police chief. During her swearing-in ceremony, Hyatt spoke calmly and firmly about leading her new department in rebuilding trust with the community, rethinking oversight and accountability, and reevaluating technology use within the police force. “Hyatt has demonstrated the ability to think dynamically about leading law enforcement, particularly in a large and diverse jurisdiction like Baltimore County,” says Olszewski. “Frankly, she’s one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever seen.”

And just like that, Hyatt transitioned from being a nose-to-the-ground public servant to a full-blown public figure. Never one for the spotlight, she had to learn to embrace the line of locals waiting to shake her hand at events, as well as the small army of staffers who follow her to each item on her agenda. But the limelight seemed like a small price to pay for a platform big enough to execute her ideas. So, she got to work.

One of Hyatt’s top priorities for her first months on the job was to meet as many department members as possible. She wanted to hear about their experiences with the agency, talk with minority members about the challenges they face, and figure out how to recruit more diverse talent. As of September, 80 percent of sworn county officers were white, although white people make up only 57 percent of the area’s population. “A police department has to reflect its community; it benefits everyone,” Hyatt says. “You want the community to see people in the police department who look like them and have similarities to them, because, maybe for the first time, they’ll consider having a career with us.”

As chance would have it, the leading legislative initiative of her career would present itself within her first few months, thanks to a string of commercial burglaries of retail firearms establishments last summer. After learning that some of the stores had been burglarized but hadn’t installed additional security measures, Hyatt and her team identified gaps in local regulations that could be closed to prevent similar future burglaries. In the fall, she met with Olszewski to pitch The SAFE Act, which requires county firearms establishments to implement a police-approved security plan, including video surveillance, secure storage spaces, and security guards to protect their inventory.

“I wanted those roles not as the top female, but as the top candidate.”

“The requirements of The SAFE Act are less stringent than what the state law requires for medical cannabis dispensaries,” Olszewski says, prior to signing the bill into law in late January. “We think that anytime there are gaps in the law that help fuel violence, we have a responsibility to do something, and I applaud the chief and her team for bringing this to my attention.”

That kind of direct community outreach has been a hallmark of Hyatt’s tenure. She understands, for example, the importance of joining Olszewski for a neighborhood walk through Lansdowne, even though her dynamic with residents has shifted since her early days of walking foot patrol. Although she’s a private person, she pushes to be seen as an approachable, trustworthy chief in every setting.

“With every rank that I ascend, it gets more difficult to have the type of interactions with people on the street or officers that I want to be able to have,” Hyatt says. “The onus is on me to not get so busy with other priorities that I forget about what brought me to this job and what is most important.”

One change that Hyatt continues to grapple with is her unofficial title as the first female police chief of Baltimore County. On one hand, she understands that there’s a significant responsibility that comes with being the first to break the glass ceiling and subsequently become a role model for the next generation of girls who write poetry about law enforcement. But on the other, she knows that she didn’t get this position for any reason other than being the most qualified person for the job. And when the prefix “first female” is added to her title, the emphasis feels like it underscores the fact that she’s a woman, not her decades of experience.

“Any position I ever went for during the course of my career, I wanted those roles not to be the top female, but to be the top candidate,” Hyatt says. “At the end of the day, I don’t want to be judged as the county’s first female police chief. I want to be judged on what I accomplish in this role, regardless of who or what I am.”

On a rainy day in December, Hyatt spent an afternoon stationed between cartons of blueberries and cherries at Wegmans in Hunt Valley, handing out automobile safety tip cards. For more than an hour, Hyatt greeted every incoming customer and waved hello to every toddler riding in a shopping cart. Meanwhile, a few feet away, Hyatt’s chief of staff, a Precinct Seven colonel, and a shopper were caught up in conversation. When the man turned to leave, the colonel gestured to Hyatt’s turned back and said, “And there’s our new police chief!” The man let out a single, low chuckle and replied, “Well, good luck with that.”

Maybe Hyatt heard the comment; maybe she didn’t. After more than 20 years in this field, she’s learned to ignore the comments about her size, gender, and capabilities. After all, that person doesn’t know what it’s like to work for a police department that doesn’t have a women’s locker room, or hear fellow officers say that the only reason she got her first job was because of her dad. They don’t know what it’s like to be promoted to the highest role in Baltimore County law enforcement, only to have the fact that she is the first woman to do so become the focal point of her story.

But she does. And despite what that man or anyone else thinks, it’s her responsibility to keep everyone in that Wegmans, that town, and that county safe. So, as the stranger walks toward the exit, Hyatt stands bolt straight and keeps her gaze trained on the entrance, waiting for her next opportunity to help someone.

Charm City Django Jazz Fest
Feb 21-22. When Michael Joesph Harris hopped off the Creative Alliance stage in 2014 after playing a successful concert of tunes inspired the legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, he could tell by the energy in the theater that Baltimore audiences wanted more Gypsy jazz. Fast forward two years, and Harris, left, who is the founder of local groups Ultrafaux and The Hot Club of Baltimore, opened the doors to the first Charm City Django Jazz Fest, which hosts Gypsy jazz musicians from across the world for performances, jam sessions, and workshops. Harris says that the festival (this year from February 21-22) has helped revitalize the finger-plucking community within the city’s arts scene. “Keeping the legacy of Django Reinhardt and that sense of originality rooted in tradition alive is a big part of what we’re doing with the festival,” Harris says. 3134 Eastern Ave. 8 p.m.. $28-75. —KP

The American Craft Show
Feb. 21-23. Calling all crafters! This annual weekend-long event is known for being a DIY haven, and this year’s lineup of more than 600 vendors from across North America will not disappoint. Browse through the Baltimore Convention Center’s vibrant marketplace to shop for everything from jewelry and clothing to furniture and home goods. Whether you leave with new baskets or necklaces or a dress, stop by to snag some thoughtfully made pieces. Baltimore Convention Center. $14-36. Time varies.

Ornamenta
Feb. 1. Every winter, the Baltimore Jewelry Center—known around town for its hands-on workshops and classes—hosts Ornamenta, the nonprofit’s fundraiser to benefit its educational and studio rental programs. For one night only, take in breathtaking works by local artists, rub elbows with up-and-comers in the city’s arts scene, and celebrate the success of this Station North staple by donating to this worthy cause. Impact Hub, 10 E. North Ave.. $100-575. 7-11 p.m..

Wicked
Feb. 12-March 8. The Hippodrome Theatre keeps the Broadway sensations coming with this four-week run of Wicked. Travel to the Land of Oz (before the days of Dorothy and friends) as two witches form an unlikely friendship: one bubbly and popular and the other smart, misunderstood, and green-skinned. Experience the iconic story of how they grew to become Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West during this bucket list production. Hippodrome Theatre, 12 N. Eutaw St.. $70-246. Time varies.

A Date with John Waters
Feb. 14. Can you imagine a better Valentine’s Day date than an evening with Baltimore’s own Sleaze Supreme, John Waters? Devoted fans will rub shoulders with Waters noobs at Baltimore Soundstage during this evening with the venerable filmmaker and cornerstone of Charm City pop culture. Who can say where Waters will take his ever-evolving one-man show? All we know for sure is that no holds will be barred. 124 Market Pl.. $44. 8 p.m..

R. Eric Thomas
Feb. 20. Join Elle senior staff writer, nationally recognized playwright, and Baltimore native R. Eric Thomas as he reads from his newly released memoir, Here for It. With a daily humor-politics column, Thomas has had plenty of practice using words to reconcile his identity, religious faith, and the recent social shifts within our country. After reading through our profile of this laugh-out-loud author on page 70, make plans to join fellow fans for this reading at Enoch Pratt’s Central Library. Enoch Pratt Free Library. Free. 7 p.m..

Small Foods Party
Feb. 8. Whoever coined the term “the bigger, the better” clearly never attended this teeny snacks party at the American Visionary Art Museum. At this 15th annual bash/competition, bring your appetite (and a tiny silverware set) to sample a smorgasbord of bite-sized eats made by local home chefs and makers. Don’t miss this weird and wonderful opportunity to taste itty-bitty bites of fan-favorite foods such as crab cake sandwiches and cinnamon rolls and help crown this year’s “Bad Idea” award. American Visionary Arts Museum. $5-20. 7 p.m..

Celine Dion
Feb. 24. If you weren’t planning to catch legendary performer Celine Dion’s “Courage” world tour at the Royal Farms Arena, think again. After a more than 10-year hiatus, this world-renowned pop powerhouse is back on the road, and she’s sure to enchant Baltimore with classic hits such as “My Heart Will Go On” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Snag tickets early to experience a night of belting out high notes and worshipping at the feet of the queen of adult contemporary, which is almost guaranteed to help your heart go on a little longer. Royal Farms Arena. $150-849. 7:30 p.m..

Frozen Harbor Music Festival
Feb. 28-March 1. Not even the icy weather could stop this party. Now in its fourth year, this frozen music festival will take over nine rock venues across downtown, including Rams Head Live! and Mosaic Night Club and Lounge, for three days of nonstop sets by more than 100 rising acts. Make plans to hop from venue to venue to catch performances by hip hop, rock, and rap groups in the heart of the Inner Harbor and don’t forget to grab a picture with the party-animal polar bear Mascot, Koasty, before the end of the weekend. Power Plant Live! 34 Market Pl.. $20-225. Fri 7 p.m.-Sun 1:30 a.m..

Fake Wedding
Feb. 29. Back by popular demand, this fake-wedding party, hosted by local nonprofit action network Volunteering Untapped, is one of the winter’s can’t-miss affairs. After “celebrating” the matrimony of two randomly selected guests, pop the champagne, throw away the vows, and then spend the rest of the night dancing like nobody’s watching. Head to downtown’s Columbus Center for this (fake) ceremony between a (fake) bride and groom, and enjoy (very real) food, drinks, and a night of fundraising for a do-good cause. Columbus Center, 701 E. Pratt St.. $75-800. 7-11 p.m..

The other night, at a bar, I got ma’amed.

It wasn’t the first time it happened, but it was the first time I can recall a fellow woman directing the term to me, and it stung. I think the issue was that she was in her early 20s, blonde, and being genuinely polite. Ten years ago, I was also a (moderately) polite server with blonde hair slinging drinks and accidentally shocking customers with formal greetings dripping in antiquity.

Currently, I am 34 years old. I’m an elder millennial who remembers landlines and call waiting and didn’t get my first cell phone until college, and even that thing had a walkie-talkie button. I vividly remember Y2K and 9/11 and, perhaps somewhat less culturally significant, the creepy countdown to the Olsen twins’ 18th birthday. I remember being amused as sociologists and ad executives tried to define and understand my generation’s motives. I remember reading endless contradictory think pieces on how we were lazy but resourceful, born of analog but coming of age in digital, entitled but scrappy.

And as with all things when you’re young, the world’s attention on my generation felt somewhere between an eye-roll and being warmed by the sun. We didn’t yet understand that all older generations examine the hell out of the new ones, wondering how we measure up, the ways we might save the world, and the ways we’d be sure to end it. We just knew that we were young, and that this was of deep interest to everyone.

And now we’re all mostly in our 30s, being called ma’am by the kids we used to babysit.

The ma’aming, obviously, struck a nerve with me.

When it was just men using the term, I could chalk it up to politeness. I could let myself believe that these were respectful males who were taught to err on the side of caution—that I was somehow only running into the kind of men who would never assume a woman’s pregnancy or interrupt her during a board meeting. But to this woman, I was thoroughly a ma’am, an exhausted-looking mother of two, trying to fit in a few pages of the books she’s been reading for months while waiting for a friend to show up for post-bath and bedtime drinks.

Once I got home, the ma’aming sent me racing back to my gently lit bathroom mirror to confirm what I generously had been thinking was a self-critical over-exaggeration: I really do look older. The lines around my mouth don’t disappear when I stop smiling. Despite my dogged commitment to the one good thing Paris Hilton ever taught me—wear sunglasses at all times, at all cost—crow’s feet are spreading out from the corners of my eyes. Even the Botox I had tried on a lark last summer was betraying me, allowing me to express a genuine reaction to the neck wrinkles I’d just spotted.

Aging, as with all things human, is weird. In the immediate wake of being ma’amed, fortified by two Negronis, I felt haggard and irrelevant. Without my youth glowing out of my pores, who was I? Until that night, I had never been so old in my life.

But in the harsh light of the next morning’s low-key hangover, and despite an entire night spent aging, I looked—young-ish again? And since then, it’s been fascinating to see how the aging process is both linear and entirely random. There are days I catch myself in the mirror and think I look great for someone with two toddlers who is mathematically in her mid-30s. And then there are the days I walk by a reflective surface and wonder who the crypt keeper dressed head to toe in Madewell is. The good days give me confidence and hope; the bad ones give fat commissions to the skin care team at Sephora.

Curious about the non-surgical ways I could freshen things up a bit, I decided to take action and made an appointment with plastic surgeon Nadia Mostovych at Belcara Health in Mt. Washington. I arrived armed with a picture of the endless bottles, pots, and snake oils that comprise my skin care regime and the need for an explanation about my sudden lurch into early middle-age.

What I learned was a science lesson in the art of decay. It turns out collagen production starts to decline at a rate of about 1 percent each year once we turn 20. It takes a while to notice, which is why so many people cite their early 30s as the time they first begin to see signs of aging. It’s clear that external elements like exposure to the sun, pollution, and nicotine can hasten wrinkles, but there’s not much to be done about curtailing the natural aging process.

“During consultations, some people say they feel like they look tired,” says Mostovych. “What they see in the mirror doesn’t look like them anymore. People get stuck on how they looked and felt during their late 20s and early 30s and can eventually feel really out of balance when those things no longer match.”

The good doctor began our consult by explaining the bare minimum of preventative skin maintenance—mineral-based sunscreen, retinol, and a good vitamin C serum or any kind of antioxidant serum—but as she moved into the more serious options to turn back time, I physically and emotionally found myself leaning in. In what can only be described as a self-imposed game of “vanity chicken,” I began wondering exactly how far I’d be willing to go with the myriad treatments, factoring in my current age, income bracket, and short-lived tanning bed stint in college.

Surprising even myself, I was willing to bypass traditional facials entirely, and head straight into the realm of procedures, which is how I found myself having my blood drawn on a sunny Friday morning. I opted for a platelet-rich plasma facial, better known to those us of who follow open-book celebrities on Instagram as the “Vampire Facial.” Essentially, blood is drawn and put in a centrifuge to separate the platelet-rich plasma. It is then placed on the skin, and a micro-needling treatment ensues. This treatment is ideally performed three times over the course of three to four months, and it’s meant to leave the patient with smoother, clearer, glowier skin.

2020 is a wild time to be alive.

In the immediate days following my treatment, I looked pretty banged up. I cancelled weekend plans, hunkered down with my generously portioned bag of post-treatment serums, and waited for the bruising and redness to subside. (If you believe we are close enough friends, I will show you post-procedure pictures, otherwise you’ll have to use your imagination or Google.) And after a few house-bound days, I noticed a genuine difference. My skin was tighter, my fine lines kinder.

The procedure isn’t cheap, and there is some recovery downtime, but it’s also painless and the results are immediate and can last more than a year. My toddlers haven’t noticed the improvements (rude), but close friends have, and I’ve been fielding texts and sending updates to the women in my life who are also finding themselves on the less buoyant side of collagen production.

There are clearly plenty of ways to fight the good fight against aging, but the question remains: Why do we fear it? How can a $50.2-billion-a-year industry thrive raging against the one thing our bodies all inevitably do, whether we intervene or not?

To explore that, I reached out to Michiko Iwasaki, a geropsychologist and associate professor at Loyola University. Aging in America, she pointed out, is not like aging in most countries. In her native Japan, she says, “Aging equals wisdom, and there is a more positive perception.”

But here in America, where we emphasize youth and vitality, it’s quite the opposite. “When the term ageism was invented in the late ’60s, people unconsciously accepted that aging is bad,” says Iwasaki. People do plastic surgery to find better work and partners, because looking young gives them an advantage.”

And we’re expected to act youthful, too. How can we genuinely embrace the fact that our bodies are aging when culturally we’re expected to work long hours, say yes to everything that’s offered, ignore accumulating PTO, and work during maternity leave? And with the advent of social media, we’re now keeping tabs on our own selves about just how much we can fit into a day while looking happy and attractive. Energy and activity are our social currency, and physically aging is the way we eventually betray ourselves.

As I considered my conversation with Dr. Iwasaki, I realized the timing of my interest in experimenting with anti-aging treatments isn’t simply vanity—it’s existential. Though I’m not past child-bearing age, I do not intend to have more children. My body is beginning to show wear and tear through, among other things, the cacophony of knee cracks signaling my impermanence each time I lift myself off the floor after playing with my kids. And the fact that my face is starting to look a bit older actually kind of matters. I automatically and subconsciously react to people based on their perceived age every day. I once gave a ride across a parking lot to a much older female stranger mostly because I assumed that, unless she was armed, she posed no threat. And when I encounter high-schoolers, I vacillate between not being able to stand them and wanting them to think I’m cool. If I’m making snap judgments about people based on their age, I think it’s reasonable to assume the same is happening to me.

So, is it possible to age gracefully? It seems, like so many things, that the answer is somehow highly specific to each of the eight billion people on this planet. For some, it might mean decades of plastic surgery, while others might rely solely on sunblock and water as their beauty treatments. For me, it will likely fall somewhere in between. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to get older, but I think I’ll always be a lady perpetually—though non-surgically—on a mission to look good for however old I am. Because, as Iwasaki points out, “Whomever, wherever we are, we are all aging.”

Just be careful whom you call ma’am along the way.

Amidst the mania and confusion that surrounded the night the date changed from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, Tom Zahorik was quite certain what he wanted to do.

He and his girlfriend, Val Newcomb, were living together in Roland Park at the time. Toward the tail end of the two-and-a-half years they’d been dating, Newcomb says she began to tap her fingers on the counter, wondering when Zahorik would propose.

He knew that he wanted to do so around a big event. So, at Thanksgiving, he conferred with family members to talk strategy. When he brought up the prospect of proposing on New Year’s Eve, he was met with a healthy dose of skepticism: Wasn’t there a chance that, when computer dates across the globe changed from 99 to 00, chaos would ensue?

“I was definitely concerned,” Zahorik says. “What was being kicked around wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.”

But he went on, undeterred. As the family gathered for New Year’s in Newcomb’s sister’s home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which was stocked with plenty of wine and beer and food just in case—like “preparing for a snowstorm,” Newcomb says—and with Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve as the soundtrack, Zahorik got down on one knee and popped the question.

“I remember being on the steps,” Zahorik says. “I was watching the TV out of the corner of my eye, because if there was going to be a blackout, it was going to be there.”

Newcomb said yes, and amidst the excitement of getting engaged, she and Tom looked around to make sure everyone and everything was alright. It’s not every day that the end of days is prophesized on as grand a scale as it was in the months leading up to New Year’s Eve 1999. Twenty years later, one of the 20th century’s most infamous events is also perhaps its most inconsequential.

Or, as the newly engaged Zahorik, who admits he was quite certain that the end was nigh, remembers thinking at the time: “I’m glad the world didn’t end.”

The Y2K problem arose out of a lack of forward thinking. For decades, to save space and characters in code, computer programmers entered two digits into systems to indicate the year. After all, for whatever year they were operating in—and for the many, many to follow—that’s all that was needed.

“Shortcuts were taken in system design which were not quite appropriate,” says University of Maryland computer science professor Ashok Agrawala. But around 1997, it dawned on those who were on the front lines that there was a potential problem. “People were concerned as to how computer systems would react to the digits turning over,” he says.

Effectively, there are a number of basic computer functions that had long been coded around the date at the time. So, the thought was, if there was a date entered that a computer couldn’t identify, it would cause a breakdown across airlines, communication tools, power grids, and myriad other resources.

“I can’t quite compare it to any other kind of thing,” Agrawala says. “This was effectively a global phenomenon.”

It was also one that had to be dealt with on a local level. In the days, months, and years leading up to Y2K, numerous steps were taken in Maryland to prepare for an unknown. A Y2K Ad Hoc Committee was formed at Johns Hopkins University to formulate a strategy surrounding how to best prepare for what lay ahead.

“We discussed the power grid a lot,” says Stephanie Reel, a member of the committee and the current Chief Information Officer for Johns Hopkins University and Health System. “There would be no ability to manage power if there were outages. A lot of planning went into it, and there was a lot of anxiety. It was such a far-reaching problem with a pretty fixed deadline and not any ability for flexibility.”

Reel says that the abstract side of the problem—discerning and cataloguing exactly what within Hopkins’ systems might be affected—was a necessary process that, while rewarding, required a comprehensive effort. It allowed for an audit of different networks in a way that they might not otherwise have done. To them, Y2K was like a light switch, that, once turned on, would reveal just how solid (or vulnerable) their systems actually were.

Essentially, what those at Johns Hopkins—and across city, state, and national governments—were doing was playing the world’s worst waiting game. Either catastrophe would strike at midnight, or it wouldn’t.

At Graul’s Market’s Ruxton location, co-owner Kate Poffenberger made sure that the store had a surplus of batteries and water to sell to customers. They also had extra change on hand—in case banks failed and were unable to process the checks that customers often paid with at that time. Concern about registers working was abated, too, with computerized systems checked and set to adjust accordingly.

In a December 1999 Baltimore Sun editorial entitled “Don’t Panic Over Y2K! Just Do This,” writer Mike Himowitz suggested readers “do the same thing you’d do in case of a blizzard, ice storm, or hurricane. Have plenty of flashlights and batteries available, along with a battery-powered radio or TV.” In the event of a power outage and eventual heat failure, he advised to “make arrangements with a friend or relative in another part of town who can give you a place to stay for a night or two if necessary.”

It’s easy to look back on this quaint advice and color it ripe for parody. But these words of wisdom were not isolated instances, and, though more often than not, cooler minds prevailed, the fear that existed was real, widespread, and not easily discounted.

“The unknown factored into [the sense of unrest] quite a lot,” Agrawala says.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, in what can only be described as lousy luck, then Governor Parris Glendening found himself juggling two crises. In the Pocomoke River, a Pfiesteria piscicida outbreak had been plaguing the area. There were reported fish deaths and health complaints related to fish consumption, and the government was scrambling to contain the problem. Though the problem was concentrated to the Pocomoke River, that didn’t stop people from worrying, and Glendening found himself doing his best to quell concerns.

“That and Y2K were somewhat similar,” Glendening recalls. “But with Y2K, we had years to prepare. I absolutely understand why a number of people were concerned and why there was some degree of near-hysteria at the time. My job as governor in both cases was to calmly and firmly bring people’s attention to what was going on, what the potential for disaster was, and reassure them.”

Though the outbreak predated Y2K, there was still enough popular concern that Glendening spent most of December 31, 1999 visiting crabhouses and seafood restaurants in an attempt to illustrate that Maryland seafood was safe. “That’s what I was doing up until midnight,” he says.

Throughout Baltimore, those in positions of power were preparing for what they hoped would not be a historic night. Mary Beth Marsden, formerly a longtime anchor at WMAR, was on the air on New Year’s Eve 1999. In any other year, senior employees could’ve been off, but on this night, the station was fully staffed in the event that something out of the ordinary happened. They knew that they could be affected, too. “I was concerned about how we would respond to potential chaos,” Marsden remembers. “In the news business, you don’t want to freak people out. At the same time, you can’t ignore it. As reporters, we were on the front lines. Those stories were the reason we were on the air—times like Y2K are where you feel like maybe you’re doing some good.”

Marsden recalls keeping her eye on news reports from Australia and other parts of the world where midnight had come and gone without any issues. It helped assuage concerns, she says.

Elsewhere on the broadcast front, Vic Carter, who has been at WJZ for 30 years, remembers anchoring a New Year’s Eve show from the Inner Harbor. While he and those at the station had a healthy amount of skepticism toward Y2K, Carter was prepared for anything as he broadcast from the roof of the Maryland Science Center.

“I’m not sure we had a huge backup plan in the event something happened,” Carter says. “Doing what I do for a living, it’s like getting into a ride at the carnival or on a roller coaster. You get in and buckle up and go along for the ride. Whatever happens, happens. Y2K was a fun thing to think about, but it didn’t happen.”

Meanwhile at Johns Hopkins, Reel remembers gathering with senior officials in a conference room at the hospital campus. There was a palpable energy in the air, as those who had been principally involved in preparation for the event waited to see what would happen. At the stroke of midnight, a brief moment of panic set in, as one of Reel’s colleagues with a dark sense of humor turned off the lights in the conference room.

“Nobody breathed for a minute,” Reel says. “It was comic relief—we needed it. We sat in that room with computers hooked up to go into every system to make sure it was running. It was a very odd feeling when things went fine—almost like an adrenaline withdrawal.”

Twenty years later, Y2K isn’t much more than a blip on the radar of those who lived through it. For all the hysteria, stocking of groceries, and apocalyptic discourse, it amounted to a whole lot of nothing. There were small glitches, but nothing came close to what was foretold.

Whether that was a result of years of planning or simply something wildly overblown is debatable. But for all the news coverage, preemptive measures, and promise that New Year’s Eve 1999 brought, the fact remains that what was once going to be a seminal moment in human history simply wasn’t. Though, in Tom Zahorik’s case, it was a seminal moment, one that brought with it a sense of relief, eventual marital bliss, and, he admits with a laugh, a pretty nifty mnemonic device.

“It makes it easier to count my anniversary.”

Black & White Party
Jan. 25. When it comes to planning and executing The Pratt Contemporaries’ annual Black & White Party, Alexa McCulloch and Lindsey Stone, co-owners of Union3 Event Productions, jokingly refer to themselves as the “conductors of that crazy symphony.” This year, the duo will orchestrate the two-day overhaul that will transform the Central Library into the iconic land of Oz on January 25. It’s all to honor the fundraiser’s “no place like home” motto that revels in its return to the downtown library following two years of renovations. And while the pair is excited to see their creative takes on the Emerald City and Munchkinland come to life, McCulloch, left, says her favorite part of the event is watching the main hall fill up with guests ready to dance the night away. “The best thing about this event is that it’s a party for party’s sake,” she says. “Watching people let loose on the dance floor and have a good time in support of the library—there’s nothing better.” Enoch Pratt Free Library. 8 p.m.. $175.
—KP

Polar Bear Plunge
Jan. 23-25. Over the past 23 years, the ice-cold waters of the Chesapeake Bay have become the site of one of Maryland’s most anticipated charity fundraisers, thanks to the Maryland State Police. To become one of the brave souls that throws their near-naked body into the frigid waters at Sandy Point State Park, fundraise ahead of the plunge and help Special Olympics Maryland meet its $3-million goal. Sandy Point State Park, 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis. Times vary. $75.

Elizabeth Catlett: Artist as Activist
To March 1. If you’ve driven or walked past the Reginald F. Lewis Museum lately, you’ve already seen one of the standout pieces, “Sharecropper,” from this exhibit draped over the side of the downtown museum. Revered as one of the most important artists of the 20th century in both the U.S. and Mexico, Catlett’s portrait of a woman gazing into the distance is one of 20 prints and 14 sculptures on display through the start of spring. Walk through this thought-provoking exhibit to learn how the award-winning artist used her work to confront injustice in 1950s Mexico, with particular attention to the plight of sharecroppers. Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Times vary. Free-$8.

Baltimore Crankie Fest
Jan. 3-5. Rediscover the art of storytelling through crankies—scrolls that are hand-cranked to show one illustrated scene at a time—during the seventh annual Baltimore Crankie Fest. Head to Creative Alliance for this celebration of the niche visual medium, featuring four performances with handmade crankies accompanied by musical guests. Watch as these hand-drawn stories unfurl before your eyes, and participate in workshops on how to make your own crankie. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. Times vary. $18.

Baltimore Winter Restaurant Week
Jan. 10-19. Start scouring menus and planning your meal schedule now to prepare for Baltimore Winter Restaurant Week, the biggest buzz in Charm City’s cuisine scene. Brave the icy weather for hot deals at nearly 100 local dining gems, such as two-course lunches for $15 or three-course dinners for $25. Break bread at up-and-coming spots such as Orto and Noona’s, or revisit old haunts like Tio Pepe’s and Alexander’s Tavern. Locations, times and prices vary.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade
Jan. 20. Honor the icon of the Civil Rights Movement during this 20th-annual parade along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where thousands of onlookers will gather to commemorate the reverend’s lifelong fight for racial justice. This year, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts will invite an honorary grand marshal whose work embodies King’s legacy to lead the proceedings. Find a spot along the parade route to watch as floats, marching bands, and community groups trek through the city streets to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King. Location varies. 12 p.m.-2 p.m.. Free.

Harbor Point Ice Festival
Jan. 11. It’s that time of year when Baltimoreans typically stay inside to avoid the blustering wind and bitter cold, but the Harbor Point Ice Festival gives locals and visitors alike the chance to wrap up, come together, and warm our hearts in this magical winter wonderland. Visit Harbor Point during this one-day affair and spend the day marveling at handmade ice sculptures, enjoying live music and eats from area food vendors, and participating in tons of family-friendly activities. Harbor Point, 1310 Point St.. 12 p.m.-6 p.m.. Free.

CATS
Jan. 21-Jan. 26. With the live-action adaptation of this award-winning musical now playing in theaters, most audiences are already familiar with the weirdness of a show dedicated to a tribe of cats prowling around at night. Hear iconic songs like “Memory” and “Jellicle Cats” live when the national tour stops at the Hippodrome Theatre this month. Although this set of six shows will feature the original score and costume design from the musical’s first years on Broadway, awe-struck audiences will experience the classic tale with brand-new sound design, choreography, and direction as CATS gets an update for the new generation. The Hippodrome Theatre, 12 N Eautaw St. Times vary. $52-201.

A Beautiful, Terrible Thing
Jan. 23. Calling all local musicians! This month, the Stoop Storytelling Series is partnering with legendary rock club Ottobar to give space to stories about the pitfalls and triumphs of life as an independent artist. Whether you have experiences to speak on or would rather sit back and listen, grab a drink and prepare to hear live retellings of musicians’ best and worst gigs, most meaningful sets, and everything in between. The Ottobar, 2549 N Howard St. 8 p.m. $15.

Chesapeake Oyster, Wine, & Beer Festival
Jan. 25. What’s the best way to wash down a bushel of world-class oysters? Heavy Seas beer, of course—and the two dozen other wines and spirits you will find at this 13th annual, adults-only seafood extravaganza. Blend briny bivalves and boozy flavors downtown at The Assembly Room, where tickets give you an all-access pass to a shuckin’ good time. The Assembly Room, 318-316 Guilford Ave.. 12 p.m.-4 p.m. $69.

On an impossibly warm morning in late September, James Wolf has his hands full. Literally.

Sitting on an Orioles blanket at a Wyman Park playgroup, he bounces a toddler up and down on his left thigh, encouraging the familiar motions of “The Wheels on the Bus,” while his right arm rocks a stirring infant nestled inside her car seat. Somehow, and without upsetting the rhythm of either child, a cell phone emerges from his back pocket, which he deftly uses to capture a video to send to his wife. In between songs, he greets wandering toddlers by name and chats with the other 20 or so parents and caregivers—all of whom are women.

Sixteen miles north at GBMC-Hunt Valley, his wife, Dr. Kate Diehn, settles into her first full week back to work as a primary-care physician after the birth of their daughter, June, earlier in the summer. By the time she returns home in the evening, she’ll have cared for upward of 16 patients while her family spent their day visiting playgroups, running errands, taking long walks, and keeping the house in order.

Wolf and Diehn are part of a growing trend of couples who are bucking the antiquated gender norms that once kept women out of the boardroom and men out of the nursery. According to the Pew Research Center, 17 percent of all stay-at-home parents in 2016 were fathers—that’s a 10 percent rise since the data was first reliably gathered in 1989.

Wolf had very little hesitation about leaving his career as an environmental remediation senior project manager. His job was rewarding, he liked the work, and he has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins in environmental science to boot, but the opportunity to stay home with his kids was an easy choice, especially given his wife’s higher earning potential.

“When our son, Henry, was born, we kicked around the idea of leaving my job, and the utility of having one of us at home was what tipped the scales,” says Wolf. “It pays off in so many dividends—the continuous exposure to the kids means there’s no disconnect. I know what they’ve learned and done all day and can relay that to my wife.”

But it doesn’t come without sacrifice.

Wolf cites the main stressors of being an at-home parent: the beating his body takes from holding and chasing around two small kids, the pressure on his wife to be the sole breadwinner, and the occasional feelings of isolation he has. Though the number of stay-at-home dads is certainly rising, it’s not always easy to break into a mom group.

Feeding time: James Wolf with Henry and June. –Mike Morgan

“Moms connect quickly because they typically have the shared experience of being pregnant, going through birth, and breastfeeding,” says Wolf. “I can’t really chime in on those, so I sometimes have to wait on the sidelines until I can jump in to talk about things like diapers or which libraries and playgrounds to go to.”

According to the Pew Research, 17 percent of all stay-at-home parents in 2016 were fathers.

WTMD music coordinator Sam Sessa also struggled with the isolation of parenting young children when he left his job as a Baltimore Sun reporter to stay home with his newborn son.

As a stay-at-home dad, it took some time to fall into a groove, and Sessa was surprised to find himself almost exclusively among mothers and female nannies. “I’d read stories that they existed, but, in practice, there just weren’t that many dads around,” he says. Like Wolf, Sessa noticed barriers to making meaningful conversation with some of the mothers. “Being a stay-at-home dad was isolating in ways I wasn’t expecting,” he says. “The first time I saw the acronym for the term, I was like, ‘Oh, of course it’s SAHD.’”

He and his wife, Dr. Amie Sessa, a dermatologist, synchronized their schedules so Sam could work two days a week at WTMD to ease the isolation. “In the early days of parenting, I would walk into the office, sit down next to a coworker, and say, ‘I need to talk to an adult for the next 15 minutes, please,’ which became my therapy after spending a full day with a baby and a toddler.”

It didn’t, however, take Sessa long to find a way to connect to his stay-at-home peers, and his part-time work actually became a lifeline (and, eventually, a full-time gig as his kids got older). At a library playdate, a group of moms noticed his WTMD shirt and lamented the loss of attending concerts after having kids. Immediately seeing a way to fill the void, this conversation sparked Sessa to create the popular Saturday Morning Tunes series, which brings kids and their parents—yes, even dads—to various venues around Baltimore for music the entire family can find palatable. He clearly struck a chord—a recent Saturday Morning Tunes concert at Power Plant Live! saw 1,200 men, women, and children rocking out.

And while Sessa’s music series is produced on a fairly large scale, Dr. Kevin Roy, an associate professor at University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, says that, as men and women renegotiate caregiving roles, it’s not uncommon for stay-at-home fathers to create their own social events and circles. “Men who stay at home can feel a need to play a community role,” he says. “Instead of feeling they are just caregivers, they might also be the soccer coach and get involved in community-based volunteer work as a way to create some status in their new role.”

It was this impulse, coupled with a very real need to connect with other male parents, that led to the creation of stay-at-home-dad groups around the country. Brock Lusch of Cincinnati is a board member of the At-Home Dad Network, a group with more than 13,000 Facebook followers, that was founded 24 years ago in an attempt to connect fathers to each other. Now the group hosts an annual convention.

“It started on chat rooms and forums, and at the first convention, they ordered pizza and brought in a few speakers,” says Lusch, who was in the midst of prepping for this year’s convention in Minneapolis, speaking by phone. DadCon19 will bring more than 120 men to Minnesota with the mission of connecting primary caregiver dads together to discuss professional development as dads, network, and get a chance to relax.

“Being a stay-at-home dad was isolating in ways I wasn’t expecting,” says Sam Sessa.

Mike Howarth, a Federal Hill father who left his job at Legg Mason to become a full-time parent at about the same time the At-Home Dad Network launched, remembers the world before social media, when men on the playground were sparse and there were no neighborhood Facebook pages to turn to for kid-friendly events.

“The ‘stay-at-home’ part of the title is a misnomer,” he says. “You have to get out of the house.” And so, he turned to what existed in 2000—phone chains, list serves, word of mouth, and the original way to build a network: physically going out into the world to meet people. “We lucked out, living in Federal Hill, because there were a lot of new, young families, and there was always something to do,” he says.

Tony Stephens, a Federal Hill father of two, has capitalized on the social media landscape not available to Howarth at the turn of the century. After moving his family from College Park to Baltimore, Stephens quickly realized the intense commute back to his work as a lobbyist was untenable. He took a 40 percent pay cut and began working 30 hours a week as the executive director of the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance, a nonprofit that connects city parents to resources and each other. This move allowed him the flexibility to walk his boys to and from school, take the lead on household management, and find an easy way to connect to his new community.

But even the most evolved dads still deal with the stigma of not being the primary breadwinner. And while he certainly sees other fathers in the lead caregiving role, especially given his work, he thinks modern dads have less of a social stigma compared to their predecessors, who were viewed as doing “women’s work” by staying at home to raise children.

“Technology and social media have played a huge part—we can’t help but reflect our peers,” Stephens says. “I wondered how I would be perceived taking this step, but saw friends and acquaintances in New York, Iowa, lots of cities across the country doing this, and it gave me a nudge.”

Beyond that, Stephens says that social media has helped reshape gender norms. “Social media has changed the landscape of what we see as masculinity. We have access to more people like ourselves making choices that aren’t cookie-cutter masculine Mad Men images of what men are supposed to be.”

Even the most evolved dads still deal with the stigma of not being the primary breadwinner.

And the anti-Mad Men parallels don’t end there. “Family life is different now,” says Stephens. “Parents want to be engaged with their children. Most of us aren’t trying to work toward a lavish existence anymore. We just want to make a life where the family can be the best it can be.”

Dr. Roy echoes this sentiment. He says men who choose to stay at home tend to be younger, hold gender-equitable beliefs, and are able to realign their sense of what providing means. “These are men who are open to playing with different ways of being a guy,” he says. “They feel less stress taking on this role, which, to some extent, leads to a higher relationship quality with their partners.”

It’s worth noting that, of all the men interviewed for this article, not one regrets the decision to stay home. Each spoke reverently and generously about their wives. They all reported a sense of pride and feelings of fulfillment, and they all referenced the long-needed change in attitude toward “traditional” gender roles as even more motivation to stay home. “My wife is amazing,” says Wolf. “She takes care of her patients all day, which is exhausting. Then she comes home and transitions right back into the role of a parent, which is work all over again. She gives me a lot of credit for what I do for the family, but I think all the credit belongs to her.”

And though his wife, Diehn, struggles—like most working parents—with feelings of guilt and of missing out, she’s watched her young family thrive with her husband at the helm. “Sometimes I’m sad to not be the one at home, but I’m also proud that my kids can see that I’m dedicated to my career,” she says. “Ultimately, our arrangement enables me to be the best I can be at work, because I know my kids are being taken care of by someone who sees them and loves them like I do.”

Sessa believes the positive outcomes of fathers taking the lead reverberate far beyond the home.

“Maybe having more stay-at-home dads would be good for the world,” he says. “If and when they go back to work, they’ll have more empathy for women who are parents. The default mode for men can sometimes be ignorance—before dads stayed home, they didn’t know what women went through, because they hadn’t done it.”

We never thought we’d say these words, but Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is having a moment right now. Known for so long as “the place with the Amish buggies,” this city, located in the hilly commonwealth countryside (and only a quick hour-and-a-half drive from Baltimore), has recently emerged with its own personality. And it’s a surprisingly hip one.

Surprising because, well, it’s just so dang old. Lancaster—one of the oldest inland cities in the United States—was settled in 1709 by German immigrants known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. It officially became Lancaster 20 years later, when a British citizen named it after his hometown in England. (Locally, Lancaster is pronounced “lank-iss-tr” not “lan-kast-r.”) It even served as the nation’s capital for exactly one day during the Revolutionary War—September 27, 1777.

Today, the Lancaster Central Market—open Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays—is the heart of the city and its revival. Around since 1730, it’s the oldest continuously run public farmers’ market in the country. On one fall afternoon, post-yoga women peruse French breakfast radishes at Groff’s vegetable stand. Kids chow down on whoopie pies, a cakey cream-filled chocolate treat that originated in Lancaster County, and retirees shop the long aisles, illuminated by skylights overhead. There’s something for everyone—African cuisine, Cuban sandwiches, aged goat cheese, and more herbs and grains than you could use in a lifetime—a fusion of old and new.

That seems to be what Lancaster has done so well—hold on to tradition (Mennonite men in their straw hats and beards selling butchered meats) while embracing innovation and the future (countless boutiques and a restaurant scene The New York Times called “a global feast in an unlikely spot.”) And while you might head home and start Googling condos in The Lancaster Press Building (it’s a four-minute walk to the market), an even better idea might be a day trip or an overnighter in a place that’s easily walkable and pleasant in all seasons (albeit a bit nippy in winter—pack accordingly).

→ EAT

Lancaster’s food scene has grown into more than just the chicken pot pies and apple dumplings of the Pennsylvania Dutch.

To start the day, Commonwealth on Queen is a go-to for brunch, with a menu overflowing with toasts, though the real star is a smoked salmon and arugula eggs Benedict. Similarly, the Bistro Barberet & Bakery, owned by former Le Bec-Fin executive pastry chef Cedric Barberet, features a lovely bistro menu, but its standout is the bakery, brimming with all the favorites: crème brulée, tiramisu, tarts, macarons, croissants, and eclairs indulgently filled with vanilla, pistachio, and dark chocolate cream.

We’re partial to Max’s Eatery, too, a foodie’s diner that’s perfect for kids. Breakfast is served all day, and even as an adult, it’s amazing how magical a cereal bar with unlimited refills of Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms sounds.

That being said, if you want to spend less time eating and more time taking in the sights, swing by Silantra Asian Street Kitchen for fast-casual Chinese that’s also family-friendly. Think Chipotle but with scallion burritos and sides like shrimp chips with sweet chili sauce and sweet potato fries with wasabi mayo.

After a blustery afternoon, head indoors to Luca for a rustic Italian dinner featuring the likes of bruschetta with handmade burrata and local figs, pappardelle with pork ragu and smoked buttermilk, and their famous wood-fired pizza with spicy tomato sauce, shaved garlic, soppressata, mozzarella, and hot honey. (They’ve also adopted the “Living Wage” initiative to bring equality to kitchen staffs, with a small service charge applied to all food purchases for the back-of-house employees.)

Lancaster holds on to tradition while embracing innovation and the future.

→ DRINK

These days, when it comes to measuring a town’s hipness, there may be no better way to judge than by its coffee shops. And Passenger Coffee & Tea’s King Street cafe—located less than a mile from their roastery—gets a perfect score. The coffee, made by baristas who have mastered the craft, is as smooth as the simplistic décor: wooden benches with soft leather backings, white walls, penny-round floors. And while we could sit and people-watch all day from the shared courtyard with the market—there’s wandering to do.

Ask an Irishman his favorite bar and you know it’s always going to be good. Tellus360 did not disappoint, with its notable selection of whiskeys, beers, and local craft brews, not to mention a super impressive 10,000-square-foot green roof with actual lush gardens as part of an ongoing attempt to reduce storm water runoff in Lancaster. (You’ll have to go back in the spring for that, of course, though currently it’s an après-ski bar, complete with fireplaces to keep guests warm and cozy.)

Just a short walk from downtown, Thistle Finch Distillery is located in the former Walter Schnader Tobacco Warehouse. Tours run on Saturdays and Sundays, giving patrons a chance to taste the small-batch whiskey, gin, and vodka made with locally sourced grains in their custom copper pot still. They mix a mean cocktail, too.

If you like your drinks with a side of amusement, you have to hit Decades, a six-lane bowling alley and arcade with a full bar. Inside the historic Stahr Armory, the 80-year-old, 15,000-square-foot gymnasium—which looks like a beer hall and a roller-skating rink had a baby—is SkeeBall, Donkey Kong, Ms. Pacman, Frogger, and Centipede (among a ton of other retro games), as well as lanes of ten-pin that are first-come first-served. Both the beer and cocktail offerings are strong; this time of year, try the “Double Agent,” made with aperol and vermouth, topped with hefeweizen beer and garnished with orange and clove.

→ SHOP

One of the reasons Lancaster has been compared to Brooklyn is its independent shops that speckle the streets, from the stellar Mr. Suit Records vinyl shop to Sweetish Candy, a store that sells—you guessed it—only Swedish candy, to the super popular Foxduck boutique with its locally designed and ethically made apparel that highlights the city. Meanwhile, Ellicott & Co. is a little like the handsome guy you still think about from college—smells good, looks good, and knows how to use a cast-iron skillet; tucked into a side street, this men’s store is packed full of American-made apparel, accessories, and home goods. Mark your calendar, as many of the 200-plus boutiques stay open late on December 12 for extra holiday shopping.

But is it really a trip to Lancaster if you don’t stop by Building Character, a marketplace with 70-plus independent shops selling vintage, recycled, and handmade items like locally made jewelry, furniture, artwork, and lots of postcards and photographs that walk the line between old-fashioned and creepy? And a block away, its sister store, Madcap & Co., has an impressive selection of locally made items, too, from mugs and coasters to candles and cards to plants and penny candy. It’s easy to spend a good hour inside, convincing yourself you do need a tote bag that says, “Lancaster is fricking awesome,” cheekily attributed to James Buchanan, the 15th U.S. president.

→ DO & SEE

Speaking of Buchanan, who is historically considered one of the worst presidents ever, you can visit Wheatland, his 1828 Federal-style house, right outside the city. Just take your time getting there—Buchanan Avenue, President Avenue, and Marietta Avenue are full of gorgeous houses that are fun to gawk at. Tours are led by knowledgeable guides in period costumes. Yuletide at Wheatland is a particularly stunning time to visit, with rooms overflowing with Christmas décor, plus festive music and games.

If your kids grew up going to Dutch Wonderland, introduce them to the Lancaster Science Factory. It’s a small museum (which just underwent an expansion) where kids can explore science, engineering, and technology with hands-on displays. The Clair Brothers, a local live touring production company—they’ve done sound for artists including the likes of Elton John and Metallica—sponsored a stage at the museum complete with sound and lighting elements for the kids to experiment with. On top of that, if you have a Maryland Science Center membership, admission is free.

It’s a town that seems to have a kinship with Baltimore: lots of history and quirkiness.

If you can, plan your trip around a show at the Fulton—it’s the oldest working theater in America and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The building itself stands on the foundation of Lancaster’s pre-Revolutionary jail, and the exterior wall of the prison courtyard is now the theater’s back wall. Erected in 1852, it was designed by the renowned Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan to serve as a community center for meetings, lectures, concerts, and theatrical performances.

→ STAY

Although Lancaster is a pretty straight shot up 83 (with a gorgeous drive over the mighty Susquehanna River), staying over is always a great option, especially with top-notch lodgings including the Lancaster Arts Hotel, an industrial, art-heavy lodge located in a former warehouse, and the Cork Factory Hotel with its stylish rooms in a building that once housed the historic Armstrong Cork & Kerr Glass companies. If you spend the night, you can pop over to the Kitchen Kettle Village—a 20-minute drive from downtown—for loads of Pennsylvania Dutch treats and goods (jams, relishes, quilts) that happen to make great gifts. And they do it right for the holidays, too—Christmas lights, caroling, and s’mores.

But no matter the season, it’s easy to fall in love with Lancaster—and not just because of the whoopie pies. It’s a town that seems to have a kinship with Baltimore: lots of history, quirkiness, independent shops, great restaurants, love of markets. It’s the kind of place you leave and then immediately start planning your next trip to. In fact, we’ve already been back twice.

Mayor’s Christmas Parade
When Debbie Oxnard walked with The Silver Steppers, an area equestrian drill team, in the Mayor’s Annual Christmas Parade for the first time in 2009, her participation was a complete surprise to her mother. To Oxnard’s family, watching the annual parade has become as cherished a tradition as Christmas morning, so when she rode by her mother’s home on Hampden’s 41st Street with the whole family watching, her mom was shocked. “We quickly took pictures while the parade was stopped at a red light,” Oxnard says with a laugh. This year’s procession on December 8 will be Oxnard’s 10th time riding in the parade, with her family cheering the group on from their front stoop with hot cocoa in hand. “I grew up watching that parade, so riding in it is amazing,” she says. “It’s like coming home.”—KP Location varies. 1 p.m.. Free.

Night of 100 Elvises
Dec. 6-8. Trust us: You can’t help falling in love with The Lord Baltimore Hotel’s annual Night of 100 Elvises. For the 26th year, the downtown venue will pack three of its rooms with entertainment fit for The King, including dozens of Elvis impersonators, tribute artists, and plenty of hip-thrusting dance moves. With classic car displays, vintage rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, an Elvis ice sculpture, and, new this year, a themed wedding chapel, attendees definitely won’t be lonesome on this night. Lord Baltimore Hotel, 20 W. Baltimore St.. 7-11p.m.. $62-876.

Washington Monument Lighting
Dec. 5. You can’t call yourself a true Baltimorean until you’ve attended the region’s longest-running holiday tradition in the heart of Mt. Vernon. Join thousands of onlookers around the Washington Monument and watch in awe as fireworks light up the night sky to mark the start of another holiday season. After the show, peruse a holiday village, catch a live performance, and duck into local haunts like Wet City and Dooby’s to warm up with fellow revelers and drink specials. Mount Vernon Place. 5-8 p.m.. Free.

Adorned: African Women and the Art of Identity
Dec. 11-June 19, 2020. Learn more about the incredibly strict gendered division of artistic labor that existed in sub-Saharan Africa throughout the 19th and 20th centuries through this new exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art. Opening this month, this thought-provoking display will bring two dozen pieces from the museum’s collection together, including jewelry, dyed textiles, and intricately decorated gourds, to illustrate how the types of works created by men and women shaped the social identities of that time. 10 Art Museum Dr.. Time varies. Free.

The Stoop Holiday Hootenanny
Dec. 12. What could be more Baltimore than coming together to tell stories around a metaphorical stoop? Get together with friends and neighbors at The Senator Theatre for an evening of cocktails, a bluegrass performance from local father-son duo Ken and Brad Kolodner, and listening to brave Baltimoreans share stories, from heartwarming to outrageous, about past holiday experiences. This Stoop stomp is sure to keep you inspired throughout the season. The Senator Theatre. 7 p.m.. $15-25.

Jesus Christ Superstar
Dec. 17-22. Fifty years ago, acclaimed composer Andrew Lloyd Webber debuted this rock-inspired soundtrack to Jesus Christ’s final weeks. Now, the musical phenomenon has been revived for a powerhouse anniversary tour. Whether you’ve got heaven on your mind, or you’re just feeling like a superstar, head downtown to the Hippodrome Theatre to see Jesus Christ in all his singing and dancing glory. 12 N. Eutaw St.. Time varies. $80.50-160.

A John Waters Christmas
Dec. 19. As long as he lives to peddle impudence, John Waters will host his annual one-man holiday show, “A John Waters Christmas,” where nothing is off-limits. Will this local filmmaking icon go toe-to-toe with President Trump’s recent Twitter attacks on Charm City to set the record straight, or will he set his sights elsewhere? Whatever the Pope of Trash has in store, head down to Baltimore Soundstage for a refreshing taste of his typical twisted humor. 124 Market Pl.. 7 p.m.. $44.

BSO Holiday Spectacular
Dec. 21. Nothing rings in the holiday season quite like tap-dancing Santas. This exciting program at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall will transport you to a holiday haven, featuring the crowd-favorite Santas, an audience sing-along, and a few other musical surprises. Stay in the holiday spirit after the show with opportunities for family photos, holiday cookies, and ornament shopping in the lobby. The Meyerhoff Theatre. Time varies. $17.50-75.

Kwanzaa Celebration
Dec. 28. Every year, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum hosts an all-out Kwanzaa celebration that brings Baltimoreans from all walks of life together to honor this week-long holiday that lauds African heritage in African-American culture. Head to the downtown museum to experience African dance and drumming performances, workshops, lectures, crafts, and even a marketplace with the theme Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility. In between activities, walk through the galleries to view exhibitions such as EMPOWERED! Black Action Figures, Superheroes, and Collectibles. 830 E. Pratt St.. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.. $5.

New Year’s Eve Spectacular
Dec. 31. While there will be no shortage of celebratory dinners, parties, and concerts to ring in the start of a new decade, this Inner Harbor extravaganza is certainly the centerpiece of the evening. With a fireworks show that can be seen from waterfront neighborhoods like Federal Hill and Canton, as well as live music and dancing along the Inner Harbor promenade, this annual New Year’s Eve Spectacular is a can’t-miss way to welcome the start of 2020. 100 Light St.. Time varies. Free.

Bob and Darlene Hosier have enough Christmas decorations to deck out four houses, top to bottom. Over the past few decades, the couple has adorned the front of their three-story rowhome with countless strings of lights—along with a rotating cast of bright snowmen and wreaths, an inflatable purple hippopotamus, vintage Christmas dolls, and a handmade replica of the train garden from It’s A Wonderful Life—and hundreds of thousands of people have traveled to their home on the corner of a sleepy Hampden block to see it.

“It’s just some Christmas lights,” grumbles Bob, repeating the phrase over and over in conversation. The 62-year-old has given this response to countless people over the past few decades—reporters, grocery store clerks, documentary filmmakers—who ask him why Hampden’s Miracle on 34th Street tradition has become a local and national phenomenon that’s now woven into the narrative of Baltimore’s quirky character.

Sometimes, when Bob repeats the phrase, he pulls on the ends of his graying handlebar mustache; other times, he gently slaps the knee of his worn-in blue jeans for emphasis. It doesn’t matter how many times or in how many ways he repeats it, he says, there will always be people who don’t get it. People who question why he and his neighbors living on the 700 block of W. 34th Street spend the weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving decorating their front porches, stoops, and lawns with over-the-top holiday light displays. People who don’t understand how the residents deal with the tens of thousands of strangers who pack the block during the holiday season to take pictures of “the most outrageous Christmas lights in Maryland.” People who press them about what kind of break they get on their electric bills or whether they get paid for their appearances on HGTV, CNN, or the homepage of Bing.

But it’s never been about the cost or the publicity, although Bob understands why no one can believe that he and his neighbors do all of it—the planning, purchasing, decorating, hosting—for absolutely no money. The Miracle on 34th Street tradition is simply how Bob and his neighbors decorate for the holidays, and no matter how the block and its residents have changed through the years, that sentiment stays the same—at least as long as Bob has a say in it. “I’m just a guy who puts up some Christmas lights,” Bob says. “I can’t help that the whole world shows up to see them.”

The story of how the tradition started is a tale almost as time-honored as Christmas itself. In the early 1980s, Bob, who was working as a meat cutter at Kash & Karry at the time, fell in love with Darlene, who was working as the grocery store’s head cashier. The pair tied the knot in 1983, and Bob moved into Darlene’s three-story rowhome on W. 34th Street’s 700 block, where she has lived for all of her nearly 70 years.

As a young married couple, they realized they shared an affinity for Christmas decorations during their first holiday season. Bob, who grew up decorating the outside of his parents’ house in Northeast Baltimore with as many multicolored lights as possible, asked Darlene if he could add some twinklers to the outside of the house. Her father, who purchased the home in 1947, had always decked out the home’s exterior during the holidays, and Darlene had carried the torch since his death, but Bob took it to a new level with themed displays, illuminated figures, and even a full-sized tree on the roof. “To any rational human being, what I do during the second half of the year to prepare to decorate would be too much work,” Bob says. “To me, it’s just getting ready for the holiday.”

“If someone wants to join this party that we have with the lights every year, we’re here for you.”

In the early 1990s, Bob rigged a speaker system so they’d have Christmas music playing along with the lights. Their neighbor across the street wanted to be able to enjoy the holiday tunes from his house, too, so Bob wrapped a speaker wire around a string of lights and ran it along the light pole that adjoins the two houses. Other residents on the block admired his handiwork, and before long, Bob was going from rowhouse to rowhouse installing hooks on his neighbors’ roofs and draping lights to connect all 25 homes on the block.

Something about Bob’s commitment to creating extravagant displays that grew in size and spectacle each year, along with the over-the-street lights, seemed to motivate other residents to get in on the act. While there was always plenty of holiday spirit and a strong sense of community to spare, residents began adding countless bulbs, as well as things like working train sets, brightly lit palm trees, and handmade sculptures, to the outside of their homes. By the late ’90s, as word spread to the rest of the region, 34th Street became a popular destination for holiday revelers who would walk or drive down the block to admire the rows of merry houses. “People were pulling over to take pictures of everything,” Darlene says. “The attention just started rolling from there.”

Full-scale notoriety came in 2001, when the Maryland Lottery contacted Bob with the request to capture the block in its full holiday glory for a TV commercial. Bob hesitated, not only because he didn’t feel comfortable getting paid for the commerical, but also because he believed that once the rest of the state saw what locals had begun dubbing the “Miracle on 34th Street,” there’d be no turning back. “A bunch of the neighbors came to me and said they really wanted to do the lottery commercial,” Bob says. “I said it was okay with me, but I told them, ‘Remember folks, if we do this, we can’t stop doing this. Once it starts, we can’t stop,’” he says.

Sure enough, the week the commercial ran, the tightly knit working-class neighborhood was practically gridlocked. “Cars couldn’t move, the fire department couldn’t move, the police department couldn’t move,” Bob remembers. “There were people stuck on both sides of I-83 waiting to get in. I have never seen so many people in my life.” Thousands of people streamed into Hampden that winter to see the now-famous lights, and media attention from both area and national news organizations followed close behind.

Thanks to coverage from national outlets such as The Travel Channel, Nightline, and Better Homes & Gardens, as well as the rise of social media, the Miracle on 34th Street tradition has steadily grown into the sensation that it is today. As depicted in the commercial that escalated it all, there’s a countdown that marks the block’s “lighting” on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, except now every square foot of the street is filled with onlookers and the night is known as an unofficial block party. The tradition still comes to a close on New Year’s Eve with a handmade ball drop, but now instead of four people watching a slightly toasted Bob run through the street as “Baby New Year,” roughly 4,000 people show up to catch a glimpse of him in a diaper and bonnet.

Some residents have even developed their own methods of measuring the crowds, including the Hosiers, who leave composition notebooks on their porch for visitors to sign and collect about 20 books-worth of signatures every season. Longtime resident and artist Jim Pollock, who converts his living room into a pop-up art gallery during the holidays, uses a handheld clicker to count people as they walk in. (He averages about 1,200 visitors per night, and nearly 300,000 people have walked through in the past seven years alone.) “One time, a woman came through the gallery and said, ‘In a world full of chaos, this is a beacon of hope,’” says Pollock, who’s famous for the 10-foot-tall hubcap tree in his front yard. “What more could you ask for from some Christmas decorations?”

“At the end of the day, it’s about nothing else but decorating for the holidays.”

Of course, fame has its downsides. The sidewalk, as well as people’s porches, steps, and circuit breakers, have experienced significant wear and tear, and finding street parking during the holidays is a decades-old issue. Far from immune to the city’s increased crime rates, the block’s residents threatened to go dark during the 2014 holiday season in an effort to bring attention to a string of violent crimes that had occurred in the neighborhood. (The lights stayed on, but the bluff attracted plenty of buzz.)

But despite transforming from a kitschy block-wide hobby into an internationally recognized attraction, the only thing that has really changed about the Miracle on 34th Street—besides the added foot traffic—is its residents. It’s still strictly voluntary: There isn’t a homeowners’ association or a committee that organizes the event, and, undeterred by persistent requests, there are no vendors or businesses sponsoring the block.

Over the past few years, all but seven of the original decorating households have left the block, making way for a new generation of renters and homeowners. “I’ve had a lot of good neighbors who have passed or left the block and took some of that magic with them,” Pollock says. “We’ve had to find new people to pick up the spirit.”

While longtime residents don’t have a say in whether new neighbors embrace the street’s tradition, many make an effort to ensure that newcomers are aware of the four-to-five week spectacle that will take place outside their front door and offer decorating assistance. “If somebody needs lights, I’ll certainly spread the joy,” Bob says. “If someone wants to join this party that we have with the lights every year, we’re here for you.”

Since most residents know about the block’s signature event before moving day, many are prepared to carry on the tradition, or in some cases, start their own. Hillary Strilko, who moved onto the street in 2009, now teams up with local animal rescue and welfare organizations to serve cookies and cocoa to 34th Street visitors in exchange for donations. The initiative started as a way to honor the memory of her brindle pit bull, Roo, and has raised more than $135,000 over the past decade. “We use a tall money box, and a lot of parents will lift their kids so that they can donate themselves,” says Strilko, who calls her home “the doghouse” and decorates the outside with inflatable pups and photos of pets in holiday gear. “It’s heartwarming to watch people teach their kids about giving back to local causes.”

-Amanda White-Iseli

Down the street, Riley Wilks and his wife, Heather Franz, have embraced their role as “the flock party,” thanks to the 60-some illuminated lawn flamingos they bought from a MICA student to use as holiday decorations. While they have fun scattering the flamingos in the yard and being the go-to house for Christmas parties, Wilks says that the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve are mostly just like any others for them, thanks in part to their parking pad. “We just stay inside and do our normal routine: Netflix, ice cream, and Chinese food,” Wilks says.

Previous renters Carla Johnston and Jennifer Wright did not have quite as positive an experience when they moved onto the block in 2013, however. The 20-something roommates were excited to reuse some of their Halloween decorations, including handmade fake ceramic limbs, to create a “Zombie Christmas” themed display. A few days before the lighting ceremony, they transformed their lawn into The Walking Dead meets Christmas, with zombie heads atop trees and a fake blood-stained sheet next to candy canes and a blow-up snowman. Wright says that, within a few days, one of the neighbors confronted her on their front lawn, saying she had “never seen decorations so inappropriate.” Wright and Johnston took down the spookier parts of their display, but shortly after, news trucks and reporters showed up at their door and, even though neither commented to the press, the story of the disagreement appeared in The Wall Street Journal. “We were just trying to do something different; we weren’t trying to disrespect Christmas,” Johnston says today. “I love Hampden, but that street is very much like, stick to the rules, or else. The following year, our theme was Home Alone, and we hung paint cans from the roof and played music from the soundtrack. That went over well.”

Bob told his doctor, “Fill me up with some morphine, I gotta go light the street.”

As time goes on and Hampden continues to change—the neighborhood’s average home value index has increased by nearly $90,000 since January 2012—many wonder what the future holds for the Miracle on 34th Street. As Bob and the remaining original decorators reach the age when climbing onto three-story roofs to replace Christmas lights is no longer an option, he says it will come down to whether the younger residents are willing to invest the time and energy into keeping the tradition alive. As it stands, the Hosiers operate all of the lights hanging above the street. “More people on this street can get involved, but the magical question is, where are you plugging all of this in? And who is going to pay for all of this?” Bob asks. “It’s not an exorbitant amount of money, but is anyone else in the younger generation going to put the time and effort into it?”

While some residents, like Wilks and Strilko, believe that the block will continue to decorate for years to come, especially since the Hosiers’ daughter and grandson live on the block, others aren’t so sure. “Nothing lasts forever,” Pollock says. “I would love for me and all the neighbors to take over when Bob is done, and then we’ll be set for the next 10 years. But when Bob chooses not to do it anymore, I think a lot of other people on this block are going to choose not to do it anymore, too.” He adds: “My biggest fear is that when this all ends, John Waters is going to swoop in and do a movie here because he always does a movie about stuff after its death.”

But the man who started it all isn’t done yet. Bob and Darlene have made so many amazing Miracle memories—proposals staged on their front porch, meeting Gov. William Donald Schaefer, helping their neighbors plug in for the first time—that they’ve forgotten more of them than they remember, and he doesn’t plan to stop leading the charge anytime soon. (A few years back, Bob was in the hospital the Friday before the lighting with a gallbladder issue, and he told his doctor, “Fill me up with some morphine, I gotta go light the street.”)

Bob’s biggest concern for the future—besides still being able to climb his ladder safely—is whether they’ll be able to preserve the integrity of the event by keeping vendors and sponsorships at bay and stick to bringing joy to the neighborhood. “At the end of the day, it’s about nothing else but decorating for the holidays,” Bob says. “When I have to keep track of the cost or I have to take money from vendors and things like that, that’s when it’s time to stop.”

The Miracle on 34th Street started with just some Christmas lights, which is why every year during the final hours of Christmas Eve—after the thousands of bundled-up onlookers who packed the street earlier have gone home to bed—Bob stands on the empty sidewalk and takes a photograph of each illuminated home. Then, sometime after the lights have been taken down and the decorations returned to storage, Bob will add the photos to his ever-growing collection of mementos that he’ll pass on to his grandson, Colt, to show him what a string of lights and an idea can do. “It’s just some Christmas lights,” Bob says, one last time, “but what it’s done, for this block and tons of other people, is absolutely amazing.”

The Lion Brothers Building on Hollins Street in West Baltimore surely has the best-smelling loading dock in America.

The seductive scent of burning oak smoking dozens of pounds of salmon that emanates from behind the back door of Neopol Savory Smokery’s ground-floor production kitchen is vaguely reminiscent of a campfire cookout—that is, if Scottish and Norwegian fish were on the menu instead of burgers and dogs. It’s the same intoxicating aroma that lured customers, like a siren song for the nose, to a stall in Belvedere Square Market for 15 years, where mother and son Barbara Lahnstein and Dorian Brown smoked fish, garlic, shrimp, turkey, mussels, sausage, and just about anything else they could think of before moving their food preparation operations here in June 2018.

Inside, two 35-by-80-inch J&R Manufacturing red metal smokers do their thing. The fish in them now is destined for Neopol’s three retail outlets and weekend farmers markets, where it will be devoured by rabid fans addicted to this particular brand of smoking.

Meeting that demand is one reason Brown and Lahnstein opened the production kitchen. They plan to sell their sandwiches, spreads, and salads to the public from this spot starting next year, but for now the more than 1,000 pounds of fresh-never-frozen salmon—and everything else that they smoke here six days a week—supplies stores in Washington’s Union Market, Georgetown, and the original Belvedere Square location.

“I’m really grateful for everyone that supports us in D.C., but the love in Baltimore is different,” Brown says. “Belvedere is where the heart is. Our customers there are . . .”

“Amazing,” Lahnstein chimes in.

Neopol is an unlikely made-in-Maryland success story starring a diminutive, blunt-talking German immigrant and her only child, a strapping, thoughtful, and charming man with a knack for making customers and employees feel as if they, too, are part of the family.

“People love Dorian,” Lahnstein says as Brown cringes, a facial gesture his mother won’t let slide.

“Stop. It’s true,” she says in a German accent that hasn’t thinned much since she moved to the United States from Stuttgart in 1982.

During a 90-minute conversation at a table where customers will soon enjoy delicacies like the salmon spread Lahnstein now insists on setting out, they interrupt and correct each other often. It’s not hard to imagine a scene at a farmers market two decades earlier when Lahnstein embarrassed her teenage son by insisting that he show customers his unfortunate new tattoo of an Aries symbol that he now admits looked more like a diagram of the female reproductive system. (It has since been covered up by a tattoo of a raven.)

But from the moment Lahnstein’s husband left her and Brown just days after Dorian was born 36 years ago, they’ve been a team of two. Although they couldn’t be more different, they are bonded by a love for one another that’s as impossible to ignore as the smell wafting from those smokers.

It’s the Saturday before Labor Day, and as Lahnstein’s done for decades, she’s selling an assortment of smoked treats at the Waverly Farmers Market, which she still calls the “backbone” of the business.

At times it seems as if Lahnstein, who has lived in Charles Village for more than 20 years, is greeting a receiving line of old friends. Jennifer Goold moved to Baltimore in 1993 and started frequenting Lahnstein’s tent here not long after. She buys salmon and tops it with olives and other veggies in salads for her children’s lunches. (PB and J, it ain’t.)

“You haven’t changed at all,” Lahnstein tells her.

“It’s all the amazing smoked fish,” Goold replies.

When Paola Albergate arrives to pick up a jar of bone broth, Lahnstein ducks out from her post behind some tables to greet her.

“I come to this market every Saturday, and I love her the most because she believes in what she’s doing and wants to share that passion with everyone,” Albergate says. “She makes you feel like you’re a part of her little Neopol circle. I can get bone broth from Whole Foods, but I won’t do it because Barbara tells me what she puts into it.”

Neopol is an unlikely Maryland success story starring a German immigrant and her only child.

Almost on cue, Lahnstein begins explaining how she simmers the bones for 60 hours and adds apple cider vinegar. She—and several of her customers—believe drinking the broth has health benefits. Wunder wasser, she calls it.

“It’s best in the morning or in the evening before you go to bed,” she says. “I refuse to sell it to people who say they’re going to use it for a dish. It’s not stock. It’s $20—why would do that? It’s a waste. You can go to Giant.”

She calls the concoction one of her better ideas before launching into a list of ones that fell flat. Mozzarella emerged from the smoker as gooey “spaghettis.” Peas were a disaster. Sardines flopped. But the line at her tent that’s continued to grow—year after year, and now, as she continues to talk—is proof that her successes far outweigh the failures.

Lahnstein, 60, was interested in art and graphic design as a young woman, but after she came to the U.S. and became a single mother, she was forced to recalibrate her life.

“I needed money, and I thought, people need food,” she says.

Fair enough, but what to make? Recalling a childhood favorite, she decided on smoked herring. But sourcing the fish here proved problematic, so she settled on . . . just about everything else.

Lahnstein didn’t just buy a ready-made smoker—she sketched a design for her own.

“Reading a lot of books on it, it’s very simple,” she says. “I found a welder off Harford Road. It was a guy who had his ears blown out in Vietnam. He couldn’t understand me anyway, but I showed him the drawing.”

Lahnstein and her friend Odessa Dunson, who went on to become Brown’s godmother, began selling smoked foods at farmers markets. “We smoked pheasants and put it in baskets and decorated it. They looked beautiful,” she says. “Imagine a German woman—I had much more hair then—and a black woman at the farmers market selling smoked pheasant. People really bought it. We made $70 or $100 and we thought we were rich.”

As a child, Brown helped his mom in a number of ways. He’d sit in the living room shredding cheese for pies while watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And there was Dorian’s Special Lemonade, handcrafted by the then 7-year-old.

“I wanted him to make his own money,” Lahnstein says. “I made him invest in buying a box of lemons and the cups and the sugar. He had bundles of money in his pocket.” (In fact, Brown continued selling the lemonade though college, when he made up to $600 a weekend. Today it is still a staple at Neopol, which offers several varieties, including a popular cardamom one.)

In 1993, Lahnstein and Dunson opened Metropol café on Charles Street. When they lost their lease four years later, Lahnstein continued selling baked goods and smoked delicacies at farmers markets while Brown squeezed lemons.

“My daughters were in love with Dorian,” says developer Bill Struever, who waited in line many a Saturday morning for that lemonade. Struever was such a big fan of Lahnstein’s smoked salmon that he convinced her to open a stall in his Belvedere Square Market in 2003.

He invested in the building and helped get the newly named Neopol up and running. “I think a market in any city in the world would love to have Neopol,” says Struever, who was also instrumental in helping Lahnstein and Brown open the production kitchen in his Lion Brothers Building. They call him their “angel.”

At the time, Brown, who was attending Hampton University with the goal of becoming a teacher, helped out at the store in the summers, over holidays, and on some weekends. Along with fish, poultry, and meat, Lahnstein’s culinary creations like smoked hummus and smoked tofu had made it into a foodie mecca.

While Lahnstein thrived creatively (she designed Neopol’s fonts and its lovely logo of a fish kissing a lemon, which Brown has tattooed of the inside of one of his arms), the business side of the operation was never her strong suit. By 2007, she was burned out and ready to close shop.

“I said, ‘Dorian I can’t do this anymore,’” she says. “You should have seen his face. He was really upset. He said, ‘No, this is our family business.’”

With Neopol floundering, Brown put off his teaching career after graduating to help revive the business. In 2009, mother and son became partners.

“I came in with a fresh perspective,” he says. “We started letting people taste things at the counter, doing sandwiches. We started hiring people who were friendlier.”

Salmon is dry-cured with ingredients including cranberry, candied ginger, and caramelized onion.

Customers noticed.

“The energy in that particular store was just different than the other ones in Belvedere Square,” says Nia Johnson, who has been a twice-a-week customer for years. The turkey club is her favorite. “The people that worked there seemed extremely happy, and there was a magnetic energy. The first time I had their food it was just amazing. I could not not return.”

Brown also focused on cementing relationships with employees. Olivia Ferrell, general manager of the Belvedere Square location, started working at Neopol seven years ago. She considers Lahnstein to be her second mother and thinks of Brown as a brother. He’s been instrumental in helping her develop as a leader.

“I have a lot of college students who work here,” says Ferrell, whom Lahnstein and Brown voluntarily paid while she was out on maternity leave. “Dorian told me to send them a text message when they’re starting a new semester. Something positive to let them know I’m thinking about them, which is something I’d never thought to do.”

In 2015, Brown was approached by a man at a farmers market and asked whether he’d like to open a location in the new Union Market, in Northeast Washington. The first day Neopol offered its signature salmon BLT and other items for lunch there, it sold out of food. Today, it’s the business’ busiest location.

Another retail store opened in Georgetown last year, and suddenly the 850-square-foot kitchen in Belvedere Square was bursting at the seams. Opening the production kitchen was a necessity—and a leap of faith.

In the nearly 4,000-square-foot facility in the Lion Brothers Building, a former embroidery factory, a second J&R smoker has joined the blackened 16-year-old original. Salmon is dry cured with ingredients including cranberry, candied ginger, caramelized onion, and whole grain mustard, then air dried for an hour before being smoked for three to six hours at temperatures ranging from 120 to 135 degrees. Other foods, like eggs for the one-of-a-kind smoked egg salad, are cooked first then simply finished in the smoker to add a charred flavor. (“We smoke the chicken first, and then they lay the eggs,” Lahnstein jokes with customers who ask how it’s prepared.)

During the business’ growth spurt, Brown is working upward of 90 hours six or seven days a week. On this sweltering mid-August day, he left his apartment in Remington at 4:30 a.m., picked up food for the D.C. stores at the production kitchen, then drove it to Washington because the regular driver was on vacation. After making a delivery to Union Market, he worked the morning and lunch shifts in Georgetown, stopped back at Union Market to check on an employee who had been out with a kidney infection, then drove home to Baltimore in rush hour. After finishing clean-up at the production kitchen—which included mopping the floor—he reflects on why 14-hour days like this one are worth it.

“I owe my mom a lot,” he says. “When I was kid [I saw her] work crazy hours, and I took notice. She’s not doing as much anymore—and she shouldn’t have to. Right now, I’ve never worked more or slept less. The stress of this is real. It’s a tough business to be in, but I still really love this. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

Around 6:30, he finally heads home to make dinner with his girlfriend, Jess. In one of the smokers, the last pieces of oak are left to burn out on their own. They’ll leave ash and coals to help kindle the fire tomorrow, when there will plenty more salmon to smoke.

A quick turn down the hall from the Hippodrome Theatre’s Fayette Street side entrance reveals a strange sight for visitors to Baltimore’s base of operations for glitzy Broadway tours. Open double doors reveal two stories of windows pouring sunlight over long-hidden marble and steel beams, and pieces of the walls and floor seem to be missing. It’s hard to place what exactly what was there before. Were these doors always here? Did the building always go this far?

Take the time to look over a couple of project boards posted at the entrance and, if you’ve spent some time around the theater, it clicks. These walls were once a funny shade of tan, right? And those windows weren’t always so big, were they? No, they definitely weren’t. The space was once the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center’s ballroom, closed off to most and open only during special events (more than a few Best of Baltimore parties, for example).

The M&T Bank Pavilion, as the ballroom is officially known, was originally built as the Eutaw Savings Bank around 1881 and has been part of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center since the adjacent buildings were acquired by the state of Maryland in the 1990s. But the building has sat mostly unused for the past 15 years, and now work is finally underway to follow through on the original plans for the space: to turn it into a new venue, one that could be a gateway for audiences of all ages and stripes to interact with the Hippodrome in a whole new way.

Once complete, this historic space will be home to a 25,000-plus-square-foot flexible performance space that will expand the nonprofit Hippodrome Foundation’s ability to present shows, events, and educational programs, in addition to hosting cultural institutions around the city and providing them with a place to perform without the struggle of lugging or renting technical equipment. The new space will also allow the foundation to run its free camps and workshops for Baltimore-area schoolchildren year-round instead of only during the summer when the Hippodrome stage is free.

The expansion is just one of the forward-thinking projects currently underway among Baltimore’s theaters. There’s something stirring behind the scenes in the local theater community—and in many ways, the Hippodrome and theaters like it are taking their cues from their smaller, more experimental brethren. To be clear, there are still plenty of chances to bring the family to a classic retelling of Romeo and Juliet or a Disney musical, but there’s a radical streak running through the rehearsal halls and stages across the city, one that’s hoping to bring people back into their dimmed halls by exploring new voices and lending power to those who need their voices amplified.

In some ways, that streak has been around for ages, inspiring storytelling in neighborhoods across the city. In Fells Point, The Vagabond Players, one of the oldest continuously operating community theaters in the country, has been sustained by actors volunteering time and energy beyond the responsibilities of their daily lives to bring drama to its audiences for more than 100 years. Downtown, the African-American community theater company Arena Players is nearing its seventh decade in Baltimore, having first sprung up at what was then Coppin State College a decade ahead of the Black Arts movement elsewhere in the country.

There’s something stirring behind the scenes in the local theater community.

Then there’s the wealth of independent theaters and companies throughout the city—groups like Baltimore Theatre Project and Charm City Fringe and Spotlighters and Iron Crow—that have consistently been exposing city audiences to diverse works and new types of performances. This year alone has brought artist-owned performance space Le Mondo to a long-awaited home on Howard Street, marked color-conscious theater troupe ArtsCentric’s move to a permanent home in Remington, and sent experimental troupe Single Carrot Theatre away from its marquee and into new corners of Baltimore in hopes of “activating different neighborhoods in different parts of the city that may be less seen,” according to artistic director Genevieve de Mahy.

But, now, as we roll toward a new decade, the city’s larger companies have caught up as well. The Bromo Arts District, home to Everyman Theatre, The Hippodrome, Le Mondo, Arena Players, and several other venues, is abuzz, and there’s talk among this tight-knit group of creative leaders of bringing new voices to new audiences. They want to engage with people in new ways, encourage a new generation of theater-goers, and sate current audiences’ appetites for more diverse and inclusive works.

Just how to tackle all those goals is the question of the hour for Baltimore’s theaters, and its creative community in general. How do these cultural stewards reach out to people and get them to engage with the art they’re producing? Part of the answer is producing stories that are more representative of the diverse world in which we live. At Center Stage, that means highlighting works by women, people of color, and LGBTQ playwrights and reexamining the way they work with artists. The same is true at Everyman, where founding artistic director Vincent Lancisi is using this new season to blend classics with highlights from the current “golden age of female playwrights.” The theater is gambling on the idea with its biggest season ever, eight total plays, four of which are written by women and three of which, including the premiere of the final play in Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ Queens Girl trilogy, are part of the first-ever New Voices Festival. The festival will also launch an intimate new upstairs space.

“There’s a renaissance of playwriting and women authors out there. How long have we been suppressing this? We just haven’t seen them because they haven’t had opportunities and see the light of day. . . Now the opportunity has presented itself,” Lancisi says. “Let’s take the best of the best famous plays, pay homage to those who came before us, but let’s create a lot of opportunity for some of these new voices to be heard. The world is changing faster than we care to recognize or are even able to keep up with, and the theaters have to catch up.”

With greater representation and dedication to wider populations, there’s hope that, like it has during so many eras before, the theater can become a gathering place and center of education and activism. It’s the reason why socially conscious Single Carrot left the stage and started scouting spots to bring their immersive performances to new neighborhoods. And it’s the idea that compelled the folks from Center Stage to bring a truck bearing an invitation to Miss You Like Hell, a “joyful musical about an undocumented mother and her U.S.-born daughter” to the September meeting of GOP leaders in Harbor East because, as they explained, they thought the House Republicans would find the play “illuminating.” Escapism, this is not. As Center Stage puts it, they want to meet audiences where they are.

When new director of artistic partnerships and innovation Annalisa Dias joined Center Stage this summer, she put that intention into action by meeting with both local independent theaters and social justice organizations with the aim to better understand the work already being done in the city to engage audiences and connect them to resources. One such meeting was an education event hosted by Guerrilla Theatre Front’s Dogs of Art that covered immigrant rights, ICE detentions in Baltimore, and how people can help. The event helped inspire programming for Miss You Like Hell, for which Center Stage created a lobby installation that offered information on direct service providers working with the local immigrant community.

“We’re going to start opening these doors and really trying to activate the space in a new way,” Dias says. “It’s trying to rethink the experience of walking through these doors and going to a show and what you do before and after. How do we make this a space where people want to hang out and interact in a different way?”

For many companies, that “meet people where they are” mentality extends to area schools. Giving students the opportunity to experience drama and see themselves reflected in it is a common thread among the leadership of the city’s theaters both big and small. Whether it’s introducing school groups to the Bard at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company or building and performing an in-class puppet show with Black Cherry Puppet Theater, these troupes are finding ways to connect kids to the performing arts and hopefully start a lifetime of participation in the city’s creative landscape. Partnerships between the Hippodrome Foundation and the Baltimore Design School have even opened up theater as a career path by offering older students interested in costuming opportunities to learn from area professionals and network with local costume warehouses that work with national productions.

Student matinees at theaters across the city feature talkbacks with casts and crews, and students often say these class visits are the first time they have ever seen a professional production, a trend Everyman’s Lancisi has seen grow over the past decades.

“Sadly we’ve lost entire generations [of theater-goers] to date, and we like to say it’s because of price, but I think it’s also because of theater-going traditions,” Lancisi says. “It always requires somebody or some place to provide the exposure. The first time that the students come and see a play can be a life-altering experience for them. They see themselves on stage, or represented in some way, or their point of view matters when they’re encouraged to talk to us about it and react out loud as a community together.”

“The world is changing faster than we care to recognize . . . and the theaters have to catch up.”

Making the younger generations a part of this community is one of the keys to Baltimore theaters’ broader vision for the future, but the hope is that new voices and experiences will be the siren songs that bring people both young and old back into the theaters, away from streaming at home and back downtown. And once those audiences are in the seats, that they’ll engage with all the little things that add to the experience —local art inspired by the shows on the walls, chances to discuss work with the cast, interactive elements of the performance itself —but also with one another.

“[Center Stage] could be activated as a space where people really want to gather and unpack and process, a fun, joyful space of healing, resistance, power-building, democratizing. . . all these things,” Dias says. “We have power to change the way things have always been done and uplift and amplify artists who are living in the city.”

And as these spaces expand and diversify, the whole community benefits. More so than some other industries, there’s a feeling of camaraderie and support among Baltimore’s creative class. The larger venues are inspired by experimentation and new ideas coming from the smaller companies, and smaller companies can be assisted by the resources of the large as each inspires its audiences to seek out more from the wealth of options around it. The Hippodrome Foundation has already been in talks with 56 groups, including local concert series, art spaces, and other theater companies, about using their new state-of-the-art location once the renovation is complete.

“There are 70 arts organizations that don’t have permanent homes. We want to be the incubator for the growth that’s happening,” says Ron Legler, president of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center. “What we’re hoping to do is take some of the smaller things that are out there that are gems in the city and help them grow and help them find different revenue sources to stay competitive.”

That growth and support means bringing works and performers to new audiences, and giving those audiences what has always worked in the theater, stories that connect and contribute to the conversation. If successful, they have the power to change the way people think and feel. It’s a big ask, but Baltimore’s casts and crews and creative leaders are willing to do the work. They’re used to doing things the hard way.

“The best case scenario for me has never changed, which is that all the theaters of Baltimore are full of audiences hungry for the work they’re doing, that their marquees are bright, that they’re reaching a wider audience, a more diverse audience, that people are willing to try new things or go to a theater they’ve never heard of before,” says Lancisi. “Doing things live is the most labor-intensive and challenging thing to do, but we do it because it’s magic. There’s nothing like it. You’ll have a communal experience, and it’ll just blow you away.”

At 50, Deb Cohen began feeling constantly bloated and lethargic. A busy law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, the Fells Point resident had delayed her annual visit to the gynecologist. She just figured her body was changing because of menopause.

She was right about that, but didn’t know the half of it: Her symptoms were being caused by a 3.5-pound, 19-centimeter cyst, part of which was cancerous.

“The symptoms were there, I just had no clue,” Cohen says. “No one talks about menopause and what it will be like. My body was changing, and it never dawned on me that it was cancer.”

It was, in fact, Stage III ovarian cancer. So Cohen turned to what she had come to regard as her trusted team of doctors at The Weinberg Center for Women’s Health and Medicine at Mercy Medical Center, where she had been treated multiple times, beginning with the 2009 removal of a lump in her breast. To treat the cyst, she was referred to Neil B. Rosenshein, a nationally renowned ovarian cancer specialist and director emeritus of The Weinberg Center.

“I’ll never forget sitting there pre-surgery listening to him as he read the list of things that can go wrong, tears running down my face, thinking, ‘Okay, I’m signing my life away.’” But there was no one else she would trust more with a scalpel. In June 2014, Rosenshein successfully removed the cyst. “He’s an amazing man,” Cohen says.

Cohen remains close to him to this day, and continues to return to Mercy for her six-month checkups, even after moving to D.C. in 2015.

“I’m the luckiest unlucky person,” she says. “I had great health care, great doctors, and lived within a mile of Mercy—you don’t get any luckier than that.”

Mercy’s center does stand out, however, for blazing the trail.

The Mercy center on which she has relied is part of a historically recent health care trend of dedicated female-focused care—such women’s centers have popped up all over the country, and Baltimore now has more than half a dozen. But they raise the question, why not just go to Marcus Welby General Hospital? Because the need for such targeted care stems from biology.

“We have estrogen receptors on every organ in our body,” says Wen Shen, a gynecologist specializing in menopause medicine at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. “And you’re trying to tell me a man’s body works the same?”

And, as in the case of Cohen at Mercy, Shen says the menopause transition is when a lot of medical conditions start kicking in—issues with heart health, bone health, and brain health.

“These are all related to the lack of ovarian hormones because of menopause,” says Shen. For instance, studies have shown that women suffering from severe hot flashes are more at risk for high blood pressure and heart disease.

“The whole list of every medical specialty you can think of, I can come up with an issue in that specialty that is post-reproductive related,” Shen says.

That’s why, building on the national trend, she’s spearheading the creation of a women’s health center at Hopkins that will focus on post-reproductive years, and looking for funding to make it a reality. “We need to be able to help women specifically. Men have been getting good advice and care, because all the research is based on them. Women have been sort of short-changed when it comes to a lot of their medical care.”

Mercy’s center does stand out, however, for blazing the trail: It’s celebrating its 25th anniversary, making it the oldest dedicated women’s health center in the region. It launched the center in 1994, during a period when hospitals around the country started turning to female patients as a niche in an increasingly competitive and tumultuous market. Mercy polled local women and took cues from the best women’s health centers across the country to develop its own version, eventually investing more than $40 million in the project with the goal of consolidating all the medical services in one location.

Other Baltimore-area medical centers pursued similar concepts, spawning more such women’s centers in the past 25 years (see below), but each boasts different strengths. However, a common motivation is to make health care one-stop shopping for women.

At Hopkins, oncologists have often referred patients to Shen to manage symptoms caused by radiation or chemotherapy. “Then I’ll find out that they have high risk for heart disease, that they have osteoporosis, and I refer them to specialists,” she says.

But that can mean a lot of appointments, often at different locations. And one trend doctors are seeing is that working women are developing some of the same attitudes toward wellness that men have always been blamed for—such as ignoring symptoms, procrastinating, and toughing it out because they’re too busy with work and family.

With the average age of menopause’s onset at 51 (and the average women’s lifespan at 81 years), menopause is hitting at a critical time—often at the high point in careers, when women are caring for their own families and sometimes their aging parents as well.

“Today’s woman is so overburdened it’s very hard for her to do all this,” says Shen of the many appointments required to get holistic care. That’s where a women’s center steps in.

“I’m the luckiest unlucky person . . . I lived within a mile of Mercy.”

“A multidisciplinary center is like a one-stop shop. At 9 a.m. you’re going to see the oncologist, at 10 a.m. the rheumatologist, at 11 a.m. the cardiologist,” Shen explains. “The vision is to make it really efficient for the patient to get the care that she needs. Because if she had to make all these appointments with different doctors located on different campuses, across different months, requiring repeated time off from work—that’s a challenge.”

Besides having different strengths, such health centers can also target different markets. As newer hospitals such as Greater Baltimore Medical Center and MedStar Good Samaritan followed their patients to the suburbs, Mercy doubled down on its urban location on St. Paul Place, hoping to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of nearby commuters, more than half of which are women.

The move attracted Rosenshein from The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Rosenshein opened the center at Mercy and remains its director emeritus.

The Weinberg Center’s offerings, which include breast care, gynecology, plastic and reconstructive surgery, mammography, and radiation oncology, were originally scattered throughout the Mercy campus. In 2003, the hospital finally brought all the services together under one roof as Mercy cut the ribbon on a state-of-the-art, six-floor facility, made possible in part by a $10-million gift from The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

Rosenshein echoes that housing all the services together allows The Weinberg Center to provide patients with holistic care. “Most of the issues we have are interrelated,” he says. “People who have ovarian cancer are at more risk for breast cancer. People who have both have genetic issues that need to be addressed.”

The refocusing has been more than a business decision for the hospital: It goes back to the mission of its founders, the Sisters of Mercy, who opened a refuge for homeless and abused women in Dublin in 1827.

This year, The Weinberg Center hit several milestones, including the 5,000th da Vinci robotic surgery performed by gynecologic surgeon Dwight D. Im, medical director of the Neil B. Rosenshein M.D. Institute for Gynecologic Care at Mercy.

By chance, Deb Cohen’s one-year checkup with Rosenshein was scheduled on the exact anniversary of her surgery. So she decided to celebrate. “I stopped to pick up a bottle of champagne for my anniversary, and I picked him up one, too,” she recalls. “I said, ‘We’re going to be celebrating tonight. I don’t care what your family celebrates, but you should, too.’”

Now, she’s sharing her story to encourage other women to listen to their bodies. “I knew three or four women who [also] got this, one who died from this,” Cohen says. “I look around and think, ‘God, I was lucky.’”

Several other hospitals in the metro area have created women-centric health centers. Here’s the short list:

→ LifeBridge Sinai Hospital of Baltimore

2401 W. Belvedere Ave.

Part of LifeBridge Health, Sinai Hospital is home to the Louis and Henrietta Blaustein Women’s Health Center. Opened in 2005, this 24,930-square-foot center consolidated women and infant services and includes 32 labor, delivery, and recovery rooms, two operating rooms, three triage rooms, three post-anesthesia units, and three high-risk/extended stay rooms.

Best known for: Serving the needs of women during labor and after delivery, the women’s health center also houses the Institute for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, which offers prenatal testing and counseling for high-risk pregnancies, diabetes, and genetic problems. The center also houses the Jennifer Gandel Kachura Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a level III facility for newborns needing specialized care; and nutritional counseling, exercise courses, and other educational resources.

→ LifeBridge Northwest Hospital

5401 Old Court Rd., Randallstown

Equipped with the most up-to-date technology, Northwest Hospital’s Herman & Walter Samuelson Breast Care Center provides women with advanced screening and treatment options for holistic breast health in a spa-like atmosphere. Launched in 2010, the hospital’s Women’s Wellness Center offers obstetric and gynecological services to women alongside general health and wellness resources.

Best known for: One of Northwest Hospital’s centers of excellence, the Samuelson Breast Care Center employs dedicated breast-specialized experts including a radiologist, surgeon, and mammography technicians.

→ The Johns Hopkins Hospital

600 N. Wolfe St. and other locations

Obstetric and gynecological care at Johns Hopkins dates back to 1889, when Howard Kelly founded the department. Today, the center is well-respected in a wide range of areas, from family planning to fetal therapy and gynecologic cancers.

Best known for: Today, The Johns Hopkins Hospital is known for its Endometriosis Center, providing women with cutting-edge solutions for individualized endometriosis care, including minimally invasive and robotic surgery techniques to remove endometrial lesions while maintaining fertility. To treat heart disease, which is the No. 1 killer of women, and which often has different symptoms than those found in men, Hopkins is home to the Women’s Cardiovascular Health Center at the Bayview campus and at Johns Hopkins Cardiology in Columbia. It combines advanced medical treatment with a whole-body approach to preventing and managing heart disease, using a multidisciplinary team of experienced cardiologists with fitness, nutrition, and mental health experts.

→ MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center

9000 Franklin Square Dr.

Women’s Health Services at Franklin Square Medical Center offers a full range of obstetric and gynecologic care, staffed with attending and resident obstetrician/gynecologists, sub-specialists in maternal-fetal medicine, nurse midwives, women’s health nurse practitioners, ultrasound technologists, gene counselors, social workers, and registered nurses specializing in women’s health.

Best known for: Delivering more than 700 babies each year, the center specializes in high-risk pregnancy care for mothers and babies with medical problems and other complications. The center offers patients the latest technology and treatment options for regularly scheduled well-women appointments, as well as acute care, contraception, management of Pap smear abnormalities, screening for sexually transmitted diseases, medical and surgical management of abnormal bleeding, including minimally invasive options, and mid-life and menopausal symptom management.

→ University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center

301 Hospital Dr., Glen Burnie

Women’s Services at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center include pediatric care, treatment for a wide range of women’s health issues, and labor and delivery. Its state-of-the-art surgical suite offers da Vinci Robot-assisted, laparoscopic procedures for abdominal or vaginal hysterectomies.

Best known for: The Pascal Women’s Center offers spacious labor, delivery, and recovery rooms with whirlpool tubs, private postpartum patient rooms, and dedicated operating rooms for Cesarean births. The on-site Center for Advanced Fetal Care office, Neonatal Special Care Unit, and childbirth education classes round out resources for growing families.

→ Greater Baltimore Medical Center

6701 N. Charles St., Towson

GBMC provides a full spectrum of women’s health services, including labor and delivery, obstetrics, and gynecology, on the main campus as well as throughout the community, and a level III-B Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Best known for: For women needing close monitoring during pregnancy, the 12-bed Mangione High Risk OB unit, adjacent to the delivery suite, provides specialized maternal-fetal care. It’s one of the only in the region that consolidates all prenatal services, inpatient care, and antepartum testing in one location to promote a seamless continuum of care. Its Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery includes doctors who are specially trained to diagnose and treat disorders of the pelvic floor. The Uterine Fibroid Center at GBMC is one of only a few centers in Maryland that provides a comprehensive approach to treating fibroids, a condition that affects 77 percent of women.

Baltimore Craft Beer Festival:
Nov. 2. Back when Nepenthe Brewing was solely a homebrew shop in Meadow Mill, husband-and-wife team Brian Arnold and Jill Antos hosted the Baltimore Craft Beer Festival’s homebrew competition for at-home makers. But now that the couple, (pictured center and right), along with co-owner Brendan Kirklin, (left), have expanded Nepenthe Brewing Co. into a popular brewpub/restaurant/homebrew shop, the team is ready to serve their own brews at the fifth annual festival at Canton Waterfront Park on November 2. Kirklin says they’re excited to pour alongside dozens of other Maryland brewery teams and share Nepenthe’s wide variety of sips with the festival’s thousands of attendees. “It’s always a warm and fuzzy feeling when someone tries your beer for the first time and they say, ‘This is so good! Where are you guys located?’” says Antos.—KP 12-5 p.m.. Canton Waterfront Park. $10-60.

Miracle on 34th Street
Nov. 30-Dec. 31. The Miracle on 34th Street light display that illuminates Hampden every winter has become a statewide phenomenon, thanks to the homeowners who welcome onlookers onto their decked-out porches and lawns. Once the sun sets, stroll through the 700 block of West 34th Street to “ooh” and “ahh” at the uniquely Baltimore displays, including brightly lit Bohs, crabs, flamingos, and, of course, local artist Jim Pollock’s famous hubcap tree. Don’t miss the chance to admire “the most outrageous” Christmas lights in Maryland. W. 34th St.. 6-11 p.m.. Free.

Día de los Muertos
Nov. 2. This beloved Mexican holiday—translated to “Day of the Dead”—is a colorful celebration filled with music, sugar skulls, and marigolds that honor family members and loved ones who have passed. Luckily for locals, the Walters Art Museum hosts one of the largest celebrations in the region, bringing traditional dance performances, Mexican folk-art activities for families, authentic snacks and drinks, and a community altar to its halls. After the festivities, stick around to take tours of the collection in English or Spanish. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.. 600 N. Charles St. Free.

Baltimore Vintage Expo
Nov. 3. In need of a fringe jacket or some vintage denim for the cool months ahead? Pop into the annual Baltimore Vintage Expo—Baltimore’s fan-favorite vintage and antiques sale hosted by local go-to shops Milk & Ice Vintage and Bottle of Bread at Union Craft Brewing. Browse through racks of high-end selections of vintage clothing, accessories, furniture, and decor from some of the best retailers in the region. 12 p.m.-6 p.m.. 1700 W. 41st St.. Free.

Bob Dylan
Nov. 12. Times may be a-changin’, but the legendary folk music of Bob Dylan will never go out of style. With 10 Grammy awards, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and even a Nobel Prize in Literature, this rock ‘n’ roll icon can do it all. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Dylan perform at the UMBC Event Center this fall, where he’s almost guaranteed to play crowd favorites like “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” A must for Dylan diehards, this show will have you toe-tapping to familiar and fresh melodies all night long. 8-11 p.m.. UMBC Event Center. $52.50-85.50.

Aladdin
Nov. 13-Dec. 1. On the heels of the live-action version of this classic Disney film, the story of Aladdin will come alive on The Hippodrome stage, minus the presence of Will Smith. Bring the whole family to the historic downtown theater to experience the adventures of a street urchin who falls in love with the princess of Agrabah, with plenty of songs, colorful characters, and romance to keep audience members of all ages entertained. Catch this eye-popping musical during its almost three-week run and get ready to go on a magic carpet ride for the ages. Times vary. 12 North Eutaw St. $52-175.50.

Colson Whitehead
Nov. 14. Acclaimed author Colson Whitehead has earned a reputation for his striking imagination, groundbreaking style, and perspective on American history and society, thanks in part to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad. Join Whitehead at the Enoch Pratt Central Library to hear this literary master read from his latest novel, The Nickel Boys, based on the true story of a Florida reform school, and answer questions from attendees about his career and works. 7 p.m.. 400 Cathedral St.. Free.

Baltimore Whiskey Festival
Nov. 23. Spend the evening sipping whiskeys from around the world during this fine-spirits festival. Choose from 100-plus craft-distilled whiskeys, stop by the Founder’s Finds table to browse a curated selection of rare products, or learn about the art of distillation from experts during a series of free seminars. If the entry price gives you pause, keep in mind that a portion of event’s proceeds will go toward the Spirit of Hope Children’s Foundation. 12-4p.m.. 316 Guilford Ave. $69

Jonas Brothers
Nov. 30. When the JoBros announced in February that the trio would reunite and release new music for the first time in six years, you could practically hear the squeals of excitement from aging millennials across the world. At the end of this month, pack the Royal Farms Arena to dance and sing along with the boy band that stole the hearts of millions during the early 2000s as they play smash-hit songs such as their latest single “Sucker” and throwback bops such as “Burnin’ Up” and “When You Look Me in the Eyes.” Bonus points go to fans who don their original Jonas Brothers’ merch. 7:30 p.m.. Royal Farms Arena. $35.95-495.95

August Wilson’s Radio Golf
To Nov. 17. The latest production by Everyman Theatre brings the final show in playwright August Wilson’s 10-play series about the African-American experience during the 20th century to Baltimore. This fast-paced show follows the story of a successful real estate developer who hopes to become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor, but hits a roadblock after discovering an uncomfortable truth about his family’s history. Settle into the downtown theater and take in this thought-provoking work that points out similarities to issues still present in the modern world. Times vary. 315 West Fayette St.. $25-62

Portland—Maine’s great, granite-clad city on the sea. At one time seen as the down-on-its-luck little sister to Boston, the city’s new status as culinary queen of New England (nay, the East Coast) may come as a surprise if you’ve always thought of it as the other Portland.

Once a gritty harbor town whose stone edifices bore testament to the bygone days of the cod and timber industries, the city has experienced a renaissance as restaurateurs discovered its affordable rents and proximity to fish, forests, and farms. Today, Portland is a walkable foodie mecca, where bustling breweries and innovative eateries in the cobblestoned Old Port vie to constantly set the culinary bar higher.

With the region’s best ingredients as the medium, Portland’s gastronomic scene is the great uniter, drawing everyone from vacationing families to urban hipsters, Down East Mainers to snowboarding hippies, brought together by their kindred search for an excellent meal. Its ample eats, drinks, and food experiences ensure that they won’t leave disappointed—or hungry.

While you can take the scenic, nine-hour drive (or the even longer Amtrak train ride) to get there, hop on a 1.5-hour direct flight from Baltimore via Southwest Airlines and you’ll find yourself there, belly growling, in no time. Once you arrive, go ahead—tuck in.

→ EAT

Although there’s always room for a lobster roll or two, Portland’s food scene—packed with James Beard Award winners—has broadened Maine’s reputation beyond just being the crustacean’s world capital. Glowing with accolades from the likes of Bon Appétit, which named Portland their 2018 Restaurant City of the Year, the city is a place where every meal—from humble diner fare to worldly tapas—is an epicurean adventure.

Some of the finest seafood on the East Coast comes courtesy of Eventide Oyster Co., an ostreaphile’s paradise. This 2017 James Beard-winning eatery serves up a just-caught selection of New England and West Coast bivalve varieties from a hewn-granite raw bar, but throw in some of their iconic steamed-bun lobster rolls, a few oyster shooters, and an Allagash ale or two, and you’ve got a meal that beautifully captures the flavors of Coastal Maine. Lines form early—plan to wait.

Much like Eventide, a seat at the farm-to-table Central Provisions requires a little luck to score. You’ll understand why once you finally unfold their thick napkins and peruse the daily menu, from pillowy clouds of tuna crudo floating on marigold-spangled aioli to the crisp house-made fries served in an old-school paper cup. Don’t overlook the cocktail menu, either, with inspired takes on throwback libations.

For a more down-to-earth, true-blue experience, say it with me: “Becky’s Diner, nothin’ finah!” Spend a Saturday morning at this no-nonsense comfort food institution sitting next to a motley assortment of fishermen, longshoremen, tourists, and locals alike and you’ll be in total agreement with that statement as you tuck into a steaming cup of joe, a plate of corned beef hash, or a split, buttered, grilled blueberry muffin. Located right on the working harbor, you can also count on the tastiest crab melt in town.

Portland has so many excellent restaurants, you may need to plan several trips just to scrape the culinary surface. Instagram influencers flock to the sceney The Shop by Island Creek Oysters for a seat on their no-fuss deck. Also consider a visit to Duckfat for Belgian fries, poutine, and gelato milkshakes or The Honey Paw down the street for fish-forward broths, lobster wontons, and house-made noodles. For our money, we often find ourselves at the off-the-beaten-path Piccolo, an intimate Italian spot, perfect for the cool days of autumn and winter, that specializes in lovingly prepared a-la-nonna fare and seasonal ingredients.

→ DRINK

Of course, man cannot live on bread alone—and thankfully for anyone with a terrible thirst, Portland’s bar and brewery scene is expansive and endlessly creative. With acclaimed breweries and hip coffee shops, mixologist-mastered watering holes and trendy wine shops, there’s a libation to suit every situation.

With more than a dozen breweries in the city, serving drafts of everything from traditional New England IPAs to avant-garde sours, Portland is now known for craft brews as much as it is lobster. Of course, there’s Allagash Brewing Company to thank for that, who, fresh on the heels of its 2019 James Beard for outstanding beer producer, has earned its stripes after nearly 25 years of artfully crafted Portland brews. Known best for its Belgian-style “White” wheat beer, this iconic Maine brewer provides a refreshing respite in a market oversaturated with small-batch ales. After a tour, tip back a flight of classic suds and more creative takes, such as their spontaneously fermented Coolship varieties, on the stone porch.

Meanwhile, the cult-followed Bissel Brothers specialize in beers with big flavors—ultra hoppy, super sour, or cloudy and dank, and all delicious and dedicated to wild fermentation. Started by the namesake siblings in 2013, the brewery’s cool, cavernous tasting room is a bit of a trek, but their innovative, experimental brews are well worth the drive or Uber. The flagship Substance IPA is one of the constants in a rotating line-up of brews whose names—“Industry vs. Inferiority,” “Baby Genius,” “Here’s to Feeling Good All the Time”—communicate their brash, individualistic approach.

Slinging cocktails is an art form, and judging from the proprietary drinks proffered at every Portland bar, the city’s mixologists are approaching Old Master status. For those served with Prohibition-level panache, stop by Vena’s Fizz House, a locally loved bar with inventive highballs, mocktails, and custom sodas crafted with their own infusions, bitters, and flavored syrups. Also visit the Portland Hunt & Alpine Club, located just around the block, where you can channel your inner Skarsgård with Scandinavian sips and smorgasbords, or the maritime-themed Blyth & Burrows, with a section of the menu devoted to Navy-inspired concoctions (we recommend the “Three Sheets”).

Once seen as the little sister to Boston, the city’s new status might be culinary queen of New England.

Wine connoisseurs will feel at home at Drifters Wife, a hybrid restaurant-wine shop. Owners Orenda and Peter Hale are passionate about natural, unadulterated wines, and have a well-curated inventory made from organically farmed, hand-harvested grapes, fermented with native yeasts. Rely on the deep expertise of the servers for their guidance, especially if you pair their creative field-and-sea-to-fork fare with a few of their complex pours.

Prior to happy hour, spend some time in one of Portland’s light-filled coffee shops, where house-roasted pour-overs and cold brews are the gold standard. Reigning supreme is Tandem—a local coffee shop to this Portland what Stumptown is to that Portland. Beans are thoughtfully sourced from around the world, and if you go to the East Bayside location (the other is located inside a chic former auto repair shop on Congress Street), you can watch them being roasted with a front-row seat. For caffeine on the go, check out Bard Coffee, where takeaway growlers will sustain you throughout the day.

→ SEE & DO

Between meals, Portland offers plenty of ways to enjoy the good life of Southern Maine.

The city’s working waterfront is one of its most distinctive features. Lobstermen and the fishing fleet still dock and sell their daily catches, and a stop at the real-deal Harbor Fish Market is a way to experience a slice of Maine’s maritime culture. Fresh seafood of every stripe gleams on glistening beds of ice, and huge tubs of live lobsters are frequented by men in rubber boots and dipnets. Open to the public and suffused with the smell of the sea, it’s a great way to work up an appetite before dinner. Their oyster selection is extensive, so snag an oyster knife and select a dozen or two for an impromptu, only-in-Portland picnic in Deering Oaks Park.

On your walk, the city’s historic past is everywhere—its cobblestone streets, brick warehouses, stately stone homes and churches. With old buildings come attics, and attics mean vintage clothes, a relationship that’s obvious on Congress Street, where dozens of secondhand clothing, antique, and vinyl stores have taken up residence in the old shopping district. From the thrifted tees to the macramé décor to a curated record selection at Moody Lords, you’re sure to find some nostalgic souvenirs to bring back home with you to Maryland.

In the heart of downtown, art lovers should also take a tour of the Portland Museum of Art and its extensive collection, which includes notable works by Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, and N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth, as well as other artists who found inspiration in the forests and oceanside cliffs of Coastal Maine. Every Friday night, the PMA offers free admission from 4 to 8 p.m.

And just across the harbor, the city overlooks the island-dappled Casco Bay, which is full of lighthouses, seals, lobstermen, and sailboats. Take the Casco Bay Lines Ferry from the Old Port for a 1.5-hour cruise to Chebeague Island to enjoy the island’s slow pace and dollhouse-diminutive Victorian cottages. Spend the night at the Chebeague Island Inn, a restored 1920s hotel overlooking a rolling lawn down to the water’s edge. Its wrap-around porch is the perfect place for a sundowner or two while watching the sun set in a state that has aptly been named “Vacationland” and whose motto is “the way life should be.”

When Casey McKeel began roasting coffee, she started with a drum roaster attached to a backyard grill behind her Waverly home. She’d grown up in the business. Her mother ran a café in her native Michigan and, as an undergraduate, she’d studied the impact of the coffee trade on communities where coffee is farmed and produced. In 2012, McKeel, who’d moved here two years earlier, launched Thread Coffee determined to build a democratically run, environmentally sustainable, fair and transparent trade operation.

A year later, Thread forged a relationship with Red Emma’s, the city’s ever-expanding worker-cooperative bookstore, café, and venue—then in its original basement location on St. Paul Street. “That was before Red Emma’s moved to Station North, but it was looking for a larger space,” McKeel recalls. “We thought, ‘Why not share resources? We could roast in-house there and split a portion of the rent and licensing.”

This was hardly the first collaborative project for Red Emma’s, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this month. By the time Thread Coffee began its association with Red Emma’s, named for the turn-of-the-century immigrant, anarchist, and writer Emma Goldman, they had already spun off the collectively managed 2640 Space—the still-thriving destination for grassroots political and cultural events—in partnership with St. John’s United Methodist Church. And they had assisted in the launch of the city’s only worker-owned and democratically operated bike shop—Baltimore Bicycle Works. Thread Coffee was in a good hands.

Five years after incubating with Red Emma’s, Thread moved into its own roasting space and café inside the Open Works building in 2017. The same year, Food and Wine named them Maryland’s “Best Coffee.”

“We got to see how Red Emma’s functioned from the inside as a worker-cooperative, how they developed consensus around decision-making,” McKeel says. “That was a crucial learning experience.”

In today’s Amazon-dominated, e-sales-driven book industry, if Red Emma’s had done nothing else beyond survive for the past decade and a half, it would be a remarkable achievement. Instead, it has evolved into a community hub and indispensable institution, hosting nationally renowned writers, activists, artists, and educators. They’ve organized the Radical Bookfair Pavilion, part of the Baltimore Book Festival, for more than a decade, attracting the likes of Amy Goodman, Amiri Baraka, and Ralph Nader.

They were the first to publish New York Times best-selling Baltimore author D. Watkins in print, putting his viral essay “Too Poor for Pop Culture” together with other work into a zine format. They’ve provided a platform for acclaimed local photographer Devin Allen and the city’s award-winning youth poets from DewMore. Last summer, they moved back to Mount Vernon into a 9,000-square-foot building on Cathedral Street that once served as home to a jazz club run by Baltimore legend Ethel Ennis. In the process, they’ve grown from a handful of worker-owners to a payroll of almost 30 people, all making a sustainable wage.

But the thing those at Red Emma’s are probably most proud of, co-founder John Duda says, is the something they’re less known for: how their inclusive, non-hierarchical project has helped spark and support a whole movement of worker cooperatives in Baltimore. “When we started, there was zero local guidance and zero local support for anyone trying to imagine how to own and run a business democratically,” Duda says. “We found ourselves not only figuring things out as we went along, but fielding lots of demand from people trying to follow in our footsteps.”

Beyond launching 2640, working with Thread, and their early advising role with Baltimore Bicycle Works, which recently opened a second shop in Belvedere Square, the Red Emma’s team has helped beloved ice cream makers Taharka Brothers in their ongoing shift to employee-ownership. They’ve assisted the immigrant women at the Mera Kitchen Collective—who hold pop-up events around the city and sell their international dishes at JFX Farmer’s Market—as well as the returning citizens at Core Staffing and the vegan food activists at Greener Kitchen.

In turn, those experiences, along with their own struggles raising capital from traditional banks, helped those at Red Emma’s understand the key role of cooperative-friendly finance. Eventually, it all led to the formation of the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED), which has now gone on to deploy close to $700,000 in “non-extractive” loans—loans paid back as a percentage of profits—to local worker cooperatives. When Duda and fellow Red Emma’s co-founder Kate Khatib (they married in 2015) arrived in Baltimore in 2003 to pursue PhDs in Intellectual History at Johns Hopkins University, they hadn’t thought about becoming, much less bankrolling, a new breed of entrepreneur. That’s what has happened, however.

“I think we got increasingly serious about the business the longer we were around, and as people started to take us more seriously,” chuckles Khatib after a recent packed house for a Q&A with D. Watkins and Baltimore Beat editor Lisa Snowden-McCray. “I can’t say we saw this coming or it was planned,” adds Khatib, who works half-time at Red Emma’s while also serving as BRED’s executive director.

“Probably half of us thought Red Emma’s would last a year on St. Paul Street and then we’d go on to something else.”

BRED’s first loan, $15,000 to Taharka Brothers, helped them get their famously neon pink ice cream truck repaired in time for the summer of 2016. A second loan enabled them to open their new scoop shop at the renovated Broadway Market. Another loan helped Thread finance a larger capacity coffee roaster to meet growing demand. BRED loans also allowed The Greener Kitchen to purchase equipment for a production facility and rental kitchen, and assisted Core Staffing with working capital to better serve its members.

“Red Emma’s is the poster child for worker-owned businesses, and we turned to them and BRED during what was a tumultuous time for us,” says Sean Smeeton, a Taharka Brothers co-founder. “We had an offer from an investor, but they wanted 51 percent of the business and control of the decision-making process. We didn’t want that. We wanted to empower the young black men that work for Taharka to become entrepreneurs.”

Darius Wilmore, Taharka Brothers’ creative director, adds Red Emma’s did a lot more than facilitate a loan, assisting in the technical work of restructuring the business. In particular, Khatib and Ro McIntyre, another former Red Emma’s worker-owner and BRED co-founder, “spent so much time at our building in Clipper Mill, guiding us, they practically worked here part-time,” Wilmore says. (“We did it for the ice cream,” McIntyre jokes later, “which is great.”)

As Red Emma’s has become a model for local cooperatives and others around the country—Firestorm Books & Coffee in Asheville, North Carolina, and Wooden Shoe Books and Records in Philadelphia, to name two—the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy has provided a template for a national network of similar loan funds, called Seed Commons. Baltimore is not alone in seeing its worker cooperative ecosystem grow in recent years. Cities including New York, Madison, Minneapolis, Oakland, Berkeley, Austin, and Cleveland have also begun to integrate worker cooperative support into their economic development strategies. (Briefly defined: Worker-owned co-ops are values-based enterprises that prioritize worker and community benefit. Workers are represented in leadership and manage the day-to-day through various management structures.)

“We turned to Red Emma’s and BRED during . . . a tumultuous time for us.”

In fact, the City of Baltimore recently awarded a potentially significant $47,000 Community Catalyst Grant to BRED to pilot a worker-cooperative “conversion” pipeline. That grant, operated in concert with the Baltimore Development Corporation, is designed to assist retiring business owners in transitioning ownership, if so inclined, to their employees. The “silver tsunami” of Baby Boomer retirements could cost Baltimore thousands of jobs if the children of those business owners, for example, don’t wish to take over those enterprises.

Given the cooperative ecosystem here, Duda says, owners may begin to realize that it’s becoming easier to retire “through an exit to workplace democracy” and more satisfying, in terms of their legacy, than selling to an equity fund that may kill off the business. Again, it’s not just Baltimore. Recognizing the possible dissolution of millions of small businesses, Congress in 2018 passed the Main Street Ownership Act to smooth the finance of business sales to employees. (Pointing to their own legacy, Red Emma’s will help host the biennial three-day Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, presented by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, at the University of Baltimore School of Law in mid-October.)

“Cooperatives take a while to get going, but the process of converting existing businesses should be a faster,” says Kristin Dawson, of the quasi-public Baltimore Development Corporation. Dawson and others note marginalized, low-income groups, often including immigrants, women, minorities, and the queer community—in other words, those without access to traditional capital—stand to benefit from the cooperative financing model.

Not that anyone expects to get rich from working at a cooperative. Baltimore Bicycle Works founder Josh Keogh’s salary was roughly $35,000 before he left after nine years for a position at the Arts & Ideas Sudbury School. The job came with health benefits, however, and given the seasonal nature of the business, 10 weeks vacation. “It’s a normal bike shop in a lot of ways, except all decisions are made in an open and transparent way, and we didn’t have the seasonal ups and downs of hiring people and then laying them off,” Keogh says. Nor should anyone believe working in a cooperative business is easier than working in a more typically structured business. Building consensus around decision-making is, by nature, a cumbersome process.

That said, studies show co-ops are often more productive than traditional enterprises. Equally important, they can prove transformative for work-owners. Whitney Jones, who’s been in the front of the house at Red Emma’s for three years, didn’t believe being part owner of a successful business was even a possibility for her.

“I grew up a black and trans woman in Baltimore, and there are a lot things, like the opportunity to run a business and grow that Red Emma’s offered, you are locked out of, especially because I’d been homeless at points in my life,” Jones says. “Working here, because people know it’s a safe space, now I have a chance to be a resource for other girls who may be struggling.

“I don’t have plans to go anywhere,” Jones adds. “I’m invested, and when I invest in something, it means I intend to be in for the long haul.”

On a dark and still afternoon in October 1849, five people stood watch as a simple mahogany coffin containing one of the world’s most prolific authors was lowered into an unmarked patch of dirt in the heart of downtown Baltimore.

With clouds hanging low in the autumn sky, the small crowd—a former classmate, schoolmaster, and three relatives—paused for only a few minutes in the freshly turned earth, with the reverend, who was also the deceased’s cousin, electing not to deliver his prepared sermon to so few people.

Without pomp, circumstance, or even a tombstone to mark Edgar Allan Poe’s death, the group quietly dispersed, leaving the 40-year-old poet buried in Lot 27 of the Westminster Burial Ground with his grandparents, older brother, and the mysterious truth of his death.

Poe only lived in Baltimore for a few years, but the city shaped many aspects of his life, as well as its tragic ending. While he was born in Boston in January 1809 and raised by a foster family in Richmond, Virginia, this city is where he found the familial connections that would become the backbone of his life and career.

Between his unsuccessful stints in the Army and at West Point, Poe spent a few months in 1829 sharing a room with his cousin at the Beltzhoover’s Hotel on the corner of Hanover and Baltimore streets. He became a regular at The Assembly Rooms & Library on Holliday and Fayette streets, participated in a verse-writing challenge at the Seven Stars Tavern on Water Street downtown, and published 250 copies of his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.

After he was dismissed from West Point on charges of gross negligence and disobedience in 1831, Poe took refuge in the city, too, moving into his Aunt Maria’s already-crowded household near Fells Point, sharing the small residence with his cousins and grandmother. The following year, when the family moved west to North Amity Street, Poe went with them, settling into their side of the rented duplex that still stands today.

Although the home has been renovated since Poe lived there in the 1830s, the integrity of its five rooms, as well as the original winding staircases, have remained intact. Enrica Jang, director of Poe Baltimore, the organization that maintains The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, says that most of the Poe House’s 13,000 annual visitors are struck by how the family fit so many people in such tight quarters. “The house is so small, and the argument could be made that he didn’t live here for very long,” Jang says. “But if you understand the history of what he created while he lived here, it’s huge.”

“But he found something that, I believe, he really wanted here in Baltimore—and that’s a family.”

After years of limited literary success, Baltimore became the site of a new beginning for Poe—one that shaped his career as a literary critic, editor, and author. Despite his overwhelming debts, he continued to write poems, some of which, including “Enigma [On Shakespeare]” and “Serenade,” were published in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, and he labored over short stories, with a few published in The Philadelphia Saturday Courier.

He spent four years here working on his fiction and learning to shape his most grotesque ideas into narrative form. But his big break arrived in October 1833, when a few short stories from his collection titled The Tales of the Folio Club won a contest in the Visiter—considered his first true success. “Poe turned to short-story writing while he was here because he realized he could make money at it,” Jang says.

By the time Poe moved to Richmond in 1835 to join the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger, he had written at least 16 stories and a handful of poems. But within a few short months, Poe felt himself drawn back to Baltimore. His grandmother died that summer, leaving him dreadfully depressed, though the true root of his unhappiness was revealed in a letter about his cousin, Virginia. Dated August 29, 1835, Poe professed his love and potential as a future husband.

Today, stored deep in the belly of the Enoch Pratt Central Library, the original “proposal letter,” now nearly two centuries old, is one of the highlights of the institution’s impressive Edgar Allan Poe collection. Special collections manager Michael Johnson can quote a few phrases from the illustrious letter—My love, my own sweetest Sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your cousin, Eddy. “He wrote stories in Philadelphia, New York, and Richmond, and had jobs all up and down the East Coast,” Johnson says. “But he found something that, I believe, he really wanted here in Baltimore—and that’s a family.”

After quietly marrying Virginia, who was 13 years old, in September 1835, Poe, then 26, only returned to Baltimore a handful of times before that fateful day in October 1849.

While there’s endless speculation surrounding the circumstances of his death, it is known that he had been traveling home from New York in the days before he was found lying semi-conscious outside of “4th Ward Polls,” a tavern at Gunner’s Hall on East Lombard Street. (Although The Horse You Came In On Saloon in Fells Point claims it was the last destination Poe visited, there isn’t any evidence that he actually imbibed there.)

It was assumed Poe was drunk, and so he was put in a carriage and sent to a hospital a few blocks south of where Johns Hopkins Hospital now stands. He was said to look “repulsive,” according to the acquiantance who found him, with messy hair, a dirty face, and “lusterless and vacant” eyes. Poe never regained enough coherence to explain how he had come to the condition in which he was found, and he died four days later.

Poe’s shadowy death can only be described using his own writing, as author Arthur Hobson Quinn wrote in his Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography: “The ‘fever called living was conquered at last,’ and the poet who had seen farthest into the dim region ‘out of space, out of time’ went on his last journey, alone.”

But in a sense, Poe hasn’t been alone since. What started as a slow build of local appreciation for the literary figure—bolstered by Baltimore teacher Sara Sigourney Rice’s efforts to erect a memorial at Poe’s burial place during the 1870s—has grown rapidly as details about his life, work, and death reached all corners of the country.

During the early 1900s, cities where Poe had spent significant time—Richmond, New York, Boston—began to lay claim to their portions of his past. Baltimore was among the first to begin adopting him as one of its own, mounting a statue of the author in the Gordon Plaza of the University of Baltimore in 1921 and creating the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore in 1923.

Jeffrey Savoye, current secretary and treasurer of the local Poe Society, joined the group in 1983, which was a few years after it turned over control of the Poe House to the city, and some 40 years after its members saved the structure from demolition. He started seriously studying Poe in college, and it was then that he began to see the poet as a misunderstood figure who, at one time, had been “abused in the public view” by his critics. “That not only reawakened my interest, but it became a kind of cause for me—I felt as if his reputation needed saving,” says Savoye, who has since published more than 45 Poe-related scholarly articles and established the Baltimore society’s website, a comprehensive reference guide about the author, as well as the largest collection of Poe’s writings in the world. “Poe has a way of reaching out from beyond the grave and inserting himself anywhere in modern times.”

As more people have read Poe’s most famous works, such as “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” he has gained a posthumous following of fans who revere him for his revolutionary horror writing. Sometimes called the “grandfather of horror,” Poe was one of the first to write intentionally from the perspective of madness, while also threading complex themes of sorrow, humor, and agony throughout his complicated narratives, which were not completely unlike the trials and tribulations of his own life.

“If all you get from Poe’s work is the horror of it, you’re going to have a good time,” Jang says. “But when you read deeper into it, you see the humanity and much more primal emotions. Underneath the themes of horror and fear, there is clearly love and pain.”

As the decades went on and the fandom continued to grow, Baltimore and its various “Poe sites” became a destination for people looking to draw themselves closer to the author, especially after the city’s obsession went national in March 1996 with the announcement that its new football team would be named after the infamous bird in his most recognizable poem.

Today, people travel from near and far to take tours of the Poe House, look through the Central Library’s artifact collection, and pay their respects at his final resting place. “I’ve had people burst into tears or people’s hands start shaking when they see those pieces,” Johnson says of the library’s sliver of Poe’s original coffin and locks of his and Virginia’s hair. “It’s powerful to them because of how much they love Poe.”

The locations themselves have even become the subjects of local folklore. From around 1949 to 2009, a mysterious person (or persons) wearing all black and a big hat would visit Poe’s grave in the wee hours of his birthday night, drink a glass of cognac, and leave three roses and the rest of the bottle on the memorial. The figure became known as the Poe Toaster, and while no one ever unmasked them, it became a tradition that drew a small group of onlookers every year. The ritual was halted after the author’s 200th birthday, but the Maryland Historical Society and other local organizations picked a new anonymous Poe Toaster to carry the torch starting in 2016.

It has been 170 years since Poe took his final breath here, but he and his work continue to spark creativity and connection in Baltimoreans. Kurt Bragunier, owner of the Poe-themed Annabel Lee Tavern, says he relates to the author’s artistic spirit, and so he adorned the walls of his Canton restaurant with murals and artworks dedicated to Poe’s likeness. For 12 years, casual fans and Poe fanatics alike have been able to flock here to debate his best poems over dinner, celebrate his birthday with black sheet cake, and, if they’re lucky, catch a glimpse of Bragunier’s original 1850 copy of the restaurant’s namesake poem. “I want this building to always be a monument to Poe, even after I’m gone and the restaurant is gone,” he says.

“I can’t think of any other city in the U.S. that reveres a writer the way that Baltimore reveres Poe.”

More recently, the Lord Baltimore Hotel began hosting a bi-monthly comedy show at Poe’s Magic Theatre, and there’s even a storytelling cruise around the Inner Harbor—aboard the Raven, no less—that discusses Poe’s presence in Baltimore. This August, the Baltimore-based National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre teamed up with local public radio station WYPR to premiere a part-radio drama, part-podcast series called Poe Theatre on the Air. Each month, co-founder Alex Zavistovich and a team of actors read adapted versions of some of Poe’s ghastly tales over the airwaves. “I think that giving people the opportunity to experience Poe beyond the limitations of the page is extremely valuable,” Zavistovich says. “When you hear it recounted, your mind fills in the blanks that reading it might not give you.”

But Baltimore’s latest claim to fame is the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards, which was created last year to bring fans from across the world together for a two-day celebration of his “death weekend.” It’s the first time that representatives from other historically significant Poe cities, including The Poe Museum of Richmond and the Bronx County Historical Society, which runs Poe Cottage, have joined forces with Poe Baltimore to give the festival’s thousands of attendees a well-rounded look at his life.

As Baltimore is the host city, many of the festival’s activities emphasize his time here, and for good reason. “Baltimore has the body, so I think we’re at the top of the list,” Jang says with a laugh. “But I like that all of the Poe places can celebrate and enjoy the history with each other.”

This year, in fact, 170 since his death, Poe’s dismal burial scene will happen again, but this time, mourners will travel by the busload to attend his “funeral” reenactment at the Carroll Mansion on Lombard Street—complete with a historically accurate casket, a hand-sculpted head, and a “body” dressed in a Christopher Schafer suit. Not to mention the dozens of wakes, readings, and performances being held across the city in his honor, while the Poe Society of Baltimore will also host its 97th commemorative lecture presented by a scholar who has dedicated their life to studying him.

Although some people might think it’s strange that places such as his grave and the North Amity Street home—now surrounded by both public housing and luxury apartments—have become shrine-like destinations for thousands of visitors every year, it’s a point of pride for local Poe fans. He may have struggled during his years here, but he worked through his hardships to achieve the type of success he always wanted.

“I can’t think of any other city in the U.S. that reveres a writer the same way that Baltimore reveres Poe—he’s not just a writer; he’s a feeling, an ethos, and it’s tied up in the identity of the city,” says Jang. “Poe suffered, but he was also highly intelligent, very sharp, and funny. I think that if you ask people who live in Baltimore, they would make the same observations about the city. There’s a true identification, I think, that great things can come from humble places.”

Doors Open Baltimore
Oct 5-6. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.. Locations vary. Free. When Margaret De Arcangelis walks past a building—whether it’s a new high-rise office or a centuries-old home—she’s always curious to know what’s inside. That sense of appreciation for local structures of all sizes and ages is what led her to become the committee chair of Doors Open Baltimore, an annual event where more than 55 spaces open their doors to the public. De Arcangelis says that while many people only associate Baltimore’s architecture with rowhomes, Doors Open (this year on October 5-6) gives visitors the chance to explore the different types of buildings, museums, and historic houses that make up the city. “Through this event, people ‘catch the bug’ and get excited about these buildings,” she says. “If we get people interested in them now, we hope that curiosity continues throughout the rest of the year.”—KP

The Great Halloween Lantern Parade & Festival
Oct. 26. 3:30 p.m.. Patterson Park. Free. One of the city’s most beloved fall traditions turns 20 this year, and to celebrate, there will be even more parade floats, glowing sculptures, and dance parties than ever before. After spending the afternoon in Patterson Park for the annual Lantern Festival, join thousands of onlookers and watch people of all ages parade through the park holding glowing lanterns and marching alongside community bands.

International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards
Oct. 5-6. 11 a.m.. 203 N. Amity St.. Free-$200. Whether you believe Edgar Allan Poe died of alcohol poisoning, cooping, or otherwise, there’s no denying that his “death weekend” never ceases to bring Poe fanatics together. We take a deep dive into Baltimore’s connection to Poe on page 82, but this two-day festival that commemorates his death with a funeral “viewing,” Poe House tours, and a special Black Cat Ball is certainly worth noting. Join thousands of fans outside of his former home on North Amity Street to experience Poe-themed performances, booksellers, and poetry readings, and learn more about the full history of his tormented life through representatives from preeminent “Poe places” such as Richmond and New York.

Halloween 2019
Oct. 26. 8 p.m.-1 a.m.. Maryland Science Center. $42-80. Who would’ve guessed that one of the hottest Halloween parties in Baltimore—complete with more than a dozen musical acts, a wild costume contest, and tons of craft beer—would take place at the Maryland Science Center? For one night only, the kid-friendly exhibits will make way for this annual music festival on the Inner Harbor, with big-name headliners such as rock band J. Roddy Walston and The Business, pictured, rapper DDm, and Talking Heads tribute group Psycho Killers. Don’t miss the chance to hear the likes of bluegrass stompers The Dirty Grass Players, folk-pop septet Haint Blue, and DJs Roby Macy and Jasmes Nasty all under one roof in this can’t-miss collaboration between local nonprofit Believe in Music and the Maryland Science Center.

Phantom of the Opera
Oct 9-20. 12 N. Eutaw St.. Time varies. $56.50-206. The Hippodrome Theatre is kicking off its 2019-2020 season with the classic of all classics: Phantom of the Opera. Revered as one of the best musicals of all time, this award-winning show follows the story of a brooding, mask-wearing phantom who stirs emotions and schemes at a 19th-century Paris opera house. Whether you’re experiencing it for the first time or the 10th, this timeless show by Andew Lloyd Webber is sure to leave you thinking about its powerful themes all the way home.

Charm City Fringe Festival
Oct. 10-20. Time and prices vary. Bromo Arts District. Baltimore’s theater community is even better when it comes together, and this annual festival that brings every type of actor and audience member together proves it. Experience the most innovative and cutting-edge theater productions Charm City has to offer, with 11 days of shows across multiple venues in the Bromo Arts District. Check out the full schedule of acts, troupes, and performers online to make your theater-hopping plans.

Oysterfest 13
Oct. 12. 12-9 p.m.. 36 E. Cross St.. Free-$99. For the first time in its 13-year history, this slurp-tastic festival will take place on South Point’s waterfront, with tons of freshly shucked oysters, seafood delights, and drinks to kick off prime Chesapeake Bay oyster season. Spend the day sampling more than 10 varieties of raw oysters, taking in the picture-perfect views, and, if you want to be impressed, watch the some of the region’s most skilled oyster shellers compete for the title of fastest local shucker. If you’re hemming and hawing over the price of a VIP shuck-buck package, remember that a portion of the proceeds benefits the Oyster Recovery Partnership and Living Classrooms Foundation, Shipboard.

Baltimore Comic-Con
Oct. 18-20. Time varies. The Baltimore Convention Center. $25-165. If you spot a superhero or villain walking around the Inner Harbor, don’t worry, that just means that the annual Baltimore Comic-Con has officially descended upon Charm City. Now in its 20th year, this weekend-long sci-fi fest is a can’t-miss event for comic book enthusiasts, with a packed schedule of costume contests, art exhibits, panels, and, of course, browsing for comic books. Spend the weekend at the Baltimore Convention Center looking for the perfect addition to your collection, rubbing elbows with big-name cartoonists, and showing off your best Joker or Darth Vader look.

Baltimore Running Festival
Oct. 19. Time and location varies. $55-280. One thing that we love about citywide festivals is there’s usually something for everyone, and the Baltimore Running Festival is the perfect example. Since this event features five different events ranging from an all-ages 5K to the BaltiMORON-a-thon, runners of all skill levels can come together and celebrate the beauty of hitting the pavement. Register early to secure your spot at the starting line and get ready to show off that crab-shaped finishing medal.

The Walters Gala and Party
Oct. 19. 6 p.m.-12 a.m.. The Walters Art Museum. $115-500. The Walters Art Museum has been revered as one of the best art museums in the country, so it’s no surprise that its annual fundraising gala and party is up there with the best of them. This year’s theme, Modern Nouveau, takes inspiration from an exhibition of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the architect who influenced the art nouveau movement, that’s premiering at the Mount Vernon museum this month. Start the evening with a cocktail reception followed by a gourmet dinner in the galleries, and cap off the night with late-night drinks and dancing in the Sculpture Court. Be sure to grab tickets early, as this party-for-a-cause experience is almost guaranteed to sell out.

This past June, on the graduation stage of a prominent local all-girls independent private school, there was yet another indisputable signal that we are in the midst of a profound, fundamental cultural correction in regard to how we collectively understand gender and identity. For the first time in the school’s 134-year history, amid the gleeful throng of beaming graduates in white dresses, a young man, Will McClelland, dressed in an understated creme-colored suit, became the first openly transgender student to graduate from The Bryn Mawr School.

But it was complicated. It still is complicated. And it is the harbinger of the arrival of the single most important and defining issue confronting all-boys and all-girls private schools in generations.

Across the United States and around the globe, the leadership of single-gender independent schools are grappling with how to reconcile their missions with a new generation that demands to live and be seen for who they are, not who they are told to be. While society’s long overdue recognition of the trans and non-binary community, a historically marginalized sector of the population, is a step forward in social progress, this recognition presents a unique nexus of extraordinary challenges within the isolated realms of Baltimore’s many independent, single-gender schools. Here, throughout the tight-knit community of prestigious single-gender private schools—specifically, Roland Park Country School, Boy’s Latin, Bryn Mawr, St. Paul’s School for Boys, St. Paul’s School for Girls, Oldfields, St. Timothy’s, Gilman, Garrison Forest—heads of schools, administrators, and counselors are scrambling to adapt to a fundamental cultural paradigm shift unimaginable to their institutional founders. Are these schools ready for this? Their parents? Teachers? Alumni? How about their boards of directors? These are all powerful forces, and they are colliding at very high speed.

“The world is changing—with or without these schools,” explains Jabari Lyles, the first full-time LGBTQ Affairs Liaison with the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office. “Schools are responsible to our kids and to our society for keeping up.”

The gender revolution is toppling the longstanding binary status quo with astonishing rapidity. “The transgender movement was one of the first social justice and diversity issues to come of age in the social media era,” explains Julie Mencher, a renowned therapist, policy consultant, and trainer on LGBTQ issues based out of Northhampton, Massachusetts. “As a result, the pace of public awareness, trans visibility, and social change has been viral.”

From corporate boardrooms to the halls of government, outdated gender binary policies and perceptions are being hastily jettisoned to accommodate change. Culturally speaking, we have already crossed the Rubicon of integrating transgender acceptance—and rejecting the traditional gender binary—into the mainstream.

Transgender role models such as Olympian Caitlyn Jenner and actress Laverne Cox are more visible than ever, and American brands have begun to recognize the new zeitgeist. A recent campaign for Gillette features a father teaching his transgender son how to shave. Airlines are proudly touting third gender options in their bookings. Leaders from the LGBTQ community are running for public office across the country, including Congress.

And while social media has certainly fuel–ed the dizzying pace of the gender revolution, this massive shift in the cultural landscape can also be attributed to a far more simple truth: the transgender community is—and always has been—everywhere. They are our parents, students, co-workers, teachers, friends, brothers, and sisters. Their voices have merely—and finally—been amplified.

Although both all-boys and all-girls schools are on a steep learning curve, Will McClelland’s graduation from Bryn Mawr represents part of a larger country-wide trend highlighting how the all-girl institutions are reacting with greater alacrity and agility than their all-boy counterparts.

“It’s true that girls’ schools are way ahead of [boys’ schools] in considering trans inclusion,” says Mencher. “I see it as partly about identity and partly about practicality: Quite differently from boys’ schools, the very identity of most girls’ schools has historically included a social justice mission of expanding traditional notions around gender. Girls’ schools have offered safe harbor for girls to pursue education, achievement, and ambition, free from the gendered—and often sexist—choreography of a coed environment.”

“Our ideas of what it means to be a boy have expanded quite a bit . . . and that’s a good thing.”

In an email, Sue Sadler, the Head of School at Bryn Mawr, echoes that sentiment: “For 135 years, Bryn Mawr has tried to even the field for an underrepresented group: girls!” she writes. “Over time, the school has become more inclusive of race, religion, and sexual orientation, and gender is the new frontier of inclusion. As our understanding of gender expands from binary terms of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ to a spectrum of gender expression, we have to examine what the definition of ‘all-girls’ is. Fortunately, we’ve always had a wide range of ways to be a girl.”

Across the country, many prestigious sec–ondary all-girls schools, such as Los Angeles’ Marlborough School and Manhattan’s The Nightingale-Bamford School, The Brearley School, and The Spence School, have already taken action and issued revised, explicit policies and guidelines. Marlborough and Nightingale now have policies that will consider “any applicant who identifies as female, including those assigned male at birth.”

So far, Bryn Mawr has no explicit policy. “At this time, we prefer practices to policies,” writes Sadler. “We’ve addressed the uniform codes and campus facilities such as gender-neutral bathrooms. We continue to educate our community on transgender topics and discuss how to best serve our students with faculty, trustees, and families. Fortunately, there is a lot of latitude in how this can be implemented, and we try very hard to serve both the student and the mission.”

While non-binary and trans students in all-girls spaces may benefit from their schools’ emphasis on empowerment, all-boys schools are inherently different—and differently complicated. Boys who do not identify as cisgender, a term for anyone who identifies as a gender consistent with the sex they were assigned at birth, must reckon with an environment in which social pressures to uphold traditional tropes of masculinity are acutely exacerbated.

Henry Smyth, headmaster of Gilman School, an all-boys school in Roland Park, oversees more than 1,000 students from pre-K-12. He is keenly aware of the inherent challenges of leading an all-boys institution. The table in his office is strewn with a toppled mountain of summer reading—all books related to educating boys, what it means to be a boy, and how to crack longstanding myths about boyhood.

“What these discussions about genderfluidity have allowed to happen is for us to continue to figure out how the definition of what it means to be a boy can be expanded to include as many different types of boys as possible,” Smyth says. “Our ideas of what it means to be a boy have expanded quite a bit over the past 50 years. And it’s expanded even faster over the last 15 years. And that’s a good thing.”

The pressing question becomes how these
schools approach the retention of students who, in developing their own sense of self, identify as a gender that’s wholly at odds with the school’s single-gender mission.

“In my own thinking, I’ve been making a distinction between guidelines and policy,” notes Smyth. “Because part of what I’ve heard loud and clear from other schools and organizations who’ve been looking into this as well is that having hard and fast policies is not the way to go. There are going to be such great variables in each person’s different story and path. So, what might be more helpful is that we have guidelines that reaffirm what we believe in as a school and that provide the right sorts of questions to be asking, and what areas need addressing when making the right decision for a particular student.”

Presently, the single-gender private schools in the Baltimore area we spoke to are all operating on similar informal, case-by-case bases when it comes to individual students. This allows institutions the flexibility to consider and navigate the constellation of variables involved in a new sphere they concede they are still coming to understand.

It also preserves the school’s right to remove a transgender student solely on the basis that their identity has strayed beyond the confines of their school’s single-gender mission.

For LGBTQ advocates, the passive “case-by-case” approach is often unfavorably compared to the notorious Clinton-era “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for gay members of the armed forces and has been sharply criticized for placing an additional strain on young adolescents who, if struggling with their gender identity, may already be shouldering a mighty emotional burden.

“We’re forcing kids to make a decision or reconcile or compromise their identity for their community—and that’s terrible,” says Lyles. He says the kids are given a near-impossible choice: “[They] have to either pick, ‘I’m going to pick who I’m going to be’ or ‘I’m going to pick where I’m going to be because I feel safe.’” He adds that the case-by-case approach can work, but only if the goal is manifestly “to do what’s in the best interest of the student.”

Adding another layer of complication, it is not uncommon for transgender students to wish to remain in their single-gender schools—even if the school is not the “right” place for them anymore. Over time they have created a safe space for themselves in these schools. Some, like Will McClelland, have not been affirmed by their own families, and so the ties they have forged within their school community—a critical support network of trusted classmates, allies, counselors, and teachers—often provides one of their only safe havens. “I always felt a lot more comfortable at Bryn Mawr than I did at home,” says McClelland.

Although his experience was oftentimes difficult, when asked how he would feel if he’d been asked to leave Bryn Mawr, McClelland, in a matter-of-fact manner, replies, “I would’ve been devastated. My whole life was there.”

“I would feel hurt to be torn away from my friends . . . because of something I did not choose.”

Echoing that sentiment is Steve Chan*, a transgender boy currently enrolled in a prominent local private girls’ school. “I feel it is not the school’s place to make those decisions for students,” he says. “If a student is having personal issues because of their gender identification in a school, there should be every opportunity for them to change schools, but it should always be the student’s decision. Being transgender already made me personally feel as though my entire world shifted around without my consent, and one of the things that has helped me get through this has been the existing relationships I had with friends and teachers from my school; taking that away from students without their choice would be harmful and unnecessary.”

Chan has attended his school since kindergarten and is now entering his senior year. “I would feel hurt to be torn away from my friends and existing relationships because of something I cannot change and did not choose,” he says.

Others contend that while reserving the right to remove transgender students from a school might preserve the purity of its single-sex mission—and mollify powerful old-guard stakeholders—it also risks reinforcing the long history of marginalization suffered by non-cisgender students within their school communities.

“The mission of single-sex schools is grounded in the gender binary,” Mencher says, “so it does require some thoughtful study and policy consideration for a school to be able to acknowledge that gender is a spectrum, that anatomical sex does not determine gender identity, that gender identity can be fluid, and that gender identity is self-affirmed, not assigned by others. These schools have stepped up quickly, but they understandably have further to go.”

No matter what schools do, what remains indisputable is that, “[Along] with providing the best environment for learning . . . the primary and most fundamental responsibility of the schools, even above mission, is providing for the safety and well-being of their students,” says Lyles. “And when talking about the transgender community, safety and well-being is a very serious concern.”

Of the more than 6,400 transgender and gender non-conforming people who responded to a joint study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA School of Law, 41 percent said they attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime—an alarming rate, especially in comparison to the rate of the general public, which is 4.6 percent.

Those who identify as transgender are also at significantly higher risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and other mental health concerns than their non-trans peers. The data connecting these disturbingly disproportionate rates of self-harm, addiction, and mental health issues in the transgender community can be directly linked to the stigma and discrimination still suffered by many—bullying, harassment, family rejection, and outright violence. Schools have a moral and professional obligation to create and continually foster safe spaces for all their students, including those who identify as gender non-conforming.

The critical importance of how we treat these children is further underscored in a recent policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that stridently urges the support and caretaking of transgender and gender-diverse children and adolescents. The AAP “encourages families, schools, and communities to value every child for who they are in the present, even at a young age,” while assuring them that “transgender identities and diverse gender expressions are normal aspects of human diversity,” reads the statement.

“I’ve seen over and over how trans kids who lack family support can find a lifeline with a trusted teacher or school administrator. That can make all the difference,” says Mencher. “But if the topic of gender diversity is never discussed at schools, gender-questioning and trans students are likely to stay silent rather than reach out for help. I worry much more about the trans students we don’t know about than the [ones] we do.”

To that end, “Schools must take the lead in educating their entire communities—not just faculty and students, but parents as well,” says Mencher. “Because, although few in numbers, these children are everywhere.”

Smyth acknowledges the truth in this sentiment. “There’s more ground to be broken, and more understanding to be had and reached,” he says.

To remain inclusive and relevant, every aspect of a school—from facilities, to dress codes, to athletics, to the words they use—will have to be reassessed in an entirely new context. New campus cultures will emerge. Every school will have its own journey along the path of how they come to embrace and affirm LGBTQ students. They will have to harken back to the ruptures of the civil rights era to find a corollary paradigm shift of such immense proportions.

As for Will McClelland—after posting an A- average, joining the ice hockey team, serving as Arts Council President, leading the campus Gay-Straight Alliance, living and speaking his advocacy for the LGBTQ community on campus, and even making some history—he’s looking forward, with youthful anticipation, to his freshman year at the University of Michigan, where he will be able to live his true identity completely and openly and have the freedom to be just “be myself.”

*This student’s real name and school have been withheld to protect privacy.