Through its administration of several Safe Streets violence-interruption sites in Baltimore, LifeBridge Health has been directly involved in efforts to prevent gun violence since about 2021. Twice last year, Neil Meltzer, the hospital and urgent care system’s CEO, went to the White House at the invitation of its Office on Gun Violence Prevention, including serving as one of the lead presenters at a June summit on public-health and hospital-based strategies to address gun violence.

In December, under Meltzer’s leadership, LifeBridge Health launched a public-education campaign, called Stop the Iron Pipeline, to build statewide awareness around the trafficking of illegal guns into Maryland.

Launching a public awareness campaign about gun violence seems like an unusual initiative for a hospital system. What was the impetus?
What has been frustrating to me is the fact that our communities have been deeply affected by gun violence—every day, we and every other hospital system see the impact of that violence—and we also know what the situation is. At the White House, I learned specifically that so much of the gun violence in Maryland is [traced back] to guns that were trafficked from out of state.

This is an issue that LifeBridge has been intimately involved with through its administration of several Safe Streets violence-interruption sites in the city.
What we’re trying to do is get to the root cause of gun violence, and Safe Streets programs and interventions address what’s happening in the streets of Baltimore, specifically. But we also know that we’re the number-one state in the country for trafficked guns…This is an issue that’s statewide.

LifeBridge has produced a short film and song, “Pipeline” (dropping Feb. 13), by Grammy-nominated rapper Logic and young singers from Resonate Baltimore, the Parkville music school. What does the campaign entail? How do you plan to get the word out?
Everything has gone out on social media, Facebook, Instagram, etc., and on the website of the movement. It’s a highly visual website that we hope will connect to a younger audience and get them engaged. Our goal is to educate them around the issue and then have them take action by signing a petition to the governor, asking him to prioritize this issue.

Maryland has comparatively strict gun laws, which obviously doesn’t prevent the inflow of guns. Is the idea ultimately to put pressure on other states to act as well?
We’re hoping this begins to put some pressure on maybe Virginia or the Carolinas. It’s possible to pinpoint a gun shop in Georgia, for example, where illegal guns are coming from. So, we’re also hoping there’ll be more aggressive action in Maryland, such as what [New York] Attorney General Letitia James did in New York, filing lawsuits against out-of-state ghost-gun retailers. We really just hope to break the cycle some way.

If you want to know what’s happening in the Baltimore arts scene, look no further than Teri Henderson. Over the years, the 34-year-old Texas transplant has emerged as a leading voice for the local creative community, from her time as a staff writer at Bmore Art and gallery coordinator for the publication’s Connect + Collect space to her current role as arts-and-culture editor at the Baltimore Beat, where her weekly event roundups have become a vital resource.

With a warm, inquisitive style, her writing focuses on the overlooked stories of Black, brown, and queer artists, as does her curatorial work, like this month’s “All Water Has a Perfect Memory” exhibition at Current Space, and January’s upcoming “Layers: The Art of Contemporary Collage” at MICA. Be sure to also follow her Black Collagists, a digital archive, as well as a physical book, dedicated to the multifaceted medium.

Growing up in Texas, how did you come to appreciate the arts?

My mom always had art in the house and made sure that my brother and I were always in museums. The Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, or the Carter Museum [of American Art]. …

In college, I took a world religion and visual arts class, and if I hadn’t met Professor Elwell, I would not be doing what I do today. At that point, my goal was to open an art gallery, but I didn’t really think that I could write about art until taking his class. I also tried to make art, and I was just not good at it, but this felt natural to me. Still, I never thought then that I would become an art critic. …

And then as a child of the internet, on MySpace and LiveJournal, I was just always archiving images, making galleries, finding joy being around art. I was thinking the other day about Black Collagists and how I’ve been doing this kind of thing without knowing what it was for decades now.

What is the magic of collage to you?

Sometimes it’s hard to afford to make art. Studio materials are expensive. Classes are expensive. But collage is a very democratic medium that allows anyone to participate in it. It’s a really fun medium. It’s tactile. It allows you to be present and grounding. It can be very meditative. …

There’s a very basic definition of collage—using disparate or even discarded materials to make something new or whole. And for Black people, Black creatives, especially in the United States, there is this tradition of making something out of nothing, like soul food. With collage, you can have scraps of paper and create something that is magnificient, that allows you to connect not just with the material but also with who you are. And you can always collage over it. There are no mistakes. …

There are some forms of their art that people will define as “craft,” which they use a negative connotation, as if it’s not as valid or relevant as an oil painting. And I disagree with that. This is a medium that does need to be collected, does need to be exhibited, and does need to be seen. I don’t have a fine art background. I didn’t go to a fancy art school. The quote-unquote art world is exclusionary and makes people feel like they don’t belong. But the collage community is so collaborative. People are like, ‘Oh, you make artwork? Come on!’ The amount of affirmation that I see is beautiful.

You moved to Baltimore for law school but got involved in the local arts scene through co-curating WDLY, a nomadic events platform for creatives of color, which some readers might remember from your Arts After Hours event at the Baltimore Museum of Art. How did this work eventually translate into writing?

In all of my work, I have just wanted to make space for people who might not have had it before. [When I started writing,] I knew Baltimore was a predominantly Black city, I knew the artists I spent most of my time with were Black, brown, and queer, and I wanted to make sure their work was documented. …

Just today, I saw Tromac, an artist I recently interviewed, posting about being on the cover of a newspaper and how good that felt for him. Sometimes it can feel like your work isn’t reaching anyone, but then there’ll be an affirmation from the universe like that. I’m proud of what I’ve done at the Beat. And the fact that it’s free is so important. We want it to be for everybody, in the same way that everybody can collage.

Does this approach translate into your curatorial work as well?

There’s a lot of overlap. When I first started two years ago, I thought that they were two distinct different things, but I’ve realized that a lot of my writing is just an extension of my curatorial practice. That’s what’s really cool about the Beat being an alt paper. It’s something that we’re building and that gives us a lot of freedom. Again, I’m trying to expand what people think art coverage should look like, who should be highlighted, what faces should be included. I’m even trying to push my own limits of, how do we show Baltimore in its multiplicity? How do we show a wide array of what a Black Baltimorean is? A hallmark of being a good curator is being a good storyteller, where people have their voices heard and honored, and that is what the Beat tries to do, too.

How does the internet show up in your work these days?

Oh my God, I’m always like, “I want to take a break from social media,” but it fuels my work. … And especially as a deeply introverted person, it provides a refuge and a digital community where I’m able to communicate.

The arts scene seems to be in the midst of an evolution. How would you describe this current moment?

I feel excited. So many spaces are closing, like The Crown is gone, but new spaces are emerging, and there’s this sense of solidarity as people organize around whatever the next thing might be. I’m really excited that Gatsby’s [in Station North] was bought by artists. I have a lot of hope because of the artists here. I just hope things stay affordable, so the artists can stay. I don’t want the city to lose its soul, which I feel is its artists, and the creative economies and communities that they cultivate.

In late June, marathon swimmer, multidisciplinary artist, and 36-year-old Baltimore resident Katie Pumphrey set a record as the first person to ever complete a 24-mile, open water swim from Sandy Point State Park near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Baltimore Harbor.

It wasn’t her first rodeo, so to speak—the lifelong swimmer and swim coach has participated in major swims around the world, including around the island of Manhattan and across the English Channel. But for this swim, just months after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, she had what seemed like all of Baltimore behind her. Over the course of 14 hours, through night and day, she navigated from the nation’s largest estuary up the Patapsco River to the Harborplace Amphitheatre, where a horde of cheering fans awaited her.

We sat down with Pumphrey to hear about her epic swim and how the water influences her art.

A lifelong swimmer, you got into open-water swimming via the local Chesapeake Bay Swim in 2010. How did you move on to bigger swims around the world?
I started reading books and memoirs from other swimmers. Ultramarathon swimming is such a uniquely woman-centered sport, with pioneers like English Channel swimmer Lynne Cox. I ended up swimming the Channel myself twice, in 2015 and 2022, and I found the most welcoming and encouraging community of ultramarathon swimmers around the world. Lynne Cox actually called me to wish me luck. The public underestimates women, but in this sport, no one does.

How did you dream up the Bay to Baltimore Swim?
The moment that the Waterfront Partnership announced that Baltimore Harbor was swimmable in 2023, I wanted to get involved. I  emailed them three minutes later…I wanted the swim to be grand, a 20- to 30-mile range, and I wanted it to draw positive attention to Baltimore. The Bay Bridge is 24 miles away, and that felt perfect to us.

What was the swim like?
I left Sandy Point in the darkness, and it was wild. It’s really hard to get a rhythm; it’s also when your imagination is at its loudest. I kept thinking about [the possibility of] sharks, and telling myself, “It’s their living room, you’re just swimming by.” But then there was the most beautiful sunrise hour. By the time I made it to [a remaining span of] the Key Bridge, the conditions were really rough. I switched to a backstroke to go under the last span. The sun disappeared behind it, and it was overwhelming, and incredibly moving. I took a few deep breaths, turned back over, and went on.

How does swimming influence your work as an artist?
A lot of my work focuses on playing with our instinct to react to stress and chaos—how our imagination can play tricks on us and how we steady those anxieties through humor. That draws on my experiences in the water, teeter-tottering between steady and unsteady ground. Sharks, alligators—they are sea monsters that are representative of our fears, and I explore how we can push past them.

After her brother was killed by a drunk driver, Kelli Brooks (pictured) thought she was “going crazy.” She had no idea that grief could manifest in both physical and mental ways. She now says it was “divine intervention” that brought her to Roberta’s House, a family grief support center.

After witnessing the disparity of unresolved grief and loss in urban communities, Annette March-Grier co-founded Roberta’s House in 2008 along with her family, the owners of March Funeral Home, to address the needs of grief, especially in children. The grief center was named after the March family’s matriarch, the late Julia Roberta March.

For Brooks, being able to work through her heartache saved her life and now, as the community outreach coordinator, she sees firsthand how vital it is to have children be part of the conversation.

“It’s really important to involve kids and really teach them, at their level, what grief is, what death is, and how it can impact their lives.”

This is all done through peer support groups, educational workshops, community outreach, and Camp Erin, held every summer. Created and supported by The Moyer Foundation (now Eluna), Camp Erin is the largest national bereavement program for youth. Children and teens attend a weekend camp experience that combines traditional camp activities with grief support, free of charge for families.

The importance of both Roberta’s House and Camp Erin is “recognizing that they’re not alone,” says licensed clinical social worker Aneesha Scott, behavioral health program clinical director for Roberta’s House and Camp Erin Baltimore. “And even when you’re grieving, you can still have fun, you can still laugh, you can still engage with others,” she says, adding that kids learn healthy coping strategies as well.

Last year, Roberta’s House helped more than 250 children, thanks to countless trained volunteers, in ways that let them heal at their own pace.

“Grief looks different for everyone, especially at different ages,” says Scott. “So, somebody comes in and they’re not able to necessarily talk. Sometimes they have to write it. Sometimes we have to do art projects. Sometimes we have to go play in the game room….You have to meet them where they are until they’re ready to tell their grief story.”

Much of Faith Leach’s work as Baltimore City’s chief administrative officer sounds complicated and inaccessible—reforming outdated systems, for example, or securing philanthropic donations for city programs. But it’s all too real when she’s out driving around town.

“I feel it every day,” says Leach, 40, who explains that her job is essentially to keep the city running smoothly. “[City agency] directors will tell you how they get daily texts and phone calls from me about everything from traffic signal optimization to litter and trash in roadways. These are all things that impact our daily life.”

After nearly 20 years of government service in North Carolina and a stint as deputy mayor in Washington, D.C., Leach was appointed by Mayor Brandon Scott in January 2023. Her mission of “professionalizing” city government culture and streamlining how it all functions is no small order, but she’s up to the task.

How would you describe the culture of municipal work today in Baltimore City?
Our public service members are very proud. They love their city fiercely, but the thing I’ve noticed is that for a very long time, city government and its employees were forced to use piecemeal solutions to make up for broken and antiquated systems, and we really needed to professionalize the overall management of government and strengthen our service delivery.

For example, we have a notoriously inefficient procurement system and employees had to figure out how to [purchase inventory] with a system that just frankly did not work, and that became a part of the culture.

After a year and a half, what’s your biggest victory so far?
We’ve really gotten a lot done together. As soon as I walked in the door, one of the biggest things I heard about was recycling. I pulled together a cross section of our government leaders to dig into the challenges and we developed a plan to not just return to weekly recycling, but to stabilize our Solid Waste Division. We hired almost 70 drivers and laborers, we right-sized and optimized our routes, and we set about updating our fleet, which was well out-of-date. It was this very thoughtful exercise to ensure we brought recycling back in a way that was sustainable for the city.

Do you have moments when you’re off the clock and notice, “This is where my work impacts daily life”?
One of the things that moves me the most is when I drive through a community with vacant houses and lots that haven’t been maintained, and I see young people at bus stops or walking to and from school—this is what they pass every day. That’s when it really hits home for me how important this work is. It’s those quality-of-life issues that impact the growth of our young people. It impacts our ability to grow our city and sustain and maintain our population. Those are the things that we have to get right if we want to really be the best version of ourselves as a city.

When he learned about the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge on that fateful Tuesday morning, March 26, Pastor Rashad Singletary rushed to his red-brick church in Turner Station, located less than 500 feet from where the iconic piece of infrastructure had stood just hours earlier. There, he checked in with colleagues, congregants, and community members, then donned his official credentials as Baltimore City’s director of community affairs and started to consider what to do next.

In addition to leading Mt. Olive Baptist Church, the 35-year-old faith leader has worked in community engagement for more than a decade, including a longtime career with local gun violence intervention nonprofit Safe Streets, before joining the Mayor’s Office in 2021. This experience would help him, and others, swiftly organize a community vigil in his own pews, gathering dozens of politicians, members of the press, and affected residents in a powerful moment of unity in the wake of a tragic event that not only rattled Baltimore, but the entire world.

How would you describe your community?
Number one, Turner Station is one of the most historic African-American communities in the country. It is a resilient community. It’s family oriented. And it’s very small—there’s one way in and one way out—but there’s a lot of talent and love there.

What has the bridge meant to the people of Turner Station?
The Key Bridge was not just a place of traffic for the Port of Baltimore; it also connected communities. I have congregants who watched the bridge being built. And so when it collapsed, a lot of our community wasn’t just shaken up because it fell, but because it was a part of their growing up, and of their livelihood. Personally, for me, I would take the bridge with my wife and kids to get to work, to go home, to visit with congregants. Now we’re having to get used to going outside and not seeing it there anymore. And to not hearing the traffic on 695. It’s so quiet now.

The vigil was an interfaith gathering, including Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski. What was the experience like for you in the end?
It was very humbling. Because where our church is located, we’re all the way down at the bottom of the road. It’s beautiful, right next to the water, but most people wouldn’t even know we’re here. Personally, I had been contemplating, “God, I know you sent me to this church, I know that we’re growing, but I really want to be able to serve this community in a greater way, I just need some guidance.” …It was almost as if God said to me, “I’m showing you what your responsibility is. And that is to minister to communities, regardless of race, religion, or crisis. To be available to do what I’ve called you to do, at any moment.”

How have you found faith in the weeks that have followed?
The collapse of the bridge was a major tragedy, but it has also developed new relationships and brought our community together in a way that it might have not been engaged in before. And now that the government is looking for ways to rebuild, let’s not forget about these communities that have been neglected…What opportunities do we have to rebuild [their] infrastructure?

Eleven years ago, band manager Phil Chorney found himself sitting on his Hampden stoop, picking a guitar and drinking whiskey with a few of his friends, when they had an idea to throw a bluegrass concert. Chorney had fallen for the genre’s rich history in Baltimore, and soon enough, that impromptu jam session led to 14 bands and a sold-out crowd at then-new Union Craft Brewing.

These days, with the help of fellow Baltimore County native Adam Kirr, the Charm City Bluegrass Festival has evolved into a beloved annual tradition in Baltimore, with some 3,000 music fans in attendance and an impressive lineup that includes both local artists like Cris Jacobs and Caleb Stine and big-name Americana acts such as Billy Strings, The Lone Bellow, and bluegrass legend Del McCoury. And now, after a long run at Druid Hill Park, the family-friendly shindig moves to the Baltimore Peninsula, where the sound of fiddles and banjos will ripple across the Patapsco River on May 3 and 4.

Weeks before, we caught up with the organizers to reflect on the last decade.

How did you come to learn about Baltimore’s bluegrass history?

Adam Kirr: Tim Newby’s book, Bluegrass in Baltimore, was an eye-opener into how important this city was in the development of bluegrass music, especially going back to the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, with traveling artists like [Kentucky native and “Father of Bluegrass”] Bill Monroe…At the time, Baltimore was one of the main stops. With the industrialization of America, with people moving from Appalachia for work, bringing their music with them, Baltimore became one of the biggest markets. These were usually rough bars where people took the music seriously. And the Baltimore bluegrass sound is known for being loud and fast because bands were playing, acoustically, in such rowdy venues.

Phil Chorney: Those stories are iconic. We take a lot of pride in being just a small part of that history.

Last year, you celebrated the festival’s tenth year. What has the mission been?

PC: This festival is a celebration of the history of live bluegrass, Americana, and roots music in Baltimore. But it’s really become more about the community than anything else. This year, we’re striving to introduce folks to new bands and really focus on musicians from the region. Long-term, the vision remains just putting together the most compelling lineup for people to enjoy the music and each other.

The festival has grown into a Baltimore tradition. Why do you think that is?

PC: I travel a lot and see folks all over the country now wearing our hats. It feels good, like people have embraced our vision and our openness…I have a fairly liberal definition of bluegrass music, but if you have one of four instruments—guitar, bass, mandolin, violin or fiddle—you’re bluegrass to me. At the end of the day, it’s about more than just the picking. It’s the family, friends, and music.

AK: And just a nice day outside in spring.

What’s it been like to see the Americana scene blossom here?

PC: The scene has really matured, and now there are all these picks at different venues, and all these other bluegrass events throughout the region, and even some bands who formed because they met at our festival. We’ve all come up together. And if it keeps people supporting local musicians and places like The 8×10, we’ve done our job.

Although he had trouble focusing in high school, Wesley Jamison found direction, strength, and more in the then-newly erected gym at The Park School.

“I felt safe in there,” he says. “It was just me, my goals, my challenges. I would go during lunch. I could focus in a way that was very hard for me outside of the gym.”

Today, the 2005 Park alum and Baltimore City native aims to provide a similar environment for teenagers and young adults in the city as the executive director of the nonprofit MissionFit. Operating out of Remington, steps from the crocodile mural, the organization offers not only free fitness classes for young people but room to grow, too.

What does MissionFit do?
We’re using movement and coaching as a language to develop health, wellness, independence, and leadership capacity in the young people that we work with. At one level, that might be offering a place to exercise, have fun, and sweat, because I know they don’t have great access to places where they can move and blow off steam. We see about 500 people in a given year and 200 regularly. We have young people who say, “When I’m stressed, I need to come to the gym.” We give them access and show them how to use the gym.

At another level, in our Strength Ambassadors program, we’re using coaching to take 18- to 20-year-olds and put them in front of 13- to 15-year-olds and allowing them to be the leaders of the programming. They get paid for their work, so we also talk about business and financial literacy, as well as things like healthy eating, cooking, mindfulness, and yoga.

How did the Strength Ambassadors program start?
The initial idea was to give the young people we work with the skills so that they can be the coaches and broadcast our message way beyond our walls and to the people that surround them. I really think about health from as global of a perspective as possible. I believe your health is affected by this global arena of determinants. I would argue things like finance, or job and college readiness, all have a potential effect on your health and wellness—and vice versa. We know that movement and exercise help with executive function. So if we can tip as many of these levers as possible in favor of young people, we give them the best chance to be healthy and well and thrive.

What are some of the most critical issues faced by the youth you’re working with?
A lack of safe spaces to exercise, safe and reliable mentors, or connection between young people. For us, access to a space and the people that young people need to be [around to be] healthy is where we’re sitting at. I had a 17-yearold come into the gym the other day and say, “I’ve never been in a gym before.” But even if that young person comes in, they might not know what to do. So you need the safe space, but you also need guidance, and we’re trying to do both.

In the summer of 2013, Baltimore’s homicide rate was on the rise, prompting residents to take to the streets in an effort to reduce gun violence through neighborhood engagement. Out of that violent year, positive activism was spun by groups like 300 Man March, Moms Against Gun Violence, West Wednesdays, and, ultimately, Baltimore Ceasefire—which changed its name to Baltimore Peace Movement in 2022 to “declare what it’s about, not what it’s against.”

Baltimore Peace Movement hosts Peace Promise Weekends the first weekend of February, August, November, and Mother’s Day weekend. During these dedicated days—a time for communities to host life-affirming events and celebrate the peace that naturally resides in all humanity—research has shown a 52 percent reduction in gun violence. Throughout the year, the movement serves as a hub of resources for organizations and community members working to nurture peace in Baltimore.

Award-winning photojournalist—and frequent Baltimore contributor—J.M. Giordano has documented the local peace movement since 2013, and compiled his photos into a new book, 13–23: How a Summer of Violence Led to a Decade of Activism.

Here, we share an online-exclusive preview of the pictorial history, as well as exclusive images from Giordano’s most recent coverage of Baltimore Peace Movement’s peace weekend that took place August 4–6, 2023.

From 13–23: How a Summer of Violence Led to a Decade of Activism:

From the Baltimore Peace Movement’s Peace Promise Weekend August 4-6: 

For 28 years, Michael Buckley introduced listeners to new kinds of music and interviewed some of the region’s most fascinating people as part of his weekly Sunday Brunch radio program on Annapolis’s late WRNR 103.1 FM. A blend of musical genres and a celebration of the Chesapeake’s vibrant culture, it was a beloved weekly ritual for listeners across Maryland.

Five years after launching the show, Buckley would incorporate a regional interview into each broadcast called “Voices of the Chesapeake Bay,” ultimately interviewing hundreds of the estuary’s most notable subjects, from watermen and environmentalists to Civil Rights leaders and Indigenous tribe elders.

The station went off the air in February, but in Buckley’s state-capital studio, the music and stories play on. Listened to archived episodes via voicesofthechesapeakebay.net and tune into his new show, Americana Voices, on Saturdays at 2 p.m. via 88.5 FM.

What got you interested in interviewing people?
When I was 16, I dropped out of high school and hitchhiked across the country for eight years. I learned how to talk to people. When they pick you up, they want you to talk about yourself, but then it gives you a chance to interview them, too. It taught me a lot. But as time went on, I started to feel like I’d missed a lot by not going to school. I thought knowledge should be shared, it should be available to people of all ages, and we can all learn from each other.

You don’t have a background in broadcasting, but you worked with WRNR for 28 years. How did you get started?
I was running the big music store at the flagship Borders [in Montgomery County] and I put together music programs on new releases, with one panel discussion about the radio revolution. Later, I ended up having a meeting with Jake Einstein [who founded WHFS and later WRNR] and ranted about all the music that wasn’t getting played.

He listened to me contentedly, and after about a half an hour, he said, “You should have a radio show—do you have a tape?” I didn’t. But I said, “Yeah, I got a tape,” and I went home that night and used all these different artists, and he loved it. He put me on Sunday mornings, for a five-hour show, 7 a.m. to 12 noon. And I did that until WRNR went out of business.

What was your vision for the Sunday Brunch?
I have this philosophy, which is free form: a DJ should pick the music right on the spot while they’re doing the show. So I did my thing; I wanted the world to have the experience of listening to all different kinds of music—classical, jazz, folk, blues, mixed together in harmony and in one place…I wanted to get people to look at things from a variety of points of view, and I had a captive audience. The interviews for “Voices of the Chesapeake Bay” were based on this common passion for this Bay that we live around. Everybody’s got a great story to tell. Everybody has twists and turns in their lives that lead to extraordinary moments in a lifetime.

What do you think as you look back at 28 years with WRNR?
Each show is like my child—I can’t pick a favorite. But I’m blessed to have done all of these interviews. I’m enchanted with this country that we live in, which is so rich in stories, so massively beautiful. I wanted to find out if people are basically good people, and I think I’ve found that people are genuinely friendly, impressive, approachable. For me, it’s one form of living a full life. I have gotten to interact with and encourage people to have an awareness of how rich their lives are.

When she was a photography student at MICA, Deyane Moses couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t many Black students on campus. For her first curatorial thesis project in 2018, the now-36-year-old artist created the Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA), using photographs, archival research, and oral histories to shine a light on the oft-overlooked history of Black students at the prestigious art school. The project received critical acclaim, and in the years since, it has expanded to the city at large. Through her umbrella Blackives, she now provides archival and research services to help Black communities in Baltimore preserve their past and future.

The idea of collection plays a huge role in your work life. When and how did you take interest?
Collecting started happening in high school. I got into scrapbooking during my senior year. That was when they had disposable cameras. I took pictures. I saved my shirts. I saved every ticket. I saved everything. I wish I had saved things from when I was younger. For me, the fascination with collecting things is being able to see other people’s stories being told from what they’ve collected.

How did MIBA get started?
I knew Baltimore was predominantly Black, but at MICA, I was the only Black person in most of my classes, and I had one Black instructor. I started wondering, “Why does this place look like this?” In MICA’s history book, there was only one page about segregation. In my opinion, it was very whitewashed. So I decided to start researching and the rest kind of unfolded from there. I located the first four Black students who attended MICA—as well as some people who tried to attend, but couldn’t between the periods of 1894 and 1954, when schools were segregated—and I started looking into who attended afterwards. MIBA started off with MICA, and it continues, in a way, with MICA, but it’s started to expand beyond that to talk about Baltimore—specifically Black artists who have lived and worked here, and who have made an impact in the art world.

Recently, your work has focused on advocating for increased recognition of Tom Miller, a Baltimore muralist. What is up next?
[For my day job,] I work with Afro Charities, which is a sister organization to The AFRO that cares for and helps make accessible its archive, which has 130 years’ worth of history in it. I’m currently working on putting [their stories and gathered materials] into a database. I’m also attending Wikipedia edit-a-thons. Over the years, people of color have been working to add more of their communities into Wikipedia’s database. It’s a good starting place to get to know who people are.

What’s the most rewarding part of the work you do?
I’ve been able to fill in gaps for the people in my community. I have a lot of gaps in my own family history. If I can’t do it for myself, at least I can do it for other people until it’s my turn.

Ana Temple Rodney grew up bouncing between Woodlawn and her grandparents’ backyard in Glen Burnie, where she would create herbal concoctions out of dirt, grass, and weeds. Now, as a trained doula and mother of two young boys, she’s healing others through MOMCares, a nonprofit designed to help under-supported mothers by providing doula care, self-care rituals, and advocacy, as well as help for the entire family unit through her Rising Mama organization.

In 2014, you gave birth to a premature son who spent six months in the NICU.
Aiden is now a bubbly, active, sweet, smart, and sensitive 6 year old. My traumatic experience turned all previous notions of motherhood on its head. Just as there is no manual on motherhood, there is no manual on how to offer support. My identity as a “strong Black woman” made it hard for people to support me, as some assumed I didn’t need help. There were so many lessons that I awakened to in those moments, both painful and joyous.

How did you turn those experiences into work?
In 2018, when my older sister passed away from complications that began in her postpartum period, I realized that the narrative around mothers, particularly Black mothers, not mattering [to the medical system] after their children were born was toxic. It was proving to be fatal and traumatic. I began the work of MOMCares and Rising Mama as a way to right the wrongs. Being a longtime practicing doula, I experienced birth and postpartum regularly, but it was my own struggles that really illuminated all the opportunities for more intentional support.

What impacts your work the most?
My role as a mother keeps me grounded in the mission and vision of what the programs are supposed to embody. My role as a single mother allows me to sit in the driver’s seat of what may be needed and how it can affect a household. The journey of motherhood is with you forever, and support is needed at every level and stage.

Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How do we make care more safe and equitable?
I have seen the difference in treatment, microaggressions, assumptions about partners, medical staff downplaying pain, assuming people are drug seeking, taking longer to address requests, pushing formula instead of breastfeeding, assuming income and education without any real indicators. In order to improve treatment and safety, we need more representation in the medical setting, sensitivity training, as well as bias and discrimination training, better eyes on how medical staff are modeling for medical students, and more incorporation of holistic practices in the medical setting.

What has the feedback been from families you have interacted with through your programs?
My mamas are always so thankful to have the support, and many of them refuse to let us go. We become family. We just received an email from one of our community partners that conveyed thanks from a mama we are serving who said we were the only ones who responded to her needs. Which made me sad. But also invigorated me to keep going with the work. The answer is yes.

In January, as COVID-19 began its spread around the globe, a team of Johns Hopkins University engineers began tracking data from around the world to document the novel coronavirus. Their online dashboard now gets upwards of 4.5 billion hits a day from public health authorities, researchers, and the general public. In early May, we spoke with project lead Lauren Gardner, an infectious disease specialist and co-director of the school’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering, about the dashboard’s viral moment.

What was a normal day like for you before the coronavirus outbreak?
A lot more relaxed. My group does infectious disease modeling, specifically looking at the risk of spread on national or global scales. We look at how many different factors—people, their environment, land use, population density, urbanization, climate mobility—play a role to understand which are most significant, then we build out prediction models. Back in January, we were looking specifically at measles. I’ve historically done a lot of work around Zika and dengue fever.

Given your expertise, did the arrival of this pandemic come as a surprise?
Back in January, I definitely didn’t think this was going to become the worst pandemic in a century, but in general, I am keenly aware of the heightened risk of new novel viruses getting introduced into the human population. The severity of this one, the extent to which it has integrated into every part of the world, and the complete economic collapse around it, is more extreme than I, and I think most people, were originally thinking. Even in January, we were expecting to see it all over the world—we were modeling importation and exportation risk at a global scale back then. But there was still just so much uncertainty surrounding how infectious it really was.

How did you make the shift to following COVID?
We had a lab meeting back in January with a couple of my PhD students and we were talking about this new coronavirus in China, just discussing what was going on and the implications. The students were already tracking it closely because they’re both Chinese and have family there. I thought it could be a great opportunity to build out a dataset for an emerging infectious disease in real time for the research community. Of course, we didn’t know where it was going to go. We built the dashboard just to visualize the data. It was a big surprise how popular it became for the general public. It makes sense now. My PhD student, Ensheng Dong, was really the pioneer. He built the original dashboard from scratch. We literally made the whole thing in a few hours one evening. But the data collection feeding into it is an incredibly complex process that has massively evolved over the last few months.

How quickly did it begin to consume your work?
The first week we put it up. It was growing quickly in popularity. By the end of February, it was already getting a billion hits a day. It was huge, and already starting to quickly get unsustainable in terms of managing it. We had to grow the team and start automating things. Part of it too was the scale of the outbreak. In terms of magnitude and also spatial scale, it just grew so fast through January. It was pretty obvious very fast that we were getting in deep.

How timely and accurate is the dashboard?
We update every hour. It just depends on how frequently our sources update, and because we’re reporting from all over the world, we’re getting updates at different times. One of the biggest challenges has been that sources are changing all the time. Over the last few months, counties, states, and even countries have come up with their own reporting systems, dashboards, and websites dedicated to COVID. None of these existed in January and February when we first started tracking this. Reporting rules are also changing. Some places include probable cases, some include probable deaths, some don’t. That’s really complicated to keep up with, and it’s a reason why there are discrepancies. Everyone in the world is still trying to learn how to deal with this, and their data collection and processes are continually evolving. Even in the U.S., there are inconsistencies all over the place.

What’s your day to day like now?
Since January, it’s been 110 percent. None of us have taken a day off. We work pretty much all the time because the dashboard is running all the time. We have people on 24-hour rotations for issues around servers and scripts and data crashes and all that, and we have group meetings every morning to talk about any ongoing issues, because we’re still literally building out the infrastructure every day. On the side, I’m doing a lot more modeling and analysis now, too, using the data we’ve collected through the dashboard. We’re creating weekly risk assessment forecasts for what’s going on in the U.S. We’re looking at how the cases and death rates are growing in every U.S. county. We’re looking at how social distancing is affecting the outbreaks growth rates. We’re looking at building local and global models for climate seasonality, and how that’s affecting COVID around the world.

Are there any key takeaways?
We’re learning a lot. The most critical thing right now is that we’re obviously seeing the loosening of regulations around social distancing and stay-at-home orders, and I would say it’s definitely not time for that yet. There’s strong evidence that social distancing is driving down the growth rate of the outbreaks, and if we start moving around again, we should expect to see those increase.

Are there any local trends you’re paying attention to?
A lot of our county-level modeling looks at the contributing risk factors, and a lot of that has to do with certain socioeconomic demographic characteristics, so I definitely have concerns about Baltimore. I do expect it to get worse here. Maryland is one of the higher risk states that we’re concerned about.

What’s next for the dashboard?
We’ll keep it running and continue to build on it and keep it as sustainable as possible. We’ll continue to create new models to try to learn more about COVID, and then ideally we’ll be able to transfer that knowledge to other infectious diseases. I think the dashboard has filled a knowledge gap and set a great example in terms of having a public facing tool to watch these things unfold in real time. I think it could be a good resource for annual influenza. And I hope it encourages more vaccinations among populations because maybe they’ll understand more about the risks.

You joined the Hopkins team in early 2019. What it’s like being a part of that community in this moment?
This tool is so trusted because it’s coming out of Hopkins. I think it’s really cool that we’re doing it out of the [Whiting] School of Engineering. It’s important for people to recognize that engineers can contribute to society in lots of different ways, including public health.