Former Baltimore City mayor Catherine Pugh was sentenced to three years in prison and three years probation Thursday as a result of conspiracy and tax evasion charges resulting from the sale of her Healthy Holly children’s books. Prosecutors were seeking a five-year sentence, and Pugh faced a maximum of 30 years in prison. Pugh will also be forced to pay restitution to the University of Maryland Medical Center and Maryland Auto Insurance, two of the organizations she sold books to. All copies of Healthy Holly in government custody will be destroyed.

Much has been speculated upon regarding how much time—if any—Pugh would serve in prison, and if the sentence delivered by U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasnow would send a message intended to prevent further political corruption in Baltimore.

“If you hold yourself up to a higher office, you’ve got to hold yourself up to a higher standard,” says Michael B. Runnels, associate professor of law and social responsibility at Loyola University Maryland. “Mayor Pugh is just the latest in a series of mayors who have run afoul in these types of getting a hand caught in the cookie jar dynamic.”

Pugh’s dealings are the latest in a series of corruption scandals involving local officials. In 2017, Gary Brown, a Pugh aide who has also been implicated in the Healthy Holly scandal, was charged with making illegal campaign contributions. In 2018, former Maryland senator Nathaniel Oaks was sentenced to three and half years in prison on corruption charges. Earlier this year, Tawanna Gaines, a former Maryland state lawmaker, was sentenced to six months in prison for wire fraud. Also earlier this year, Cheryl Glenn, a former Balitmore state delegate, pled guilty to taking bribes for political favors.

“It gets exhausting to see this unrelenting negative press in Baltimore,” Runnels says. “It’s almost like we take one step forward and two steps back.”

When asked his thoughts on Pugh’s sentencing earlier this week, Baltimore mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young offered no comment. In a statement, City Council President Brandon Scott did not specifically share his thoughts on Pugh’s sentencing, but offered that the occasion marked “an opportunity to move forward” for her and the city.
But in the past several weeks, local politicians including Kweisi Mfume, who recently won the Democratic nomination to succeed Congressman Elijah Cummings, and friends of the mayor, like former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, have requested leniency for Pugh. On the eve of the sentencing, Pugh’s lawyers released a 13-minute video in which she asks for forgiveness. At the sentencing hearing, they referenced Pugh’s public service to Baltimore and dedication to the city as reasons why she should not receive heavy prison time.

But in issuing her verdict, Chasanow sent a clear message that the extent and depth of Pugh’s crimes warranted multiple years of prison time.

“Public corruption should be treated with great scrutiny and seriousness,” says Roger Hartley, the dean of College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore. “Especially in a situation like this where there was some real forethought behind selling books to large donors who might then be in a position for currying favor for contracts later with the city.”

Pugh’s sentencing wraps up an almost year-long saga, as The Sun first reported on the scandal in March of 2019. For Hartley, the conclusion of the former mayor’s trial marks the closing of a chapter, as the city looks forward toward a mayoral election.

“After this decision, so many people in the city want to move forward with a strong new mayor and a strong government that is transparent, legitimate, and trustworthy,” he says. “I think that’s what the voters, businesses, and citizens of this city are looking for right now.”

It was a rare sight to see last Friday evening, around 7:30 p.m., when the great Pat Spencer exited the Loyola University men’s lacrosse locker room and sat before a small group of reporters at Ridley Athletic Complex, visibly frustrated by the outcome of what just happened on the lacrosse field.

His coach, former Loyola goalie Charley Toomey, and teammate, current goalie Jacob Stover (former Ravens kicker Matt’s son), spoke about the disappointment of a surprising 7-5 loss to Army on their home field in the Patriot League semifinals, and the hope and expectation that the NCAA tournament selection committee would still grant them an at-large berth. Meanwhile, Spencer—Baltimore-raised and one of the greatest college lacrosse players of all-time—alternated between running his hands through his sweaty hair in disgust, and closing his eyes and appearing to try to calm himself down.

For only the fourth time in a sparkling four-year career at Loyola—where he’s dazzled observers, teammates, coaches, and opponents (see this diving, back-handed goal) since the first game of his freshman year—Spencer recorded less than two points in a game, with one assist and no goals.

For a college senior who is third all-time in points scored by a NCAA Division I lacrosse player (360), is six assists shy of that all-time record, and owns a list of other league and program scoring bests, it was the equivalent of Michael Jordan or LeBron James being held to a couple points on the basketball court.

And now people were asking the only questions they could: how eager Spencer and the Greyhounds might be to get another chance to play this week when college lacrosse’s NCAA tournaments begin. He couldn’t end such a great playing career with a goose-egg in the goal-scoring column, right?

“We all want another opportunity,” Spencer said. “We really didn’t put our best foot forward today. But we got a really good team and we know what we’re capable of doing coning down the stretch. Yeah, we want to get back out there.”

Fortunately for them, and anyone who wants to catch a final glimpse of Spencer in person locally, Loyola indeed heard its name called on ESPN’s Selection Sunday broadcast, as the tournament’s eighth-seed, and will host traditional lacrosse power Syracuse at noon Saturday. The game will air on ESPNU. Another local figure, former Johns Hopkins goalie Quint Kessenich, will provide color commentary.

Win or lose, it will be the last home game for Spencer and 11 other Loyola seniors. The rest of the tournament is played at neutral sites, with the championship on Memorial Day up I-95 at the home of the Philadelphia Eagles.

As is typically the norm around these parts, the Loyola men’s team joins a handful of other local programs in the lacrosse postseason, which include women’s and men’s teams from Towson, Johns Hopkins, UMBC, Navy, and University of Maryland.

Spencer, however, is the headliner. And, time being what it is, is inching closer to the culmination of a remarkable college lacrosse career. His resume: a three-time finalist for the Tewaaraton Award, the equivalent of football’s Heisman Trophy; three-time All-American (so far, only because this year’s picks haven’t been announced yet); four-time Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year; five points shy of moving into sole possession of second-place on the NCAA all-time scoring list; and helping Loyola reach the national semifinals as a freshman in 2016.

But it all started relatively off-the-radar. In a sport where college recruiting can often happen at an uncomfortable and unreasonable early age, Spencer was passed over by top-tier Division I programs because he didn’t fit the prototypical mold and profile as an early high-schooler.

He was a late-bloomer, going from a skinny, 5-foot-6 sophomore, and playing on Boys’ Latin’s junior varsity team, to a 6-foot-2, two-year varsity sensation who led the Lakers to an undefeated season and a No. 1 national ranking in 2014. By that point, he’d already decided to stay in the neighborhood and play in college at Loyola. He caught the coaching staff’s attention with performances with the Baltimore Crabs summer club team.

Four years later, the local boy is readying for one last NCAA tournament ride, and we’re hoping for at least one more spectacular dive show tomorrow, like this one . . .

But his college athletics career might not be done, even when the lacrosse story ends.

Spencer was also a Sun All-Metro basketball player in high school, as guard, and he’s got realistic hoop dreams. His younger brother, Cam, will play basketball at Loyola next year, and older brother has stated his desire to use an extra year of NCAA eligibility to play somewhere next winter. In fact, Spencer has played in the competitive Annapolis Summer Basketball League the last four summers, and was MVP in 2017. (And there he impressed semi-famous street-ball legend “White Chocolate,” former Bowie State point guard Randy Gill.) There’s a lot of concepts from the lacrosse field that apply to the basketball court, and vice versa. And he can dunk.

Plus, Spencer graduates from Loyola this month with a degree in finance. In short, the guy has options. He was also the No. 1 overall pick in the recent Premier Lacrosse League pro draft, meaning he could show off his stick-and-ball wares to national audiences on NBC this summer while earning a salary and benefits.

That’s all discussion for another day, though. For at least one more 60-minute lacrosse game on Saturday, No. 7 in the Loyola green, cool gray, and white uniform will look to make the most of his shot at career-closing redemption (a national title would be storybook and ideal), and try to enjoy the present. It will be a show for the rest of us.

While incarcerated for six years on drug charges, Jesse Krimes made art—through very limited means—to transcend his environment and ultimately find a sort of freedom. The first pieces the Philadelphia artist constructed behind bars were newspaper mugshots of offenders transferred onto prison-issued bars of soap. He made them during the full year he spent in solitary confinement, awaiting trial, and called the series Purgatory.

Once sentenced and moved to a prison in North Carolina, he smuggled bedsheets into his cell and transferred images from The New York Times onto them with hair gel and a spoon, often using the same mugshot imagery but substituting criminals’ faces with those of politicians and other social icons, with the mindset that “we’re all offenders,” as he puts it. He mailed home each completed sheet (quite an undertaking, as he was not supposed to have them and had to disguise the parcels), with the intention to combine them all into one massive mural upon his release in 2013—which he did.

The resulting piece spans 15 by 40 feet, with three long horizontal rows of sheets pinned together. He calls it Apokaluptein:16389067 and has shown a scaled-down replica of it in a handful of galleries since his release. It’s currently at Julio Fine Arts Gallery at Loyola University Maryland through February 28. Though he includes other work in the Baltimore show, the title piece is perhaps his most impressive, spanning the length of one wall of the gallery and busier and more colorful than the other work.

Though the aesthetics, execution, and details are worth hours of viewing pleasure in and of themselves—Krimes earned a BA in studio art from Millersville University just prior to his arrest—the images are also layered heavy with meaning, worthy of many more hours of viewing and thought. Krimes doesn’t shy away from symbolism and the use of popular culture, political icons, and the historical events that took place while he was behind bars to shed light on the issues at play in modern times and his perspective on them. He considers himself a conceptual artist, first and foremost, and notes that he pays close attention to the materials he uses and the language that’s invested in them.

As much as Apokaluptein:16389067 appears to be a statement on American culture, it can also be interpreted as the image of a human’s internal workings—a mental or spiritual landscape. It could also be read as a modern retelling of Hieronymus Bosch’s famous “Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych. But rather than showing a sequence of time in linear fashion, as Bosch did, Krimes’ narrative arc appears to be a vertical path—either dropping down into consumerism and false projection of self or rising toward a pure reflection of the self as seen in its natural state. The images are much lighter on the top row, almost as if this row above is an angelic realm whose small, flying women, affixed with rectangular mugshot heads, are colored a sharp white. Below them, in the middle layer, similar female figures drawn by Krimes are colored a fleshy peach, and in the bottom panel, they are faceless line drawings.

In its totality, Apokaluptein:16389067 (its title is the Greek origin of the word apocalypse, followed by Krimes’ Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate identification number) contains nearly every historical event from 2010 through 2013, when it was made. Reading the Times “was the only way to experience the world,” Krimes says. “I think what really saved me was the [art]work and reading.”

Along with the Times, he was reading The Kingdom and the Glory by Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, the latter of which worked its way into his pieces in a very literal sense. He hand-transferred digital prints of pages of text from Foucault’s book—marked up with his annotations made while incarcerated—onto prison bedsheets dyed with coffee, giving them an old book quality.

Nearly all the pieces include his trademark treatment of mugshots: rectangular cutouts of politician and celebrity headshots (there are quite a few of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, who were in the news a lot at the time) layered onto other bodies. Krimes uses this specific treatment to convey a message. Instead of the government showcasing its power through public beheadings, they now put mugshots in newspapers, he points out. A head against a solid backdrop gives no context, while the text surrounding that image describes a person during one specific moment in time and often says little about who they really are—or who they were or who they’ll become.

Since his release, he’s worked, primarily through art, to bring awareness about mass incarceration and the injustices faced by prisoners. It should be noted here that Krimes saw firsthand how charges can be manipulated. He was caught with 140 grams of cocaine, but the drug weight—and therefore his charge—was increased to 50 kilos when he wouldn’t “cooperate,” he says, and rat out others involved. The weight increase was based on hearsay. He was sent to a maximum security prison, where the nonviolent offender shared space with serial killers.

“Everyone has been touched by this [mass incarceration] in some way . . . but people don’t talk about it,” he says.

He’s exhibited his work and given talks at multiple galleries while continuing to make more pieces and experiment with different mediums (his work is in the group show Prison Nation at Aperture Gallery in New York through March 7). He gave a TEDx Talk in 2015 in Philadelphia about prison. In 2017, he was named an Artist as Activist Fellow through the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

As part of his fellowship, he’s bringing art to rural places around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to expose people who might not normally attend an exhibit. For an upcoming project, he’ll install art in a barn inside a corn maze. And that art will in turn become a catalyst for talking about our federal prison system, which is, as he sees it, a microcosm of American society.

“Incarceration is more common than you’d think, but I go into communities that have no clue about it. . . . You think slavery’s over? It’s not.” Instead of picking cotton, he says, inmates are paid ridiculously low wages to make desks and chairs and bed sheets.

You are an assistant professor at Loyola, and you have lived in states including Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. It seems like the stories in your collection have settings that you are familiar with from where you have lived.
I’m an editor at the journal The Common, which is a journal that features writing with a strong sense of place, and place is something that’s really important to me. I usually write about places after I’ve lived there, and I feel like if you can focus on the setting, it gives you ideas for things that could realistically happen.

I moved around a lot growing up. My mom is from North Carolina and we moved away when I was 3 but then moved back when I was 16, and in between we lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio. So I think I grew up seeing places not really through the eyes of a local, but more so as an outsider. I think I was always conscious of what seems possible or important to you has in some ways to do with how you see yourself in relationship to your community. For instance, when I was living in Pennsylvania, it was a really beautiful small town that had some steel industry that had left. Some people went to college and some people didn’t and that was totally normal. You would maybe go to the technical school or do other things, and that was very much because that was what people were like in that particular place.

What would you say is the connecting thread in this collection?
The connecting thread for me is love relationships that are in some way compromised—different versions of people seeking connection and settling for something that’s less than what they hoped for. In most of them it’s romantic love.

Where do you find inspiration—does it start at a character or a theme level?
Occasionally, it’s a situation either that I see in real life or that I read about. But usually it’s a person in a situation, and it’s from people that I know. The other thing I think about is experimenting with form and technique, so sometimes if I’m stuck on what to write about, I give myself a technical challenge.

How long have you been writing?
I would say that I’ve been taking it pretty seriously for like 10 or 12 years. There was time when I was sort of writing, but not writing consistently. But for the past decade or so I’ve been feeling serious about it and maybe a little more confident. It’s helpful to have some external validation, so I think once my stories started landing in better places, I was able to figure things out better, then it became more fun to do it. But also, I’m not really sure why this changed, but I think it’s important that I was reading and writing really consistently, and the fact that I was doing it all the time, the work then got better.

Was there a moment when you felt like, I’m a writer?
[Laughs] Even now, when I’m on a plane, I tell people that I’m a writing teacher. Part of it is shyness or lack of confidence or something, but I think another part of it is that I want to be focused on the work and what I want to say and I want writing to be a result of that, instead of getting really fixated on this persona of the “writer.” I think that’s distracting.

What has kept you writing short stories instead of, say, poetry or novels?
I like reading poetry, but for me, it feels as intimidating as yoga, where you have to be calm and precise. So that’s never something that I had any illusions of being able to do, even though I enjoy reading it. I have been working on a novel, but with short stories, you can learn a lot quickly. You can try out a distant third person point of view and in a couple of months build certain techniques, whereas with a novel, you’re signing up for at least a few years. For me, it was just a way of teaching myself how to write. I could practice lots of different things. 

How long have you been in Baltimore, and what’s been the most surprising thing about living here for you?
I moved here in 2014. There has been some class stuff that is subtle and unspoken that I can sense but I don’t entirely understand yet. Also, there’s an attachment to private school education that I wasn’t really familiar with. A lot of people, if they grew up in Baltimore and went to a private school, that’s a huge part of their identity. In the places where I lived, I didn’t know anybody who didn’t go to a public school. There’s a certain level of wealth in Maryland that I sometimes find shocking. I really like Baltimore. I’ve found people here to be friendly, and it’s a manageable sized city, and the literary scene here is terrific. People are really welcoming and it’s not at all competitive, but there’s also a ton of stuff going on. I love to go to readings at the Ivy, or there’s the Starts Here Reading Series, and all of that’s been really terrific.

I’m sure that’s been interesting for you looking at class in Maryland since a fair amount of your short story collection has themes related to class.
It’s something I’m always conscious of and there’s been various times of my life where I’ve felt like me and my family were on different sides of the privilege line. Like when I was in Pennsylvania, there were a lot of people who were struggling, and I didn’t feel like my family was struggling. It’s always something I’m thinking about.

Do you believe writers have to have first-hand knowledge of your subject matter for it to be successful?
I have such strong feelings about this. On one hand, of course you have to imagine things—you can’t literally just write about your own experiences. There has to be room for imagination. One of the great things about fiction is that it allows you to have empathy, and part of the point is to imagine someone else’s experience in a way that is respectful and authentic. But on the other hand, I think there’s something that happens in literary fiction where people fetishize pain and poverty when they themselves did not experience that. 

One of the things that’s problematic about that is that the literary world is made up of largely privileged people, who don’t offer very good checks and balances about whether or not it’s an accurate representation. My thoughts are that, obviously, you have to research things and be able to put in the time and research, and the other thing is you have to seek out or be willing to hear form people who are coming from that group, who have had those experiences. And if they say that you aren’t getting it right, you have to be willing to listen. 

You brought up research, which begs the question—what’s your research process like?
With all of the stories, there’s something that I researched—whether that’s going to the place, and seeing what’s actually in the parking lot. Sometimes, it’s interviewing people and talking to them. I did a fair amount of research for the title story—I talked to a police officer and an attorney and somebody who works on a construction site. Much of what they told me didn’t end up in the story, but it’s still helpful to have those conversations.

You recently had a baby. What was it like having your book come out at the same time?
It was kind of crazy because the due date was the publication date. But it’s been good. Maybe it’s a little helpful because I’m not obsessing about the book and its reception, I’m concentrating on other things, which has been kind of nice.

Now, you’re balancing writing and teaching and motherhood, so what’s your process like?
The biggest thing for me is to do whatever it is I’m doing at that moment. When I’m writing, I’m writing, so I turn my phone off, and I close out of the Internet. If I’m working on a project, then I’m at least opening the document every day, even if I’m not working on it so that I can be in that world. In the days that I’m not teaching, I try to have a block of time, and in the days that I am, I try to at least engage with the material somewhat. The summers have been really useful. For the past few summers, I’ve been doing writing residencies, which really help because you’re in a separate place and you can really focus. When I’m teaching, I try not to think, ‘Oh, I’m not writing now.’ I just focus on work, and having these separate selves.

Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall

James Magruder (Queen’s Ferry Press)

Ah, college: the time when we were the most adventurous, open-minded, rebellious—and, perhaps, promiscuous. Magruder’s romp of a novel showcases this period perfectly, exploring the ambitions, travails, and romantic lives of residents at the Yale University residence Helen Hadley Hall during the early 1980s. This eccentric crew is in the throes of life changes—questioning majors, careers, sexualities, and relationships—while the news of the AIDS virus hovers ominously in the background. It may sound like little more than a sex romp, but it’s Magruder’s excellent character development that makes this a great book. Though he’s writing across gender, age, and ethnicity, Magruder—a playwright and author who teaches at Swarthmore College and lives in Baltimore—never makes you feel as if he doesn’t understand each person completely, showcasing faults and strengths, troubles and triumphs in equal breath. Their external and internal narratives are stitched together by Helen Hadley herself, a postmortem omniscient narrator, who adds the right amount of commentary and empathy.

See our Q&A with writer James Magruder.

---

Missile Paradise

Ron Tanner (Ig Publishing)

More often than not, we depend on nonfiction to teach us about parts of the world we’ve never seen and to spell out complicated histories. But fiction is just as capable of delving into that territory, and Tanner’s novel is a fine example. It transports us to the Marshall Islands, an island-nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was once an American testing ground for nuclear bombs. There a mixture of native peoples and U.S. engineers are tasked with making and testing missiles have created a challenging climate. Instead of showering us with statistics and historical details, Tanner—who teaches writing at Loyola University Maryland and has won a Pushcart Prize—weaves together four stories that introduce us to this exotic place and the culture clashes that define it. His characters experience guilt, frustration, and confusion in their dealings with one another, giving us a better understanding of the complexities of foreign relations and the atmosphere surrounding the world’s superpowers and developing countries. All the while, Tanner’s riveting prose carries us through these troubled waters, creating an expertly crafted, gripping tale.

---

Ada’s Violin

Susan Hood, Illustrated by Sally Wern Comport (Simon & Schuster)

It’s common knowledge that children’s books aren’t just for kids. Why would any adult turn down the opportunity to page through a richly illustrated tale that is beautiful in its simplicity? Ada’s Violin is such a book, with lush illustrations and a story about the transformative power of creativity, love, and determination—a story that just happens to be true. Ada, our heroine, lives in the small Paraguayan town of Cateura, which was built on a landfill. She longs to play the violin, but her musical dreams are put on hold as her family can’t afford the instrument. Then, music teacher Favio Chávez arrives in town and soon hatches a big plan—to form an orchestra based around instruments found in the landfill. Chávez’s vision became the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay, which has since toured the world. The book is available in Spanish and English, and Annapolis resident Comport’s illustrations—which have a collage feel that is perfectly suited to a book about putting together something from nothing—strike just the right tone no matter what the language.

Chris Tillman is bright light in series against his former team.
We admit that this week wasn’t the best for the Orioles, who lost the series to the Seattle Mariners. But the good news is that we’re still tied for first place in the division and that the three-game series had some shining moments.

One was Joey Rickard’s amazing defensive skills. And certainly another was Chris Tillman’s outing on Wednesday night against his former team. Tillman held the Mariners to two runs for 6 1/3 innings, making this his sixth quality start and holding his ERA steady at 2.61. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, Tillman remains undefeated against his former team. With characteristic modesty, the pitcher told The Sun that the win had very little to do with him. “We just seem to swing the bats well every time I pitch against these guys,” Tillman said. “A big defense night for us tonight, too . . . We took some really good swings off a really good pitcher.”

Towson and Loyola’s lacrosse teams will duke it out in NCAA quarterfinal.
Coming off of an upset over the No. 2 Denver Pioneers on Sunday, the Towson Tigers lacrosse team heads to Ohio to take on regional rivals Loyola. Just a few short years ago, the Loyola Greyhounds were considered the fierce and persistent underdogs in the Maryland lacrosse world, but now Towson is reminding us of a team with that same tenacity.

“To go out and beat the No. 2 see really showed the kind of team that we are,” Towson redshirt senior midfielder Ben McCarty told The Sun. “We were really happy to get that win.” The Tigers better keep that fire going when they meet the Greyhounds (13-3) in an NCAA quarterfinal Sunday at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. The two teams have already met earlier this year, when Towson defeated Loyola for the first time since 2007.

“Playing Towson is awesome because they’re close to home,” sophomore long-stick midfielder Zac Davliakos told The Sun. “We know they beat us last time. It really gets you fired up to go out there and try to put your best foot forward.” Watch it all go down on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. on ESPNU.

Ravens’ draft pick Chris Moore plans to give out footballs to fans.
ESPN’s Jamison Hensley had a great story on its website this week about Ravens fourth-round draft pick Chris Moore. Last Christmas Eve, the University of Cincinnati wide receiver got flagged for a unsportsmanlike penalty after he gave away the ball from a 47-yard pass to a young fan at the Hawaii Bowl.

“I was more upset that they took the ball from the kid,” Moore told ESPN. “After the game, I gave him all my stuff and all the gear I could. I felt bad.”

So it’s music to Moore’s ears that, unlike in college football, there is no penalty when players give out a football to the crowd. But, his first touchdown catch won’t be going to a fan. “Every other one after that, they can have them,” he said. “I’m not going to lie about that. The first one has to go to mom.”

After that, though, expect Moore to be handing out footballs Cam Newton-style. Moore is known for going deep—his 21.8 yards per reception in 2015 was ranked eighth in the nation, and he finished with 26 career touchdowns. “When I got the phone call on draft day, I got real excited. I know Joe Flacco has that cannon,” Moore told ESPN. “I love to go deep and I love to make the big plays and get the fans into the game.”

We like this guy already!

Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 87 this month. Take part in these events to salute a great American icon and remember his calls for justice and peace.

MLK CHILDREN’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
1/16: Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 1-3 p.m. $5. 443-263-1800. Bring the kids for this Dr. King birthday party featuring stories, games, and songs, plus birthday cake and ice cream.

MLK DAY CELEBRATION
1/18: Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. $5. 443-263-1800. This daylong celebration features community discussions, a cultural performance, storytelling, arts, and crafts.

SELMA
1/18: Carroll Arts Center, 91 W. Main St., Westminster. 1-3 p.m. $5-6. 410-848-7272. Catch this Oscar-nominated film, a moving portrait of the civil rights leader’s 1965 march.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY
1/18: American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Free. 410-244-1900. Enjoy free admission with guided tours, workshops, and special performances in honor of Dr. King.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY PARADE
1/18: MLK Blvd. and Eutaw St. Noon. Free. 410-752-8632. The city honors the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with regional marching bands, color guards, steppers, equestrian units, dance squads, civic organizations, and floats.

MLK CONVOCATION
1/18: Loyola University, McGuire Hall, 4501 N. Charles St. 5 p.m. Free. 410-617-5077. Hear Claudia Rankine, an award-winning Jamaican-born poet and leading voice in racial discourse.

I HAVE A DREAM
1/21: Weinberg Center for the Arts, 20 W. Patrick St., Frederick. 10 a.m. & 12:15 p.m. $6-7. 301-600-2828. Follow Dr. King’s journey in this stage adaptation of his influential life.

DAYBREAK OF FREEDOM
1/30: Jim Rouse Theatre, 5460 Trumpeter Rd., Columbia. 7:30 p.m. $10-25. 410-997-1317. Joseph Schwanter’s classical work is brought to life by the Columbia Orchestra with words by King himself.

Do you watch the Oscars?

My wife and I usually watch it. Unless I’m out of town. I usually hit the hay before it’s over.

It’s really, really long.

It runs into my bedtime. I hate it that they backload the important awards until the end, but I guess they have to.

Do you think the Oscars are relevant?

That’s
a great question. Relevant to what? Relevant to the art of filmmaking
as it’s understood globally? Not very. In terms of a popularity contest
in Hollywood? Very relevant. You can sort of assess the trends Hollywood
thinks are cool and the actors and directors that are considered hot
and deserving by tracking it over the years. For example, Martin
Scorsese never won for years and years, and then he finally got it for The Departed because they figured he was due; he’d been denied all those times.

And Steven Spielberg didn’t win for years, and then he won for Saving Private Ryan.

Hollywood
is devoted to making money, right? That’s what it’s all about. They
have always tried to balance that with creating a product that is not
simply commercial, they hope, and this is an event where Hollywood gets
to say, ‘Look, we’re doing serious art here!’

Well, in their endeavor to make some entertainment of substance, how do you think they did in 2013?

There
were several quite well made and even stirring and moving films. I
thought it was one of their better years, recently. Although, I have to
say, the last three or four years, I didn’t really watch all the movies
that were nominated. It’s an irony: When you teach film, you don’t have
time to go to the movies. You watch the same movies over and over again
for your class or you watch them at home or in your class, so I seldom
get out. But! Because of this interview, I’ve been seeing a lot of
movies in the last few weeks.

Which movies stand out for you this past year?

Well, I loved American Hustle.
I liked the storytelling style David O. Russell has there. And I
remember the ABSCAM scandal vaguely. And it brought back memories seeing
those ’70s fashions. I thought Christian Bale’s performance was one of
those kind of a stealth performances. He didn’t look great, but he
completely lost himself in the role. I never thought, ‘Oh, here’s a
Hollywood actor doing this.’ I thought it was really strong.

And, yeah, 12 Years a Slave
is devastating. You leave the film speechless. Although, there are
stereotype characters in all of them, like Michael Fassbender: He’s the
evil slave-owner; that’s all he is. And there’s a foil there for him
with the Benedict Cumberbatch character, the ‘nice’ slave owner. So,
there’s some kind of schematic storytelling in that one, but Chiwetel
Ejiofor, his performance is magnificent. All of the nuance he shows in
his face? To me that’s the best actor. I think he’s going to win.

Do you? Because it seems like all the pre-Oscar awards have gone to Matthew McConaughey.

Yeah,
that’s a Hollywood thing there. He’s played these stud roles or in
B-romantic comedies, and he’s stretching. In the last year, he’s really
stretching. He made a movie called Mud, Jeff Nichols’s second film, a real interesting performance there. And he lost all that weight [for Dallas Buyers Club]
and he’s playing against type, so Hollywood may reward that. I think
that Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves best actor, [but] the Academy seems to
favor actors who gain or lose weight for roles. In that light, Matthew
McConaughey and Jared Leto look like favorites for best actor and
supporting actor.

It seems like the best actor race, in
particular, was very strong this year. There were a lot of people who
got left out, in particular Robert Redford.

And how about Tom Hanks?!

Right, and Tom Hanks! Those are two really big names to leave out. What does that say about this year’s crop of leading men?

Well,
I think Tom Hanks got left out because Bruce Dern got nominated. Dern
is one of those—he’s 77 years old—he came in that wave of great ’70s
character actors; he often stole films in supporting roles. He’s kind of
dropped off the map in the last 10 or 15 years, and this is kind of a
comeback. And Alexander Payne, the director of Nebraska, is
well regarded in Hollywood, so [Dern] had to be nominated. So there was
no room for Tom Hanks. I don’t know what happened with Redford. Maybe
Dern edged out Redford, actually, because they’ve got the two older guys
there. They can only get one grandpa.

What about the ladies this year? There’s Amy Adams in American Hustle, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine, Meryl Streep in August: Osage County, and Judi Dench in Philomena.

Cate Blanchett won for The Aviator
years ago. She was doing an impersonation of Katharine Hepburn. I
didn’t particularly like that. People can watch five Katharine Hepburn
movies, and you can do that. And Sandra Bullock is kind of a one-woman
show there. I mean, Clooney, he’s in the picture for the first half,
maybe. And she has a lot of talking to herself going on there. I think
there’s a good chance she’ll win because everyone was so impressed by
all the hardship she had to endure during the shoot. And she had to act
with no foil. A lot of times Hollywood rewards that. I really liked Amy
Adams’s performance. The movie is great because you don’t know who is
scamming whom here. Was she really still in love with [Christian Bale’s]
character? Was she really falling for Bradley Cooper’s character? You
weren’t really sure. And maybe she wasn’t really sure either. So she was
going to play both ends against the middle and go with the winner, I
think. And so that kind of deceptive look that she had in her eye, the
things that passed across her face, I thought it was really impressive.
Now, Cate Blanchett, I’m sorry, but I thought her performance was very
mannered in Blue Jasmine. The voice and everything. I don’t
think the movie is very good, and she suffered from a poor script there.
Talk about stereotype characters there, wow. We’ve got the noble
blue-collar guy, the nasty Bernie Madoff character that Alec Baldwin
played. If Alec Baldwin fell asleep and woke up, he could play that
character. It didn’t involve any direction for him.

No. Probably not.

But
you shouldn’t punish the actors because of the movie. I think Woody
[Allen] makes too many movies, and he doesn’t think it through. My vote
would be for Amy Adams, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sandra Bullock
got it. I don’t think Meryl’s going to win this year. And Judi Dench?
She’s won before, so probably not.

Do you think the
recently resurfaced child molestation accusations against Woody Allen
will hurt Cate Blanchett’s Oscar chances? She’s widely considered the
favorite in the Best Actress race—or at least, she was.

Interesting
question. I doubt the allegations will hurt Blanchett, though. She’s
likely to be seen, even by those who believe the allegations, as an
innocent victim. My guess is that, if anything, voters bend over
backward to be fair to her.

One of the things people were
excited about was the potential for the 2013 nominees to be the most
diverse group in Oscar history. That didn’t quite come to fruition but
there are more people of color represented than there used to be. What
are your thoughts on Oscar diversity this year and in general?

I
think the Academy Awards still suffer from tokenism. They consider if
they have one African-American or, you know, somebody from some unusual
place, then they’re covered. But I would congratulate them on Barkhed
Abdi’s nomination. That was from left field, completely. He hasn’t acted
before. He’s a funny-looking fella. He doesn’t have a Hollywood look,
that’s for sure. That was a very strong performance in a movie where he
was the villain and he had to add some shading to that. But you know,
Hollywood is filled with good lefties so they do their best, but until
there are more complicated roles for—not just African Americans but
also, say, people with disabilities and so forth—they’re still going to
continue to suffer from tokenism.

You’ve got Lupita Nyong’o for
best actress in a supporting role and one African-American in Supporting
Actor and one Anglo-African for a Leading Actor and that’s par for the
course for the last several years, isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s about what they usually manage.

But
you could argue too—and this is what Spike Lee always says—it’s really
difficult for an African-American director to get films financed unless
they’re thrillers or unless they’re genre pictures, and they’re not
going to get nominated unless they follow Hollywood: Go there and shake a
lot of hands, get a lot of press. I don’t know if he’s right or not.
Spike’s kind of a provocateur so . . .

Speaking of shaking
hands and kissing babies, the behind-the-scenes campaigning seems so
prominent now—or maybe it’s just that the public is more aware of it
now. Thoughts?

I think we know more. If you read about
the history of Hollywood, it always went on, but it was a different
industry then. You had agents doing so much more of the work, and it was
not known by the public. For example, all of the gay actors—they were
open secrets in Hollywood. Everyone knew, but the general public didn’t
have a clue. So, those kinds of things wouldn’t happen now. So I think
it’s just more out in the open. They lobbied for their awards. They
lobbied for their roles, and so forth. It is more blatant now, and I
think probably a little more energetic, but I think probably it’s just
that the general public knows more about it now. There’s no such thing
as privacy these days, and that applies there also.

Your recent book, Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream deals
with the American Dream, and while none of the best picture nominees
are classic noirs, many of them do deal with the American Dream in
various ways. What are your thoughts on that as a theme that unites
these disparate pictures?

The Wolf of Wall Street is about the perversion of the American Dream. Blue Jasmine,
again, you’ve got the perversion of the idea that you rise by your
bootstraps, and you make a lot of money, and you do an honorable
business, and you rise and become wealthy. But, in that one, Alec
Baldwin’s character rips people off, and then you have the contrast
between the upper-class lady played by Cate Blanchett who doesn’t know
how to do anything and her sister, Sally Hawkins, very blue-collar. So
you can see the class theme very strongly in that.

You could argue that American Hustle,
these guys want to get something for nothing. They’re operators,
they’re entrepreneurs. That’s very noirish, actually. The idea that we
don’t know who is really faking and who is not and that someone will get
in over his head completely, like Bradley Cooper’s character who thinks
he’s in charge but actually isn’t, those are all noirish. In Nebraska,
you know, [the character] Woody wants to go get his million dollars.
The dream of getting rich. The backstory is he’s had a disappointed
life. Something happened to him in Korea, and he’s never been the same
since. This is a chance to redeem himself and leave something for his
adult children, so that certainly applies there. And again, 12 Years a Slave
is about how what we think of as the American Dream covers up a history
of slavery and violence and exploitation. So, I think it still applies.

It
seems like there’s still plenty of material to be mined from the
disparity between the idea of the American Dream and the reality of the
American Dream.

Yeah, I try to argue in the book that
these people are all buying into this ideology and they find out that’s
it’s either vacant or they made one mistake and that was it.

It’s unforgiving.

That’s right.

Any other snubs or omissions?

Many people were expecting the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis to get many more nominations than it did. It kind of got shut out there.

How do you account for that?

I
think it’s a hard movie to like. The main character, Llewyn, is kind of
a jerk. And, speaking of the American Dream, it doesn’t have the right
story arc. He doesn’t succeed by hard work and then become famous. He
just kind of goes in a circle. There was a guy at the theater with me,
and it was very funny. He got up at the end, and he’s getting past me in
the narrow aisle there, and he stopped. His face was like three inches
from my face and he was like, ‘What was that story about anyway?’ I
think a lot of people got to the end and went, ‘Huh?’ So I think it got
shut out because of that. But I have to say that Oscar Isaac was
riveting. A really wonderful performance even though the character is
not very likable. You wanted to look at him, and that’s what a good
actor does.

Well, he’ll probably get rewarded with more work, which is, in many ways, better than winning an Oscar.

Oh
I think so, too. The idea is that once you get an Oscar your career is
made but there are a lot of people who win an Oscar, and then they don’t
get work for three years.

Again, it’s not the American Dream that people think it is.

Yeah.
People say, ‘Oh, he’s going to cost too much now,’ so they won’t hire
him, or ‘He’s too associated with this particular role.’ It can be a
double-edged sword.

On the final day of 2011’s fall practice for Loyola University Maryland’s men’s lacrosse team, the players figured the coaches might go easy on them. It was a chilly Friday in November, right before break, and Inside Lacrosse’s pre-season polls had just come out. Loyola—consistently ranked in the Top 10—was slotted at a measly number 21.

“I thought it was maybe going to be an easier practice,” says senior long-stick midfielder Scott Ratliff. “But, it turned into the hardest conditioning day of the fall.”

Loyola’s assistant coaches had devised a list of 21 types of sprints—long, short, different directions, you name it—a pattern for each team ranked above them. Before each run, the coaches would yell a team name: “Hopkins!” “UVA!” “Syracuse!”

As the teams’ names were rattled off, thoughts swirled through the mind of each player grinding his way up and down the field of the Ridley Athletic Complex.

“You’re thinking about the players on the teams you know from high school, what will happen when we play,” says junior attackman Justin Ward. “It was such a mental grind.”

Coach Charley Toomey, who was in meetings that day, said the 21 sprints were all in the hands of his assistant coaches. But maybe it was a good strategic move.

“That became a calling card for us,” Toomey says. “We challenged our guys. We’re not used to being on the outside looking in.”

Loyola didn’t remain on the outside for long. Their Cinderella season would have them going 18-1, beating almost all of those 21 teams, and being crowned the first Division I NCAA champions in university history.

But, how did they do it? How did a team with only a handful of seniors, who didn’t even qualify for the tournament in 2011, go on to win the coveted trophy? With a revolutionary coaching strategy, the right athletes at the right time, and that motivating chip on their shoulder, Loyola found the keys to success.

“Those rankings were in the back of our head all season long,” Ratliff says. “We felt like we never got the respect we deserved until it was all over.”

To start with, this squad couldn’t have asked for a more ideal head coach than Toomey, who has been leading the team since 2006. Toomey also played for Loyola as a goalkeeper.

“I started playing when I was 8, when most people’s fathers had never heard of the sport,” says Toomey, now 45. “But I fell in love with the ability to run around and beat on someone else. It was fun.”

Toomey was recruited from The Boys’ Latin School of Maryland late in his senior year by Loyola coach Dave Cottle. That team grew exponentially, and in Toomey’s senior year, they reached the NCAA championship game (the last time prior to 2012), but fell to Syracuse.

“Even back in those days, we were a program going against these huge schools,” says Brian Kroneberger, a wealth manager and former midfielder on Toomey’s team. “For the most part, the program has always been an underdog.”

After he was done playing, Toomey never strayed far from the idea of coaching, volunteering for Loyola and, eventually, becoming head coach.

“I saw the coaching side not just for the X’s and O’s, but also from a recruiting and scouting standpoint,” Toomey says. “Plus, I just love that locker-room environment. That’s where kids meet their best man and your best friends.”

However, since Toomey took the helm in 2006, Loyola hadn’t seen much success. Starting with last season, he decided to make some changes.

“Every player realizes Toomey’s the guy he wants to play for,” says ESPN lacrosse analyst Paul Carcaterra. “But in 2012, he changed the team’s identity. He wanted them to play fast. When I talked to him, he would scratch his head and say, ‘Are we really playing this fast?’ Because it’s a risk. But he said the pros will outweigh the cons. A fantastic observation.”

Indeed, in the off-season, Toomey and his coaching staff attended conventions and watched Division III games, focusing on tempo and transition offense (when the midfield moves the ball quickly, giving the offense opportunities to take shots).

“It was really different from day one,” Ratliff says. “Two years ago, we were young and played a slowed down pace. But we started running transition drills, and it was a blast. It was much less structured, and they just let us play. It brought a new life and energy to the team.”

Another huge reason for optimism was Eric Lusby, a fifth-year attackman coming off a torn ACL injury, who was practicing without a knee brace and felt pretty much back to normal.

“Coach changed our offensive philosophy,” says Lusby, who now plays professionally for the Charlotte Hounds. “He wanted 40 shots a game, almost double the typical amount, which is what [attackman Mike] Sawyer and I like to hear.”

The team also had face-off master senior J.P. Dalton, the long-stick skills of Ratliff, disciplined defenseman Dylan Grimm, the cerebral studier Ward, athletic midfielder Davis Butts, and shooters Sawyer and Lusby, to name a few.

“We had all of the players we needed in each role,” Butts says. “Eric came back from an injury, we had two transfers, and other players matured. All of the right pieces just kind of came together.”

Loyola had perennially played in the shadows of local titans The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, so it took viewers a while to notice the team’s under-the-radar talent.

“They were more than underdogs,” says alumna Kroneberger. “They weren’t even being talked about.”

But the Greyhound players were much more aware of their potential—even as early as fall ball in October.

“We scrimmaged Siena, which is a very good D-I team,” says Ward. “We had 21 shots in the first quarter.” That’s a lot. “We peppered the cage. It seemed so easy. That was my first clue, ‘Wow we could be pretty good.’”

Loyola continued to beat up on higher ranked teams like Maryland and Harvard, but still, it wasn’t until the fifth game of the season that heads were turned.

“I started to think they were for real when they beat Duke,” says analyst Carcaterra. “I spoke to Duke’s coaches after the game and they said it wasn’t a fluke.”

“Loyola took care of business. You saw the energy of a team that’s never really been there before.”

Loyola cruised through the season, going undefeated for 12 games, until they faced their final regular-season game against Hopkins, aka “The Battle of Charles Street.” Though Loyola fell in overtime, players admitted the team felt different, even in defeat.

“We only lost by one goal,” says midfielder Butts. “But we were going to the tournament. We were excited because we knew we were going to get a bid either way.”

Reflecting on the regular season, Coach Toomey said the team philosophy was to take it one day at a time.

“We didn’t talk specifically about Hopkins or playing Hobart or playing Denver a third time,” he says. “For us, it was always about the next match-up, the next ground ball.”

By the time May rolled around, Loyola had earned a regular season record of 12-1 and entered the NCAA tournament.

“The beauty of this sport is, when you get to play some of the best teams in the nation, you’re going to move up the polls fast,” says Carcaterra. “Loyola took care of business, and you saw the energy and excitement of a team that’s never really been there before.”

Championship weekend took place in Foxborough, MA, at Gillette Stadium (a good luck charm for local teams these days). The four remaining teams were Duke, Maryland, Notre Dame, and Loyola. Most sports analysts believed that it would be Notre Dame and Duke in the final.

But, on May 26, Loyola surprised everyone, yet again, beating Notre Dame 7-5.

“You’d think at that point, we couldn’t play the disrespect card, but everyone except one writer picked Notre Dame to beat us,” Ratliff says. “I remember walking back to the locker room seeing some Inside Lacrosse writers. I said, ‘Keep picking against us boys!’”

So, now it was time for the big show: Maryland versus Loyola in the finals. The last time the Greyhounds were here was when Coach Toomey was a 22-year-old goalie.

“I felt awful nervous,” Toomey admits. “I saw Maryland play Duke two days before, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them. Their head coach is one of my closest friends. The conversation we had in the locker room was, ‘We’re number one right now and Maryland has to come to us.’”

By now, Loyola’s strategy was no secret and Maryland knew that, in order to win, they had to slow the Greyhounds down and create a more traditional six-on-six game.

“Loyola played great defense and goal-tending,” Carcaterra says. “The defensive midfielders allowed the offense to play to their strengths. It was a double whammy. Loyola showed they could win two ways, fast or slow. They were able to adapt.”

The Greyhounds put nine shots in the net, including four from Lusby, whose 17 goals were the most in a single NCAA tournament, and who was named the most outstanding player of the tournament.

As the final whistle blew, Greyhound players flooded the field, heaving their pads, helmets, and sticks into the air like it was a commencement ceremony.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Coach Toomey says. “I never saw a head coach run and jump onto the pile, so didn’t think I could do that. But our trainer’s son jumped into my arms, and that’s when I released my first smile.”

The stands at Gillette were packed with forest green that day, proving that even a tiny Jesuit university, an eighth of the size of Maryland, can be just as loud.

“People always think of Hopkins or Syracuse,” Lusby says. “A team like Loyola winning, you dream about it, but you never think it can happen.”

So the question becomes, what now? Many coaches, like Alabama football coach Nick Saban, argue that being a champion may be even more challenging than an underestimated team.

“It’s much more difficult to win the second one,” says Toomey. “There can be complacency in the locker room, and now you have a target on our back.”

Besides losing key players like Lusby and Dalton, Loyola’s offensive coordinator Dan Chemotti was named the head coach at the University of Richmond. On the other hand, with their large junior class last season, the playing philosophy will remain the same.

“They almost virtually have their same team back,” Carcaterra says. “I think Coach Toomey is going to handle it really well. The message now can be, ‘People didn’t think you could do it then, and no one thinks you can now.’ Lots of good fuel.”

Rankings have placed Loyola at No. 1, and most of those skeptical sports reporters now see them as a certain final four team. In other words, Loyola has some swagger now.

In fact, when the players were celebrating back at Ridley after the championship win, they remembered those painful sprints back in the fall and, this time, only ran one. But Coach Toomey isn’t letting it go to their heads.

“We really need to embrace the now,” he says. “This is a brand new trophy, and we’re chasing a new dream.”