Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse – Baltimore Magazine

Events Commemorating the Anniversary of Freddie Gray’s Death

Jess Mayhugh — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 14:46:22 +0000

April 19 marks the one-year anniversary of 25-year-old Freddie Gray’s death a week after he sustained a spinal cord injury while being transported in a police van. Concerns surrounding his death catalyzed into violence and destruction last April, but also renewed a spirit of community that inspired discussions and demands for reform.

As we all reflect on the past year, join community organizations in commemorating the anniversary of both Gray’s death and the uprising that followed with these events.

April 19: Rise at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church

Explore the history of the civil rights movement at the Baltimore premiere of Rise, a music and poetry concert. Rise debuted last year in Washington, D.C.—the same day Gray passed away. The concert, which touches on events from Selma to Ferguson, features Howard University’s vocal jazz ensemble Afro Blue, Howard University Choir, Occasional Symphony, and the Peabody Community Chorus. Prior to the concert, join Aaron Maybin, Sonja Sohn, Tariq Touré, and D. Watkins for a conversation about art and activism in Baltimore.

April 20: Devin Allen and Kwame Rose: One Year Later at Impact Hub Baltimore

Both photographer Devin Allen (whose photo made the cover of Time last May) and activist and hip-hop artist Kwame Rose (who publicly confronted Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera during the uprising) provided national media with another perspective of our city throughout last spring’s unrest. On this Wednesday evening, hear their thoughts about Baltimore today. This discussion event also kicks off a new exhibit of photographs, all created by children Allen mentored at the Penn North Kids Safe Zone.

April 21: What is Progress? Reflections One Year Later at the Walters Art Museum

Activists, policy makers, and community leaders will discuss the intersection of art and urban issues in “What is Progress? Reflections One Year Later.” This event—a collaboration between Good News Baltimore, Open Society Institute, and the Walters—looks to answer what has changed in the year and what will change in the years to come. This discussion is the final in Good News Baltimore’s series about the future of Baltimore.

April 25: Coalition for Transformation and Betterment of Baltimore rally at War Memorial Plaza

More than 1,500 people are expected at the rally from 3 to 6 p.m. that will draw attention to critical needs, including community policing practices, affordable housing, education, and employment, as well as the need for unity and cooperation. Additionally, the Stand Up Bmore citywide “Get Out the Vote” initiative will be onsite to provide voter education, voter assistance and community resources.

April 26: Art // Protest // Baltimore at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse
Discover how politics influences the work of four local artists at this discussion about art and protest, featuring Sheila Gaskins, Kimberly Sheridan, Pablo Machioli, and Fire Angelou. In contrast to those who suggest art can “heal” Baltimore, these artists also question what role angry, demanding art can play in the city’s struggle for social justice.

Until April 28: “Bmore” than the Story at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum

In response to national dialogue about the “Baltimore riots,” high school students from Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in West Baltimore have created an exhibit to redefine their experiences last April. The exhibit includes visual and performing art addressing one-sided media coverage and the students’ own lives. The same day the exhibit closes, the museum will open a new video installation, titled “Question Bridge: Black Males,” which deconstructs black male identity in the U.S.

May 6: Symphony for the City at Bethel A.M.E. Church

Join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, their after-school music program OrchKids, and the Bethel A.M.E. Church Choir for a free evening concert at West Baltimore’s Bethel A.M.E. Church. The concert—which is “dedicated to the people of Baltimore and reflects back on a year of healing for the City,” according to a BSO news release—will include excerpts from composer Joseph Schwantner’s New Morning for the World, which features a narration of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., alongside classical music.

Through May 8: Detroit ‘67 at Center Stage

The play may be about a city far from here almost 50 years ago, but there are plenty of themes that we still grapple with today—the role of police, economic opportunity in urban communities, the role of race in community relationships. The footage of National guard troops that plays as a backdrop will resonate with Baltimore audiences, and at one point, it even includes footage of protestors after Gray’s death

May 9: BSO Musicians at the Pennsylvania Avenue Branch

Building on the popularity of the two free concerts the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played during last year’s unrest—including an impromptu concert outside Meyerhoff and the “Concert for Peace” [link to blog] the following week—the BSO is holding a free, three-concert series in West Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. After playing Handel’s Water Music in March and Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 in April, the BSO will conclude their series with Mozart on this Monday afternoon.

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Pile of Craft 2014

Jess Mayhugh — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend marks Charm City Craft Mafia’s eighth annual Pile of Craft—one of the city’s unique (and free to attend!) craft fairs.

The self-acclaimed “Craftiest Bunch in Baltimore” has recruited more than 45 artists from across the country to sell their handmade items at the fair. These crafts will range from paintings, prints and ceramics, to stationery, toys and home goods, to apparel, jewelry, handbags, and more.

And even if you’re not shopping, you might just go home with some of the pieces on display. The fair’s raffle (tickets will be available at the information table) will afford fair goers the chance to win donated items from Craft Mafia vendors. Proceeds will go to charity.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to meet the artists and to learn some crafting themselves—Baltimore Print Studios will lead DIY printmaking demonstrations.

While enjoying this one-of-a-kind shopping experience, enjoy coffee and food catered by Red Emma’s.

When: Saturday, June 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: 2640 St. Paul St.

Image courtesy of the event’s Facebook page.

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Overheard at Joppa Market Place, Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, and War Memorial Building

Jess Mayhugh — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 09:00:00 +0000

Ring Tone

February 8, 2014
Joppa Farm Road, Joppa

“There’s nine matches, and only three have been approved for weapons,” Dan McDevitt reminds the motley crew of tough guys, heels, cheap-shot artists, Samoans, and “Black Wall Street” thugs—some doing push-ups, others pulling on Lycra singlets and elbow pads—backstage at the sprawling Joppa Market Place. The venue normally hosts an Amish flea market, but tonight is the site of Maryland Championship Wrestling’s (MCW) 16th Anniversary Show.

Meanwhile, 64-year-old WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler, best known for putting comedian Andy Kaufman in a neck brace in the 1980s, poses for photos with row after row of fans. Later, just before intermission, Lawler, still built like a keg of beer, enters the ring to battle “The Pinnacle” Shawn Patrick.

Despite his age and a 2012 heart attack, which occurred announcing a show, Lawler trades body slam after body slam with Patrick, an Ocean City hotel manager by day, before finishing him off with his signature pile driver.

“Phat Blues” Kelly Bell, a 290-pound MCW wrestler, retiring because of vertebrae issues, notes that being a good wrestling heel isn’t easy. “I always started with a bad joke, but you walk a line,” says Bell, who fronts the popular Kelly Bell Band in another life. “Years ago, I grabbed the mic and asked a good ol’ boy crowd what Pink Floyd and Dale Earnhardt had in common. The punch line? ‘The last hit for both of them was ‘The Wall.’

“Too soon [after Earnhardt’s death]. My tag-team partner and I needed a state police escort out of the building.”

Carnal Knowledge

February 14, 2014
North Avenue

Billed as a “nerd date,” an eclectic mix of straight and gay couples, gray-haired and young alike—as well as curious singles—pack Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse for a Valentine’s Day science lecture from Harvard professor Sarah Richardson, author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male & Female in the Human Genome. Not a traditional Valentine’s date perhaps, but romantic nonetheless. “I studied biology as an undergrad, and my boyfriend is a neuroscientist at NIH,” says Will Abshier, 22. “This is a shared interest for us.”

Naturally, there’s a photo of Bill Clinton in the presentation. Not, however, because of the former president’s infamous hormones; rather to highlight that researchers now believe there are greater genetic differences between men and women—Bill and Hillary, for example—than previously understood. According to biologist David Page, whose TED Talk Richardson uses in her lecture, men and women are about as similar, in terms of the percentage difference of their human genomes, as they are to chimpanzees.

Richardson stresses that gender descriptions as more complex than “binary” “X” and “Y” labels—and that scientific “facts” remain influenced by culture and politics. She jokes that the mapping of the human genome did not include the discovery of the “Jane Austen appreciation locus” or “channel-flipping trait”.
During the Q & A, one man asks about the human male Y chromosome, which diverged 300 million years ago in mammals, but is getting smaller. “It’s an interesting subject, especially when you consider it alongside the expanding role of women and the ways some men are reacting to that,” Richardson tells another male questioner. “But yes,” she adds with a wry smile. “There’s shrinkage.”

Monumental City

February 22, 2014
North Gay Street

Inside the marbled War Memorial Building, about 200 people, including current Maryland National Guard soldiers and a dozen and a half surviving members of the Maryland 231st Transportation Truck Battalion are celebrating that historic, all-black unit’s 135th anniversary. Later, there will be a wreath laying at the Negro Heroes of the Unites States statue at City Hall.

Also on hand, a descendant of “Buffalo Soldier” 1st Sgt. Augustus Wiley, who served in the 9th Calvary Regiment after being born into slavery in Reisterstown.

Dubbed the “Monumental City Guards” when the unit received recognition as an all-black independent militia in 1879, the truck battalion was called to active duty during the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Korean War. “The 231st Battalion was the first U.S. National Guard unit to land in Pusan—Dec. 31, 1950,” retired Sgt. 1st Class Louis S. Diggs, the keynote speaker, tells the audience.

A member of the 231st, Diggs recalls waking up in Korea after integration came to his unit’s camp literally overnight—when troop losses and the arrival of new soldiers put black and white soldiers in the same barracks for the first time—albeit two years after President Truman’s order abolishing racial discrimination in the Armed Forces.

After Korea, Diggs spent years in Japan and Germany, not realizing how little things had changed at home. “I’ll never forget visiting my mother in Sandtown before leaving for Philadelphia where I was stationed next,” Diggs recalls. “She made me a big bag lunch for the drive—didn’t have to look inside—whatever she’d cooked, I knew would be good. But after a ways, I open it and with my food, I pull out an empty jug.

“I thought, ‘What’s this?’ And then it hit me—she knew, even if I’d forgotten—there wouldn’t be a bathroom on Pulaski Highway or Route 40 that I could use.”

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