On a Friday morning in late May, Ashley Sterner seems more conductor than radio personality. Her hands float over the audio board—pushing buttons, sliding bars, adjusting presets, and then right at that coda, comes in that voice, “This is your public radio, 88.1 WYPR.”

It’s a familiar, friendly tone that’s been gracing the local NPR affiliate for nearly 20 years. But while her job as the local Morning Edition host is old hat to Sterner—dispensing local news and witty banter during station breaks—some things have changed this past year, both small and large.

For starters, she’s abandoned her car for a bicycle and can be seen rolling up to the Charles Village station a little after 4 a.m. on a purple and pink 12-speed road bike. And in early January, she officially became Ashley on-air, after almost 18 years just using Nathan. Ashley, with her brunette curls, lovely smile, and propensity for patterned shirts and statement necklaces, is who Sterner has really been since she was a student at American University in the 1990s, after growing up in rural Pennsylvania.

“I had already started making mistakes and saying ‘Ashley’ on air,” laughs Sterner, 44, who has a delightful if slightly mercurial manner—one second ticking off broadcasting facts that only a true radio expert would know and the next indulging in a bit of good-natured self-deprecation. “I have been Ashley in my personal life since I was 18 years old. My wife has never called me anything but Ashley. I feel like I’ve always been Ashley.”

But for so long, her on-air job and her off-air life were disconnected. It was emotionally draining to be two different people simultaneously.

Unlike other individuals who have done so more privately, Sterner’s transition was literally broadcast. “I don’t know how I could not do it publicly,” she shrugs. But it also took place with little fanfare. No big announcement. “I’m not the news,” she says. But in a way she is. “Obviously, I’m trans.”

It’s said with the relief of someone who had unsuccessfully tried to transition before and who had “handled” the stigma by suppressing and ignoring who she really was.

“I thought that was the price to pay to live in this world,” she says. “I thought I had to be Nathan as the price to be in radio. It turns out that I don’t have to do, either of those things.”

“EXISTING AS TRANS IS A FORM OF PROTEST, ISN’T IT?”

The pandemic was a turning point for Sterner. “When all our routines broke, so did I; I was in a very bad place,” she says. But her voice never betrayed her. Not a quiver, not a sniffle. “I was still good at portraying as much happiness as I possibly could, but I wasn’t feeling it all. And now, we live in a messed-up society, but I am personally happier than I have ever been in my life.”

There is a joy to her voice each time she gets to say Ashley Sterner. With every episode, she unlocks a little bit more of her true self.

“For my entire life, there have been pieces of me that have been partitioned away that practically no one sees,” she says. “I don’t have anything to hide and it’s liberating to just be myself all the time.”

So far everyone has been supportive, from management to listeners. “People have been nice. And the difference is, I feel like now when people are being nice to me, they are being nice to me rather than being nice to a character that I was playing for everyone’s benefit.”

After wrapping up work around noon, she rides home to Lauraville each day, happy with her quiet revolt.

“I feel like I am doing the most positive thing I can do by simply being public and present and doing my work as best as I possibly can,” says Sterner. “Existing as trans is a form of protest, isn’t it? And as such, I am doing that every day on the air.”

Art Space is a recurring element in the UpFront section of our print publication that spotlights a local artist or project making an impact in the city at large. Here’s what’s going on this month:

It’s hard to believe that Baltimore’s beloved indie radio stations are all grown up, but this month, both WTMD and WYPR will celebrate their 20th year—with music and…locomotives?

Yup, the anniversary bash will take place at the B&O Railroad Museum on June 10 at 6 p.m., and during half-hour train rides you’ll hear local acts like rapper Eze Jackson, chamber-pop duo Outcalls, and headlining electronic artist Dan Deacon.

“You can’t get much more Baltimore than this,” says Sam Sessa, director of events and community engagement for WTMD and WYPR, with the latter acquiring the former in 2021. Tickets start at $55

Twenty years ago, Al Spoler, a veteran director at Maryland Public Television and the long-running co-host of “Cellar Notes,” a weekly wine and beer review on what was then WJHU-FM, pitched the idea of doing a cooking show for the public radio network. While the concept of talking about food on the radio was a novel one, its time had come.

Ever since Julia Child picked up a rolling pin for her famous The French Chef, cooking shows have had a place on TV. In fact, Spoler himself worked on two shows with famed French chef Pierre Franey. But home cooking had recently gotten a boost, thanks to the then-fledgling Food Network.

“There was an increased interest in home cooking,” recalls Spoler. “And in America—or at least the Mid-Atlantic—everything was up for grabs. You could dabble in any cuisine you wanted—the whole world was our oyster.”

Also fueling the public’s passion, locally at least, was the fact that Baltimore’s culinary scene was just starting to sparkle, thanks to the talents of local chefs like Nancy Longo of Pierpoint in Fells Point, brothers Spike and Charlie Gjerde of Spike & Charlie’s Restaurant & Wine Bar in Mt. Vernon, Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman, who had the fine-dining Low Country cooking spot Savannah in Fells Points, and Jerry Pellegrino, who taught the public about wine pairings at his Federal Hill restaurant Corks.

“There were the steakhouses and Martick’s and Haussner’s and Maison Marconi that was the old-school continental, but we were the new kids in town,” says Pellegrino. Adds Spoler, “There was a whole young generation coming up. It was a pretty happening time—there was just lot of talent in Baltimore kitchens in those days.”

In fact, Spoler, who, at the time, was part of an exclusive men’s cooking club called the Cork and Fork Society, was a talented cook in his own right. “Every six weeks, we’d have a formal black-tie dinner and some of the members would do the cooking,” he recalls. “I had a few friends in Federal Hill who were really good home cooks—and they inspired me.”

One of those friends was not just a home cook, but a professional chef. That was the larger-than-life Pellegrino (who once famously made Julia Child a crown of corks when she stopped by for a meal at Corks). As Spoler thought about his concept for the show—in which an everyman learns how to cook from an expert—he decided to tap the talents of Pellegrino and cast him in the role of mentor.

“I knew that I couldn’t possibly pass myself off as the expert,” says Spoler. “I’d have to be the stand-in for the everyman. It was such a lucky thing that Jerry was up for doing it—he’s the soul of affability. I thought he’d be the expert and I’d be the ambitious home cook or student who wanted to learn more. I felt that was a good role for me and that was a good use of his talents.”

When Spoler pitched the idea to Andy Bienstock, vice president and program director at WYPR (which purchased WJHU in 2002), Bienstock gave it the green light. “Because of ‘Cellar Notes,’ we already knew that Al could host his way through a discussion of things that are more sensory than just words,” says Bienstock. “We had a pretty good hunch they’d be able to pull it off, and once we met Jerry, who brought his enthusiasm, we knew it couldn’t fail.”

The whole concept of having a radio segment made total sense to Spoler, who also co-hosts Maryland Public Television’s “Maryland Farm & Harvest.”

“It was only four-minutes long and we could give you little nuggets of information,” he says. “What I always envisioned is that ‘Radio Kitchen’ would whet your appetite—it would get you salivating. If we did a good job, people’s mouths would be watering as they listened to our show.”

Their first show in 2002 was a lesson on how to make Maryland crab cakes. (“Make the mayo from scratch for a thicker consistency. And to avoid filler, add dry mustard powder to avoid moisture, plus pan-fry them with oil and add chunks of butter to the pan,” says Pellegrino, recalling what they told listeners at the time.)

About a week before the show, the duo got together at Pellegrino’s Federal Hill home to test the recipe they would discuss on the show. (Until the pandemic, that was their standard operating procedure.) “We whipped up some crab cakes and they were really good,” recalls Spoler, “so that became our first show.”

“IF WE DID A GOOD JOB, PEOPLE’S MOUTHS WOULD BE WATERING AS THEY LISTENED TO OUR SHOW.”

“The crab cake was the most obvious starting point,” says Pellegrino, who adds that what made it a great show is that crab cakes, in their own way, are controversial. “If you have 10 Marylanders in a room, there are 12 different crab cake recipes—and they’re all the best.”

And so, “Radio Kitchen” (which one of their friends joked should be called “No Lookin’ Cookin’”) was born. Twenty years later, with more than 1,000 shows in the archives, it’s still going strong. To date, the show—which still airs during drive time at 8:40 a.m. on Tuesdays—reaches listeners in the Eastern Shore, Western Maryland, Southern Pennsylvania, and Northern Virginia.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘If I hear you, I’m late to work,’” says Pellegrino with a laugh. “They’ll tell me, ‘I’ll sit in the car until the show is over before I go in to work.’”

In addition to hosting shows on techniques like sous vide and braising, the duo will teach listeners how to make items both savory and sweet or focus on how to use local produce or find the best buys at area farmers markets.

“They do a terrific job of making things simple,” says Bienstock. “They explain recipes as well as you can explain a recipe, they talk about things with a lot of imagination, and they make everything sound like fun, which is really important.”

Of course, as the food scene has evolved, and listeners have become more sophisticated, the show has evolved, too. “In the beginning, lettuce was iceberg, not mesclun or, God forbid, arugula,” says Pellegrino. “Now we can do a whole show on spring lettuces. And no one knew what heirloom vegetables were—everyone thought that a tomato was supposed to be perfectly round and red and taste like Styrofoam.”

Ask Spoler to name his favorite episode, and he says he likes them all, but when pressed, he looks at a piece of scrap paper where he has jotted down notes to jog two decades of memories. In February 2016, the duo did a show about beef Wellington, which Spoler learned to perfect from watching a tutorial from the Food Network’s Gordon Ramsay. “If there’s a dish I want to learn, I’ll do a show on that,” says Spoler. “I do a lot of research and come up with the idea and then try it. Gordon Ramsay is an excellent video teacher. I watched his technique and it turned out really well.”

The globetrotting host has also been influenced by his travels. “I was down in San Juan a number of times,” says Spoler, “and there’s a Cuban dish made with flank steak called churrasco, which I really love, especially the way they do it down there with a nice wood-fire grill. It’s a really thin cut of meat heavily peppered, and then you have chimichurri with it and black beans.” Of course, it inspired an episode.

For his part, Pellegrino, who co-owned the Mt. Vernon cooking school Schola until recently, often drew inspiration from whatever cooking lessons he was giving his students, from Mexican food to Italian fare. He also fondly recalls the hot dog tasting episode in which the men boiled and taste-tasted eight different brands. “Hebrew National was the clear winner,” says Pellegrino. “It was either that or Nathan’s,” clarifies Spoler.

Occasionally, an episode has caused a stir. “The one that caused a big controversy was the chicken pot pie show,” recalls Pellegrino. “I got stopped at Cross Street Market and yelled at. People were up in arms that I thought it was okay not to have a bottom crust if you didn’t want to. We got some hate emails from that one.”

Watching the two men together, it’s clear that the bond is brotherly, though their personalities are as disparate as their backgrounds: Spoler is professorial, with every word weighed and measured, and he’s fond of phrases such as “for heaven’s sake.” Pellegrino shoots from the hip, tends to speak more colorfully (peppering his speech with the occasional swear word), and is the radio equivalent of the class clown.

Pellegrino’s mom was Sicilian, and his dad was from Naples. “I come from a mixed marriage,” he says with a laugh. “We had dinner together every night. My mom and grandma and grandpa cooked, and food was important to us as an Italian family. Wine was important, too, but not fine wine. Dad would drink Gallo Burgundy out of jugs.” Before opening Corks and becoming a radio co-host, Pellegrino was a dissertation shy of earning his PhD in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University.

Spoler, who holds a master’s degree in broadcasting from Boston University, had worked in communications for the entirety of his career and won an Emmy for his 1996 special on the Morgan State University Choir’s Silver Anniversary show at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Unlike Pellegrino, he did not come from a foodie family. Living on his own after graduate school, he asked his mother for a copy of the iconic Joy of Cooking.

“I promised myself when I moved into my own apartment that I was never going to have a TV dinner,” he says, “I would cook my dinners and I stuck to that.”

Perhaps their differences can best be illustrated by their varying views on avocado toast. “I get it at The Center Club all the time,” says Spoler. “It’s one of my go-to lunch items.” “I have no interest in anything avocado,” says Pellegrino. “They are oily, useless pieces of Keto diet crap.”

While the two men work best when they’re riffing with each other, they actually haven’t been in their small WYPR studio on North Charles Street in Old Goucher since March 2020. These days, the pandemic has forced them to record into their phones and send in the audio files to their longtime senior producer Bob White for editing. But even with this new production method, they haven’t missed a beat.

“I like to call their show ‘Theater of the Mind,’” says White. “Their personalities and their knowledge of food and drink sells them and explains why the show has been on for so long. People enjoy the camaraderie between the two of them. They play off each other so very well and they’re never at a loss for words—sometimes there are too many words though to fit what they do into a five-minute show, which is actually four minutes long, not including sponsors.”

And it’s a good thing this new telephone method of recording the show has gone off without a hitch, because in 2020, Pellegrino and his wife, Erica, left Baltimore, moving to a 13-acre farm, Strickland Hollow Farm & Distillery, in Meridale, NY. (On the farm, they distill gin and grow apples for brandy-making and hard cider, and keep rare and endangered species, including Soay sheep, exotic chickens, and Toulouse geese, plus two chihuahuas named Mela and Isabella.) For Spoler, home is his 100-year-old rowhome in Lake Montebello with his wife, photographer Vickie Gray.

So, after all these years, what grade would Pellegrino give his co-host “apprentice”? “I give him an A-plus,” says Pellegrino. “I learn as much from Al as he has learned from me.”

And what would Spoler give Professor Pellegrino?

“Jerry?” says Spoler smiling. “He has tenure for life!”

Aaron Henkin’s voice might be better known than his bearded, bespectacled face, and it’s that familiar dulcet tone that is floating over the brick steps of Pigtown on this Wednesday afternoon as he interviews resident Judy Aleksalza for The Maryland Curiosity Bureau, his brand-new weekly WYPR podcast that asks listeners: “What are you curious about?” Then he dives in to find the answer.

Henkin is casually dressed—slim blue chinos, plaid cotton shirt—and the only thing that separates him from just making polite conversation with Aleksalza is the headphones, recording device, and small microphone that come from a tote bag connected to the station’s call signal.

“I wish this was on TV so you can see it,” says Aleksalza perched on her stoop and gesturing to her home, bought 45 years ago as part of the Dollar House program. That’s this episode’s question: Did the program work and could it be done again?

“It’s a podcast,” Henkin tells her. “We can paint a picture with words.”

And that’s exactly what Henkin has done these past 20 years since first landing at WYPR’s predecessor station, WJHU, in part because his gift is also in his silence. He’s a world-class listener with the ability to draw answers out of his subjects that are honest and nuanced. When he’s done interviewing Aleksalza, one of a handful of sources for this particular piece, he asks for 30 seconds of quiet to record the city sounds around him: cars driving by, leaves rustling, the whizz of bicycle wheels.

Baltimore has always been a welcome guest. First, with The Signal, a show devoted to exploring Maryland’s thriving artistic and cultural scene, and then again, with Out of the Blocks, which earned Henkin the national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2018 for a podcast dedicated to exploring the lives of complete strangers and sharing their stories of one city block. That series ended this past summer after nine years.

“What I loved most about Out of the Blocks was it was an excuse to just wander around Baltimore and encounter people I never otherwise would have met,” says Henkin. “The most challenging thing was that every conversation I went into with someone was from scratch, and I had no idea what kind of narrative arc would come out of that story—or if there would even be one.”

But with The Maryland Curiosity Bureau, Henkin gets the same high—the ability to traverse the town and meet random people—but “there’s a built-in narrative where every episode starts with a question, and it ends with an answer, or a failure to get an answer.” But even in the failure, “you’ll learn things that weren’t even suggested in the question, and it’ll still end up giving you a richer experience about life in Baltimore.”

Henkin has already delved into “where are Baltimore’s hidden streams” and in October, was lining up interviews for the charming question “is a city park a good place to meet someone and fall in love,” posed by a single woman whose grandparents met in Patterson Park.

One man told Henkin that he always drives by a sign that proclaims, “Baltimore is a nuclear-free zone” and always wondered what exactly that meant. Says Henkin, “People talk about the wisdom of the crowd—this is the curiosity of the crowd.”

It’s a bit of a gamble to put his show into his listener’s hands, but he has faith in his city.

“I had no idea about Baltimore when I moved here,” says Henkin, originally from the Midwest. “I’ve been here 20 years now, but I know I’ve heard more than 20 years’ worth of stories because I’ve been so lucky to do this work…It’s a front row seat into everything that’s interesting.”

In Town of the Big House, a new five-part podcast series hosted by WYPR, local documentary producer Richard Yeagley embeds with an unknown Virginia real estate developer named Kahan Dhillon, who seemingly arrived out of nowhere in Baltimore in 2016, proposing a massive $10 billion citywide development plan.

Dhillon’s pitch to the city, which he dubbed “The Baltimore Renaissance,” earned him interviews and headlines from much of the local media—including WBAL, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Business Journal, as well as WYPR. He claimed personal and private investment commitments of $200 million for the effort and garnered meetings with numerous community leaders and local officials, including City Council President Jack Young, former Mayor Sheila Dixon, and William Cole, president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corp. (Young even sent out an email introducing Dhillon to his fellow council members.)

City Councilman John Bullock eventually invited Dhillon—founder of a small Alexandria, Virginia, real estate company—to air his plan at a council hearing in July 2017, which is where everything kind of fell apart.

It all sounded too vague, not to mention too good to be true, to a couple of council members—especially when Dhillon said he was seeking $3.5 million in planning fees to launch his project. In particular, Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer and Eric Costello questioned the seriousness and real-world clout behind Dhillon’s thin initiative. “The Baltimore Renaissance” plan basically died on the spot, although Dhillon has remained on the periphery of city politics and community activism.

In Town of the Big House, Yeagley, who spent 18 months tracking Dhillon as he promoted his project, raises the specter that the would-be developer was, at least initially, part of a Baltimore-based political corruption investigation by the FBI. “That’s my working theory,” he told Baltimore magazine. Specifically, Yeagley tries to connect the timeline of Dhillon’s early efforts with the timeline of the FBI investigation into former state Sen. Nathaniel Oaks. In January of 2017, six months before Dhillon’s formal pitch to the City Council, Oaks confessed to the FBI that he had accepted payments from an informant posing as an out-of-town developer. Ultimately, Yeagley posits—albeit without definitive evidence—Dhillon just ran with the project after the FBI was forced to end their investigation.

According to the FBI, “as a result of Oaks’ deliberate and intentional conduct in tipping off” another political target of their investigation, their covert investigation into that politician, and “possibly other politicians” was no longer viable.

The podcast doesn’t provide any answers to the basic questions it raises and certainly does not claim any criminal wrongdoing by Dhillon. But it is a compelling recount of a strange saga, and a revealing look behind-the-scenes at Baltimore politics and the outsized role developers play in shaping the city.

It is also a tale of a city desperate for big change and susceptible to big promises.

Responding by email, Dhillon defended his integrity and said of series: “The podcast simply put is full of false commentary, innuendos and alternative facts.” He also sent a link to an audio clip put together by a supporter than does not address the fundamental issues raised in Town of the Big House, but disparages Yeagley’s purpose and character.

We suggest you check the podcast, it’s a fun and compelling listen, do some further research if you wish, and decide for yourself what it all means.

How did you get started in radio?
Completely by accident. I had no intentions of doing anything in radio. I have a master’s degree in conflict resolution so I thought I was going to be studying religious conflict in the Middle East. I started working as a content producer for an independent radio show called Interfaith Voices that’s housed at WAMU in Washington, D.C.

As a content producer, I was advising on stories and writing scripts. It was a very small staff so everybody pitched in and did a little it of everything. They taught me about the audio side of things and I learned that I liked that equally as much as I liked storytelling.

What drew you toward the audio side of storytelling?
For me, it was a new platform for creativity. I love mixing interesting sounds and the fact that you can tell a story in a unique way through audio. Plus, it’s a really intimate medium. Listeners are most likely listening [to podcasts] while they’re driving or at the gym. Either way, you’re alone with one person’s voice in your ear. It’s a new medium, but it’s also an old-school way of storytelling.

WYPR’s podcast The Noir and Bizarre explores strange local stories with an emphasis on Baltimore’s spooky history. Where did this idea come from?
Last fall, we had an internal podcast committee to look at ways that we could develop in-house podcasts. All of the producers had a chance to pitch ideas, and I was really interested in doing something that would bring out the quirkiness of Baltimore. I wanted to play with historic topics that would tell new, interesting stories and give listeners a real sense of place. Baltimore is a weird city—we all know a strange local story—and I wanted to bring those out for everyone to hear.

How does the podcast discuss familiar topics, such as the life of Edgar Allen Poe, in a new way?

I find that, while people might be familiar with the general idea of an aspect of Baltimore’s history, they may not know all of the details. I’m not just interested in telling people facts, but exploring bigger questions, such as why are we still reading [Poe]? Why does his work continue to resonate with people after so many years?

Tell us how you approach storytelling in the podcast.

I try to walk a line between being serious and being campy. . . .I don’t want to freak people out, and I’m not into horror, but I do like weird, off-the-beaten-path stories. I like adding a dose or suspense or an eerie vibe to an episode, but I’m not here to scare anybody. A lot of the creepy things that we’re interested in surround bigger questions that are really important. I think people respond well to it because it’s a safe way to play with ideas like death and mortality.

What do you want listeners to take away from the podcast?
I want people to appreciate the city and its history, even the weird parts. And I hope it encourages people to go places like The Walters Art Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Peabody Library—these historical resources are right here, and they’re amazing. These spaces have so much history. Every piece of art in the museums and every book in the library was put there for a reason, and there’s a story behind each one.

Going forward, what do you think the distinction between regular programming and podcasts will look like for local radio stations?

One big difference is that podcasting is on-demand. One of the beauties of radio is that, when you turn on the dial, you don’t know what’s on and there’s a serendipitous nature to it. But for podcasts, you have to seek it out on your own. You inherently have a more motivated listener because they have to find it themselves. I think that since there are so many podcasts nowadays, if radio stations can tie [their shows] to something local and tangible, it will be more appealing to listeners.

What do you see for the future of The Noir and Bizarre?

This podcast was an experiment and I’m glad it’s going well—I think it gets better with each episode. I don’t think we’ll run out of creepy or interesting things in Baltimore to cover, and I hope I can keep exploring them for as long as possible.

GRASS IS GREENER
According to a new study published in the premier Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts have contributed to a major influx in important underwater grasses. Between 1984 and 2014, nitrogen levels fell 23 percent while acres of submerged vegetation, long considered a key indicator of bay heath, more than tripled to nearly 100 square miles. Researchers directly correlated this resurgence with recent cleanup initiatives, such as the pollution reduction efforts that were established in 2010. High-nutrient pollution can cause algae blooms that block sunlight from or smother the grasses, which remove carbon dioxide from the water and act as habitat for other aquatic creatures. That being said, the Trump administration’s 2019 budget is currently considering cuts to regional water cleanup efforts like those on the Chesapeake Bay.

HOORAY FOR THE BAY
At the beginning of the month, the Environmental Protection Agency reversed its decision to cut federal funding for the 27-year-old Chesapeake Bay Journal. Last year, the EPA abruptly announced its $325,000 cut half-way through its six-year grant with the environmental publication, inciting public outcry over the potential detriment that the Trump administration’s budget could cause the restoration efforts of the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay Journal, which receives another two-thirds of its funding from other sources, sued the agency in hopes that it would disclose an explanation. Under pressure from Senator Democrats, the EPA restored the grant just shy of four months later on March 1.

GUIDING LIGHT
In early March, the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks announced that a portion of the Wyman Park Dell would be rededicated the Harriet Tubman Grove in honor of the iconic, Maryland-born abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor. The wooded area formerly included the contest the Lee Jackson Monument, which was removed by Mayor Catherine Pugh in August 2017. The Harriet Tubman Tree Fund was also announced, with a goal of planting young trees to help sustain the native canopy.

BIRD WATCHER
With spring officially sprung, Great Blue Herons are back in action, and the Chesapeake Conservancy makes it easy to watch their ways. Installed last year, the non-profit’s webcam takes viewers behind the scenes of one of the water birds’ Eastern Shore rookeries. The same organization that brought us peregrine falcons Boh and Barb of downtown Baltimore now brings you a treetop view of these majestic creatures, including one couple named Eddie and Rell. Any time of day, they can be found feeding, nesting, or tending to their young. Watch the live-stream via their website, and also tune into the conservancy’s other cameras, including one for ospreys Tom and Audrey on Kent Island.

HIT THE GAS
In mid-March, state regulators approved a new natural gas pipeline beneath the Potomoc River. Helmed by Canadian energy company, Columbia Gas, this controversial project led to five arrests during a sit-in protest just two days earlier. While opponents vehemently oppose the pipeline, the Department of Energy claims that the project will meet a slew of precautionary environmental requirements so as to not threaten the river, or that of ground or drinking water.

APPLES TO APPLES
In late March, Civic Works’ Baltimore Orchard Project announced the upcoming launch of Moveable Orchards, a new initiative that brings portable fruit trees to the city’s vacant lots and community gardens in underserved neighborhoods like Sandtown-Winchester. The program hopes to provide a sustainable source of nourishment for local residents, as some 23.5% of the Baltimore’s population lives in food deserts, according to a recent study by the city’s planning department and Johns Hopkins University, the majority of whom are African-American. They plan to officially launch on Arbor Day on April 27, having currently raised nearly $7,000 of their raising $15,000 crowdfunding goal.

BOOK WORMS
As a veteran journalist and environmental radio host on WYPR, Tom Pelton has become a go-to source when it comes to conversations surrounding the Chesapeake Bay. His new book, The Chesapeake In Focus: Transforming The Natural World, brings together those years of experience in a rumination on ways to save our state estuary. He also celebrates other great local conservationists, like Bonnie Bick and Michael Beer. Catch a reading and book signing at the George Peabody Library on April 18.

Early this spring, when President Trump proposed the elimination of federal funding for public broadcasting, WYPR kept its cool. “Every few years there is a threat,” says the station’s program director, Andy Bienstock. 

“What it does is remind listeners how important their support is. In this current news cycle, people need sources they really trust.” To wit, in six short days in March, audience members pledged more than $370,000 in the station’s most successful fundraising drive to date.

But this wasn’t the first time 88.1 FM had to overcome a period of uncertainty. Like in 2002, when its predecessor, WJHU, was sold. Or in 2007, when the station—now WYPR—weathered the financial crisis without laying off a single employee. And then there was the Marc Steiner debacle of 2008, when the host’s dismissal launched an outpouring of audience protest. The station stood its ground and hired Dan Rodricks, who became a hit. 

“We look to the future a lot in this business,” says president Anthony Brandon. “We don’t speculate too much on what we did yesterday.” 

The station has had to evolve in other ways, too, like investing in digital and social media, but even that didn’t go quite as expected. “As we’ve looked at all these new ways of reaching listeners, be it podcasts or Facebook Live, the idea was that regular radio listening was going away,” says Bienstock. “But our numbers are as good as they’ve ever been in our history.” 

Over the past 15 years, the NPR affiliate has grown from a 14- to 41-person staff, with 220,000 weekly listeners and an annual budget of $5.8 million, up from $1.4 million in the final days of WJHU. Programming has remained fluid, with familiar faces like Tom Hall and Sheilah Kast moving time slots, beloved old-timers walking the plank (RIP Car Talk), and new shows joining the lineup, like the Out of the Blocks docu-series and Future City with Wes Moore. 

“The fact that we’re even here talking about this is an incredible success,” says Bienstock. “We never lose sight of the miracle that is public radio.”

Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

 EAT

Aug. 13: WYPR + Salt

Salt Tavern, 2127 E. Pratt St. 4-6:15 p.m. $5-10.

As we reach the middle of August, it sadly means that our city’s beloved outdoor concert series will slowly start coming to a close. This Sunday, before you make your way to Patterson Park for its last live music of the season, swing by Salt Tavern in nearby Butchers Hill to pregame the show with our local NPR affiliate (and concert co-host) WYPR. At this 11-year-old Best Restaurant, fill your belly with a smattering of small bites by renowned chef Jason Ambrose—hopefully including the stalwart’s trademark Wagyu foie gras slider and tempting truffle fries—then scramble down Pratt Street to hear local 1960s soul collective, The Bellevederes.

 DRINK

Aug. 13: Charm City 5K Trail Run

Boordy Vineyards, 12820 Long Green Pike, Hydes. 6-11 p.m. $45.

What better form of encouragement for an evening run than endless amounts of wine? This Sunday, lace up for a 5K race through the picturesque Boordy Vineyards in Baltimore County, all the while reminding yourself of the finish-line reward: fine wine and cheese. Bring your friends and family to sample the winery’s roses, reds, and whites, with live music and a continued run of unseasonably cool weather—we hope.

 SEE

Aug. 11-13: BronyCon

Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. $70-2,000. 

For one weekend a year, the streets of Baltimore transform into a colorful, cartoon paradise as fans of My Little Pony convene for the annual BronyCon festival. With a cult following of “bronies,” this cosplay convention features three days of autographs, costume contests, gaming, and one giant BronyPalooza concert. Whether you’re ogling as an onlooker or joining in the equine fun, head to the Inner Harbor to bear witness to this once-a-year affair.

 HEAR

Aug. 13: Us And Us Only

The Crown, N. Charles St. 8 p.m. $7. 

Last month, we were wowed by the new album of Baltimore indie-rocker Us And Us Only. The quintet’s second full-length release, Full Flower, is a feat of lush guitars, punching drums, and earnest vocals, created in part by the soon-to-be-closing Mobtown Studios. Each song fills the room with a nostalgic summer sound, like on “Kno” and “sun4u,” and solidifies their status as a Baltimore Band To Watch. Catch them live this weekend at The Crown, with Baltimore’s own psych-pop group Raindeer and folk singer Nina Gala, plus Brooklyn-based shoegaze trio with possibly the best band name ever: Really Big Pinecone.

 DO

Aug. 12: Baltimore AFRAM Festival

Druid Hill Park, 3001 East Dr. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Free.

For the past 40 years, the AFRAM festival, formerly known as the African American Heritage Festival, has kicked off in the high heat of Baltimore summer with thousands of festivalgoers at Camden Yards. This year, however, a few big changes are taking place, with a shorter timeslot, new venue, and more local than national focus. Though the revisions have incited some backlash, this celebration of African-American culture is still sure to be a jam-packed day full of art, music, community outreach, and family fun in its first-ever location—the verdant landscape of Druid Hill Park. 

After 35 years as music director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, you announced last January that you would be retiring this summer. How has it felt to prepare for your farewell show on March 11?
It’s a surreal experience. I don’t think it’s ever really hit home that this is my final year, but it’s certainly not far from the back of my mind that this is the last time we’re putting everything together. I’m in the sort of plausible deniability stage. It is, on the other hand, just like any other concert, so we have our deadlines. Once you start getting into the work itself, making sure you’re prepared to do as beautiful a concert as you can, everything else sort of falls by the wayside and you just start making music. I’m savoring every rehearsal and the chance to do this again with folks who have become my dearest friends.

You said that you felt this was just the right time—that fresh blood might be a good thing for the 51-year-old choral ensemble.
I think any arts organization can benefit from an injection of new energy, new ideas, and new perspective. None of us who run the organizations here in town—you know, Julia [Marciari-Alexander] at The Walters Art Museum, or Chris [Bedford] at The Baltimore Museum of Art, or Marin [Alsop] at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra—we don’t own these organizations; we’re stewards of them. We take care of them for the time that is allotted to us, and my time has been very generous and very long. I’ve been really blessed for that and it’s been a great honor to help take care of it, nurture it, cultivate it, but now it’s somebody else’s time and turn. It’s a great job, and whoever gets it next will be walking into a really great organization with terrific people and a terrific mission to contribute to the cultural vitality of our city and region.

How have you seen Choral Arts evolve over your tenure?
The Choral Arts Society is certainly much more connected and vigorous than it was in 1982. In my first season, we did three concerts. A couple of years ago, we did 48. It’s the sheer volume of what we’re doing and the breadth of the repertoire—not just classic choral arts music but folk and jazz and popular music. We’ve got a reach that we never had before and it’s been really exciting to be a part of that.

And it’s not just that the Choral Arts Society is growing, but we’re growing along with so many other organizations. The arts scene in general in Baltimore and throughout the state has grown exponentially since I started. The number of offerings in not just music but theater, dance, literary arts, and visual arts are much more plentiful than they ever were. The DIY scene here is huge. We have so much going on creatively—in a city that is well under a million people. There’s an excitement and vitality to the arts scene in Baltimore that’s been really exciting to be a part of, and I hope Choral Arts has been a significant part of its expansion and growth.

Be it large or small-scale shows, how has it felt to stand up there and conduct?
What’s great about it now, in particular, is that I feel an even deeper bond with the people with whom I’m working. I don’t see this at all as a situation in which I’m coming in and leading something; I think of this as a situation I’m coming into and being a part of this great collection of talented, expressive, and communicative artists. There are people I’ve now known for three and a half decades, and we know each other. We’ve done this many, many times together, and each time we take the stage, it’s this great community of people who care about doing music really beautifully. Because when it’s done beautifully, it makes an important contribution to people’s lives.

Have your fellow musicians allowed you to slip in some of your favorite pieces for this final show?
You can almost count every one of them as one of my favorite pieces. These are all pieces that we’ve enjoyed over the years. It’s nice having them all together on one program.

Even after the final show, you’ll still be here in Baltimore at WYPR, where you’ve worked for the past 14 years, the last two as host of Midday. Was it ever difficult to juggle those two jobs or were they symbiotic?
They are symbiotic in that it’s the same side of the brain. When I open up a score, I take a look at it and say, ‘What makes this piece tick?’ And when I’m interviewing a guest, it’s, ‘What makes this person tick?’ They’re very similar pursuits, but the actual execution of both jobs is difficult because they are both very demanding. As I mentioned, the Choral Arts Society is way busier than it ever used to be, and it really deserves somebody who can devote a good bit of their attention to the important work that they do.

For whoever takes over your position, and for the future of Choral Arts in general, any well wishes or hopes for them, besides, obviously, the best?
I’m looking forward to being a resource to the new person in whatever way I can. But the best advice I could give anybody for any job—let alone the new director of the Choral Arts Society—is enjoy it. If you’re really having fun, if you’re really doing every rehearsal and every show, and you’re conscious of how gratifying and exciting and wonderful and enlightening it can be, and you really take the time to have the presence of mind to enjoy each and every moment . . . Because music is a temporal thing. When you’re on stage, it is a moment that is fleeting. The phrase comes and then it’s gone, and then you’re onto the next phrase.

The last few weeks of pregnancy are by far the strangest. There are the obvious, physical oddities: watching the pupils of my friends’ eyes eclipse their irises whenever I turn to the side, the grunting and sighing sounds I’m apparently making every time I move, and the incredible amount of food I’m able to put away now that the baby has dropped and given my stomach the room it feels it deserves.

But the truly strange parts of being this late in the game are mental and emotional. There is simply no way to know what birth will feel like, or what seeing the baby for the first time will do to our brains. My husband and I can’t fathom how our relationship will change or what it will be like to add a new member to our decade-old gang. I trust that we’ll be good parents in terms of loving our kid and doing our best to keep him safe and healthy, but we could still really screw this up. For example, I’ve already admitted, out loud, that my feelings would be hurt if our son didn’t like Harry Potter. If that crazy thought doesn’t prove how easily this whole parenting thing can turn sour, I don’t know what else could.

Phantom literary fears aside, we’re hanging out in the pre-baby purgatory zone where everything is equally amazing and terrifying. Every sudden ache causes nervous laughter, every doctor’s appointment causes mild anxiety, and every time I see our baby’s closet full of tiny little outfits, I feel like I could burst open trying to contain how much I miss someone I still haven’t met.

To try to play it cool in these final days, I’ve found it best to distract myself with books, movies, music, and food. Here is a compilation of what I’ve been doing while waiting for this baby to decide to make some moves. If you’re super pregnant, too, I hope this offers some new ways to pass the time.

Listening

“Baby,” Devandra Banhart: When I hear this song, everything flashes forward and I imagine singing and dancing to it with my kid while he’s in that sweet spot between being old enough to remember lyrics and young enough to indulge his mother in hipster nonsense.

“This Will Be Our Year,” The Zombies: My husband has an annoying habit of sitting down at the piano every time we’re walking out the door, and this song is at the very top of his rotation. I can’t wait to introduce my son to the dance of pretending to be exasperated while secretly finding this delightful.

“Changes,” David Bowie: Turn and face the strange indeed, Mr. Bowie

“I’m Coming Out,” Diana Ross: I’ve been playing this a lot, hoping my kid will adopt it as his mantra and use it as inspiration to make his debut. Ditto for Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak.”

Fresh Air: The WYPR app is almost constantly playing on my phone, and I am eternally grateful for the “Fresh Air On Demand” feature. Terry Gross is a damn delight.

Reading

Bringing Up Bebe, Pamela Druckerman: Rob and I both read this and fully agree that it’s our ideal parenting approach and almost definitely impossible to achieve unless you are, in fact, French.

The Happiest Baby on the Block, Dr. Harvey Karp: This was recommended as a preemptive read in case your bundle of joy is also a bundle of colic. I read it, thought it seemed reasonably helpful, and then promptly forgot everything. I imagine it will make a comeback during desperate, 2 a.m. feedings.

Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling and Sick In the Head, Judd Apatow: On the off chance that laughter is the best medicine for inducing labor.

Watching

Away We Go: This movie nails the way it feels to be on the precipice of changing from a couple to a family.

For Keeps: It makes me feel grateful to not be forced into ’80s maternity wear, but more importantly, it offers a pretty raw look at postpartum depression.

30 Rock: Because I believe in both the power of inception and Tina Fey.

Project Runway: I can’t explain my sudden obsession with this show, but I could kiss whoever put seven seasons of it on Hulu. I could also kiss Heidi Klum for hosting it, because I think she’s the only reason my husband hasn’t run over our Apple TV base with his car.

Eating/Drinking

Honey Crisp apples (or “nature’s Starbursts,” if you’re my husband): Best served directly out of the fridge. Avoiding cutting them up if you’re with company—friends are far less likely to ask for a bite if you’ve been gnawing off the rind.

Marshmallows with dark chocolate: No, not a s’more. Just alternating bites of an extra-large, room temperature marshmallow and a piece of whatever dark chocolate I can scrounge up in my pantry.

Iggie’s cinque formaggi pizza: Because hot cheese and carbs are appealing whether you’ve got a person trying to get out of you or not.

Raspberry leaf tea: My understanding is that it helps tone the uterine muscles for labor. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a tea to do that for the rest of my muscles.

I’m signing off for a few weeks to have this baby. Thanks for letting me share my experiences thus far, and I’ll be back in early winter to foist my sleep-deprived thoughts on infant care upon you.

In a classroom overlooking the colorful Howard Street Bridge, Paul D. Miller swipes a finger across his iPad mini and pulls up a DJ app he developed with Apple. An image of turntables appears on a projector screen, and the room fills with the soulful voice of James Brown singing “Make It Funky.” As the turntables spin, Miller (better known as DJ Spooky) scratches the virtual record with a few flicks of his fingers, breaking down the percussion and horns until the funky beat becomes something new. As the music fades, Miller poses a question to the class of 13 students: What makes something original? “If I have 10 Lego blocks and I put them together in one way and millions of people see that one way, and I say, ‘Let me flip that around,’ that’s okay,” he says, describing an artist’s ability to subvert, or “remix” the familiar into something with new meaning. “It’s a healthy, creative response.”

Miller, an artist-in-residence through spring 2014 at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), teaches a Creativity and Innovation course with WYPR radio producer Aaron Henkin. Something of a globetrotting Renaissance man, Miller is the author of various books (including 2004’s Rhythm Science, published by MIT Press), and his multimedia work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. The class is part of the Design Leadership program, a groundbreaking partnership between MICA and The Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School. The 20-month graduate degree earns students both a Masters of Art and a Masters in Business Administration.

Sipping an after-class espresso at Red Emma’s, a North Avenue coffeehouse/bookstore across the street from MICA’s Graduate Studio Center, Miller says such discussions push students to think about the causes of creativity and the effects of human design in business settings and elsewhere. “Anyone can watch a YouTube clip or read a book,” he says, “but the problem is people aren’t given enough tools for thinking. How do you channel all that [information]? How do you shape and mold it to a practical and impact-oriented approach?”

“It’s almost like you’ve got these two sides of creativity,” adds Henkin. “You’re giving these students all of these tools to create, but then there’s the question: ‘How will they apply these creations for the best all-around benefit, not only to themselves, but to the world?’”

This type of approach is necessary, Miller says, because of the rapid rate of change in technology and business today. And while design challenges, and even the course curriculum, may change, “thinking about thinking is a tool that people can always use,” Miller says.

As the corporate world plays catch-up to embrace adaptability, graduates of the Design Leadership program can bridge the world of business and the world of design. “Paul says imagination is the ultimate renewable resource,” says Henkin, “and one of the best resources you can have on your team is—”

“A good idea,” Miller interjects.

“And also flexibility,” Henkin continues. “The business person who’s got that more humanistic platform is going to be less brittle than someone who’s just trained in business.”

It’s that depth and breadth of skills that draws students to the new program, which graduates its first class this spring. Students take 22 credits at MICA and 44 credits at Hopkins.

“I was looking for a mix of MBA and design,” says first-year Design Leadership student Julie Buisson, a native of France who has lived in the U.S. for the past 10 years. Buisson moved from Athens, GA, to Baltimore for the Design Leadership program after discovering it through a Google search. Dressed in a bulky, mustard-yellow sweater and holding a mug of coffee and a well-loved Moleskin journal, Buisson fits the picture of an art student, though she earned her undergraduate degree—in marketing, with an emphasis in sales—at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.

“At Georgia, all of my friends were art students,” she says. “They showed me a different way of working. I took some art classes, and I realized that creativity is something you work on just like anything else.”

With the Design Leadership program, she’s filling a gap in her education. It’s the same for her classmates, who come from varied backgrounds, including architecture, nonprofits, photography, and even the oil industry. “There is something more that’s driving us,” says Buisson. “We all believe we should be trained as creatives—it’s just as important as being trained in analytics.”

That passion for cross-disciplinary education is exactly what the two schools look for in applicants, says David Gracyalny, dean of MICA’s School for Professional and Continuing Studies and the de-facto head of MICA’s side of the Design Leadership program. Sitting in his office inside MICA’s Bungalow building on Mount Royal Avenue, Gracyalny notes that Design Leadership students, like typical MICA graduates, develop skills to be more adaptable, resourceful, and collaborative-minded.

“We use the practice of art and design to teach people to be creative thinkers,” he says. “What they’ve learned here is a tolerance for ambiguity. This is not a degree teaching designers how to run a business. It’s about teaching transformational leaders in a variety of enterprises—people who can think through complicated problems—with a theme of multidisciplinary collaboration.”

And multidisciplinary collaboration is why the Design Leadership program was developed. Its beginnings can be traced back to 2007, when Carey professors Blair Johnson, Toni Ungaretti, and Ed Weiss began teaching Competitive Advantage: Design + Innovation, a class where students came up with creative solutions for challenges posed by local businesses.

For DAP (the Baltimore-based caulk and sealant firm), for instance, the Hopkins students proposed new products, marketing strategies, financial models, and prototype websites to help promote the brand to young do-it-yourselfers without alienating their baby-boomer parents.

After Johnson was recruited by MICA to assist with an unrelated project, he says the schools “recognized that there were knowledge gaps that could be bridged by adopting teaching, research, and industry practices from each school into an integrated experience.”

It came at a time when new research and publications—including Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind—ushered in an era of creative, right-brain thinking. This cultural shift prompted the two schools to create a more formal partnership. After a few iterations, the schools settled on a dual-degree program that folded Carey’s already-existing flex MBA, which exposes students to other disciplines, into MICA’s Design Leadership MA.

From an office in Harbor East’s glistening Legg Mason building, Kevin Frick, Carey’s vice dean for education, handles the staff-management side of the university’s MBA programs and works with Gracyalny on the Design Leadership program. The Carey School administration, Frick says, sees value in the program, because it provides MBA students with deep expertise in design, which can be applied to any business. “Design, as one student phrased it, is a way of thinking about the world,” says Frick. “We are not talking about just designing things; we’re talking about fundamentally shifting a thought process.”

Such comments echo Miller’s and Henkin’s sentiments and align with Carey’s slogan, “Business with humanity in mind.” Frick admits that some people hear the slogan and immediately think of not-for-profits, but he points out that it also means a healthy business is most likely to be found in a healthy community. He believes the Design Leadership program directly addresses that issue.

“Design, and thinking about the end user and the end-user community, is quite powerful as a combination,” says Frick.

As graduation looms, employment is on the minds of the 13 students. In between presentations of their final projects at the Graduate Studio Center, Molly Needelman, who studied graphic design as an undergraduate, knows there are challenges ahead in the employment market. In past jobs, she saw a divide between strategy and design and was often brought in at the end of the process instead of being involved from the beginning.

“I want to change that business model to bridge the different worlds,” says Needelman.

With that in mind, she’s been presenting herself as a design strategist, or in-house creative consultant, to potential employers. “It’s a lot of us trying to develop a position,” Needelman says, rather than fitting into already-existing job descriptions. “A lot of it has been a huge educational moment for employers as well.”

But Gracyalny isn’t worried. He describes the first grads as highly driven, pioneering spirits and notes that a company like Under Armour might be a good match for their cross-disciplinary skills.

And he sees Baltimore—a place where innovative ideas can not only be considered, but implemented—as the perfect environment to embrace this unconventional thinking. “What’s going to save the economy of cities like Baltimore,” he says, “are people who are willing to take a risk at times where maybe the best thing to do is try something new.”

Aaron Henkin agrees and likens it to the collaborative spirit he sees in Baltimore’s music scene. “You’ve got these musicians who, because of the spirit of this place, don’t have any qualms about getting together and making this new sound they didn’t know they were capable of,” he says “It’s the same thing with these two schools.

“They said, ‘Hey, why not try this out? We’re in town together, let’s take the best of what you’ve got and the best of what we’ve got.’ It’s almost like they’re making a new genre.”