By MARK REUTTER
About 1:40 p.m. yesterday, Russell Donnelly heard a distant sound. It started off as a rumble, then increased into a whooshing roar that caused the floor of his house to vibrate. “I thought, what is going on? It sounded like the launching of a Titan rocket booster for an Apollo spaceship.”

In fact, the sound came from a “furnace slip” at the Sparrows Point steel plant about 1½ miles west of his Edgemere neighborhood. The mishap not only shook Donnelly’s house, but caused thick plumes of fire to rise above the mill. Read the rest of this entry »

Bicyclists, if you’re tired of sharing the asphalt with those four-wheeled fossil-fuel-burners, your day has come.
       Baltimore city officials have granted a permit to allow Roland Avenue to be closed to vehicular traffic on the morning of Oct. 25., the city’s first experiment with a bicycles-only city street.
If you’re going to need to drive that day, you’d better steer clear. And if you get a kick out of life’s little ironies, click through to see the not-so-green ad that appeared on this event’s Facebook page.
Read the rest of this entry »

       The stately, historic home once owned by the late Parren J. Mitchell is headed for the auction block.

      Although the former congressman hasn’t lived there in years, auctioneers are promoting the house as the “Mitchell Mansion.” The legacy of its former owner, the first African-American elected to Congress from Maryland, may appeal to some bidders, but the 6-bedroom house on Lafayette Square Park has enough period touches and decorative flourishes to entice any avid reader of “This Old House” or Architectural Digest. Read the rest of this entry »

by MARK REUTTER

     The possibility of mass layoffs at Sparrows Point, first reported by the Brew on Sept. 17,  is the subject of a front-page article in American Metal Market, a leading trade journal.

       The article cites a memo from a union official saying that 580 union positions may be eliminated under a restructuring plan proposed by Severstal, the financially troubled Russian owner of the Baltimore county steel plant. Read the rest of this entry »

By FERN SHEN
He may have earned a PhD from MIT, had  a lovable Pixar space ranger named after him, recorded a rap video with Snoop Dogg and had the dubious honor of being interviewed by Ali G but, really, large parts of Buzz Aldrin’s life after he walked on the moon in 1969 were pretty crummy, the astronaut-author told a rapt audience Saturday at the 2009 Baltimore Book Festival. If only selling Cadillacs in Beverly Hills (unsuccessfully) had been the worst of it  …. Read the rest of this entry »