Last chance to enter Brew’s Dixon trial poetry contest?

We’re still accepting poems, until the jury renders a verdict. Best haiku, sonnet or limerick gets a $25 gift card. Whether your poem is naughty or nice, we’re hoping you’ll gift us with it soon!

Here are a few of the entries, including these two haiku by “Aaron.”

jury wrangles long
mayor’s peers sit in judgement
trial by the press

Low cost crimes alleged
Millions spent to uncover
Party politics

This one is from “Virginia”

For gifties, our Mayor likes a card -
A present that’s easy, not hard.
Whether she got them mixed,
Or her relationships fixed,
Now forever her record is scarred.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scenes from Dixon drama, as city awaits a verdict

by MELODY SIMMONS

     Entering its third week today, the theft trial of Mayor Sheila Dixon seems at times to be more soap opera than legal proceeding.

  As the jury of nine women and three men begin a sixth day of deliberations on the five remaining counts (of which Dixon can only be found guilty of three) at 9 a.m. today, The Brew offers some highlights from inside and outside of Courtroom 234.

   –  For instance, while jurors are receiving $50-per-day stipends, prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh and his team of five attorneys and investigators showed up in court for 10 hours on Wednesday gratis. The state was under a mandatory furlough day because of budget cuts.

     — Mayor Dixon, her face often showing signs of strain at the lengthy deliberation, sounded a lighter note on Wednesday while debating Thanksgiving stuffing ingredients with some of her faithful supporters: oysters or no oysters?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bay Foundation threatens to sue over Sparrows Point pollution

by MARK REUTTER

     The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is again threatening to sue environmental regulators and Severstal North America if action is not taken against illegal discharges of cancer-causing benzene and other pollutants into Baltimore harbor.

     Jon A. Mueller, CBF’s director of litigation, criticized state and federal agencies for not insisting that immediate measures be taken to stop the flow of toxic chemicals from the Sparrows Point steel mill. Mueller was responding to Severstal’s claim, reported last week in the Brew, that it was not responsible for investigating or cleaning up so-called “historical contamination” from the plant.

     “If the state and federal government fail to act in a timely way,” Mueller said, “we will be forced to take action.”

((Listen to Mark discuss our Sparrows Point coverage at 9 am tomorrow ( Tuesday) on Sheilah Kast’s Maryland Morning show, on WYPR FM.))

Read the rest of this entry »

For bicyclists, drivers and pedestrians on Pratt Street, cryptic signs about ‘the future’ add to present pandemonium

Pratt Bike Lanes 795 

by GERALD NEILY

     Riding on Pratt Street in the Inner Harbor is a constant test of split-second improvisation. One must react instantaneously to the sensory overload of cars, buses, bikes, trucks and pedestrians. Who will dive into your lane? What evasive maneuver must you make when someone cuts you off?
    
     Pratt Street’s curb-to-curb barrage of signs, lane lines, markings and apurtenances have always been been geared to “living in the now,” where time is measured in nanoseconds. But lately, in the very space where you are attempting to survive the present, the City is also asking you to ponder the future. 
 
     New Pratt Street road signs say, in Yoda-speak,  ”Future: Right Lane: Buses Bikes Right Turns Only.”

Vigil at City Hall commemorates transgender murder victims

 by DEBORAH RUDACILLE

     On October 26, 2009 city police responded to a call in the 1500 block of Montpelier Street in Northeast Baltimore to find a male-bodied person dressed in women’s clothes bleeding from the left side of his body. Darren Green, 24, died shortly afterwards at Johns Hopkins Hospital from multiple stab wounds. Green was one of the transgendered victims of violent crime memorialized at City Hall on November 20th, the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, by a group of activists, friends and city and state officials.

     It was a poignant moment for Kalima Young, research director of Connect to Protect: Baltimore, an advocacy group: “I’m sorry that we have to be here, but so proud that the city views it as important.”

     (Baltimore had an even more recent reminder of the violent toll taken by hate based on sexual orientation: a Baltimore Sun story on Friday revealed that Glen H. Footman, the Mount Vernon man shot in 2008 shortly after being seen walking on the street hand-in-hand with his partner, died earlier this month. A witness to the shooting, still under investigation as a hate crime, was overheard saying “I’m going to kill me a gay tonite.”) Read the rest of this entry »

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