Loyola biology professor David Rivers is the kind of bug guy who’s into cockroach racing, mealworm stir fries, and maggot spitting contests. (Seriously.) And his research is even grosser! But we’re not here to talk about flies that feed on fetal pigs (ick); it’s cicadas we’re interested in. And Rivers has some answers.
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Hot House: 11530 Falls Road, Sparks, MD.

Colonial style wood frame over brick farm house, circa 1853, wrapped with porches, set on a slight rise. 5,642 sq. ft. over three stories with finished basement.  6 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, with swimming pool, veranda, three car garage, 9’ ceilings, mudroom, hardwood floors, fireplaces: $1,795,000 Read More →

Baltimore’s massive poverty problem is impossible to miss, whatever your income bracket. Vacant and condemned buildings speckle the city. And many others that ought to be condemned house families. But of course we no longer need the visual cues. Awareness of Baltimore’s blight is something the entire nation has internalized.

That’s why it’s so surprising to learn that in 2011 there were actually more poor living in Baltimore’s suburbs. That’s by raw numbers of residents living in poverty (around 150,000 in the city compared with 159,000 in the suburbs), not by percentage of population. But when you’ve got the majority of assistance programs focusing their attention on the city, that leaves an awful lot of people in the cold. Read More →

When you look at Baltimore’s outrageous prison scandal, you may see a poisoned system, a disastrous combination of corruption and negligence. Me, I see a simple failure to adequately keep track of cellphones.

Luckily, the Baltimore City Detention Center has plans to complement the efforts of their phone-sniffing dogs (the existence of which has really ignited my imagination — what else can we train dogs to smell?) with a high-tech cellphone jamming system. Read More →

Leland Shelton is the one who looks like he’s just been mentioned in a speech by the president of the United States.

Leland Shelton has an inspiring biographical abstract. The Baltimore native was taken away from his mother at age four to live with his grandparents before entering the foster care system at 14. And yet, here he is, graduating from the prestigious Morehouse College and headed to Harvard Law School, and all with an eye toward helping keep foster-care kids from “fall[ing] through the cracks.”

But I wouldn’t know any of that about Shelton had President Barack Obama not recounted it in the keynote address he delivered at Morehouse commencement on Sunday. Read More →

When we get an email about a book from a fellow book lover, we take special notice.  Over the weekend, friend and Ivy Bookshop Owner Ann Berlin, sent the following to our inbox:

We are always on the lookout for very special books and authors.  I just completed a book entitled A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar and was so moved that I felt compelled to let the friends of the Ivy know about it.  This book is a very special memoir by Qais Akbar Omar of life in Afghanistan during the civil war and under the Taliban. Every once in a while, a book comes along that leaves you so much richer, and this is one of them.

If you loved The Kite Runner, I believe you will love this one even more.  The humanity shines through. This book is breathtaking.   Qais will be signing at The Ivy Bookshop this coming Monday, May 20, at 7:00 PM.  This book would be looked upon favorably among book clubs and anyone interested in the unfolding events in Afghanistan. I encourage you and your friends to meet him at the shop.

Qais recently wrote an amazing Op-Ed in The New York Times, entitled “Where’s My Ghost Money”. See the link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/wheres-my-ghost-money.html?_r=0

A Fort of Nine Towers is one of the rare memoirs of Afghanistan to have been written by an Afghan, and it reveals the richness and suffering of life in a country whose history has become deeply entwined with our own.

For the young Qais Akbar Omar, Kabul was a city of gardens where he flew kites from his grandfather’s roof with his cousin Wakeel while their parents, uncles and aunts drank tea around a cloth spread in the grass. It was a time of telling stories, reciting poetry, selling carpets and arranging marriages. Read More →

It ran in “T” Magazine, the paper’s glossy, seasonal travel publication, and was paid for by Visit Baltimore. Perhaps remembering that New York Times readers are really into how “quirky” Baltimore is, the four-page ad emphasized our city’s “classic gems and quirky delights,” from A(rtscape) to Z(appa, Frank) — with nods to the “Kooky! Kitsch! Kinetic!” sculpture race, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Prix, gay marriage, and Cafe Hon’s giant pink flamingo. It’s a little heavy on the kitsch, but there’s some substance there, too. As for the price tag? “For getting that kind of broad audience and that level of circulation, those projects tend to run about the same across the board,” Visit Baltimore’s chief marketing officer told the Baltimore Business Journal. You can see the PDF of the entire ad here — check it out and let us know what you think!

Baltimore is definitely not the prime place to be a United States Postal Service worker! In fact, it’s the eighth worst city in the country, if we’re talking dog-bite likelihood… New figures show that we rank number eight nationally for the most mail carriers attacked annually. No wonder the USPS is a partner in National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which is sponsored every third week of May by the American Veterinary Medical Association and others. From May 19-25, AVMA is offering tips and resources for remedying the situation. Learn some smart and quick suggestions after the jump. Read More →

Orb may not have won the Preakness yesterday, but he did win over the crowd at Pimlico and revived local interest in horse racing (yay, Maryland economy!). Check out some of the scenes our photographer Tyler Merbler snapped at the races. It looks like a loss by the hometown favorite and threatening rain did little to dampen the mood. – The Eds.

All photos by Tyler Merbler.

Sagamore Farm. All photos by Krista Smith.

Tomorrow, the 138th Preakness Stakes, or the “Freakness” as it is sometimes affectionately known in Baltimore, will run at the Pimlico Race Course.

Whether you find yourself at the race sipping Black-Eyed Susans and wearing a pink taffeta dress that matches the flower on your hat, or funneling malt liquor and wearing black denim shorts that match the tattoo on your abdomen, you will be participating in the long Maryland tradition of thoroughbred horse racing. It’s a tradition that owes much of its rich history, and maybe even a bit of its optimistic future, to the pragmatism of Margaret Emerson Vanderbilt.

Margaret’s first son, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, was born in 1912. Mrs. Vanderbilt was hopeful that her boy would grow up to be a businessman and she had good reason to be bullish. Men on both sides of Alfred’s family had built huge companies (Bromo-Seltzer on her side and the New York Central Railroad on her husband’s side). Now widowed, Margaret was one of the wealthiest people in America…and this was “Gatsby” America, which we all now know (thanks, Baz) was the real deal.

Alfred, as it turned out, had other interests (such a thankless job, the parenting). “Since the first time I went to the races at Pimlico at the age of 9,” Mr. Vanderbilt once said, ”I have had this wonderful feeling about racing. I don’t go to the races because I just love horses. It’s like the person who goes to the circus and falls in love with the whole show, not just the elephants.”

Vanderbilt’s racing silk design on the stalls in the original stable.

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