We’ve been watching the progress for months now, and finally it’s official: Townhouse restaurant will open its doors on May 24.

The Baltimore Business Journal is reporting that the new Harbor East restaurant will feature an Asian and Mediterranean menu and will have 40 local beers on tap. It will also have draft beer at individual tables so you can serve yourself.

High-end Japanese restaurant PABU opened last week in the Four Seasons hotel. Its menu features modern Japanese cuisine “with global influences” including “jet-fresh” fish from around the world.

As told to Vincent Jennings, MDSPCA adoption counselor:

"Hi there! I'm an older gal looking to move into a new home this spring. I'm very gentle and affectionate and I totally love to cuddle. Please visit me at the MDSPCA adoption center and let's go home together today."

Contact the MDSPCA for the latest information.

Gracie, 8 years old, spayed female, 52 lbs

The Outpost Journal has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to support the production of the Baltimore edition of the magazine. Outpost Journal is an annual, non-profit print publication that focuses on innovative art, design and community action from cities that have been traditionally underexposed beyond the local contexts. The inaugural issue, on Pittsburgh, came out in Fall 2011, and the Baltimore issue will be released in Fall 2012.

Part book, part guide, and part lifestyle journal, Outpost is a visual journey into the creative heart of a place. The Baltimore edition will be a 64-page, full color 9×12” print publication complete with multiple inserts (a limited edition screen print and a cut-and-fold insert by Baltimore-based artists Shaun Flynn and Gary Kachadorian, respectively). The issue will feature artist profiles, including of the city’s “Secretly Famous,” deep dives into arts-based community organizations such as Knitting Behind Bars, a tour of Baltimore’s signature architecture, an exploration of the city’s experimental dance community, a look at the complexities of an urban redesign project in East Baltimore, documentation of a collaborative large scale, temporary public artwork on the iconic “Natty Boh” Tower, a link to a mix tape by Baltimore-based musician Phoebe Jean Dunne (of Phoebe Jean and the Airforce) and a guide to art spaces in the city.

The Outpost Journal Baltimore edition’s Kickstarter campaign runs from now till June 8th.

Documentary film ”Slavery By Another Name” brings to light a period of history when many negative stereotypes about blacks—some that are still with us—were born. Next Tuesday, May 22, the film will have a screening MICA’s Brown Center at 7 p.m.

Pulitzer Prize-winner and Wall Street Journal senior writer Douglas Blackmon produced the film based on his research.  He will join the screening for a discussion, along with Sharon Malone and Susan Burnore, two descendants who are featured in the film. Actor Laurence Fishburne narrates the movie.

The film explores how, after slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African-Americans were pulled back into forced labor. The movie spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” to begin and persist.  Using archival photographs and re-enactments in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators and includes interviews with their descendants living today.  The program also features interviews with Blackmon and with leading scholars.

Thurber finds consolation in that, at the very least, the instrument of
his indignity is covered in fabulous mod Italian stripes (for Target).

Photo and caption by Sara Lynn Michener

Earlier today, a taped police interview and some other exhibits entered during the George Huguely trial in the murder of Yeardley Love were made available for viewing at Charlottesville Circuit Court but could not be recorded or rebroadcast under terms set by the judge in Huguely’s case. The evidence is set to be shown again Wednesday. Love was a Cockeysville native and graduate of Notre Dame Prep.

Washington Post reporters Jenna Johnson and Mary Pat Flaherty, who covered the trial for the paper, pieced together the dialogue from the police interview based on notes from the trial and audio heard today.

An excerpt:

Huguely’s Interview

Charlottesville detectives begin at 7:52 a.m. by reading Huguely his Miranda rights and asking some routine questions. They ask about his day on Sunday, May, 2, 2010, and he said he played golf, went to dinner with his father and then went home and “drank a few beers.”

Huguely: “Then I went over to talk to Yeardley . . . . Yeardley is my former girlfriend .  . . . She was like already totally freaked out . . . . I was just going to talk to her . . . . She started getting all like really defensive . . . week before she flew into my apartment … she came in all screaming at me . . .she attacked me and she was screaming at me . . . when I went over to see her to talk with her she was already on the defensive edge.

She was throwing me against the wall . . .

She said go away . . . . I’m just here to talk to you . . . . She got all . . . we were sitting there talking . . . she was getting all like aggressive . . . then I was like Yeardley chill out. I shook her a little bit and she started freaking out.”

A detective asks Huguely if he hit Love’s head against the wall.

Huguely: “No, no. She was was hitting her head . . . . I said Yeardley stop . . . . She was all freaking out just over seeing me . . . . She kept hitting her head against the wall, I shook her. . . . I never struck her. I mean I never hit her in the face or anything.”

(During this exchange, Huguely leaned against the concrete wall and knocks his head against it, showing detectives what he said Yeardley was doing)

Read, George Huguely’s Police Interview in Yeardley Love Investigation, at the Washington Post.

Not to erase the afterglow from moms’ special day yesterday, but the Wall Street Journal reports in a story about fathering that more and more dads are taking on the child care role traditionally reserved for moms.

An excerpt:

Even a casual observer of American family life knows that dads now drive kids to more doctors’ appointments, preside over more homework assignments and chaperone more playdates. Research confirms the rise of co-parenting. A recent U.S. Census Bureau report found that 32% of fathers with working wives routinely care for their children under age 15, up from 26% in 2002. Popular culture has noted the trend, too. Involved regular-guy dads are now commonplace in commercials. In one AT&T ad, a dad diapers his baby while talking sports on his phone with a buddy.

Whether it is because today’s men were raised amid the women’s movement of the 1970s, or because they themselves experienced the costs of that era’s absent fathers, there is little question that the age of dads as full partners in parenting has arrived.

The topic of fathers’ roles will be the subject of a conference titled Fathers and Fathering in Contemporary Contexts to be held next month at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda.

What about you? Do you see more Baltimore dads taking on the primary caregiver role?

Read Are Dads the New Moms? at the Wall Street Journal online.

CNN Money reported this week that more wealthy families with children in the private schools are requesting financial aid.

In the 2010-11 academic year, about 20 percent of families that filed for financial aid for private school earned $150,000 or more a year, up from just six percent in 2002-03, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.

Many parents have been hit hard by the recession and declining home values, the story goes on to explain, and can no longer afford an expensive private school education. But it’s one expense they aren’t willing to give up.

“There’s this pressure to give your kids what you think is the best,” said Robin Aronow, a school admissions consultant in New York.

Read Making 300K and Getting Financial Aid for a First Grader at CNN Money.

This Saturday, May 12 from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. the Johns Hopkins Hospital Women’s Board Will Hold its Best Dressed Spring Sale at 4101 Greenway in Guilford. You’ll find terrific new and gently used women’s clothes all priced to sell – $5 and $50.

Clothes from Lily Pulitzer, Christian Dior, Ralph Lauren, Ann Taylor, Talbots, Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Carlisle, Anthropology and more will be at the sale. Don’t miss it!!

All are sales final. Check, cash, Visa or MasterCard. 

(This is a private home next to Sherwood Gardens.) 

Greek restaurant Ouzo Bay is opening at 1006 Lancaster St. in Harbor East, in the same building that houses Charleston. The 4,000-square-foot restaurant seat 140 inside and 70 outside, according to a liquor license Alexander Smith filed with Baltimore City.  Read more at Bmore Media

A new restaurant called The Museum will open in the old space that used to house the Brass Elephant at 924 N. Charles Street Street in Mount Vernon. Not much is known about The Museum, except that the owners initially wanted to offer live music, but dropped the idea when the neighborhood opposed.  Read more at The Baltimore Sun 

The owner of Calle’s Cucina, an Italian restaurant on St. Paul’s Street in Barclay, posted late last night that he was closing the restaurant after a seven month run.  Read more at the Baltimore Business Journal