All three fields at Roosevelt Park have Little League games going right now. Baltimore is healing.

I was so proud when I heard that Baltimore would be producing a huge amount of COVID-19 vaccines, but this is a horrible, horrible outcome. Bad for the world, and horrific for Baltimore.

Storm is coming.

Tomorrow is our first day of Thirdly, where our team used to get together in Baltimore and celebrate the third gone by and prepare for the next one. It just is not the same now that we do it virtually. I miss my friends.

COVID Seder

I cannot tell you how excited I am that Francine has gone from dropping leaves to this.

I don’t think I’ve experienced any local media as disingenuous and entangled with a particular administration as “Project Baltimore” from my local Sinclair Syndicate.

Snowy evening walks in Baltimore.

I miss having real snow now that I’m in Baltimore. The last big storm to hit here, and it was a bad one, was the year before I moved here. Even in the middle of quarantine, a big snow has a different way of shutting things down that feels special. I’d love a big one this year.

Check out this crazy sky I captured (no edits) on my iPhone 12 Pro.

IKEA pegboard installed. Level and square, which was significantly harder than I thought it’d be.

More office shots soon. Hopefully will be fully cozied by end of year.

This morning I sat a the local coffee shop and ate this expensive toast. It was delicious. But it was also so normal and pleasant.

Today’s Hike

Today’s Lunch

And some updates on our Lettuce Grow

My office is coming together.

A mostly disappointing “hike” on the Gwynns Falls Trail

Larry Hogan’s cancellation of the Red Line is unforgiveable. It’s one of a string of decisions designed to harm Baltimore City and support the Maryland narrative that Baltimore is a drag on the state, rather than its vital core.

The HEROES Act cuts off funding for public transit systems where the metro area has less than 3 million people.

1. This is a bad measure.
2. How are we still writing policies with hard cutoffs rather than gradual reductions?

I have been disappointed that Baltimore seemed to be working very slowly on actually taking action on Complete Streets. But this Greater Greater Washington article on Baltimore’s new Complete Streets Manual gives me hope that the work is both good and comprehensive. Now do it!

If you’ve ever heard of the “white noose” here in Baltimore, here’s another great demonstration.

Pooling local revenue with Baltimore City’s two nearest neighbors results in $3,717 more funding per student for BCPSS students.

If we pooled the whole state, that increase grows to $4,963.

Without including wealthy DC suburbs or the Eastern Shore of Maryland, roughly 75% of the gap in funding for Baltimore City is covered just by stepping across a border designed for segregation.

75% of the gap.

That’s the legacy of state sponsored segregation. That’s what you choose when you live over the border.

Via Ed Build’s Clean Slate

This Baltimore Magazine story on what to do improve the city is spot on with 1 exception– we don’t need Maglev for Baltimore, we just need good conventional high speed rail. We can get to DC in 16 mins & NYC in 1:23 w/o maglev.

Love having Wyman Park so close by.

From today’s “taking it slow being kind of off from work” walk.

A lot of white people in America who don’t support progressive taxes, and don’t support various ways government can redistribute wealth point to one thing: they have earned what is theirs. When we talk about reparations— they didn’t own slaves.

How many of them know the history of their wealth?

This story about two Baltimore neighborhoods is just one small example of how explicit government policy and action created and sustained a racial wealth divide just a generation or two ago.

Because I grew up in the New York City tri-state area, I frequently heard from people whose families, like mine, emigrated to the US with little, long after slavery. These immigrants and their descendants made clear that because they didn’t participate in slavery or the Jim Crow South and they came to the US with little, they had no reason to have to pay taxes that supported black people in America to correct for our original sin. It seemed preposterously unfair.

They were and are blind to the ways their own family wealth in America was created and supported through explicitly racist policy programs that lead to affordable home ownership for their families. They have benefited from white supremacy all the same.

It’s been a week. Hoping this weekend gives me a chance to recharge, so I can rise up and meet the challenges of next week a little more refreshed.