He'll answer, but he's not taking any backtalk
Melanie Brockman of Cockeysville is unhappy with Baltimore County Council members. Thinks they failed to challenge County Exec Jim Smith on school building issues. Lets them have it via e-mail. Council Chairman Kevin Kamenetz sends a lengthy reply. Brockman finds it "condescending" and gives him another BlackBerry-ful.
Kamenetz's response: "Since you know all of the answers, there is little point in further communication. Since you don't like my attitude, may I suggest that you stop wasting my time. Good luck with your attitude."
Ticked off, the woman forwards Kamenetz's response far and wide. To the chairman's great shame? Not really.
He points out that he sent that flip reply on the morning of July 4.
"I gave her a detailed and timely response, and on a federal holiday, to boot."
Even Brockman credits Kamenetz for that much. "[A]lthough Councilman Kamenetz's response is disgraceful," she writes, "he is the only councilman that responded to my original email sent to all council members and Jim Smith."
A partial ID for the mystery portrait
Got an answer on that mysterious portrait I wrote about last column - and a new question.
On Sunday, I wrote about a 1950s oil painting that Linda Kiefer Sanders found while cleaning out her late parents' Catonsville home. Sanders was trying to find out who the gray-haired man in the suit was. She didn't want a nice painting to go to waste. And she didn't want to have to haul the thing back home to San Diego.
In came the e-mails. Former state Sen. Harry McGuirk? Former Baltimore Mayor J. Harold Grady? Milton Eisenhower, the former Hopkins prez and Ike's kid brother? Somebody's Great-uncle Edwin? Two people guessed Spiro Agnew.
Torie Parker Hobbs Harlan, daughter of the artist, Grace Parker Hobbs, knows for sure. She said the man is "Dr. Hopkins," who took care of her father (the artist's husband) after a bad car accident in 1952.
"As a little girl, I used to sit and watch her work on this very portrait."
Harlan has no idea how the picture wound up in Dick and Susannah Kiefer's attic. (She said her mother sometimes borrowed her paintings and pastels from clients to display at art festivals. Dick Kiefer was active in community events, so maybe he was storing the painting and forgot about it, Harlan said.)
In any case, Harlan is going to take the painting off Sanders' hands. But she'd gladly give it to Hopkins, if by some chance he's still around, or his heirs, if he has any. But she doesn't even know his first name. She knows he worked at St. Agnes Hospital a half-century ago and figures he was in orthopedics, since her dad had lots of broken bones.
I left some messages with a St. Agnes spokesman, who didn't call back. Surely someone there has the answer.
