October 23, 2009|By Laura Vozzella
The "Meatless Monday" program in Baltimore City school cafeterias has the meat industry madder than a factory-farmed hen. A spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute warned on CNN this week that students aren't getting enough protein. The Animal Agriculture Alliance urged people "shocked" by the once-weekly absence of meat on school menus to write schools chief Andr?s Alonso "to ensure this effort does not spread."
Thought to be a first for a public school district, Baltimore's Meatless Monday program is meant to conserve scarce cafeteria funds and make lunches more healthful, not to convert students to vegetarianism, district officials say. Using ingredients like beans and cheese, the meals meet the same protein requirements as ordinary school lunches, the district's dietitian has said. Meat is on the menu the four other days.
After the program was described on CNN, host Lou Dobbs commented, "That's a real political storm in the making, isn't it?" This, despite CNN's failure to turn up a single Baltimore parent opposed to Meatless Mondays.
"I don't see what's radical here," Alonso said. "Our obligation is to serve healthy and good meals, and one day of vegetarian meals is in that spirit."
The meat industry needn't fear there's a health-food freak at the helm of city schools, Alonso said. "I have the world's worst eating habits," he said. "If the meat industry folks sat at my family dinners, we would be their poster family."
Quiet auction
So who bought John Erickson's Harborview penthouse, auctioned Saturday, just days before his retirement empire went bankrupt?
Don't ask Great American Home Auctions. It won't even say the price - or if the penthouse sold.
"It was a private sale, and we're not going to disclose any details on it," said Mike Kim, Great American's chief operating officer.
Note to Great American: Next time, skip the pre-auction press release if you're going to stiff us on the results.
All that info eventually will come out in state records when and if a sale goes through. Until then, with Erickson's spokesman also mum, I rely on the Harborview grapevine.
Susan C. Brennan, a Long & Foster Realtor who's done a lot of business in the building, has it on good authority that the 3BR, 3.5BA, 3,922-square-foot waterfront condo did sell - for $1.25 million, plus a 10 percent "buyer's premium."
The property was listed at $4.6 million when Erickson first put his swanky home-away-from-home up for sale a year ago.
"People are astounded that it went so low," Brennan said.
Who bagged that bargain? Brennan wasn't saying either, but she said the name "is not going to ring bells."
Even unofficial news of the sale was enough to depress prices. Two days after the auction, a seller Brennan represents slashed the asking price on his Harborview penthouse to $995,000 from $1.35 million.
A trash man with class
Joe Kolodziejski, the street sweeper who rose to head Baltimore's Bureau of Solid Waste under then-Mayor Martin O'Malley, once rewarded a top-performing crew with the city box at a Ravens game.
A business leader with a company box nearby later remarked to another corporate type: "Who did the mayor have in his box last week? It looked like, well, a bunch of garbagemen!"
Michael Enright, a senior adviser to O'Malley in City Hall and now in Annapolis, recalled that story a few days after Kolodziejski's death Sunday. Enright also recalled how "Joe K.," as he was known, once showed off daughter Tonya Kaltenbach, a Stanford-trained doctor, around City Hall.
"As they were leaving the office, he looked at me and said, 'Not too bad for a trash collector, eh?'"
Connecting the dots
Ted Kennedy's compass was a bit off. "Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Bobby's firstborn, would be elected lieutenant governor of Rhode Island in 1995," the late senator's memoir has it. The blooper appears on page 414. ... One of Erickson Retirement Community's best-known tenants was sort of surprised, sort of not, by the company's bankruptcy filing this week. "That really does surprise me because I've known him for a long time and he always seemed to bounce out of things," said former Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who lives at Charlestown in Catonsville. "But all you had to do is follow what's happening with the corporations." ... Ravens ticket office intern Lacey Brauer appears on Wheel of Fortune Monday. I hear she wore purple and gave the team a plug.
Laura Vozzella's column appears on Fridays.
