Baltimoreans

WELL, Baltimoreans do give. The sentence suggesting otherwise was just a headline to draw interest.But the impression has long been prevalent that Marylanders are not big charitable givers compared with per-capita philanthropy rates elsewhere. It is fortified by the moderate goals of United Way and the relatively late start and growth of the Baltimore Community Foundation.An analysis by Sun reporter Kate Shatzkin on Sunday made the problem clear. According to an Internal Revenue Service breakdown of itemized-deduction tax returns, Marylanders with family incomes below $100,000 in 1997 gave ever-so-slightly more to charity than the national average for the bracket.

Few Baltimoreans -- with such significant exceptions as H.L. Mencken, Cal Ripken and John Waters -- achieve fame, celebrity and success without leaving town.Consider this short list of those who found fame by departing: Oprah, Barry Levinson, Eubie Blake, Frederick Douglass, Babe Ruth, Billie Holliday, Wallis Warfield Simpson, Cab Calloway, Jada Pinkett, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass and Spiro Agnew.It's time to rack up another name: David Zinman, former music director of the Baltimore Symphony, who left at the end of the 1997-98 season.

A history of ground rentsThe roots of the ground rent system go back to medieval England, when tenant farmers paid rent to landlords in either money or farm goods.When Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, received a land grant encompassing the present state of Maryland from King Charles I, it was on the condition that Calvert pay the crown a yearly ground rent of two Indian arrowheads and one-fifth of all gold and silver found in the state.Calvert brought the ground rent system with him when he colonized Maryland in 1634.

A WOMAN sent me a photograph of the large rowhouses of North Broadway in the 1940s. It was exquisite -- shiny black cars parked along the curb, large and healthy trees, American flags flying from poles anchored just below second-floor windows, clean marble steps, women and children on the sidewalk. Today the same area has abandoned houses, trash-strewn streets and, in some blocks, no signs of life at all.Is it unrealistic to wish North Broadway could be what it was, that a photograph taken 10 years from now might show the same block restored to its once-thriving condition?

David Miller plans to address the high rate of violence among youths in the Edmondson Avenue corridor of West Baltimore.LaTanya Bailey Jones is teaching children to be critical consumers of the electronic media and how to produce media messages.CeremonyMiller, Bailey and eight other Baltimoreans were recognized last night at the Tremont Plaza Hotel for winning 18-month community fellowship grants worth $48,750 each. The awards will enable them to help make a difference in their neighborhoods.

EIGHT YEARS after Baltimore taxpayers spent $2 million to reconstruct Federal Hill, the city is about to steady the crumbling Inner Harbor overlook once more."

Waving photographs of rodent-infested garbage and chanting "Trash Brings Rats, Can Your Trash," 110 rat-weary Baltimoreans staged a loud and light-hearted demonstration in front of City Hall last night.The rally's organizers -- members of a new coalition group, Baltimoreans Against Rats, which includes at least 20 neighborhood associations -- said the event was meant to remind officials and residents of the virtues of rat control.During the hourlong event, participants playfully taunted passing city officials and read from a list of demands, including closer supervision of city sanitation workers, stronger enforcement of city codes on trash cans, and an increase in the number of employees dedicated to rat baiting.

Stokes was right to applaud blacks for cross-racial votingDuring his concession speech on Election Day (Sept. 14), Carl Stokes said he was proud of Baltimore's African-American community, because so many of its members had crossed racial lines and voted for Martin O'Malley.I've thought a great deal about Mr. Stokes' comments. They were generous, because Mr. Stokes might have won, if about 35 percent of African-Americans hadn't voted for a white candidate.They were also perceptive. It makes sense for black Baltimoreans to vote for a qualified black candidate instead of a qualified white candidate.

Totem Pole Playhouse, the summer theater nestled in Pennsylvania's Caledonia State Park, is in the midst of the second production of its six-play season. Alfred Uhry's 1997 Tony Award-winning play, "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," continues through July 4 and features several current Baltimoreans -- actors Wil Love and Rosemary Knower and director Carl Schurr (who is also the theater's artistic director) -- as well as former Baltimorean Tess Hartman. The production will move to Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre in January.

A MODEST proposal for the next mayor of Baltimore: Forget the Glendening example of a lavish party to celebrate your inauguration. Instead, form a citizens' committee that seeks donations, large and small, for a gun-buyback program to be outlined in the inaugural speech.What a start to your administration this would be, signaling your commitment to the cause of a safer Baltimore and a departure from the more noxious aspects of big-money politics!What better way for a new mayor to remind violence-weary Baltimoreans that guns that are legally acquired can -- and often do -- end up in the wrong hands, that the weapons they keep on a closet shelf or buried in a drawer are potentially a danger to themselves and their loved ones.

Phillies@Nationals 7 p.m. [MASN] Baltimoreans are stuck in the middle of this matchup between the champs and the chumps. So, which are worse, the Phillies' obnoxious fans or the Nationals' apathetic ones?

Citizen Schaefer. Even with the Orwellian, William Randolph Hearst overtones, the title of Maryland Public Television's new documentary seems just right. Yes, William Donald Schaefer was a councilman, a four-term mayor, a two-term governor and comptroller. But these were just titles. He never stopped seeing himself as Don Schaefer, homeowner, a Baltimorean like his father who planted flowers in the backyard, who swept the alleys and wanted garbage collected on time. He thought the city could be greater than its citizens dared to hope, but he knew a greater city would be built from the alleys up. When he saw efforts that made a Baltimore neighborhood brighter, he inducted the homeowner into what he called The Order of the Rose.

Baltimore is not New York. It is not Boston or Charlotte or San Diego either. This is not a shortcoming, it is a point of civic pride. While football teams from those cities were expected to go deep in the National Football League playoffs, it is Baltimore's Ravens, not the Giants, Patriots, Panthers or Chargers, playing this Sunday for a trip to the Super Bowl. What's our name? How perfect that the Ravens have been inspired by a defiant Muhammad Ali's quest for respect four decades ago from an opponent who would refer to him only as Cassius Clay.

About 400 people turned out last night to demand that state lawmakers make education off-limits in budget cuts needed to close the shortfall. The rally at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis drew principals, teachers, parents, children and city schools chief Andr?s Alonso. The rally was organized by the advocacy group Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) and its sister organizations: Action In Montgomery (AIM) and People Acting Together in Howard (PATH). The three groups announced the formation of a new organizing network, the Maryland Industrial Areas Foundation.

The big news this week in Orioles Nation was the unveiling of the name Baltimore splashed across the chest of the team's road jersey. This was considered quite a gesture. The hometown identity has been missing for 35 years in what originated as an effort to broaden the franchise's fan base to the south after the Washington Senators left town to become the Texas Rangers. So how much better about the team does this make us feel? One school of thought is that somebody should sue Orioles owner Peter "The Asbestos King" Angelos.

The recent merger of two Baltimore financial institutions, Brown Advisory and Brown Investment Management, brought up memories of a period 40 years ago when I enjoyed a brief career with the old Alex. Brown & Sons. A letter appeared on a Loyola High School bulletin board in January 1968 about a part-time job available at this conservative investment banking house. I was a 17-year-old senior and ready for a little change. I appeared at the side door of Calvert and Baltimore streets one afternoon to apply for the $1.45-an-hour clerk's job. A day or two later, I was working a couple of hours a day after school for Stanley Kraska and his staff.

The Rev. Vernon N. Dobson, who played a pivotal role in the struggle for civil rights in Baltimore during the 1950s and 1960s, first came to historic Union Baptist Church as assistant pastor in 1958, and then was pastor for 39 years, until retiring last year. "I'm doing a little writing now, and I still preach at different churches several times a month," said Dobson, 84, the other day. He said he keeps busy with a number of organizations, including BUILD - Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development - a church-based social action group, of which he was a founder.

On the surface, a show now playing at the Theatre Project on Preston Street ostensibly shows Baltimore as Baltimoreans see it, and describe it. But the surface is deceiving, because if this were actually a hometown look at the hometown, it would be jokey or earnest or a mixture of both, and it's not - quite. Baltimore: The Opera, which runs through this weekend, really offers a glimpse of Baltimore as outsiders see Baltimoreans seeing it. It's a little bit of a revelation. A theater company called the Squonk Opera came here from Pittsburgh, as it has gone to other cities around the Northeast, and videotaped a few dozen interviews with a variety of people.

Well, we're not getting Bloomberg. Fuhgedaboutit. He's mayor of New York and, while he's donated a ton of money to the Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, he's not about to pull up stakes, establish residency in Baltimore and run for mayor here. He's far more likely to run for the White House. So we're not getting Bloomberg. (And the Orioles probably won't be getting A-Rod if he opts out of his Yankees contract, either.) Day after tomorrow, there's an election in the City of Baltimore, where Democrats rule and the winner of the party's ho-hum 2007 primary will be the next mayor.

Generally events that involve little kids seem harder to me because I always try to avoid the "cute kid" photo. It seems like gloss to me, all surface and no substance. At first I thought this assignment, titled "Poetry Slam," would be no different. The assignment description called for photos of children practicing their poetry at St. John the Apostle Church in West Baltimore. I was a little skeptical about the photographs that I might make at this event, considering that poetry is a written medium.