Black And White

When I spoke with Future Islands recently for a b cover story , we talked about the band and its label, Thrill Jockey, putting more money behind "On the Water" in comparison to "In Evening Air. " Another new video - it's the third from the album - debuted today, proving the guys weren't kidding. This time it's the Mike Anderson-directed clip for "Give Us the Wind. " The video, which premiered on spin.com , was shot in stark black-and-white and actually includes the band performing, something that's not always a given in Future Islands videos.

Moving through the Baltimore Museum of Art 's exhibit of work by the 2011 Baker Artist Awards provides an experience akin to that in the film "Pleasantville. " You start in living color and, before you know it, you're swallowed up in a black-and-white world. That cool, if slightly unsettling, transformation is achieved by an installation called "Interior/Exterior" by Gary Kachadourian, who has filled nearly every square inch of a gallery in the museum. "I've only done corners of rooms before," the artist said.

It almost seems as if Jeff Holland can stand in the gallery of his museum for hours, just gazing at the pictures on its rugged walls. It isn't that he has nothing better to do. As executive director of the Annapolis Maritime Museum in Eastport, he's responsible for finding funds, planning events, installing materials and in general keeping the museum about life in and around the Chesapeake moving "full steam ahead," as he puts it in the museum's latest...

The wise heads in Baltimore politics were sure of one thing about Gregg Bernstein's challenge to State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy: The contest ultimately wouldn't be decided by ideas or crime-fighting strategies or the candidates' qualifications, but by race. Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway told a group of African-American ministers to warn their parishioners that Mr. Bernstein's candidacy amounted to the white community "trying to steal a seat from us. " Anthony McCarthy, a radio host and one-time spokesman for former Mayor Sheila Dixon, concluded that the race had put Baltimore's African-American community into "protect Pat Jessamy mode" and that "an appeal to racial pride" was working.

It came in the midst of a special series, "Black Or White: Kids on Race" on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." The series was based on a new version of the famous "doll tests" pioneered by husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1930s and '40s, and re-created in 2005 by Kiri Davis, a teenage filmmaker. In the tests administered by the Clarks and Ms. Davis, black children were presented two dolls, identical in appearance except that one was dark and the other, light.

Betty Rosen says fashion isn't a top priority, yet the 76-year-old Pikesville resident is known around town for her style. She and her husband, Buddy Rosen, love to travel, and that's when she does most of her shopping - that is, when this professional photographer isn't taking pictures of faraway places and people. Whether she's headed to Asia, the grocery store or Gertrude's at the Baltimore Museum of Art for Moveable Feast's annual "Dining Out for Life" event, Rosen always looks picture-perfect.

Young African-Americans are 20 times as likely as whites to develop heart failure, according to a new study published today. The deadly illness strikes one in every 100 blacks under the age of 50. "We usually thought of heart failure as a disease of older people, but that's based on studies by mostly white participants," said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and the study's lead author....

Shari Elliker and Treavor Erney had no illusions about the half-million-dollar house they purchased last August in northern Baltimore's Homeland. The three-story Georgian-style home, solidly built of fieldstone in 1928 and placed among similar mansions in the Olmsted-designed neighborhood, was a majestic site to behold - from the street. But beyond the front door, with its impressive Palladian transom, a daunting job awaited. "This house was a major interior renovation," said Elliker, a popular WBAL talk-radio host.

I couldn't take my eyes off the screen Jan. 20 as Barack Obama, his black hand resting on the Lincoln Bible, took the oath of office as our 44th president. Like millions of other Americans, I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. My thoughts turned to many things that afternoon - to the Layton Theater of my youth, where African-Americans were relegated to the balcony; to Carolyn Thomas, who joined my all-white high school class in 1961 as its only black member; to the "Whites Only" sign on the bathroom door in the city park not far from home.

I've come aboard as the new editor of UniSun at a time of great promise and strong pride for people of color. Indeed, it's been an inspiring year for black Americans, many of whom never thought they would live to see a black man in the White House's Oval Office. With Barack Obama's amazing and historic triumph on Nov. 4, we now have a president-elect and first family who look a lot like you and me. I know it took a lot of sacrifice and struggle to get to this moment of change. But as a daughter of the South, too young to have participated in the civil rights movement, I see it as a beginning, not an ending.