Butchers Hill

Plastic bags have been in the air and in the news. Thursday morning, I braved the cold weather to snag "a floater," a blue plastic grocery bag carried into the backyard by springtime winds. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, some plastic bags have been banned. Citing the burden the bags put on the environment, the dangers they pose to marine life and the general nuisance factor, the city's Board of Supervisors recently voted to outlaw plastic bags at the checkouts of large supermarkets and chain pharmacies.

Once upon a time, the shortest distance between a maiden and her castle was a knight in shining armor.Not anymore.Statistics and the observations of people in the real estate and mortgage industries indicate that single women are buying property in record numbers. According to the Census Bureau, 56.9 percent of females living alone in the United States owned homes in 1998, up from 51.8 percent in 1988.That trend has manifested itself in Baltimore and the surrounding area, where many single women are choosing to exercise their growing buying power by purchasing homes.

Though traditional on the outside, with its stone steps, curving windows and witch-hat roof -- you won't find a single Queen Anne table or Laura Ashley duvet within.You will find a mafraj -- a traditional reception room in Yemen used primarily by men who sit on floor-level couches to relax.Large cherry-wood sliding doors open into rooms filled with Moroccan and Yemenite crockery, bridal chests, baskets and other ornaments.Intricate Victorian fireplaces are filled with Moroccan lamps and baskets.

In Baltimore CityKaufman reaches settlement in suit over City Council meetingA. Robert Kaufman, a Walbrook Junction community activist and former mayoral candidate, has reached an out-of-court settlement in his suit against the City Council, former City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III and two Baltimore police officers.Kaufman sued the city after being expelled from a Sept. 28, 1998, council meeting while dressed as Diogenes. Neither Kaufman nor the city would comment on the amount of the confidential settlement.

Dwight E. Genrich, 59, Social Security employeeDwight E. Genrich, a Social Security Administration employee, died Thursday of leukemia at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Butchers Hill resident was 59.For the past three years, he was a reader for the visually impaired at SSA's Metro-West offices in Baltimore. Earlier, he was a glass and silver buyer at Kauffman's department store in Pittsburgh, and a salesman for China Closet in Washington and New York City.He moved to Baltimore in 1981 to open a China Closet store in Harborplace and later was a furniture salesman at Lucas Bros.

Their first job is to bring news and insights to the Sun's readers, but Sun staff writers go on churning out books. The three latest to hit the shelves of book shops are, as is our practice, listed here in alphabetical order of the writers' names, and without critical judgment except to record that as colleagues, all of us at The Sun wish the books and their authors the success they deserve.Laura Lippman, a features reporter on the Sun staff, has turned out her third paperback mystery in as many years.

Look for a new restaurant to open soon where the Aegean, and before it the Mediterranean, used to be at 4901 Eastern Ave. The Olive Leaf, not to be confused with the Black Olive in Fells Point, will specialize in Mediterranean pastas.New in Butchers HillI've been hearing good things about Butchers Hill's new Simon's Pub (2031 E. Fairmount Ave.). It's a family affair, owned by Bruce Price and his son Simon. The menu is limited (about as long as the impressive draft beer menu). But the pub does offer more than just bar food, including shepherd's pie, grilled salmon, pastas and daily specials.

Five years ago Paul and Diane Snyder decided to take the Butchers Hill neighborhood tour, and as they were going through the large, three-story houses, they fell in love with the area between Fells Point and Canton.One house in the 2100 block of E. Pratt St., which wasn't part of the tour but where an open house was being held that day, captured their hearts."The Realtor was smart to be showing it during the tour, because we were in love with the area and wanted to find a place to live in it," said Paul.

When John Murphy and Jennine Auerbach started house-hunting six years ago, they began their search for a Victorian-styled home in Roland Park, then settled on a townhouse in Butchers Hill."

As politicians try to persuade people to move to Baltimore with catchy marketing slogans and the seductive promise of a $3,000 check, a hearty band of cyberspace crusaders is touting city living on the binary byways.Welcome to Baltimore on the World Wide Web.Turn on your computer and take a tour of the Tuscany-Canterbury district.Send electronic mail to neighborhood leaders in Belair-Edison.Or stroll through South Baltimore.Committed city dwellers, distraught by the loss of thousands of residents a year, are using the Internet as a state-of-the-art public information machine to attract potential homebuyers and new businesses.

The word is out and the anxiety is growing. In neighborhoods rich and poor, black and white, neat and messy Baltimoreans are keenly aware that a decades-old, twice-a-week rhythm of their lives is about to be disrupted. Soon the garbage trucks that pick up their trash will clatter down their streets just once a week. Oh, another truck will come a couple of days later, but it will only take recyclables, those mostly non-offending papers, boxes, bottles and cans - not the crab shells, baby diapers, cat litter, moldy bread and bruised spinach you don't want sitting around for the week in between pickups.

Baltimore police said they recently closed a "well-organized house of prostitution" in Upper Fells Point and a related residence in Butchers Hill, a community of well-kept rowhouses and close-knit residents. City prosecutors say it is apparently a case of human trafficking, involving Mexican women who arrived in Durham, N.C., and were transported to Baltimore to work as prostitutes. The rare city-level case, which moved this week to Baltimore Circuit Court, exposes a flourishing underground world of human sex trafficking that is often overlooked in a city with daily exposure to more conspicuous crimes such as robbery and gun violence, said Assistant State's Attorney Joyce Lombardi.

After their daughter was born, Mike and Stephannie Weikert, who live in Butchers Hill, developed a philosophy of "cool clothes for cool babies" and spent about $5,000 from their savings to create a hipster line of baby wear called "Small Roar." It's mostly onesies and T-shirts emblazoned with simple images: an empty speech balloon symbolizing free speech, a pacifier over the word "pacifist," a heart mom tattoo on a sleeve. It brings in about $500 each month through boutique and Web site sales, but without the resources to reach a mass audience, the three-year-old project run out of their home was always more hobby than business.

Residents of Butchers Hill and Edmondson Heights are understandably upset by the city's decision to locate temporary shelters for the homeless in their neighborhoods. Their fears might have been allayed if the city had done a better job addressing both the relatively low risk involved and the potential benefits for the communities. The city needlessly brought this on itself, when the shelters so far have resulted in few if any disruptions in the two neighborhoods. On any given day, there are about 3,000 homeless people in Baltimore.

Mayor Sheila Dixon has promised to end homelessness. But that goal - which has been applauded by residents and advocates alike - is creating headaches for neighborhoods that have played host to homeless shelters in recent months. When the city set up a 24-hour winter shelter in Baltimore's Greenmount West neighborhood last year, some residents worried that the presence of homeless men and women might dampen revitalization efforts. There were similar concerns when another shelter opened on East Fayette Street.

Awards *Inc . magazine presented Baltimore-based Barcoding Inc. with an Inner City 100 award as one of the top 100 inner-city companies in the nation. The local company, which specializes in automated data collection, was ranked 68th. *The Residences at Bulle Rock received a Nationals regional award from the National Sales and Marketing Council for Best Landscape Design for a Detached Community. Kudos *Robert W. Cannon, a partner in the Baltimore office of Saul Ewing, was named by the Maryland Bar Association's Real Property, Planning and Zoning Section as 2008 Distinguished Real Estate Practitioner of the Year.

The view from Butchers Hill -- atop a three-level veranda with restored wrought iron scrollwork -- is a sweeping panoramic shot of downtown Baltimore, the harbor and Patterson Park. The inside of this hilltop house is also striking in scope and architectural detail, evoking the historic prosperity of a neighborhood that predates the Civil War. Over the decades, Butchers Hill was known as a home for tradesmen, industrialists, merchants and professionals. "This was a grand house," said owner Todd Vaughan, who has restored several other houses on the street.

Plastic bags have been in the air and in the news. Thursday morning, I braved the cold weather to snag "a floater," a blue plastic grocery bag carried into the backyard by springtime winds. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, some plastic bags have been banned. Citing the burden the bags put on the environment, the dangers they pose to marine life and the general nuisance factor, the city's Board of Supervisors recently voted to outlaw plastic bags at the checkouts of large supermarkets and chain pharmacies.

Among the many Baltimore treasures preserved at the Maryland Historical Society, visitors will find a painting and a piece of paper. The piece of paper, along with the star-spangled banner it celebrates, is an American icon. It bears the immortal words of a Georgetown lawyer bursting with patriotic pride. The painting, Defense of Baltimore, Assembling of the Troops, gets much less attention. It is the work of an unschooled Irish immigrant, a Baltimore house painter. A large landscape, it has a hint of Grandma Moses, but its subject is dramatic, even sweeping.

Even the hot days afford a little heat break before the sun sets on the horizon. I stepped into Patterson Park the other day just as the morning dog walkers were starting to head home. Within a few minutes, I was humming "In the Good Old Summertime" to myself. The park and its venerable pagoda looked like a picture postcard from 1907: a spraying Victorian fountain, beds of canna plants intermixed with benches, cannon and walks. I wondered why more people weren't out to enjoy all this, but it turned to be a paper recycling day. I saw more residents gathering and bagging their grocery bags and newspapers than I did aimless walkers like myself.