City Life

Mayor Sheila Dixon made sure she covered all the bases: a safe city, clean streets, improved schools, an end to homelessness, green spaces, workforce housing, balanced growth and high-wage jobs. Each and every item is on her mayoral agenda. But she was candid yesterday about the challenge facing her, and equally as candid about the imperative for Baltimoreans to unite in common purpose to change those things that undermine this city. It needed to be said, because if Ms. Dixon is going to tackle the ills of city life, she needs the community with her. Ms. Dixon, a native of Baltimore, has known its pain and problems personally; her brother died of drug-related AIDS.

I grew up in Baltimore, and I live in Baltimore, yet I encounter my city most vividly on HBO. Sunday nights at 10 o'clock I sit in my living room, eat popcorn, and watch David Simon's critically exalted drama, The Wire. Like other fans, I can't wait for the fifth season to begin - hopefully this fall. Watching The Wire in Baltimore is surely different from watching it in Des Moines, Iowa, but not because its world feels like home. The violent, drug-saturated streets of West Baltimore that the series dissects with unsparing brilliance are about three miles from my house, but they might as well be 3,000.

What's a city stalwart to do?Houses in certain parts of Baltimore sell within hours. Elsewhere, entire blocks are slated for demolition. There are those who miss a sense of community and history who are returning to the city. But not enough to replace thousands of residents who, according to gloomy numbers recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau, are vacating the city.If you're Carolyn O'Keefe, Western High School Class of '74 and urban champion, you start tooting the city's horn any way you can.In 1998, O'Keefe, a 42-year-old free-lance marketing consultant who has helped develop the city's Police Athletic League and is chairwoman for the 1999 Maryland Historical Society Antiques Show, had a brainstorm: Why not produce "I t city life" bumper stickers and distribute them to everyone who, like her, realizes that the city's well-being is crucial to the well-being of the entire metropolitan area.

Baltimore is selling part of the dormant City Life Museum properties to a Baltimore County couple who plan to open a 15-room bed-and-breakfast, a restaurant, an art gallery and a 180-car garage on the downtown site.The city will keep ownership of the Carroll Mansion and Shot Tower and return them to their former status as revered historical museums, averting a bitter battle over the future of the sites with historians and preservationists, including state Comptroller William Donald Schaefer.

The vacant Baltimore City Life Museums property in East Baltimore could have been converted to house the proposed Maryland Museum of African-American History and Culture, but organizers say they didn't want to inherit another group's castoffs.As part of their planning for an African-American museum in downtown Baltimore, directors say, they held "focus groups" and learned that prospective patrons and supporters would rather see the museum board build anew than take over a museum that has shut down once -- even if the cost is higher.

He may be Maryland's new comptroller in Annapolis, but William Donald Schaefer has wasted little time letting everyone know his heart is still in Baltimore.On Monday, moments after he was sworn in before a cheering crowd in the State House, Schaefer called for the state to take over the Baltimore Convention Center.Yesterday, even as he began scrutinizing state contracts, Schaefer had his staff prepare a letter urging Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke not to sell some of Baltimore's most treasured historical properties that made up the failed City Life Museums.

Exhibit from City Life is only first in series for Historical 0) SocietyWe would like to thank John Dorsey for his review ("New life for City Life exhibit," May 7), which gives readers some idea of the scope of this installation and how it reflects local history. This is a difficult task, and we appreciate his willingness to undertake it.Normally, the planning and researching of a history exhibit begins years before it is seen by the public. Because of the public's interest in the Baltimore City Life Museums, we were anxious to present a portion of the collection as soon as possible after we agreed to acquire it. This is our first exhibit to celebrate this rich and extensive chronicle of Baltimore life, and we are pleased that we were able to create this installation in only four months.

AS the excitement over the deal to save the Baltimore City Life Museums' collection fades away, the mayor and the Maryland Historical Society should rethink one important point.While it's great that at least a third of the museum's 20,000 objects that interpreted Baltimore's history and culture will be saved and exhibited by the historical society, they did not represent the best of City Life's legacy and mission.The 'Irsay Room'Many of the objects the media and historical society executive director Dennis Fiori is pleased to have saved -- such as tire planters and a bathroom door from a now-defunct local restaurant labeled the ''Bob Irsay Room'' -- offer little more than kitsch appeal.

Mission: To collect, preserve and interpret objects and artifacts that illuminate the state's history. The museum and library are home to more than 7.5 million objects, manuscripts and rare books ranging from before settlement to the present and representing virtually every aspect of Maryland history and life. Among its collection are paintings, furniture, silver, textiles, ceramics and glass.Latest accomplishments: The recent merger with the Baltimore City Life Museums, ending eight months of speculation on the future of the local history institution.

COLLEGE PARK -- If those attending the Managing Growth in Maryland conference yesterday at the University of Maryland came to hear glowing words about the rejuvenation of city life in Baltimore, what they got was an earful of cold reality.Fred Siegel, the keynote speaker and a professor of history and economics at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science in New York City, told the gathering of approximately 300 builders, developers and government officials that Baltimore among the many troubled cities that are seeing their citizens "rush to the exits" because local government has failed to provide adequate schools and safety services.

Kenneth N. Harris Sr. could have very easily taken a different path. He could have been like so many other children of 16-year-old single mothers in Baltimore's forgotten neighborhoods, and taken the route that eschews education and accomplishment for the lure of streets ruled by violence played out amid a cancerous drug epidemic. He could have spurned responsibility, assumed the mantle of a victim of limited opportunities, and fallen in with the crowd that wallows in nihilism. But he did not. And so he did not allow us the luxury of ignoring his murder, as we do so many other acts of violence that are more commonplace than we wish to acknowledge.

New York in July, hot and breezy, the smell of pizza and coffee in the air, and on the subway one is surrounded by women in light summer dresses, the bare shoulders of elegant, young, urban women whose shoulders tell you they never toted barges or lifted bales, never laid eyes on a barge or a bale except for someone barging into their office and giving them a baleful look. They are swanning along through their 20s, and I love to look at them while observing the No Staring rule, five seconds max - but five seconds of a beautiful New York woman burns an image on your retina that will see you through the miseries of the city.

One of Baltimore's most distinctive buildings is hunting for a tenant. The four-story Fava Building in Jonestown, featuring a cast-iron facade salvaged from an 1869 warehouse, has been largely vacant since Gardel's Restaurant and Supper Club went out of business last fall. It formerly housed the Baltimore City Life Museums. A private entity, the 1840s Corp., owns the building at 33 Front St. and last year opened the 1840s Carrollton Inn, a 13-room, $2 million bed-and-breakfast inside three other former City Life buildings on the block.

From a secluded garden in downtown Baltimore, shaded by four ailanthus trees, there's hardly any sense of the high-rise office buildings several blocks away or the traffic whizzing by on the Jones Falls Expressway. The garden once bordered the estate owned in the early 19th century by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Much later, it became part of the Baltimore City Life Museums campus, a public attraction that told the story of Baltimore's history before the museums closed abruptly in 1997.

The only sure things in Baltimore are crime and taxes. But since all of our local candidates are focusing on crime, I wanted to take a moment to cry out into the urban wilderness about taxes. Like migrating birds, it seems as if every three years Baltimoreans can be seen climbing up to their rooftops to protest inflated assessments, only to go back into their nests to mournfully mull their situation. But unlike the recent past, where the patience to bear heavy tax burdens was sustained by the promise of ever-increasing home values, I fear the fortitude of taxpaying families in Baltimore is waning.

I grew up in Baltimore, and I live in Baltimore, yet I encounter my city most vividly on HBO. Sunday nights at 10 o'clock I sit in my living room, eat popcorn, and watch David Simon's critically exalted drama, The Wire. Like other fans, I can't wait for the fifth season to begin - hopefully this fall. Watching The Wire in Baltimore is surely different from watching it in Des Moines, Iowa, but not because its world feels like home. The violent, drug-saturated streets of West Baltimore that the series dissects with unsparing brilliance are about three miles from my house, but they might as well be 3,000.

Mayor Sheila Dixon made sure she covered all the bases: a safe city, clean streets, improved schools, an end to homelessness, green spaces, workforce housing, balanced growth and high-wage jobs. Each and every item is on her mayoral agenda. But she was candid yesterday about the challenge facing her, and equally as candid about the imperative for Baltimoreans to unite in common purpose to change those things that undermine this city. It needed to be said, because if Ms. Dixon is going to tackle the ills of city life, she needs the community with her. Ms. Dixon, a native of Baltimore, has known its pain and problems personally; her brother died of drug-related AIDS.

Baltimoreans face the lowest life expectancy of almost any jurisdiction in America, according to a new study by the Harvard School of Public Health. City residents can expect to live 68.6 years on average, the study found. That is worse than in all but a handful of counties in South Dakota that include impoverished Indian reservations, and there has been little improvement since a study published in 1997. Longevity in Baltimore is much lower than in affluent Montgomery County, where it was 81.3 years, eighth-highest in the nation and trailing seven Colorado counties only fractionally.

After years of enduring the hard knocks of city life - from encroaching development to approaching dogs - a lone city tree in Northeast Baltimore struck back against humanity one windy night in January and wrecked a car. The otherwise benign maple made its move about 9 p.m., as Henry Thomas Jr. relaxed in front of the TV with his wife. Thomas heard a crash outside, peered through the window and saw a huge branch in the driveway next to his month-old Chrysler C300. "We heard this boom and I was like, `Whoa,'" said Thomas, who is 57 and lives in Woodbourne Heights.

`The Intimate Ellicott City' For their new exhibit at Andrei Kushnir/Michele Taylor American Painting, members of the Washington Society of Landscape Painters went indoors to chronicle a slice of historical Ellicott City life. The more than 15 pieces they created chronicle busy store displays and dark, atmospheric bar scenes. "I love being here, and part of this is kind of a little labor of love to show the community itself through the eyes of these artists," said Kushnir, who painted a scene of Yates Market.