Southwest Baltimore

The Baltimore institution of vendors hawking produce from colorful horse-drawn wagons is about to receive a major makeover, but some involved with the city's 19th-century tradition are unhappy with the proposed changes. In August, officials condemned a West Baltimore stable housing 51 horses and ponies but pledged to help the quaint practice endure. A team of city officials began working with the street peddlers, known as arabbers, to find a suitable place to board their animals. Now officials are overhauling the loosely regulated practice of arabbing, enforcing permit requirements for vendors and their animals, and replacing the ramshackle stable with a new facility to be built near the B&O Railroad Museum in Southwest Baltimore.

Sister Mary Germana Strassberger, a retired Mercy High School librarian, died of coronary artery disease Wednesday at her order's retirement home in Pinehurst in Baltimore County. She was 96. Born Helen Adelia Strassberger in Baltimore, she attended the old St. John's Academy and was a 1929 Seton High School graduate. She entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1931 and took the name Mary Germana. She received her bachelor's degree in education at the old Mount St. Agnes College and a master's degree in library science at Villanova University in 1971.

Florence Catherine Healey, a longtime volunteer at St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church, died of a heart attack Monday at her Frederick Road home in the Paradise section of Catonsville. She was 84.For 40 years, she counted church collections, distributed raffle tickets and drove nuns to their doctors' appointments."She ran the parish raffle for 40 years," said the Rev. Paschal A. Morlino, a Benedictine priest who is pastor of the Southwest Baltimore church where she was a member. "Florence raised hundreds of thousands of dollars -- first for the school and then for the maintenance of the church."

A man shot by a Baltimore police officer Thursday night in Southwest Baltimore was released from the hospital yesterday and charged with assault, a handgun offense and drug possession, police said.Joseph Michael Stokes, 24, of the 400 block of Colleen Road was shot once in the upper left back, police said. He was treated at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after the 11: 10 p.m. incident at Augusta and Massachusetts avenues.The officer was identified as Robert Probeyahn, 35, a five-year veteran assigned to the tactical unit.

In Baltimore CountyEssex woman enters Alford plea in theft of money from groupTOWSON -- A former human resources coordinator for the Maryland Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society entered an Alford plea this week for stealing money from the society between 1994 and 1998, according to court records this week.Melissa C. Deckelman, 35, of the 700 block of Woodward Drive in Essex, entered the plea in Baltimore County Circuit Court this week, refusing to plead guilty but acknowledging prosecutors had enough evidence to convict her.Deckelman's lawyer, M. Christina Guiterrez, said yesterday the amount of money her client stole will be determined at a sentencing hearing Jan. 12.Jail visiting rooms to close New Year's weekendTOWSON -- Visiting rooms at county jails will be closed Jan. 1 and Jan. 2 for the New Year's holiday, Dorothy Williams, administrator of the county Bureau of Corrections said this week.

Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and others will discuss "The Economics of Race and Slavery in Baltimore" before and after the Civil War at 5: 30 p.m. today at Shiloh Christian Community Church Fellowship Hall, 825 Yale Ave. in Southwest Baltimore.The event is sponsored by Interfaith Action for Racial Justice Inc. Tickets are $25 per person, $10 for students and low-income residents and must be ordered. Call 410-889-8333.

THIS PAST SATURDAY was one of those exquisite days that summoned me outdoors to the Gwynns Falls Trail. My companion for this trek was Joan Finocci, a Community College of Baltimore math teacher in search of some of Baltimore's most obscure neighborhood memorials, a subspecies of monument that requires out-of-print guidebooks, maps and advance research trips to the Pratt Library.We rambled through Dickeyville to watch the water flow over the Gwynns Falls dam and took a quick pass through the village of Franklintown, a place that looks like a chunk of Vermont dropped into Baltimore City.

Crime in Baltimore has dropped to its lowest levels of the decade, with fewer reported rapes, robberies and car thefts last year, according to crime statistics released yesterday by police.One category that did not change: homicide.Last year, police recorded 314 homicides -- a crime that has not dropped below 300 a year since 1989.Yet, the city had a rare reprieve from deadly violence -- from Feb. 20 until a 24-year-old man was shot and killed Tuesday night on a Southwest Baltimore street corner.

Partnerships needed to restore, maintain the city's playgroundsI applaud The Sun's strong call for removing the hazards on many of Baltimore's playgrounds ("Playground dangers loom over children," July 13) and commend its coverage of the opening of the newly renovated ABC playground in Southwest Baltimore ("Safer play is aim of park," July 11).Formerly a site of drug dealing, the ABC playground has been reclaimed by neighborhood residents and children. This playground renovation was the result of a partnership among the state's Hotspot Communities project, city agencies, the nonprofit Neighborhood Design Center and community residents.

Southwest Baltimore's Maurice Peret has a new baby and a new job. But at the beginning of the year, the government stopped sending him a large chunk of his income.Peret, 34, who is blind, is one of a growing number of visually impaired people who find themselves limited by a federal restriction on their earnings.Because he took a job that paid more than the annual limit for Americans receiving Social Security disability benefits, he was dropped from federal rolls.To raise blind Americans' earning threshold, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona introduced a bill in January that would put their earning limit at the same level set for senior citizens.

Former priest accused of child sex abuse A former Catholic priest from North Carolina has been accused of sexually abusing a child in Ocean City more than 30 years ago. Ocean City police say 64-year-old Michael Barnes of Haywood, N.C., has been arrested in his home state and is being held there. Police say they got a complaint about the abuse this spring and that the incidents took place between 1977 and 1982. A Baltimore County man in his 40s filed a lawsuit against Barnes in Delaware in June.

City man fatally shot during an argument 1 A Southwest Baltimore man was shot and killed during an argument with two men early Saturday, city police said. Jamal White, 26, of the first block of S. Bernice Ave. was shot several times in the upper body in the 1800 block of Dover St. in Southwest Baltimore just after midnight, said Agent Donny Moses, a city police spokesman. White died about an hour later at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center. Witnesses said the victim was involved in an argument with two men when one pulled out a weapon and shot him, Moses said.

Martha E. Rhodes, a former department store sales associate who earlier had been a beautician, died of heart failure Saturday at St. Elizabeth Nursing Home in Southwest Baltimore. She was 100. Martha E. Hall, the daughter of a chauffeur and a homemaker, was born and raised in Catonsville. She was a 1926 graduate of Douglass High School and the Apex Beauty Academy. In 1926, she married Alfred Jordan and moved to Washington. After his death in the early 1930s, she returned to Baltimore, where she worked through the 1940s as a beautician.

Connie Fowler's Southwest Baltimore neighborhood was teeming with police and other officials keeping an eye on everyone's comings and goings, and she didn't mind a bit. On a recent afternoon, Fowler, the president of the Carrollton Ridge Community Association, led a gaggle of city workers on a tour of her street, coming to a stop in an alley where she pointed out bricks bulging from the side of an abandoned building that seemed on the brink of collapse....

City police have arrested three men and charged them with gang-raping three women in separate incidents that took place in the parking lot of Seton Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore, records show. The attacks occurred two weeks apart and shared similar characteristics, and detectives determined the suspects' identities after the most recent victim was able to remember the tag number on the vehicle of one of the suspects. Police did not announce the incidents or the arrests. Charged in the crimes are Anthony Oisediamen Edoror Jr., 19, and Opeyemi Adigun, 20, both of Gwynn Oak; and Adeamoloa Adeniran, 20, of Halethorpe.

Two dozen people showed up for Wednesday evening's Citizens on Patrol walk through Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge neighborhood - six weeks after a stray bullet hit a 5-year-old girl there. It seemed like a good turnout, until one scanned the faces. One person was from Violetville, another from Union Square. A community leader from South Baltimore came, as did two representatives from the mayor's office, two Guardian Angels, six police officers, the commander of the Southwestern police district, the police commissioner, two from his media office, two television cameramen and two television reporters.

It was a classic Sister Katherine moment. She was standing on a forlorn stretch of West Pratt Street when three people shuffling past stopped to inquire about the nearly finished building behind her. Eagerly, almost thankfully, she engaged them. Soon, she said, it will be a place where drug addicts can talk about their demons or just duck out of the chaotic streets for a while. Soon it will be evident why the glass-fronted building is called an Island of Hope. "It'll be a beautiful spot for beautiful people," said Katherine Nueslein, a gray-haired veteran of the Sisters of Mercy religious order.

The neighborhood where a 5-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet is among the bleakest areas of Baltimore, based on community health statistics. Of the 55 city neighborhoods, Southwest Baltimore's life expectancy ranks third worst, at 64.2 years, a 2008 health profile found. Most of the other health indicators knock Southwest Baltimore into the lowest third. Caroline Fichtenberg, the Health Department's chief epidemiologist, said that although other neighborhoods share Southwest Baltimore's dire circumstances, that area's poverty level - about 19 percent of the population - heavily contributes to its poor health.

When Micha Dannenberg looks out the window of his Southwest Baltimore home, he's noticing some definite changes. There are fewer vacant houses, he said. Parking has become more of a chore. And new business owners in the neighborhood are starting to move in. "There is a real new community involvement that corresponds to the redevelopment of the Hollins Market," he said. The changes seemed apparent Sunday when thousands of people flocked into Dannenberg's neighborhood for the annual Sowebohemian Arts and Music Festival.

Applause to retired Judge Tom Ward, who is among the organizers of a historical tribute to recall Ireland's Great Hunger, a period between 1845 and 1853 when thousands left the Emerald Isle and sailed for America. "When the Irish government suggested the worldwide memorialization of the Great Hunger, our group, the Irish Railroad Workers Museum, decided to accept the leadership and have a memorial Mass at historic St. Peter the Apostle Church," he told me this week. The Mass is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. May 17 at the church at Poppleton and Hollins streets.