Hit after hit

Today in jailhouse-broom-closet-sex news, as word of the detention center indictments spreads, the governor's spokesperson told team Duncan/Cox that he "has full confidence in Gary Maynard."* Oh, Malley. If taxing the rain wasn't the final nail in the coffin of any prospective presidential run, then there went the final thwack. Ian Duncan uncovers the legal protections that make it close to impossible to fire prison guards.* Professional concern troll Dan Rodricks has a question: did the Detention Center guards impregnated by Tavon White apply for paid maternity leave*? And finally we have a picture of the clink Casanova, who knew when he saw you patrolling the cell block that the two months he spent fermenting garbage-bag wine would not go to waste.

Warren Stevens, 50, was convicted of attempting to rape his 10-year-old niece, who escaped him.

Oh no! Cuddly ex-con Ed Norris was taken to shock trauma after a serious motorcycle accident.*

Two Mexican brothers, "Piza" and "Elmer," got six and eight years, respectively, for selling almost 10,000 fraudulent documents, including Social Security cards and green cards.

Bodacious federal drug bust: 500 pounds of pot, 220 of cocaine. (Wonder why is pot measured in English, but cocaine is metric?)

'A' is for Antwan

The man shot while trying to escape Central Booking was ID'd as Antwan Bond, age 22.

History corner: you probably knew about Roland Park, Northwood and Guilford's racially restrictive property covenants, forbidding the use or occupancy by blacks, Jews or "orientals" until 1917. But did you know that Morgan Park, near Morgan State University, was the only neighborhood in the country that barred ownership by any non-African-Americans? (No, WYPR, that is not "reverse segregation," it's just segregation.)

Really, Sun headline writer?

Really?! Really.

So this past weekend on the Facebooks, a Friend of MacArthur David Anthony Wiggins commemorated European Holocaust Remembrance Day by posting a picture of Gregg Bernstein with a photoshopped Hitler moustache, and, in case one of the group's 500+ followers might have missed the point, declaring him the titular "Adolf Hitler of Baltimore City."

Blog help us, we try to ignore the infinite amount of ignorant things stupid people things post on the Internet, but sometimes stupid is so stupid it's stupefying. Does this Wiggins person not realize that a). Bernstein is Jewish or that b). actual Adolph Hitler would not have bothered with the optics and niceties of the judicial system and just had people shot on the spot? What has our education system come to? Not only have people apparently forgotten to remember to not forget the Holocaust, more than a few also apparently never got clue one about what the heck it was in the first place. 

Here, have a story about the time a decorated general disagreed with Hitler and was forced to commit suicide. And, y'know, Stalin and Mao both killed more people than Hitler, why doesn't anyone ever get to be the Mao a/o Stalin of Baltimore City? Or the Franco, Mussolini or Staatssicherheit? Come on people, up ya game!

Ah, young love.

Neighbors say two weeks ago a SWAT team was called to the house of the four-year-old and his mother who were shot last night; there will be a Waverly community meeting at 6:30 tonight at JHU at Eastern, 1101 E. 33rd tonight. UPDATE: Police Tweeted: "UPDATE-detectives and patrol worked tirelessly over the night and arrested 26 year old Eric Ford Sr. For last nights double shooting."

Down in TX, James Sweeney, who some sources have claimed was co-founder of Dead Man Inc. with Perry "Rocky" Roark, pleaded guilty for his involvement in the gang's murder and drug-dealing conspiracies* in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. Twenty-one other members of the gang were indicted on 27 assorted  racketeering, drug dealing and gun charges by RR's office last year (and a 23rd, Kevin Bales, was indicted this year*). DMI is a whites-only offshoot of the Black Guerrilla Family, founded because apparently you have to be black to be a Black Guerrilla. El Fenton Tweeted yesterday, "Court records show sentencing in federal court for Perry Roark, who's pleaded guilty to leading DMI gang, has been cancelled. No explanation." Last I heard, Roark was being held in AAC on a murder charge. How modern: DMI has a Facebook page. (though James Sweeney's letter pledging to rescind his plea deal is not on it).

Two teenagers, a 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old-girl, led PA and MD state troopers on a wackadoodle chase all the way from York County to Charles and Cold Spring, where their wild ride ended with the teens wrecking their Dodge pickup against a pole then attempting to flee on foot. Oh you crazy kids!

Fifteen federal years for Dallas Williams, a felon w/a gun and ammo

After two murders in two months at TeeBee's Place in Parkville (right over the city line), neighbors, state and local officials are pressuring the liquor board to take the bar's booze license. There's a hearing Monday at 1 in Towson, if you happen to be in town please drop by to lend these poor tormented neighbors some moral support.

The Sun's "Dark Room" feature reveals that Old Town Mall wasn't always a notorious heck-hole: once, many moons ago, men in wide collars rode bicycles by its fountains.* Also see Baltimore History: Block by Block on Tumblr

Thanks, Susan Jenkins, I was just wondering about that. Still no charges for blowhard bigot Don Dwyer, whose reckless boat-boozing sent seven to the hospital.

Burglary, robbery, burglary, robbery, theft from auto, mace in the face in the N. Baltimore Patch blotter

Wow, Baltimore city schools used to teach kids local history?! With crime statistics, no less. Amazeballs. 

Slave for a Day

An item on the park service's agenda is raising eyebrows: "Slave for a Day" aims to educate young whelps about Hampton Mansion's slavery history*, wherein servants were fed in troughs, among other activities. As a visitor you'll be able to whip your little sister in the hog pen, wipe the bottoms of other people's children and attempt to “carry buckets of water with a yoke on your shoulders!” ... actually I made some of those up. Next Sunday's event has been renamed the "African American Experience Tour," and if you want to go experience how the 3/5ths of a person people lived for 90 minutes in June, note that the map on the nps' site is wrong, the correct map is below. The tour is 2 - 3:30.
View Larger Map

Quality reading

If you haven't read Antero Pietila's Not in My Neighborhood, you really must. Finally got my copy on Saturday and couldn't put it down all weekend. Full of fascinating facts, not just about how housing segregation and blockbusting, but crazy tidbits, like before 1904, Baltimore didn't have an underground sewage system, just massive cesspools. Also MLK Jr. apparently actively avoided Baltimore, for reasons unknown. And apparently Pennsylvania Ave used to be main street!

Baltimore to revert to 1950?

Jessamy: Bernstein will "set us back 60 years".

The 1950s had the lowest crime rates of any decade in the 20th century and the city had a population of 950,000 vs 630,000 today. Gwynn Oak and Ashburton were known not for crime but massive amusement parks. Of course all of this was built on the backs of a violently subjugated underclass and most people didn't have air conditioning, but still.. it's amazing to imagine what it must have looked like!

Stuff You Can't Make Up

The name "Baltimore" is an Anglicized form of the Irish Baile an Tí Mhóir, meaning "Town of the Big House."

USS Constellation a Fraudulent Frigate!

According to Wikipedia, Harborplace's USS Constellation is a fraud! It's not the first US Navy vessel to put to sea, as city plaques proclaimed to schoolchildren for 137 years, but an 1850's Navy war sloop altered to look like a 1797 frigate!
Oh, my.

A letter:

Just saw your post about the Connie. I used to work there as a shipwright. Although there are people who will swear with their dying breath that it's the Frigate Constellation built in 1797 (I'm doing this from memory, forgive me if I get the details wrong), general consensus, including the current management, is that it was a new boat built in 1854. There was some kind of Naval chicanery with the money from congress back in the 1850s—they weren't allowed to build a new boat, so they said they were restoring the old one, but they pretty much restored it out of existence. I believe there was a book written on the subject recently by a guy named Footner. During a major restoration a few decades ago, they tried to make it look like the original, and did a bunch of stuff that later had to be undone in the most recent restoration (1990s).

So Boston beats us on the oldest ship, with the Constitution, but the USS Constellation has some pretty cool history, including slave trade interdiction off the coast of Africa and running famine relief to Ireland. Seems harsh to call it a fraud, I prefer to think the people who believed it was the frigate were just misguided. One important thing—although it was altered to look like the frigate, it got altered back, so what you see there between the water taxi and the paddle boats is the 1854 sloop.

Still, when you look at memorabilia on Ebay and such, the older stuff will say "USF Constellation" with an F for Frigate, and the new stuff will say "USS Constellation" with an S for either Ship or Sloop, I can’t remember. There are any number of old armchair sailors who can talk about this for days on end. I tend to tune out after "Not the original? Okay."
More importantly, I made the mast in the middle at the very top after the last one was struck by lightning.
Cheers,

Chris L.
Former boatbuilder