Happy Birthday to Country, Love, Baltimore

It’s 4th of July weekend. America, our America, land of Stars and Stripes tees, anemic hot dogs in buns, pudgy dogs in red collars, porky men in too-tight shorts, yellow-haired children clutching glowing light sabers, whistling Chinese fireworks in the sky, and cold beer.
Top 10 ways you can tell you’re in Baltimore on Independence Day [...]

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Baltimore Trend: Homeless and their Dogs

The dumpster divers on our alley have been appearing, of late, toting small stray pooches. I’m wondering, is it just Mount Vernon or is this a city-wide trend? Canine companions to the men sorting through the garbage are sort of middling height, with bushy fur and either furious barks or nervous pacing. The dogs are [...]

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Wet Hot American Summer Begins

Before big drops began falling on Camden’s manicured green fields, at or around the 7th inning of yesterday’s Blue Jays-Orioles game, we reveled in a hot sunny Memorial Day weekend. Random highlights of Activity:
Panting After the Dreaded Druid Hills — “at least 7 significant hills” –we collapsed gasping at the finish line by the reservoir’s [...]

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Monsoon in Mayo

The weather is forever-rain, reminding me of a horrible dystopian movie they showed in grade school, All Summer in a Day. Like, I’ll tell my grandkids, I remember the afternoon when the sun came out: We were walking dogs around a lake… Then it started to rain again.
Anyway, we put on galoshes and met on [...]

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InstaWeather Omits FoxWatch

When did our local NBC affiliate get so high tech?
At the Channel 11 InstaWeather Plus+ page you can watch live radar, futurecast for rain totals, and subscribe to wind current and infrared satellite feeds.
All on a cool widget-rearrangeable home page.
A box is missing, however, for FoxWatch. Is she sleeping on my bed, drooling and carpeting  [...]

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March for Mutts

The blind Fox on the block smiled broadly at last Sunday’s March of the Animals, a blockbuster fundraising festival that benefits the Maryland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA)
The 14th annual March, a 1.5 mile strut that a motley crew of canines and owners take around the reservoir of Druid Hill Park, [...]

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Recycling in Baltimore

A friend commented recently that from my blog it seems that I have “given up” on Baltimore.
Banish the thought — especially today, when the sun showed up for spring. In shirtsleeves and sunglasses, we ate lunch by the harbor, looking at the water shimmer blue. A giant papaya shake stand on Broadway was nearly [...]

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A Sporting Neighborhood

Baltimore Sun nightlife critic (is this a real job?) Sam Sessa writes that what we need is a decent sports bar in Mount Vernon. The post is illustrated with a photo of Grand Central, a sports bar for boys that play for that team.
A flurry of commentary follows Sessa’s post, including someone inquiring if pool [...]

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Raid in Mount Vernon Place!

This week, animal control officers “swooped in” to cite dog owners with pooches frolicking off-leash in Mount Vernon Place.
According to the Baltimore Sun’s Unleashed blog, officers were responding to frequent complaints about the pets romping through the park. In our experience, the pugs especially take to running up and down the elegant fountain across from [...]

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Sweet on Seton

I have a crush on Seton Hill.
One minute I was waiting for a slow light to change by a WIC center at the grim intersection of Eutaw and Madison. The next, I was in a village-like pocket of federal-style rowhouses–like falling down a rabbit hole quietly lodged below Druid Hill Avenue. Maybe I was dizzy [...]

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