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Antero Pietila
Antero Pietila: Fells Point’s forgetful NIMBYs
- On Saturday I joined hundreds of others to hear an update on a 14-mile rapid-transit line to run from Interstate 70, near Howard County, to Fells Point and Canton. The exact light-rail or bus route — those are the options — will not be known for several months. Construction is projected to start in 2012.
Antero Pietila: Gutenberg in the age of YouTube
- It took me a while to recognize the real significance of YouTube, which has emerged as a truly important disseminator of information during this presidential campaign season. Then it hit me: We are witnessing an unprecedented decline of the written word now that cell phones have transformed America’s behavior patterns, giving almost everyone the capability of video recording and posting 24/7.
Antero Pietila: Before James Rouse became a saint
- Since his death in 1996, developer James W. Rouse has been elevated to sainthood. Adoring biographies celebrate the visionary builder of America’s temples of consumerism, shopping malls, as the unprejudiced creator of breakthrough new towns like Columbia and a champion of affordable housing.
Antero Pietila: Race dialogue begins in Baltimore
- Although Barack Obama acted out of political necessity, the Easter week timing of his extraordinary race speech inspired congregations of various faiths to study and reflect on his themes. Friday’s 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination ensures that race, in all of its complexities, will stay on the national front burner.
Antero Pietila: Easterwood Park’s rites of spring
- About this time each spring, softball became serious business in Easterwood Park. Acie, Coddie, Dodgie, Bince, Moocher, Beezer, Phil the Fumbler, Boffer, Cocky, Boogie, Schnickles, Yoodle and dozens of other kids practically lived in the seven-acre park at Bentalou and Baker streets, practicing and competing.
Antero Pietila: Millennial change rocks America
- This year’s fiercely contested presidential primaries are harbingers of a political realignment with the potential to be as fundamental as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition allying city machines, labor unions, minorities, liberal farm groups, intellectuals and the South.
Antero Pietila: What on earth is going on at WYPR?
- Does WYPR have a death wish? Nothing else explains the public radio station’s incompetent firing of Marc Steiner, its most identifiable local voice.
Antero Pietila: It’s time to get rid of The Block
- It speaks volumes about corruption in this city of “The Wire,” “The Corner” and “Homicide” that downtown Baltimore’s center of prostitution and drug peddling is located just steps away from police headquarters and City Hall. Yet law enforcers ignore it. That surely explains a lot.
Antero Pietila: Ma, what did they play before lottery?
- If you wanted to play to win before the Maryland State Lottery began in 1972, you needed a bookie. Illegal “numbers” could be bought easily enough — from bars, beauty shops, corner groceries, newsstands, dry cleaners. Even churches recognized the power of illegal lotteries by making a big deal about some hymn number. If such a “holy number” won, the pastor’s reputation as God’s envoy grew.
Antero Pietila: America’s Nelson Mandela moment
- Is Barack Obama America’s Nelson Mandela?
Antero Pietila: When FDR rescued homeowners
- As this roller-coaster year of subprime mortgages and foreclosures ends, it is instructive to look at Baltimore in 1933. The Great Depression was at its worst. One in five persons in the local work force was without a job. The unemployed thronged soup kitchens, relief services, police stations and even City Hall in search of money, food or advice.
Antero Pietila: Year-round gifts to Baltimoreans
- You should have been at Saturday’s sold-out matinee of “The Nutcracker” at the Baltimore School for the Arts. The highly competitive public high school showed again why it is so important. It is the only place in the city where talented elementary students as young as second grade can take free ballet lessons.
Antero Pietila: Who will sculpt Schaefer’s duck?
- Baltimore has had dozens of mayors since 1797. Grateful citizens have erected statues to only three of them, by my count: Samuel Smith, a merchant and general, whose likeness guards Federal Hill against any further British invaders; Ferdinand C. Latrobe, who served as mayor on seven different occasions, and Thomas J. D’Alesandro, a congressman and mayor, and the father of another mayor.