Tradition makes welcome return

November 29, 2008

It wasn't just that the apple pie and the pumpkin cookies smelled so good - the curtains on the windows were right, too. I liked what I saw when the restaurant at the Woman's Industrial Exchange reopened this week.

Recent columns

• A Baltimore November comes with a host of smells all its own

  November 8, 2008

  A smoky wood fire sends a clear message that it's time to get serious about the season.

• Charles North is already more than just a vision

  November 1, 2008

  Doreen Bolger, my Charles Village neighbor, invited me to join her at the Single Carrot Theatre, one of the cultural arrivals along North Avenue. The place was new to me, and it was time to learn what's going on in the slow but steady rebirth of Penn Station's environs.

• Carless in Baltimore is an exercise in hopelessness

  October 25, 2008

  It's been 41 years since I got a Maryland driver's license, and it's also been 41 years since I last drove a car. For the record, I passed the driving test in one try at Glen Burnie and then hung up the keys.

• Sour beef dinners can be tough to find, but they're worth the hunt

  October 18, 2008

  It was a ritual on fall evenings when the sunlight disappeared a little earlier than the day before. Sour beef night at one of the four churches scattered around the harbor was an occasion when you skipped lunch and left work early.

• Sausage shop reopens in time for Oktoberfest

  October 11, 2008

  The phone at Binkert's German sausage factory rang nonstop yesterday. It was the first day for the wholesale delivery of sausages, hot dogs and cold cuts since early August, when an electrical fire and subsequent water damage put this Golden Ring business out of commission. Production stopped, threatening to take the taste out of local Oktoberfest celebrations.

• Hope rises as the wrecking balls fall

  October 4, 2008

  Is the future of a new East Baltimore becoming evident on Washington Street just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital?

• Hope rises as the wrecking balls fall

  October 4, 2008

  Is the future of a new East Baltimore becoming evident on Washington Street just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital?

• Oh, the tasks of homeownership

  September 27, 2008

  This country's home mortgage crisis reminds me of the advice my neighbor, Grace Darin, once gave me. Darin, who gave Charles Village its name and fought for the neighborhood and homeownership, warned me against buying the house I now own.

• More memories of Edmondson Village

  September 20, 2008

  Thanks to Bob Heaton and other Ten Hills-Hunting Ridge-Academy Heights readers for adding to the popular traditions surrounding the Edmondson Village Shopping Center.

• Memories of 'the Village,' as it used to be

  September 13, 2008

  What is it that has etched the Edmondson Village Shopping Center in our collective memories? Could it have just been the presence of three soda fountains - at the old Arundel, the Tommy Tucker or the Whelan's?

• Following the clothesline back to a greener future

  September 6, 2008

  When will the green movement embrace the outdoor clothesline that stretched along so many of Baltimore's backyards and alleys? Last week, I arrived home with bags of laundry from 14 days at the beach. After about an hour in my gas dryer, when a beach towel refused to dry, I declared the appliance all but dead.

• Old-time Baltimore was green long before living green was fashionable

  August 16, 2008

  Every time I hear about how we need to live more green, I chuckle. Nothing new. I was raised that way - and so were many fellow thrifty Baltimoreans in the 1950s.

• Site for new law school was once a center for the sale of automobiles

  August 9, 2008

  The parking lot at the northeast corner of Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue is due to become the University of Baltimore's new law school building. Attorney and Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos has made a major gift to the school, and the Abell Foundation is backing an architectural competition for the very visible crossroads.

• Hippo's opening another night to remember

  February 14, 2004

  AS MY CAB turned south on Eutaw Street on Tuesday night, I asked the driver, "Where are the moving lights?"

• Hoping B&O Museum is able to maintain pieces of history

  February 22, 2003

  I’VE OFTEN thought that Baltimore possesses three truly great object collections: the Cone sisters' canvases, the treasure of Henry and William Walters and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Yes, the rail museum at Pratt and Poppleton, which suffered such a direct hit from this week's snowstorm, is this country's knockout stable of iron-horse history.

• Saturday nights in 'Perry Mason's' courtroom

  February 17, 2001

  THE TELEVISION shows of 45 years ago were fairly tame fare compared to what the networks and cable deliver today. But certainly when this medium was relatively new - and the arrival of a fresh set in the neighborhood was still something of a novelty - gathering around the black-and-white screen was an event.

• Chief medical advice from family: Get better

  February 10, 2001

  IHEARD this week from my sister, the mother of the twin girls who just turned 3. All her children (she has three) are down with the sort of childhood maladies that arrive in the late winter. Her washing machine is working overtime. The children just aren't themselves. Or are they?