Midday

President Joe Biden met with House Democrats this morning to discuss a framework that he says can pass the Senate, hoping to garner a commitment from his caucus to vote for the infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate.

He made comments on the framework in the East Room of the White House about a half hour ago. At this hour, he is on his way to Rome for a meeting with the Pope and to attend the G-20 Summit. He’ll attend the COP26 UN Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow Scotland, on Monday and Tuesday.

Tom's NEWSMAKER guest today is Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland's junior senator. He is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Last week, the committee voted out several bills that included more than $20 million in funds for the Baltimore Region.

Sen. Van Hollen joins us on Zoom from the US Capitol.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Now, a conversation about a dispute over the Harford County Health Department’s handling of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Dr. David Bishai is a public health expert on the adjunct faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was abruptly removed as the County’s Health Officer last Friday.

We will hear from Dr. Bishai later in the program, but first, we're joined by Maryland's 7th District Delegate Lauren Arikan, the Republican Deputy Minority Whip in the General Assembly, who represents Harford and Baltimore Counties. Last May, Del. Arikan began calling for Dr. Bishai’s removal. She joins us on Zoom to explain why.

Then we're joined by Dr. David Bishai, who discusses his year-long service to Harford County's public health and anti-COVID efforts, and his sudden and unexplained termination by the county council last week.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's next guest is Dr. James Karmel. He’s a Professor of History at Harford Community College and the Director of the Harford Civil Rights Project. The Project team has put together an interactive online and mobile-app exhibition that chronicles the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s in Harford County.

Dr. James Karmel joins us on Zoom from Bel Air, Maryland, to tell us about it.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr.

The County is Maryland’s third largest jurisdiction. The Towson Loop was recently introduced to address traffic congestion in the County Seat, and Mr. Olszewski is moving to electrify the County’s fleet of cars. School construction and renovation remain hot topics. And like other large and small cities and entities around the country, the County is experiencing an uptick in violent crime.

We’ll talk about these and other issues, including the County's ongoing response to COVID-19.

We also welcome your questions and comments.

Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr. joins us on our digital line from his County office in Towson, Maryland.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

It’s the Midday Healthwatch with Dr. Leana Wen.

Dr. Wen is a visiting professor at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health, a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a contributing columnist at The Washington Post, a CNN medical analyst, and mother of two. The former Baltimore City Health Commissioner joins us every month with the latest on COVID-19 and other urgent public health news.

COVID numbers have been improving for weeks, but nearly 43% of eligible Americans remain unvaccinated. Mandates are making a difference as many people faced with the choice between inoculation and being unemployed are getting a jab.The FDA and CDC have now approved boosters for all three vaccine brands: Pfizer, Moderna and J&J. Mixing and matching has been given the green light. Last week, more people got booster shots than first doses.

Vaccines for children as young as five are expected soon. Parents already protect their kids from diseases like measles and mumps. Will they do the same for COVID-19?

Dr. Leana Wen joins us live on Skype to address these and other developments, and to address your questions and comments.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest for the hour today is the acclaimed writer, Elizabeth Strout. She is the best-selling author of eight novels and many short stories. She won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Olive Kitteridge. A film series adaption of that book starring Frances McDormand on HBO won eight Emmy Awards.

Elizabeth Strout’s previous novel, Olive Again, re-visited Olive Kitteridge. And her new novel, published this week, puts us in touch again with another one of her magnificent characters, Lucy Barton. It’s the third novel in which Lucy figures prominently. It centers on Lucy’s first husband, a successful scientist named William Gerhardt. It’s in part a road-trip story. Lucy and William, long divorced, set-off together on a journey to find a sister who William only recently discovered he had.

Elizabeth Strout often writes about people with big hearts who live in small towns. When we encounter Lucy and William in this novel, they are prosperous New Yorkers who struggle with reckoning about their small-town roots. Lucy and William are fantastic, complicated, wondrous characters who are crafted with compassion and grace and first-rate writerly skill.

The new novel is called Oh William! It's a poignant rumination on marriage, family, trauma, and the recognition that the past is never too distant from the present.

Elizabeth Strout joins Tom on Zoom from Nashville, Tennessee. Their conversation was recorded earlier this week, so we can't take any calls.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Time again for a visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom this week with her review of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's live production of Mohegan playwright Madeline Sayet's Where We Belong, being presented at Baltimore's Center Stage.

Directed by Mei Ann Teo, Where We Belong is a one-woman autobiographical narrative in which playwright Sayet weaves together Shakespeare, self-discovery, and a quest for belonging in today's increasingly complex global society. After its limited engagement in Baltimore, the play begins a national tour.

Where We Belong continues at Baltimore Center Stage through October 24th. For showtimes and ticket information, click here.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Now, we turn our attention to a program at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) that is working to address the lack of diversity in the biomedical field, by inspiring students to pursue STEM-based careers. It’s called the CURE Scholars Program. CURE stands for Continuing Umbrella of Research Experiences. Now in its sixth year at UMB, the CURE Scholars Program partners with three West Baltimore public schools, offering mentorship and experiences to kids beginning in middle school.

On Monday, October 25th at 9pm, Maryland Public Television will air a documentary film that features students in the program, called 10th and 11th Grade: West Baltimore. The documentary also is available online at the MPT website, where it streams through November 25th.

Tom spoke on Tuesday of this week with Princaya Sanders, a senior at Western High School, and Ivan Lamos-Sanchez, the College and Career Specialist at CURE, who has been helping Princaya with her college applications.

We hear their recorded conversation, and then we're joined live by Dr. Gia Grier McGinnis, the executive director of the UMB CURE Scholars Program. She joins us on Zoom.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

We begin today with Midday on Politics. Sean Yoes joins me. He’s a former columnist for the Afro Newspaper, and as he keeps his journalist's eye trained on the local political scene, he's venturing into some independent media projects. He’s now hosting a new podcast called Sean Yoes is Live from West Baltimore. As of tomorrow, you can find that on YouTube. He’s also made a short film called Disruption: Baltimore’s Highway to Nowhere, available now on YouTube.

Sean Yoes joins us on Zoom…

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Dr. Sonja Santelises, the CEO of the Baltimore City Public Schools.

Students and teachers have returned to their classrooms. Teachers and staff are required to be vaccinated, and everybody is wearing masks while indoors. As Liz Bowie reports in the Baltimore Sun, the City School system is the only one in the Baltimore metro region that tests unvaccinated students and staff weekly. It’s an expensive program, but it has turned up dozens of asymptomatic cases, and along with mask mandates, it’s credited with keeping outbreaks to a minimum.

While the system copes with the on-going challenges of COVID, the challenges of kids who experienced learning loss when they weren’t able to be in-person last year continue to be a high priority for educators.

We discuss these and other issues in the city school system, and welcome listeners' comments and questions, as Dr. Sonja Santelises joins us on Zoom.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.