Midday

Tom's guest today is Calvin Butler, the Senior Executive Vice President of the energy company, Exelon and the Chief Executive Officer of Exelon Utilities, a group of six Exelon companies that includes BGE.

Mr. Butler is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Greater Baltimore Committee, a network of business and non-profit CEOs, university Presidents, and religious leaders. African American CEOs are still rare in business. In a recent address to the GBC’s annual meeting, Mr. Butler talked about how companies need to make diversity, equity and inclusion a central tenet of their businesses to not only increase representation among people of color, but also to tap into a talent pool that is all too often overlooked.

Calvin Butler joins us by landline from his home in Orlando, Florida.

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

Coming up a little later in today's program, Dr. Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, joins us to discuss the latest news about the coronavirus.

But Tom's first guest today is Beth Benner. She’s the Executive Director of the Women’s Housing Coalition. With the rates of vaccination against COVID 19 slipping across the country, health officials are focusing on the barriers people are encountering when it comes to getting that potentially life-saving jab.

The Women’s Housing Coalition works with some of our most vulnerable citizens, including low-income and homeless women and families, and they’ve had some success in getting many of them vaccinated.

Beth Benner joins us on Zoom to tell us how that’s being accomplished.

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

Tom's next guest is Dr. Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and senior scholar with The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

She joins us to discuss what we know - and what we still need to know - about the origins of the SARS CoV-2 virus. What is the evidence that the virus originated in a lab, instead of passing to humans through animals? And what will it take for scientists to come to a definitive conclusion?

Dr. Gronvall has been studying and writing about a number of issues related to the COVID 19 pandemic for these last many months.

Dr. Gigi Gronvall joins us from her home in Baltimore.

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

To round out the program today, Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom with her review of playwright Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline. It's a powerful new drama about a mother whose dreams for her son's education clash with the systemic racism in the schools that she believes are rigged to ensure her son fails.

The virtual production, starring Dylan Fleming, Eleasha Gamble, Bekah Zornosa, Kimberly Shraf, and Resident Company Actors Jefferson Russell and Yaegel Welch, is directed by Everyman's Paige Hernandez.

Pipeline is streaming for ticketed patrons now through July 11th.

Judy also spotlights another Everyman production: a recorded, streamed reading of The Lifespan of a Fact, a play by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal.

Part of Everyman's"Summer Six-Pack" series of virtual play readings, Lifespan began streaming May 31 and ends this Sunday, June 6.

For more information on both of these productions, visit the Everyman Theater website.

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

It's Midday at the Movies, our monthly look at films, filmmaking and the movie experience. Today Tom is joined once again by Jed Dietz, the founding director of the Maryland Film Festival. Midday's other regular movie maven, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, is away this week.

Jed and Tom discuss some of the highlights of the recent Maryland Film Festival, which ran May 19-27, including filmmaker icon John Waters' memorable hosting of the Druid Hill Park "drive-in movie" event, and screenings of a trove of locally produced films.

They also talk about the continuing nationwide wave of movie-house re-openings, as state pandemic restrictions are eased or lifted and theater owners coax patrons back with subscription packages, luxury seating and advance online food and concession ordering.

Jed spotlights some of the new films taking advantage of those returning big- screen audiences, including Disney's new over-the-top prequel, Cruella, starring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson, and the sci-fi thriller, A Quiet Place 2, a powerful sequel to the 2018 hit, with Jim Krasinski and Emily Blunt back to very quietly get their family through an alien invasion. And Final Account, director Luke Holland's chilling documentary about the indoctrination of a generation of Germans by Hitler's Third Reich, is captivating audiences at the reopened Charles Theater.Jed Dietz joins us on Zoom.

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

On Tuesday, Governor Larry Hogan became the 25th Republican Governor across the country to end federal enhanced pandemic benefits for people who are out of work. Some businesses are facing worker shortages, a problem the Governor described as critical, and he said that with jobs and vaccines now in good supply, the benefits are no longer needed.

The decision affects about 150,000 Marylanders, who as of July 3rd will no longer receive $300 in addition to any state unemployment support they may qualify for. Benefits also end for self-employed workers and independent contractors.Reaction to the announcement from Maryland Democrats was quick, and strongly opposed. Democratic Senate President Bill Ferguson urged the Governor to reconsider, and leaders asked Attorney General Brian Frosh to look into legislative actions the General Assembly might take to overturn the Governor’s decision.

Joining Tom to discuss the Governor's move is Sen. Jim Rosapepe, a Democrat who represents parts of Prince George’s and Anne Arundel Counties. And Sen. Justin Ready, who represents Carroll County in the General Assembly.

Senators Rosapepe and Ready join us on Zoom…

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

Now, an update on a story we’ve been following for more than a year. Despite efforts by local journalists, non-profits, and a wealthy businessman to acquire the Baltimore Sun from the Tribune Company, it has been sold instead to a New York Hedge Fund, Alden Global Capital. This is a worst-case scenario nightmare for those who want to see the Sun return to local control, with a focus on local news, and financial support that would allow it to provide wide-ranging and thorough coverage.

Tom's next guests have both been involved in the effort to purchase the paper. Liz Bowie is an education reporter for the Sun. Matt Gallagher is the president and CEO of the Goldseker Foundation.

Liz Bowie and Matt Gallagher join us on Zoom…

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

It’s Midday with the Mayor. Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott joins host Tom Hall for another of their monthly live conversations about key issues on the Mayor's agenda.

After another violent Memorial Day weekend, the Mayor remains committed to a multi-pronged approach to violence reduction. Progress, however is slow. The City is strategizing on how to spend the first installment of $640 million dollars in federal pandemic relief funds. And with more than half of city residents still unvaccinated, how will we get jabs into the arms of people who need them?

We welcome listener calls, emails and tweets.

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

Tom's first guest today is Michelle Orange, an author based here in Baltimore who has contributed to the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times and other publications. She also teaches writing at Columbia University and Goucher College. Her 2013 collection of essays, called This is Running for Your Life, was critically acclaimed. Her new book is in part a memoir, a rumination on feminism, and cultural history.

It is centered around her mother. Her mother did what most mothers did not do in the 1970s: she went to graduate school, got an MBA, and rose to the top of a company as its CEO. Her story became a case study in business schools in the mid-1980s. Her choices were the subject of great debate, and they came at a price; Michelle Orange’s book is an elegant disquisition on what that price was, and how it was paid.

It’s called Pure Flame: A Legacy. Michelle Orange joins us from Brooklyn, New York. Ms. Orange will be speaking about her book with the author Jeannie Vanasco on the back patio at the Ivy Bookshop this Friday (June 4) beginning at 6:30pm. For more information on the event, click here.

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

Tom's next guests today are two of his former colleagues in the world of choral music, an art form that has been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic. Early on in the Coronavirus crisis, it became clear to researchers that singing was one of the most dangerous activities one could engage in. Transmission of the virus among singers in choruses and in congregate settings in general were shown to be extremely high.

How did choral organizations adjust during this last year, and what does the immediate future hold for them?

Dr. Eric Conway is the Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Morgan State University, and the conductor of the famed Morgan Choir. He has led the choir in concerts all over the world and performed at events with the Pope, President Barack Obama, and many other notable figures. Eric Conway joins us on Zoom…

Anthony Blake Clark is the Music Director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, an organization Tom Hall led for many years before Blake took over in 2017. Choral Arts will be giving its first live performance since the pandemic began, this Sunday evening (details below). Blake Clark joins us on Zoom as well…

Follow the links to check out the Morgan Choir's most recent concerts, and for more information on events at the Murphy Fine Arts Center, as that schedule gets back to something like normal in the fall.

Anthony Blake Clark will lead the Baltimore Choral Arts Society in an in-person concert this Sunday evening at the Catholic Community of St. Francis Xavier in Hunt Valley. The seating for that event is limited, and the concert is sold out. Click here for more information about other Choral Arts Society events.

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