Midday

President Joe Biden has called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times since the conflict in the Middle East began last week, amid increasing calls from the international community to stop the violence that has killed more than 200 Palestinans and a dozen Israelis.

On Tuesday, President Biden told the Israeli Prime Minister that he expected a “significant de-escalation on the path to a ceasefire” in this latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, now in its 11th day. Buildings and basic infrastructure in Gaza lie in rubble. Hamas militants have fired more than 4,000 rockets into cities and towns across Israel.

Joining Tom now is Ishaan Tharoor. He is a foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post, and author of the Post's Today's WorldView newsletter. He also teaches at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Ishaan Tharoor joins us on Zoom…

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On today’s edition of Back to the Garden, we’ll check in again with two of our favorite green gurus: Denzel Mitchell, the Deputy Director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore and a leader of the Alliance's new Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy...and Carrie Engel, the veteran greenhouse manager and plant specialist at Valley View Farms Nursery in Cockeysville.

They join us on our digital line to answer all your gardening questions.

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

We open today's edition of Back to the Garden with an update on something else that's getting back to the garden this month. In many parts of our listening area, back by entomological inevitability, the Brood X (Ten) cicadas are once again making a grand entrance onto the scene, for the first time since 2004.

In just a little bit, we’ll check in with Denzel Mitchell, the Deputy Director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore and Carrie Engel of Valley View Farms Nursery in Cockeysville. They’ll answer any questions you have about your gardens.

But first, we're joined by Professor Stanton Andrew Gill of the University of Maryland Extension. He’s a specialist in integrated pest management and entomology. He also teaches in the Montgomery College Landscape Technology Program.

Professor Gill, whose lab is located at the UMd's Central Maryland Research and Education Center, has written about the Brood X cicada emergence on the UMd Extension website, and he joins us now on Zoom to fill us in...

Learn more about cicadas on the UME website. Just enter "cicada" in the search box.

Professor Gill also recommends sending your gardening questions and problems to the the UMd Extension's Home & Garden Information Center (HGIC). Click "Ask Extension," type in your question, attach photos, and you'll get a helpful answer in 1-2 days.

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A central tenet of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s approach to crime reduction in our city is the certainty that the traditional strategies that Baltimore has employed for decades have come up short, and that public safety must be re-imagined if the levels of violent crime are to be brought down. Murders and non-fatal shootings have for so long been a part of the landscape of certain neighborhoods. Scott’s vision for a safer city is tied to his vision for a more equitable, more inclusive, and more trauma-informed city, as well.

Tom's guest today has been charged by the Mayor to gather community input and implement the Mayor’s vision for a safer city. Last December, Shantay Jackson was appointed to be the head of a new agency established by Mayor Scott, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.

A lifelong Baltimorean, Shantay Jackson has experience in the private and public sector, with community groups and conflict mediation and resolution.The word “engagement” is in the name of her office, and we invite you to engage with Shantay Jackson here on Midday. What do you think we should be doing as a matter of public policy and individual responsibility to stem the tide of violence that has been particularly acute over the last several years?

Shantay Jackson joins us on our digital line. And we welcome your questions and comments.

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

Yesterday, Mayor Brandon Scott issued an 11th hour veto of a hotly debated bill designed to give renters more options for paying security deposits to their landlords.

WYPR’s Health and Housing reporter Sarah Y. Kim joins Tom with details on the Mayor's decision, and reactions to it from the City Council and city housing advocates.

Sarah Y. Kim joins us on our digital line.

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(This conversation was originally broadcast on March 22, 2021)

Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday has written a thoughtful and insightful books on the subject of racial inequality. Heather McGhee is the former head of the think tank, Demos, an organization that focuses on inequality. She is now the chair of the board of Color of Change, an on-line racial-justice advocacy group with 7 million members.

Her new book is called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. McGhee’s reporting is assiduous and compassionate. She explores the history and lunacy of policies and norms that proliferate belief in a racial hierarchy.This insidious allegiance to racial hierarchy has dominated the United States since its founding. No aspect of American life is spared, and no issue, be it education, health care, housing, voting, or climate change has been unaffected. McGhee makes the case that White unwillingness to align with Black people in common cause has not only been crushing for African Americans, but for millions of White people struggling for opportunity as well.

She writes, “America’s racial inequality is not only the most extreme manifestation of our inequality, but also the template, setting up a scaffolding of hierarchy that increasingly few people, of any race, can climb.” The Sum of Us also makes the case that the reasons for racial panic among White people are actually our biggest strategic assets, and our country’s greatest salvation.

McGhee observes that we have reached the productive and moral limit of the zero-sum economic model, and that we have to get on the same page in order to turn the page on race in America. If we are able to do so, she says, the rewards will be abundant. She calls them the "solidarity dividend."

Heather McGhee joins us on Zoom.

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(This conversation was originally broadcast on March 3, 2021)

Tom's guest in this archive edition of Midday is the American author, George Saunders. He’s published hundreds of short stories, and his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2017. Saunders’ short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and many other magazines, and collected in best-selling books like The Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and which Time Magazine called one of the ten best books of the decade.

Tom describes George Saunders as "a wholly original, surprising and powerfully imaginative writer whose work is unlike anything I’ve read before. His writing seems to re-invent the rules for how fiction is structured and re-imagine how storytelling can unfold."

In 1997, George Saunders joined the faculty of his graduate school alma mater, Syracuse University. Earlier this year, he published his 11th book, which is a fascinating peroration that draws on his experience in the classroom.Saunders has chosen seven stories by a quartet of famous Russian authors: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol. He examines, explains, and riffs on each story, and in the process, with joy and wonder and delight, he offers insight into how we read, and how great authors write.

It’s called A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading, and Life.George Saunders joins us on Zoom from Oneonta, New York.

(Listeners, because this program was previously recorded, we couldn't take any new comments or questions.)

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(This conversation originally aired on March 16, 2021)Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday is Alec MacGillis, an award-winning reporter for ProPublica whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic, among other publications. His latest book is about Amazon, and about the seismic shifts that it has caused not only in the American economy, but in American culture as well since Jeff Bezos started his on-line bookstore in the summer of 1994. The new book is called Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.

Bezos will step aside as Chief Executive this summer, but Amazon’s dominance in the economy will remain unparalleled. It is an enormous marketplace that dwarfs its nearest competitor in on-line retail sales. Its servers hold the data for companies across the globe, including some of Amazon’s fiercest rivals. And the ways it influences the health and well-being of communities large and small, and the ways in which it has changed the very nature of work are myriad.

Amazon’s distribution system is massive. It has warehouses within 25 miles of nearly half of the US population, including two in the Baltimore metro area, from which more than 6 billion packages are delivered every year.In his latest book, Alec MacGillis takes us into those warehouses, and the lives and communities of the people who work there. With assiduous reporting and powerful writing, he chronicles the enormous imprint of Amazon, and its far-reaching effects on American society.Alec MacGillis joins us on the line from his home in Baltimore.

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Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom today with her review of Serious Adverse Effects, playwright Derek Lee McPhatter's contemporary — and timely — drama about medical ethics. The world-premiere play, developed under the aegis of the National Black Theatre’s I AM Soul playwright residency program, is being staged by Rapid Lemon Productions, presented live before masked audiences at Baltimore's Motor House art space, and also live-streamed online for ticket holders.

Director and Projection Designer Noah Silas leads cast members Valerie Lewis, Kyla Hammond, Max Johnson and Maria Marsalis in the one-act drama.

Rapid Lemon Productions' Serious Adverse Effects continues live at the Motor House and live-streamed through May 23. For more information and ticket options, click here.

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With vaccinations up and COVID cases down, this summer’s travel season is expected to be considerably better than last year’s. Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer, is a little over a week away, so today, we thought it would be good to catch up with the mayor of Ocean City, a small town (pop. 7,102) on Maryland's Atlantic shore that's a big destination for families across the state.

Mayor Rick Meehan entered local politics in OC back in 1985 when he was first elected to the City Council. He served as the President of the Council for 14 years. He was first elected Mayor of Ocean City in 2006.Mayor Rick Meehan joins Tom on Zoom for this edition of Midday with the Mayor…

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