Midday

Today, Tom is joined by people who are active in three neighborhoods: Edith Gilliard is president of the Franklin Square Community Association. Franklin Square is just south of Route 40, between Carey and Monroe. Beth Braun is president of the Butchers Hill Association. Butchers Hill is a small neighborhood in East Baltimore bounded by East Fayette and East Pratt, between South Patterson Park Ave and North Washington St. Will Hanna is chairman ---- CEO of the New Park Heights Community Development Corporation. Park Heights stretches along Park Heights Avenue in Northwest Baltimore.

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Today on Midday, as the U.S. House of Representatives continues its impeachment inquiry, a conversation about the subject of that inquiry, President Donald Trump: what shaped his political rise, and how he has singularly shaped American culture. Tom's guest for the hour is James Poniewozik, the chief television critic for the New York Times. He was previously the television critic for Time magazine and the media columnist for Salon.His new book is called Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America. Poniewozik chronicles how TV shaped Donald Trump’s modus operandi in his early years as a celebrity New York real estate mogul, and how Trump has used TV to reinforce and advance his brand as the 45th US president. For example, one of Mr. Trump’s default justifications for saying things that are often complete fabrications is to make the claim that “many people are saying it.” As Poniewozik points out in his book, the roots of this strategy can be found in the game show, Family Feud. Mr. Poniewozik cites former New Yorker writer George W. S. Trow who observed how surreal the logic of that show is. Contestants guess not what’s true, but what most people think is true. Trump is a master of convincing people that they are not alone in considering to be true, things that are demonstrably false. And his mastery has been honed on and through, television. His 2016 campaign, as well as his current campaign for President, rely heavily on social media, but as we see in Audience of One, it’s TV that has always been at the heart of Mr. Trump’s outreach.James Poniewozik, who lives in Brooklyn, joins us today from the studios of public radio station KQED in San Francisco.We invite listeners to join our conversation.

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Tom's guest today is Dr. Brit Kirwan. He is the chair of the Commission on Innovation and Excellence, also known as the Kirwan Commission.Last week, the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education made its long awaited recommendations about how much state and local jurisdictions should pay to improve educational outcomes in MD.

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It's Thursday and time for another of theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck's weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, she spotlights In the Blood, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ 1999 urban retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and presented on stage by Fells Point Corner Theatre. A compelling look at motherhood, race and poverty, In the Blood (a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) asks audience to reexamine their roles in the oppression of marginalized groups. Mari Andrea Travis directs FCPT's dramatic ensemble, featuring Tina Canady, Adam Cooley, Christian Gonzalez, Betse Lyons, Justin Price and Dawn Taylor.In the Blood continues at Fells Point Corner Theatre through Sunday, November 3. For ticket and performance information, click here.

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Tom’s guest is Reginald Dwayne Betts. He came to our attention last year when he wrote a wonderful piece in The New York Times Magazine entitled, “Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out,---- for which he won a National Magazine Award. When Betts was 16, he was part of a group that committed an armed car-jacking. For that crime, he spent eight years and three months in adult prisons, including many months in solitary confinement.After his release from prison, Mr. Betts earned a bachelor’s degree and an MFA in poetry. He then went on to get a law degree from Yale.It was in prison that he started reading and writing poetry. His latest collection of poems is called ----Felon.----

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On Sunday, Thomas D’Alesandro, III passed away at the age of 90. He was part of a Baltimore-based powerhouse political dynasty that includes his younger sister, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and a father who served as both Mayor and member of the US Congress. Joining Tom to talk about the legacy of ”Young Tommy,” as he came to be known, is Fraser Smith, a former news man at WYPR and a former chief political reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He was also a columnist for the Maryland Daily Record.This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook Page. Watch the video here, beginning at 42:30 into the feed and concluding at 51:30.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, An update to a story we’ve been following for the past couple of years. Yesterday was the first day of the trial of Elizabeth McAlister and the group of protesters known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. They are facing charges in federal court in Georgia for their anti-nuclear protest at the Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia in April, 2018. After being arrested at that protest, Liz McAlister and one other protester spent more than a year and a half in jail. Others were on home detention. She and her fellow activists face decades in prison, if convicted. The trial is expected to take about a week. We’ll keep you posted.

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Last month, the Labor Department reported a national unemployment rate of 3.5%, the lowest it’s been in 50 years. The unemployment rate is only one metric by which the job market can be evaluated, and many point to its inherent flaws, but the reality for many employers is that filling jobs with skilled workers is harder than it used to be. One estimate has it that there are nearly 70 million available jobs nationally.There are more than 30 workforce development organizations in the Baltimore metro area. Today on Midday, a look at some of those programs, and a conversation with three experts in the employment field about what can be done to scale-up the effective ones, so that more people can be trained for jobs that are in demand, and that pay well.Linda Dworak is the Director of the Baltimore Workforce Funders Collaborative (a member of the Maryland Philanthropy Network) and the author of a report being published this week by the Abell Foundation that suggests ways some of these programs can be expanded to serve more than the 2,700 people currently involved in job training programs…We’re also joined by two people whose organizations offer workforce training.Mike Posko is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake. He directs Habitat's HabiCorps program, which trains previously incarcerated individuals in carpentry and construction management;And Tiffani Truss is the Director of Training Services at the Jane-Addams Resource Corporation (JARC), which offers job training in manufacturing.This conversation was live-streamed on WYPR's Facebook Page. Watch the video here; the segment runs from 0:00 to 39:55 on the video stream.Speaking of workforce development: there will be a special event later this week (on Thursday October 24 -- at 4:00pm) at the Peabody Heights Brewery, an initiative called GOOD BUSINESS WORKS will be launched. It’s a collaboration by Baltimore business leaders, workforce experts, and nonprofits who are recognizing businesses that are creating jobs and maintaining equitable and inclusive workplaces. For more information on the event, click here.Another program note about an event in which Tom Hall will be participating tomorrow night (October 23) at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. It’s another in the Great Talk series. The topic tomorrow night is “Baltimore: Not Just an American City: What Baltimore Means, Beyond the Headlines.”The panel will include Andre Davis, the Baltimore City Solicitor, Trif Alatzas, the Publisher and Editor in Chief of the Baltimore Sun, and Thibault Manekin, the co-founder of Seawall Development. Tom Hall will be the moderator. The conversation will begin at 7:00pm. Tickets for individual talks in the series are $15, and can be purchased online or at the door. For details on the event, click here.

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Tom's guest today is Mike Rowe, a Baltimore-born and bred television personality, producer and podcaster. He’s also an author. His latest book shares the name of his popular podcast: The Way I Heard It.The book is a clever and engaging admixture of essays in the style of the great radio raconteur Paul Harvey, juxtaposed with Mike’s chronicle and observations of his own life, collected in a career that has included singing classical opera, pitching everything from $35 KatSaks on QVC to Ford Trucks in national ad campaigns, and being the executive producer and host of the hit show Dirty Jobs, which ran on The Discovery Channel from 2003 to 2012.Mike now hosts Somebody’s Gotta Do It, a kind of second-gen Dirty Jobs which begins its second season on TBN this Saturday night, and he produces the Facebook Watch series, Returning the Favor.He’s also the founder and CEO of the “mikeroweWORKS” Foundation, which has granted millions of dollars of Work Ethic Scholarships to folks who are learning trades and skills that address critical shortages in the American workforce. Also joining us in studio a bit later in the hour is Mike's mother, Peggy Rowe, who is the author of her own recent memoir, About My Mother: True Stories of a Horse-Crazy Daughter and Her Baseball-Obsessed Mother.This conversation was live-streamed on WYPR's Facebook page. Watch the video here.

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Today, we remember Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, who died yesterday in Baltimore at the age of 68. From his early career as a lawyer known for his quiet diligence and generous mentoring, to his rise to the top ranks of the U.S. Congress, we reflect today on the legacy of a political giant. After 14 years as a Democratic delegate in the Maryland General Assembly, where he led the Legislative Black Caucus, the Baltimore native was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a 1996 special election to serve Maryland’s 7th district, encompassing Baltimore City and parts of Baltimore and Howard counties. When Democrats regained the majority in the House in the 2018 Congressional elections, Elijah Cummings assumed the chairmanship of the powerful Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he was a diligent watchdog of the Trump Administration and a leader in the House Impeachment inquiry. Joining Tom to share their thoughts about Elijah Cummings' life and work are Baltimore City Mayor Jack Young, civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis (D.,Ga 5th), Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (D., Md 7th), and former Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, as well as Mr. Cummings’ former law partner, Edward Smith, and veteran WBAL-TV reporter Jayne Miller.A wake and funeral for Elijah Cummings were announced today. The Baltimore Sun reported that they will take place next Friday, October 25, at The New Palmist Baptist Church, the same church where Mr. Cummings worshipped for nearly 40 years. The wake will begin at 8am, followed by a funeral at 10am. Bishop Walter S. Thomas, Sr., the church's pastor, will deliver the eulogy in the 4,000-seat sanctuary.

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In his latest book is called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm Gladwell explores how bad we are, generally, understanding people we don’t know, and how we often think we know people better than we do. It’s that lack of ability to accurately anticipate the motives and actions of people that have led to tragedies both individual and global.

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