Midday

It is a sad and somber day in Maryland today, as people here and across the country, and across the political spectrum, mourn the passing of Congressman Elijah Cummings, who died early this morning at the Johns Hopkins Gilchrist Hospice Center. He was 68 years old. He had served Maryland's 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996. He lived in West Baltimore.Today, three long-time colleagues and friends of Elijah Cummings join Tom to reflect on the man's life and work: First, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, and then Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes, speak with Tom live from Capitol Hill. Then, a conversation Tom had earlier this morning with Kurt Schmoke, the former Mayor of Baltimore and now president of the University of Baltimore.Tomorrow on Midday, an hour-long tribute to Elijah Cummings. Friday at noon.

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A controversial school redistricting plan in Howard County, aimed at addressing overcrowding and segregation, has polarized that community. Tom speaks with ,Jess Nocera, of the Howard County Times, Howard County NAACP president, Willie Flowers, and anti-redistricting advocate Dr. Hemant Sharma about equity in education.

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Tom's guest is the award winning writer, Charles Johnson. In 1990, Charles Johnson won the National Book Award for his best-selling novel Middle Passage, a heroic, complex and powerful story that acutely and authoritatively explores the brutality of the slave trade. Johnson’s place in the panoply of great American writers has been unquestioned ever since.

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With the new school year underway, we thought it a good time to check in once again with Baltimore City Public Schools CEO, Dr. Sonja Santelises, who joins Tom today for the hour.The Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Education, known as the Kirwan Commission was formed in 2016. The commission, chaired by former University of MD Chancellor Britt Kirwan, has developed recommendations in five policy areas that include pre-school education, college preparedness, and elevating the profession of teaching. One of the most controversial parts of the commission’s mandate is to recommend a formula for how state funding should be allocated to schools throughout MD. A task force of the commission is expected to announce that formula tomorrow, when they meet in Annapolis.Although city students lag behind other jurisdictions, the latest standardized test scores show solid gains. For the second year in a row, City students in all grades improved in English, and in most grades, they improved in math.We livestreamed this conversation with Dr. Santelises on the WYPR Facebook page. Click here for the video.

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Today, it’s another installment of Midday on Higher Education, our series of interviews with local college presidents.A couple of months ago, University of Baltimore President and former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke made an interesting proposal in an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun. He imagined that three local colleges —UB, Coppin State and Baltimore City Community College — could come together to form a City University of Baltimore...A couple of weeks later, Dr. David Wilson, the President of Morgan State University, responded with his own op-ed in The Sun. He suggested that UB should merge with his institution instead of Coppin State. We’ll be speaking with Dr. Wilson about that idea next month.Today, Kurt Schmoke joins me here in Studio A to talk about the advantages and the challenges of combining, in some way, three heretofore separate institutions.Jon Marcus joins us as well. He is the higher education editor of The Hechinger Report. He has written extensively about the growing trend of colleges and universities combining in various ways. He wrote a terrific piece in yesterday’s New York Times on this very subject.This conversation was livestreamed on the WYPR Facebook page., and you can watch the video here.

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Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins Tom in the studio for another of her weekly reviews of the Maryland stage. Today, she tells us about Dracula, a haunting adaptation of Bram Stoker’s seminal 1897 vampire novel that opens Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's 2019 season. Adapted by Steven Dietz and directed in the CSC's ornate theater space by Gerald Alex Taylor, the play unfolds in a sanatorium, as a series of sinister events reveals the presence of the greatest vampire of all time. The cast includes Michael P. Sullivan, reprising his 2013 CSC performance as Dracula; Hannah Kelly as the Count's love interest, Mina Murray; and Scott Alan Small as Renfield, the asylum patient. Emily Lotz designed the sets, and Kristina Lambdin designed the costumes.Speaking of blood...On Thursday, October 17, from 1 to 6pm, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company will host Dracula’s Blood Drive, a community blood donation at the CSC acting studio in the heart of downtown, at 206 East Redwood Street, 4th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202. It’s easy to make an appointment to donate: Visit redcrossblood.org and enter the blood drive password: SHAKESPEARE. Walk-ins are welcome.Lesley Malin, CSC's Managing Director, says all donors to Dracula’s Blood Drive will receive a voucher good for 20 percent off regular-priced tickets to Dracula, which continues at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater, located at 7 S. Calvert Street (at Redwood Street), in Baltimore, MD 21202, through November 2, 2019.

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On Tuesday, White House Counsel Patrick Cipollone wrote a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and three Democratic committee chairmen making both legal and political arguments opposing the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Cipollone contends, in part, that the president did nothing wrong in his now infamous phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine last summer, so an impeachment inquiry is illegitimate.It will come as no surprise that there are many who disagree with that contention.The White House is refusing to supply documents and witnesses requested by the committees' investigators unless the full U.S. House of Representatives holds a vote to authorize the inquiry, which so far, Speaker Pelosi has refused to schedule. The transcript of that presidential phone call and text messages between diplomats involved in the Ukraine affair -- as well as public statements by the President himself — have plunged the nation into a full-blown constitutional crisis that deepens by the day. Today on Midday, a conversation about the impeachment process with Kim Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the author of a terrific book called How to Read the Constitution, and Why. Kim Wehle joins Tom in Studio A. This program was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page and you can watch the video here.

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On today's show, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby joins Tom to talk about the consequences of police corruption and strategies to end our city’s epidemic of violent crime.Yom Tov, and an easy fast to all of our listeners observing Yom Kippur today.

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We’ll take a look at the effect of budget cuts and some of the critical issues that have caused a decline in public transit ridership in the Baltimore metro area. Samuel Jordan, of the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition, Brian O’Malley, of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, and Delegate Robbyn Lewis.

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Fall officially began on September 23rd. Two weeks later, we had a record high temperature of 98 degrees. Things cooled off a bit this weekend, although we’ll likely make it back up close to 80 degrees today. The region has also been suffering for the past month through a moderate drought, which shows little sign of ending soon. But assuming real fall weather will kick in at some point, Tom checks in with our garden gurus to see what we need to think about as we finish our harvesting and planting, and prepare to put our outdoor gardens to bed for the winter. Denzel Mitchell is the farm manager at Strength to Love 2 Farm, a one and-a-half acre workforce training farm in Sandtown-Winchester. It’s one of several programs run by the faith-inspired community group, Intersection of Change. Strength to Love 2 Farm is also a member of the Baltimore Farm Alliance…Carrie Engel is here as well. She’s the Greenhouse Manager and a plant specialist at Valley View Farms in Cockeysville, where she’s worked for the better part of 50 years. She’s responsible for their herbaceous plants, including annuals, tropicals and vegetables. And we’re joined on the phone by Clayton Williams. He’s a Master Gardner and a former farm manager at both Strength to Love 2 Farm and CivicWorks’ Real Food Farm in Clifton Park. He now serves as the Farmer Trainer at The Plantation, a one-acre non-profit community garden in Park Heights.They take your call, emails, Tweets and Facebook questions about gardening.This conversation was livestreamed on WYPR's Facebook page, and you can watch the video here, beginning at about 16:00 into the video stream.

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