Midday

(This program was originally broadcast on January 2, 2019)Today, on this archive edition of Midday, Tom's guest is journalist and an attorney Steven Brill. He’s the founder of Court TV and The American Lawyer magazine, and he teaches journalism at Yale, where he founded the Yale Journalism Initiative.His latest book is a stunning and disconcerting compendium of some of the central problems facing America: the financialization of what had been a manufacturing based economy; rampant obsession with short term profits in American business, crippling political polarity, and marginalization of the middle class. He offers a trenchant analysis of why these problems exist, and he shines a light on those people and organizations who are working to address these difficult challenges. The book is a New York Times Best-seller called “Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty Year Fall -- and those Fighting to Reverse It.”

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In 2012, Lawrence Lanahan led a team here at WYPR that explored racial inequity in the Baltimore region in a year-long radio and multi-media series called The Lines Between Us. Lanahan has just published a book in which he continues his examination of the effects of racial bias in housing, education, and economic opportunity by chronicling the journeys of an African American family who moves from the city to Howard County, and a white family who moves from the suburbs to West Baltimore. It’s called The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide (published by The New Press).Lawrence Lanahan joins Tom in Studio A, along with Mark Carter, the Executive Director of the New Song Community Learning Center in Sandtown Winchester.

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It's Thursday, and time for theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins us in the studio each week with her reviews of the regional stage. Today, she spotlights not one, but two plays now in repertory at Baltimore's Everyman Theatre: Queens Girl in the World and Queens Girl in Africa, playwright Caleen Sinnette Jennings' semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales, each featuring one-woman performances by Dawn Ursula and Erika Rose, respectively, as African American ----Queens girl---- Jacqueline Marie Butler.Directed by resident company member Paige Hernandez, the Queens Girl plays continue in repertory at Everyman Theatre through Sunday, June 23. For showtimes and ticket information, click here.

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Tom’s guest for the hour is Andre M. Davis, the Baltimore City Solicitor. Davis was appointed to the post by then-Mayor Catherine Pugh in September 2017, after 30 years as a judge on local, state and federal courts -- including eight years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As city solicitor, he directs the City’s legal department, which includes about 100 lawyers and support personnel. He is also one of five members of the City’s Board of Estimates. We livestreamed this conversation on the WYPR Facebook page. Click here to watch the video.

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James Cabezas was chief investigator for the Office of the State Prosecutor here in Maryland and, before that, he was a Baltimore City cop. His new memoir is called “Eyes of Justice: A Career Crime Fighter Battles Corruption… and Blindness.”Joan Jacobson is co-author of the book. She was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and The Evening Sun for 28 years. They’ll be talking about the book tonight at 6:30 at the Maryland State Library for the Blind in Baltimore. It’s on Park Avenue, directly behind the Enoch Pratt Central Library.

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Today, Tom's guest is John Urschel, whose resum\u233\u includes great skill and high achievement in two areas that are not often, in fact, hardly ever, associated: football and mathematics. He is a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens who retired from the NFL at the age of 26 to pursue a career in math. The book is called Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football. He co-wrote it with his wife, Louisa Thomas. They’ll be speaking about the book tonight at the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore.

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Today, it’s another edition of Midday in the Neighborhood, a series in which we’ve set out to spotlight the remarkable tapestry of communities that make up the city of Baltimore. Tom is joined in Studio A by representatives of three Baltimore communities: Reservoir Hill, located just south of Druid Hill Park, near the city’s geographic center, Overlea, located in the far northeast corner of the city, on the Baltimore County line, and Federal Hill-South, on the southwestern bank of the Inner Harbor in South Baltimore. Joyce Richardson is co-chair of the Board of Directors for the Reservoir Hill Improvement Council. Caitlin Ceryes is president of the Overlea Community Association. And Mark Jaskulski is president of the Federal Hill-South Neighborhood Association.Midday listeners joined the conversation as well, by phone, email, and social media.This program was live-streamed on WYPR's Facebook page, and you can watch the video here. If you're involved in the leadership of your neighborhood, we’d love to hear from you. Send us an e mail with your contact information to [email protected], and one of our producers will be in touch.

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Today, it’s Midday on the Arts.We begin with a conversation about the profound influence of one artist on another. The acclaimed, MacArthur Award-winning artist Joyce Scott is featured in a new exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art that juxtaposes her work with the work of her late mother, Elizabeth Talford Scott, who was also an artist. They lived and worked together in Baltimore for more than 60 years.The exhibition is called HITCHING THEIR DREAMS TO UNTAMED STARS. It opened at the BMA yesterday, and continues through December 1st.

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Midday on the Arts continues with a conversation about the future of the Single Carrot Theater. Last January, the 12 year-old Baltimore company announced that next month, it will leave the theater it’s called home since 2014. The final performances in their Remington space takes place this weekend. That show is called Pink Milk, by the trans woman playwright Ariel Zetina. It’s based on the life of the mathematician Alan Turing. (Midday’s theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck reviewed the play on our show last week.)Pink Milk is pretty typical of the kind of offering we’ve come to expect from Single Carrot, in that it is a regional premiere of an experimental play that one would be unlikely to encounter anywhere else. It is also the only play the company, now in its 12th season, has produced this year. Joining Tom to discuss the big changes ahead for the company are Genevieve De Mahy, the founding Artistic Director of Single Carrot, and Alix Fenhagen, who is serving as the company’s Interim Managing Director.

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Today's Midday on the Arts concludes with theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joining Tom with her review of Christina Anderson's new play, How to Catch Creation, now getting its regional premiere at Baltimore Center Stage.In this latest work by Anderson, a winner of the prestigious Lorraine Hansberry Award, we meet a wrongly convicted man who is released from prison after 25 years. As he sets about rebuilding his life, he begins a quest to become a father. The play spans more than four decades as it explores intersecting lives, family, parenthood, and the power of new beginnings.How to Catch Creation is directed at Center Stage by Nataki Garrett, and stars Tiffani Barbour as G.K. Marche, Shauna Miles as Natalie, Shayna Small as Riley, Lindsay Smiling as Griffin, Stephanie Weeks as Tami, and Jonathan Bangs as Stokes.Content Advisory: The play includes some adult language and topics more appropriate for middle schoolers and older audiences.How to Catch Creation continues at Baltimore Center Stage through Sunday, May 26.

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