Da Vinci scholar Dr. John Pevsner, on Leonardo's Legacy, 500 Years After His Death

Tom’s Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Junior. A Democrat, he was elected to office last November, and sworn in on December 3rd. He’s a former Maryland state delegate, a lifelong resident of Dundalk, and a former high school teacher who made education and the quality of the county’s schools a major part of his campaign for county executive -- and of his first budget.Two weeks ago, he submitted his 2020 county budget proposal to the County Council. It’s a $3.4 billion dollar plan, more than half of which is devoted to education spending. The Council holds a public hearing about the budget tonight (Tuesday April 30) at 6:00, in Council Chambers in Towson.Baltimore County Executive Olszewski joins Tom in Studio A to discuss the budget and other issues he's confronted during his first five months in office. Listeners with questions and comments can call the studio at 410.662.8780, email us at [email protected], tweet us at @MiddayWYPR, or comment on WYPR's Facebook page, where the program is being livestreamed.

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

Toms Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Junior. A Democrat,

According the Live Baltimore, the organization that, as its name suggests, promotes city living, there are 278 neighborhoods in Baltimore. Today, we begin a new series that shines a light on each of them. From time to time, we’ll sit down with people who are actively involved in their neighborhoods, to learn about the kinds of communities, rich and poor, black and white, well-known and off the radar, that comprise the fabric of our diverse and often quirky hometown. Guests: Sache Jones, Director of Health and Food Justice at the No Boundaries Coalition in Sandtown-Winchester on the West Side.Kim Lane, Executive Director of Pigtown Main Street, also on the West side.Kelly Cross, President of the Old Goucher Community Association, in the center of Baltimore.

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Midday in the Neighborhood - Sandtown, Old Goucher and Pigtown

The classical guitar virtuoso Xavier Jara joined Tom in Studio A.Three years ago, at the age of 22, he won First Prize in the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Concert Artist Competition, and he’s won several other international guitar competitions as well.A native of Minnesota, he studied there, and in Paris, and he’s in town to play a concert tomorrow night at 8 pm at Towson University’s Kaplan Concert Hall with another great guitarist, Tengyue Zhang. Their performance is part of the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society’s annual series. We live-streamed this segment on the WYPR Facebook page. Click here to watch that video.

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Ever since the story of Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh's lucrative self-dealing book sales first broke in the Sun March 13th, the city has been on a political roller coaster ride, with an embattled Mayor sidelined by pneumonia and taking an indefinite leave of absence, while the city council president assumed her duties amid a growing chorus of calls for Mayor Pugh's resignation. The latest turn came at about 6:30 yesterday morning, when agents from the FBI and the criminal division of the IRS fanned out across Baltimore and executed search warrants in seven different locations, including two of the mayor's homes, and the seat of our city’s government, City Hall. Today, Tom speaks with some of the reporters who are covering this rapidly developing story. A little later, Luke Broadwater of the Baltimore Sun and Jayne Miller of WBAL Television will join us. We’ll also get the perspective of a defense attorney, William Purpura. He is not representing Mayor Catherine Pugh, but he has represented people in some very high-profile recent cases. But we begin today with the newest member of the WYPR news team, city hall reporter Emily Sullivan.

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In his latest collection of essays, local writer D. Watkins explores the experiences of Black people in low income neighborhoods who are often discussed, but never heard from directly. He calls the assumptions and depictions of poor Black people in much of the media the product of a “drone-like” perspective, and he endeavors to dispel some of those assumptions, and bring voices from the hood, to the fore. The book is called We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America. D. Watkins is an editor-at-large at Salon and a lecturer at the University of Baltimore’s Klein Family School of Communication Design. His work has been published in the New York Times and many other national publications. D. is the author of the New York Times Bestsellers, The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America, and The Cookup: A Crack Memoir.

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On Thursdays here on Midday, our theater critic, J. Wynn Rousuck, reviews all things theatrical throughout the region. Today, instead of a review, we bring you an interview Judy conducted earlier this month with Canadian playwrights David Hein and Irene Sankoff, the married co-creators of the award-winning show, Come From Away. The couple spoke with Judy by phone from New York City.Their show was inspired by real-life events in the small Newfoundland community of Gander, immediately following the September 11, 2001 series of airborne terrorist attacks in the United States. Those attacks prompted the closure of US airspace and the diversion of all US-bound airline flights. Thirty-eight commercial jetliners were forced to land in Gander, stranding nearly 7000 passengers in the tiny coastal community for the better part of a week. The North American touring production of this hit Broadway musical is at the Hippodrome Theater here in Baltimore through Sunday, April 28.

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J. Wynn Rousuck's Interview with Come From Away Playwrights David Hein and Irene Sankoff