Roughly Speaking

Did the twin punches of Harvey and Irma constitute a convincer? Will those massive, destructive and deadly storms persuade more Americans, starting with the president, that climate change is real and causing extreme weather? While the Trump administration pulled the United States out of a leadership role on climate change, state and local officials have pledged to move ahead with initiatives to further arrest greenhouse gases. On Wednesday, a coalition of environmentalists, clergy and solar and wind energy companies urged Maryland leaders to get half of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2030.Brooke Harper, Maryland and District of Columbia policy director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, says setting the 50 percent goal would put Maryland in the vanguard of states confronting climate change.Links:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/environment/bs-md-renewable-energy-goal-20170913-story.htmlhttp://chesapeakeclimate.org/

2:09: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian and Roughly Speaking critic, recommends a debut novel, "My Absolute Darling," by Gabriel Tallent.5:58: After the islands, Florida and southern states were pummeled by Hurriane Irma, after Houston was flooded by Hurricane Harvey, it might be hard for Americans to turn their attention to Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan and the famine hitting those countries. But our topic is something a lot of Americans might not be aware of: The Trump administration's proposed deep cuts to foreign aid that for decades enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress. Thomas Awiapo, a native of Ghana orphaned as a boy, survived childhood famine because of U.S. foreign aid, and he tells us his heartbreaking story of survival. Now a consultant with Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, Awiapo was in Washington recently to says thanks for the food he received at a village school and to ask that such aid continue.Links:http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541271/my-absolute-darling-by-gabriel-tallent/

Ahead of the 18-hour Ken Burns-Lynn Novick PBS film on Vietnam, Dan speaks with Arnold R. "Skip" Isaacs, who covered the war in the 1970s for The Baltimore Sun. Isaacs separates fact from myth: Was the U.S. military really limited in how it could fight the North Vietnamese? Has the anti-war movement's role in ending the war been overstated? Did the U.S. press corps sway public opinion against continued American involvement? Did final defeat for South Vietnam result from the cutoff of U.S. aid? Arnold Isaacs, a veteran reporter and editor, is the author of the acclaimed "Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy," and "Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia." He taught courses on Vietnam at Towson University.

1:08: Paula Gallagher, Baltimore County librarian, recommends a new non-fiction book, "American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land," by Monica Hesse of The Washington Post.6:20: A former president of the NAACP, Ben Jealous has been running for the Democratic nomination for Maryland governor since June. In today's show, he criticizes the incumbent, Gov. Larry Hogan, for showing only recent interest in Baltimore's severe problem with violent crime. He also notes Maryland's decline among states with the top-ranked educational systems and pledges to increase funding for schools to recommended levels. Links:http://books.wwnorton.com/books/American-Fire/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-jealous-governor-20170530-story.html

In part two of Dan's conversation with Gilbert Sandler, the teller of Baltimore tales talks about Baltimore after World War II and through the second half of the 20th Century. He gives his views of Baltimore yesterday and today, and takes a couple of nostalgic side trips to old Orioles Park and the Club Charles. Sandler is the writer and host of Baltimore Stories on WYPR. For more than 30 years, he entertained and informed readers of the Sun with his Baltimore Glimpses column, with descriptions of the way things used to be in the city. He is the author of several books about his hometown.Links:http://wypr.org/people/gil-sandler

1:38: Our weekly book recommendation: Paula Gallagher reviews, "Stay With Me," an excellent debut novel by a young Nigerian writer, Ayobami Adebayo.5:22: Gilbert Sandler: Teller of Baltimore Tales, Part I: Few people of 90 years or more are blessed with a memory like Gilbert Sandler's, and few know as much about Baltimore. Born here in 1923, Sandler has been observing and chronicling city life for decades. He wrote a regular column, Baltimore Glimpses, for the old Baltimore Evening Sun, and continues his story-telling to this day with weekly features on WYPR, the NPR station here. The author of several books about the city, Sandler sits down with Dan in the podcast studio to talk about himself for a change: Growing up in northwest Baltimore, selling newspapers on street cars, living through the Depression and attending City College before going off to war with U.S. Navy.Coming next week: Part II: Gilbert Sandler remembers Baltimore after World War II and talks about the many changes that have taken place in the city over the last 50 years.Photo by Will Kirk, courtesy of the Jewish Museum of MarylandLinks:http://www.ayobamiadebayo.com/https://www.amazon.com/Gilbert-Sandler/e/B001KMJOOUhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/796206.Gilbert_Sandlerhttp://wypr.org/people/gil-sandlerhttps://www.amazon.com/Gilbert-Sandler/e/B001KMJOOU

Dan and guests Peter Jensen (0:40), a member of The Baltimore Sun's editorial board, and Richard J. Crosss III (19:46), Maryland Republican speechwriter and political commentator, talk about the last couple of weeks in Trumpland, from Charlottesville to Trump Tower to the President's long, rambling screed at a rally in Phoenix. What is the President gaining from his frequent attacks and on the media and members of his own party in Congress? The Sun's Erin Cox, originally scheduled for this episode, was unable to join, but will do so on a future show.

Some have been torn down, some have been turned into stores, many into churches. Baltimore once had more than 100 movie houses, many of them small theaters in city neighborhoods. Baltimore Sun photographer Amy Davis became fascinated with the forgotten cinemas and spent close to a decade tracking them down, learning their histories and taking photographs of what remains. The result is, "Flickering Treasures," a 302-page book, loaded with old and contemporary photographs, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Amy Davis has been a staff photographer for The Baltimore Sun since 1987. She and her book will be the main attraction at a Enoch Pratt Free Library's Writers Live event at the Parkway Theater on Sept. 19.Links:http://flickeringtreasures.com/about/https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/flickering-treasureshttp://calendar.prattlibrary.org/event/amy_davis_flickering_treasures_rediscovering_baltimores_forgotten_movie_theaters#.WZ01fHeGNsM

1:53: Paula Gallagher's weekly book recommendation is, "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South," by Maryland-based culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, creator of the Afroculinaria blog.5:31: Jim O'Leary, senior scientist at the Maryland Science Center, talks about Monday's solar eclipse and what visitors to the center can expect as the moon passes between the Sun and Earth.Links:https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062379290/the-cooking-genehttps://afroculinaria.com/http://www.mdsci.org/http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-hs-eclipse-research-20170811-story.htmlhttp://www.mdsci.org/event/sun-fun-eclipse/

Maybe the newest technology isn't always the best, or maybe the best needs a backup. That is turning out to be the case in two arenas of life — navigation and voting. While GPS is in wide use now — military, commercial and civilian — it's not foolproof. "The Coast Guard has reported multiple episodes of GPS jamming at non-U.S. ports," reports Sean Gallagher, the Baltimore-based IT and national security editor for Ars Technica. "South Korea has claimed on several occasions that North Korea has jammed GPS near the border, interfering with aircraft and fishing fleet navigation." So what's the answer? A return to the LORAN system — a land-based radio navigation system developed during World War II and declared unnecessary within the last decade. Gallagher describes how a LORAN comeback is in the offing as a backup for GPS.And while new technology has entered the realm of elections and voting, there still are major concerns about hacking, enough that security experts suggest a return to good old paper ballots, like those now used in Maryland elections. Paper records are needed to back up e-ballots. Gallagher attended the recent Def Con computer security conference, where hackers were easily able to break into voting machines and voter databases.Links:http://gpsworld.com/us-coast-guard-issues-gps-jamming-alert/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/radio-navigation-set-to-make-global-return-as-gps-backup-because-cyber/http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35940542http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/335734-can-congress-establish-a-backup-for-gps-before-its-too-latehttp://fortune.com/2017/07/31/defcon-hackers-us-voting-machines/http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/defcon-hackers-find-holes-in-every-voting-machine