Celebrated Baltimore novelist Sujata Massey recently took the spotlight at a Stoop Storytelling event titled, “It’s a Mystery:  Stories about the unanswered questions that haunt our city, our families, and ourselves.”  Massey loves to write a good mystery, but as you’ll hear, it’s not so fun when a real-life mystery lurks right inside your own home.

Have you ever taken a drawing class, the kind where you draw a live model?  Most of those models just do the work on the side, here and there, to make a few extra bucks.  But there are some lucky ones who have agents, managers who treat them like superstars and tend to their every need.  Producer Aaron Henkin takes us inside one of the most exclusive modeling agencies around, The Drawing Zoo.

Singer/songwriter Kristen Toedtman currently splits her time between Baltimore and Los Angeles.  Out on the West Coast, she keeps busy as a session singer and a choir leader.  But she frequently heads back East to perform with the local super-group she helped to found, The Baltimore Afrobeat Society.  Toedtman is in town to record part of an upcoming double EP, and she drops in for a visit with producer Aaron Henkin.

Heather Rounds’ novel, There, follows a young American journalist working in the northern Kurdish zone of Iraq as the region slowly regains its footing after years of war and upheaval. Not structured like a traditional novel, "There" is more a series of stories, impressions, and memories laced together from snatches of conversations, chance encounters, and pages of notes and journal entries. The fragments lend a surreal quality to the story; the rules of time and space are suspended, as in dreams. Heather Rounds joins producer Lisa Morgan to talk about “There.” 

After a long career as a naval architect, Wilbert McKinley, Jr., is starting over.  This time, he’s building an entire fleet by himself – out of Legos.  Commodore McKinley’s educational Teach Fleet is the story of a man who finally discovers what he’s meant to do.  He becomes a visionary artist and a mentor.  As it happens, he’s enjoying a second childhood along the way. Producer Aaron Henkin brings us the story.

The banjo has been on a long, strange musical trip since its first appearance in America.  The instrument was first fashioned by enslaved Africans during Colonial times, a musical descendent of their native kora.  From there, the banjo rang out through the hills and hollers of Appalachia, a mournful accompaniment to mountain balladeers.  Meanwhile, the strumming of the plectrum banjo found its way onto early jazz recordings.  Then along came the fast-picking Bluegrass style of Bill Monroe.  Recently, the banjo has been enjoying a warm embrace in the world of contemporary rock music, from Modest Mouse to Mumford & Sons.  Now, local singer / songwriter Jacob Panic is stretching the banjo’s boundaries one step further, and he visits with Signal producer Aaron Henkin…

The New Black is a powerful documentary that explores the complex issue of gay rights within the African American community. From church pews and conference rooms to street corners and kitchen tables, the film reveals the evolution of this divisive issue, and how outside forces influenced voters on both sides leading up to the historic vote for ballot Question 6 in Maryland in 2012, a referendum that legalized same-sex marriage in the state.  Director Yoruba Richen spoke to producer Lisa Morgan about “The New Black.”

A trip to the pharmacy is, let’s be honest, kind of a drag.  You wait in line.  You give your name.  You watch them rifle through the bags. If you’re lucky, they have your prescription ready.  You pay, and you’re done.  On a good day, you might get a half-smile and a muttered, ‘hello,’ from your pharmacist.  It wasn’t always this way.  Before the modern-day pharmacy, there was the bygone era of the apothecary.  And before pharmacists were relegated to their roles as rubber-stampers of doctor-prescribed medicines, there were herbalists who used their encyclopedic botanical knowledge to create and dispense hand-crafted remedies.  Well, what’s old is new again.  The Signal’s Aaron Henkin has the story…

Upcoming community education events with Oherbals herbalist Olivia Fite:

KITCHEN MEDICINE

A one-hour class on how to use food as medicine & medicine as food

Saturday, November 9th

MESH Baltimore Skill Share event 1-4pm

Christ Lutheran Church

701 S. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21230

KITCHEN MEDICINE

Learn self-care techniques with the contents of your kitchen  

Thursday, November 14th, 7 - 8:30pm

Pivot Point Office

2501 Manhattan Ave. Baltimore, MD 21215

HERBAL DIGESTIFS FOR THE HOLIDAYS: A HANDS-ON WORKSHOP

Sunday, November 24th, 2-4pm

The O Herbals Apothecary

1903 E. Pratt St. 21231

The Tuvan throat-singing ensemble Alash is currently touring the US and on its way to Baltimore for a concert at Towson University’s Stephens Hall Theatre.  Aaron Henkin talks with the band’s interpreter, Sean Quirk, about the human voice’s ability to act as a sonic prism…

Signal contributor Jeff Trueman recently had a surprising and rewarding experience sharing his love of classical music with a couple of wide-eyed, adolescent kids at a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert. The event inspired him to reach out to conductor Marin Alsop with a request for an interview. As you’ll hear, Jeff is an irrepressibly curious (and rather unpredictable) interviewer, and Maestra Alsop handled his wide-ranging questions with characteristic grace and humor….