The Numbers

From my walk last night at our local state park, things I saw.
Deer: 1
Large turtles swimming in river: 1
Big ol' carp: 2
Shoes stuck in mud near river: 2
Great Blue Heron: 2
Screaming joggers: 2

That last one is the interesting one. I was walking along enjoying the quiet and solitude on the river path when I heard a few screams behind me. They didn't sound like someone was dying - more like two kids playing around. They kept getting closer, though, so I had to pay attention to it. Soon two joggers came into view - both women. One got to me first and I saw that she was swatting and squealing at something near her. I saw nothing.

"Should I start running now? Are we being followed by something invisible and terrible?" I asked jokingly as she got near me.

"These bugs are following us!" she said, still running past me. That's when I saw a large flying insect following her. A hornet. Yeesh.

They weren't sure why, but they ended up having a couple hornets join them for their jog. I was more concerned that the women stay the heck away from me so that the hornets wouldn't leave them and choose me as a slower and easier target. I didn't feel like joining the women for their run. I'm sure that sight would've been great - the three of us running and flailing and screaming down the path.

The hornets had not been stinging them, thankfully, and when the other jogger got to me (the first one ran on by with a visible hornet following her) she said she'd been finally able to slap her assailant to the ground. But then she kept running to go help her cohort.

Truly bizarre. I came upon the joggers later on, and they were still slightly freaked out but thankful that they'd seemed to have shaken their followers by then. So much for a nice evening jog for them.

In others news, you'll all be happy to hear that the idiot druggie neighbors have finally been evicted. I came home Thursday and saw all their stuff piled out in front of their house. I was happy at first, but then I felt bad for being happy. I mean, kicking people out of their house isn't great. But then again - they're the ones making bad choices and getting themselves into that situation in the first place. Can't say I'm sad at all to see them go. I feel bad for those who have to clean the house out. There are trash bags all over the back yard and all their furniture is still out front.

I'm glad they're gone before July 4th. I wasn't looking forward to seeing what kind of insane firework display they'd start in their own backyard.

Congress

On Monday I went to my first Congressional hearing in the House office building called Rayburn. It was about the Sept. 11 dust issue in Lower Manhattan. Or rather, if you want the real subcommittee and hearing name - try this on for size:

House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Oversight Hearing on "Substantive Due Process Violations Arising from the Environmental Protection Agency's Handling of Air Quality Issues Following the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001."

Yeah, trying repeating that 45 times every time you call a different House press office and ask if the media can attend. If you've not been following the dust issue from Sept. 11 like I have (it's been my pet issue since I first covered 9/11 back in that fall of 2001) - it involves whether or not government officials lied about the air quality around Lower Manhattan when the World Trade Center towers came tumbling down. Whether you believe they lied or not, what is true is that thousands are now sick, and that includes both rescue workers who worked at Ground Zero and also residents and people who work in that area.

This committee hearing was huge because it was the first time former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman was to testify under oath about her role in the EPA when Sept. 11 happened. She was the one who gave the 'all clear!' words numerous times about the safety of the air around Ground Zero. Many NYC environmental organizations chartered buses down to DC to watch this hearing - people were ready for Whitman to answer some questions.

Should you want to read further into this issue, feel free the read the articles we've written about it by clicking here.

Anyway, fun times. I took a train down to DC and then hiked from Union Station over to the Rayburn office building. I say hiked because I was told that laptops were allowed, so I brought mine along. It becomes heavy when hoofing it in hot weather across 10 or 15 blocks.

When I got to the Rayburn building, I was sweaty and there was already a protest going on outside. I saw some folks I knew from NYC who work for organizations who help those affected by 9/11 and walked inside with them. There was a huge line waiting to get into the hearing room and thankfully there was still room left for the press to get in. The hearing room was amazing - huge high ceilings and the US seal and all the pomp and circumstance you'd expect.

When I took my seat I realized by reading nearby nametags that I was in between a reporter from the NY Times and one from the NY Daily News - both of whom's articles I've read for years on this same issue. I'm a huge fan of them both - especially the guy from the Daily News (I have his book). I refrained from going all fangirl on them and instead just smiled and took out my laptop.

Wow - what a long hearing. It was cool to watch the House Reps argue very heatedly with Whitman, who would yell right back. She even got the occasional boos and jeers from the audience - which were always met with the Subcomittee chair slamming down his gavel and yelling out, "THERE WILL BE NONE OF THAT! WE WILL NOT HAVE DEMONSTRATIONS IN THIS ROOM!"

It was also interesting to see the party lines evident on the subcommittee. The dems were very interested in pinning Whitman down when she'd obviously not be answering a question or would quickly trot out "Terrorists!" excuses. The republicans (the two who actually showed up to the hearing, the other five or six never showed) talked long about how pointless this hearing was and lobbed easy questions to Whitman. They also rambled on about how the dems are trying to find a conspiracy that did not exist between the White House and the EPA right after 9/11.

Some of the dems (and public) are convinced that because all of the EPA's press releases that went out in the weeks after Sept. 11 were OK'd and sometimes changed by White House Council on Environmental Quality folks, that the White House was pushing its own wants instead of public safety. Because Lower Manhattan and Wall Street were reopened so quickly after 9/11 due to Whitman saying "the air's fine to breathe!", many think the White House just wanted those open for its own reasons.

It's hard to explain if you don't have hours to read or listen, really. It boils down to some thinking Bush was more interested in the US economy getting back on its feet and on "showing them terrorists that we're back open so quick!" rather than being truly interested in the health and safety of those who worked in that area.

Another issue - OSHA and the EPA were not requiring recovery workers working at Ground Zero to wear respirators and protective gear. They advised them to do it, but neither required it. OSHA gave the excuse that it had no jurisdiction to do that. The EPA said they didn't take federal control of Ground Zero to require it because they didn't think it was necessary. Whitman even said at the hearing that she couldn't have imagined how the US people would have skewered her if the EPA had taken over Ground Zero for that reason.

So, back to the hearing. The republicans lobbed softball questions at Whitman, the dems nailed her.

Where do I stand? I agree with the republicans who said that there was no conspiracy to maliciously hurt US citizens. No one was out to reopen things so quick because they wanted people to get sick.

But I do think things reopened too quickly. There are test results that showed high levels of asbestos and other toxins in the air during the weeks and months the buildings smoldered. The EPA advised people to clean their offices and apartments of these toxins using wet rags and mops.

I don't know - it is hindsight. One republican bored the crap out of the audience for 20 minutes making an allusion to how one battle in the Civil War might have gone differently if one cannon had shot a different direction. The point he was making was that looking back on things in history - sure, we can make the corrections we want because we can see the whole thing.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. The EPA and OSHA weren't being malicious, no - but it also seems like they sure moved real quick on things before really studying the effects. It's true that a terrorist attack like this was unprecedented, but at one hearing witness pointed out - the EPA and OSHA have both long studied the effects of buildings collapses and buildings burning. They know what kinds of things are released into the air and have both released reports on how toxic demolitions like that truly are.

In any case, it's certainly been a fascinating topic to cover in the past six years (some of those years I wasn't on it due to a different job, but I still followed it).

I'm glad I got to go to a hearing. I was glad this one was not all day, but instead started at 1pm. I left at 5, I just couldn't take it anymore. My butt was numb (I texted that to Amber - thinking how odd it was that I was covering this huge important hearing while sitting there texting someone about my butt) and my brain was fried.

It was an interesting experience sitting there with all those other big time reporters - there were tons of us there. Whenever Whitman came into the room there was a blur of cameras flashing and clicking. It was cool to hear the public getting involved by jeering, I like when people get vocal and have to be quieted by a gavel.

My notes from the hearing are interesting. I'm glad I took my laptop as my writing hand would've been numb from all that. I type much faster than I can write, plus - my typing is usually more legible. At certain points I typed in things like "I've now discovered that Congressional hearing room chairs are uncomfortable after about 2 hours" and "why the hell is this guy rambling on about the civil war?"

Oh - also cool was hearing Whitman take swipes at the media. She even made some statement at one point to a subcommittee member about "Oh, well keep saying that - the press is just DYING to quote you on that one." To which all the reporters around me rolled their eyes and shook their heads. We just looked at each other and laughed. She hates us, but then used in her presentation quotes from news articles to back up her viewpoints.

It was cool toward the end of the hearing to see the other reporters start typing up their stories right then to be filed. So I did that too. It was a time to feel good being a reporter for me - listening to a Congressional hearing while typing up my story.

I did not bring my camera because it would've been one more thing to lug around. Plus, this hearing was serious enough that those who were there to take pictures were professional photojournalists and not regular journalists taking photos and writing a story. I did snap a few quick camera phone shots that will have to tide you over. They are smattered in with this post. In one you can see all the photogs snapping away at Whitman (whom you can barely see).

And that's that - me getting political on my blog.

The Neighbors, cont.

Whew summer, how you keep me busy! Okay, not that busy, but it's warm enough for me to be outside rather than lazing around too much. I did also just finish book #21, in case you were keeping track of my reading goals for the year.

Anyway, I promised more crazy neighborhood stories, and so here they are.

First up, the hammer story. A few weeks back I was in the house with the windows open to enjoy the nice breeze. Suddenly I heard lots of yelling out front, some woman was yelling about getting her stuff back.

I look out front and a two-door sporty type car is sitting in front of my house with two guys inside of it. A woman is standing in front of it yelling her head off about how she wants her stuff back. The passenger door is slightly open, so she grabs it and then they decide to put it in reverse. Bad move. She holds onto to the door and then occurs a scene much like the car door scene from the movie "Tommy Boy" - it bends in the wrong direction as they back the car up. It made a lovely noise.

At that point a guy who was standing with the yelling woman jumps into the passenger seat and starts just wailing away on the guy sitting there. That's when I ran to call the cops. After hanging up I heard some glass shattering outside. That worried me because this whole spectacle was happening right next to my car.

Fortunately it wasn't my car, but unfortunately it was the same sports car under attack before. Its windshield was now shattered, as was its passenger side window. The woman and her accomplice then promptly jumped into their car and sped off, leaving the two guys in the sports car sitting in the middle of the intersection with a shattered vehicle.

The guys were very suspect and the neighbors informed me that they're some neighborhood druggies they often see around. As we waited for the cops to show up we watched these two skinny dudes twitch around and remove some things from their car. No idea what they removed, but I have a feeling it was drugs - or perhaps the items the woman had accused them of stealing.

The cops showed up and chatted with the victims. As it turns out, the part I had missed was the guy attacker coming after them with a hammer and then the girl smashing their car with the hammer and hitting the guy a few times with the hammer, too. Hooray.

One of the cops then makes his way up my steps to ask me if I saw what happened. As I start explaining what I saw, the woman who did it all shows up behind the cop. And this is why the neighborhood happenings make me laugh:

"Hold on, I'm here - I did it and let me tell you why!!" she yells.

She then promptly admits to doing it all. The reason? She lives across the street from the guy and says he stole stuff from inside her car. A GPS system and some other stuff.

"He has it all in his car right now, you can search it!" she yells.

Well of course the two twitchy drug addicts yell back, "Nuh uh, you can search the car right now. Ain't nothin' in it!"

The one woman cop on the scene has had enough. You can tell she's probably had to deal with these idiots before.

"Okay okay, wait a minute here, you just admitted to doing all this?" the cop yells.

"Yes," the woman says, and then she starts trying to retell the whole story.

"STOP IT, THAT'S IT!" the cop yells. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU PEOPLE."

She then slaps the cuff on the woman and throws her in the cruiser. Some more statements are taken, the same cop threatens to throw the two druggies into jail, too, if they don't shut up. She wasn't taking shit from anyone.

Ah, Baltimore.

I'll tell you, the woman and her accomplice didn't look much like addicts. She looked normal, except for the hammer-wielding anger. Thing is, though, I believed her more than I believed the druggies. I've been in her shoes - I've had people steal from me. So I kind of felt for her. Of course I don't advocate taking a hammer to anyone or to their car, but still, I know how she feels.

Oh, and I think it was related to our crackhead family neighbors because this woman and those guys lived on another street. And yet I believe the woman was trying to track them down and came to the drug house on our street to see if she could find them. Then they showed up. I'm not positive on that, but I don't know why else she was on our street.

From there another week went by before our next episode of COPS. Amy's never around for these events, unfortunately, I'm the one who gets to experience it all. I think she's now started to expect me to say, "Guess what you missed tonight!" each time she gets home.

Anyway, about a week goes by after The Hammer Incident. Again, the windows are open for a nice breeze. Suddenly I hear a giant explosion out back. Tuesday the Cat jumps about 10 feet in the air and shoots upstairs to hide.

I walk to the back door and open it just in time to see some guys run out the back of the crackhead family house, light something in their backyard and then run back inside.

BOOM! A huge firework blows up at ground level - and I mean one of those ones that's mean to be about 100 feet up in the air and far away from people and buildings. Huge purple and orange sparks shoot all over the back alley, all over everyone's yards. Everyone runs out on the back porch.

Then there are huge 5-6 foot flames shooting up out of the idiots' backyard. Something is on fire, but I can't tell. Moron and crew try to put the huge fire out by throwing pots and pans full of water onto it. The only amusing part was the choir of neighbor voices collectively calling them dumbasses and all sorts of foul words. Then I realize what they're burning - a motorbike scooter thing. The neighbors are all yelling because they're freaked out that there's still gas in the thing.

Moron and crew start yelling back defensively, "Ain't no gas in it! Shut up! Ain't no gas!"

Then some neighbors dragged their hoses over and put it out. The fire department shows up, but the fire's out. The police show up, but do nothing. As the last cop walks away I asked him what the deal was.

"You mean you can't do anything to them for this?" I asked.

He immediately gets defensive. "Hold on, ma'am, let me explain. We can't do anything to them because we didn't see them do anything. Yes, fireworks are illegal, but we didn't see them light it so we can't do anything."

I tell him that I can show him 30 neighbors who saw them do it. Still, they can't do anything. Something about how it's on private property.

What a waste. It was really dangerous what they did. Eric made a comment on my last post about us doing similar things with fireworks at my parents' house - but this was really different.

#1- They did it in their tiny little eight by 12 backyard extremely close to all the neighbors.
#2- Their immediate neighbors have their heating oil tanks in their backyards.
#3- They did it to a motorbike that could have still had gas inside of it.
#4- It was a huge, huge firework that shot sparks up to 30 feet away. I saw them land in my backyard and beyond.

The list goes on - these guys are morons.

We had heard they were being evicted, but that has not turned out to be true, unfortunately. They're still there acting like idiots. Thankfully there've been no more fireworks, but I'll bet July 4 will be interesting this year.

Several days later Amy and I were out back hanging up laundry when one of the younger morons - maybe 13 or 14 - comes outside with a gun. I look over and he quickly hides it behind his back. There's no plastic orange tip on this one, it looks real from where I am. He runs back inside. Then later I see him pointing it out his upstairs window all over the place. Again, I tell Amy, "I hope that's fake."

Slightly disturbing. The only even slight humor from that tale comes about 15 minutes later. Amy and I decide to go for a walk that evening so we exit out the backyard. Moron kid is still pointing the gun out his window, so I tell Amy to glance back at it for a look. She's not sure if it's real either.

Anyway, we shrug it off, I'm not going to start anything with them. I had told that cop that I was afraid of retaliation from them.

So, we're about 15 feet down the alley way and into the street when the kid yells out, "F*cking dykes!"

Lovely. Here I'd thought we'd been doing well in not getting any anti-gay slurs thrown at us yet in our new neighborhood. Only took a year!

Anyway, I've been called much worse. Plus, reacting angrily to it just gives idiots more power, so I do my regular reaction when called names like that.

I turned around, waved at him, gave a big smile and yelled back, "Thanks for noticing!"

Then we keep walking. From there his insult becomes surprise, it was a hilarious transition.

"Wait! Wait! Are you for real? Are you really? Wait! Come back! Are you for real?"

Amy and I laughed for the rest of our walk. First he was trying to hate us, then he got excited. Like we're going to go back and talk to him.

"Why yes, we are f*cking dykes! Here's our trade manual, please give us some time to tell you more!"

Ah, Baltimore. I'd rather not jinx myself by saying nothing crazy has happened since then, but I just did. I was slightly worried that that anti-gay slur would lead to vandalism of our property, but thankfully that hasn't happened. If it did, we'd know exactly who to accuse, anyway.

I've probably made my neighborhood sound like a drug-riddled crime zone. In some ways, I suppose it it. But it's also got a lot of nice stuff. I can sit out front and garden. Neighbors say Hi from their front porches as you walk by. The little league team goes door to door for donations and their parents escort them and make sure they say please and thank you. Monday nights are little league nights at the field at the end of our street and the whole neighborhood turns out for it.

It's got good and bad.

There's a policeman laying in my front yard...

I was discussing the happenings in my neighborhood with a friend and he suggested I should write a book because it's so crazy. It's true - some weird and bizarre things have happened in the almost 12 months since we moved to this new house.

I decided that if I do write a book about this neighborhood, the title will be "There's a Policeman Laying in my Front Yard: One year in a south Baltimore neighborhood" - or something like that.

I forgot what all I've shared on this blog about my 'hood. I do know that I shared the story of my one neighbor who threatened someone over the phone with "I will cut your f*cking head off with a f*cking saw!" That happened when we first moved in last June.

What's funnier about that neighbor is that he's turned into one of our nicest neighbors and even mowed our lawn for us one afternoon because (as he told me with a big smile), "I was just in the mood to mow some lawns." I had meanly referred to him as "Assface," but that was dropped quickly when I realized he was actually quite friendly. So, sorry about that, but hey - first impressions go a long way. Especially when my first impression of you is your threatening a brutal death on someone.

Anyway - Herman is a nice guy.

We're also fortunate to have very nice neighbors on either side of us. Mary Jo watches our fat cat Tuesday when we're out of town. Ron and his daughter Charlene are also friendly. Ron guts big Rockfish in his backyard on occasion (yeah, wonder why we have rats?). Ron also thinks just about everyone in the neighborhood that he doesn't know personally is a drug dealer - and that's especially true if you're not white. Ron is a racist, but thankfully he does not drop the N-bomb. He just whispers.

An example. One afternoon Ron and I were chatting on our front porches when a comical sight happened. A grown man zoomed by at a high speed on one of those tiny, tiny motorcycles. It was clown-like, with his knees all bent up as he fit himself onto this tiny zooming machine. Ron and I paused until the sound died down. Then when the guy was gone Ron said in a very small whisper, "Probably a drug dealer." The clown on the motorcyle was black.

Why would I assume that he said that because the guy was black?

Another example from earlier in the year. When Amy and I were tearing stuff out of our house, we would put it out in trash bags just to see what all the garbagemen would actually take. We decided if they wouldn't take it, we'd just take it to the dump ourselves. It was a test.

One afternoon when we returned to the house, Ron was in his backyard and pulled me aside.

"You know, those garbagemen almost didn't take all those heavy bags you put out there," he said.

"Oh yeah, we were just seeing if they would take it. I'm glad they did!" I replied.

"Well, I was out here when they came by, they said they'd take it if i gave them a little extra," Ron said, making that money sign with his fingers.

"Oh geez - you didn't give them anything, did you? You don't have to bribe the garbagemen for our trash. We would've just taken it to the dump ourselves," said said.

"No way, I didn't give them anything. They still took it, though. But these guys wanted some money out of it."

Then Ron came closer and whispered. "They were black."

Thanks, Ron.

Beyond his racist undertones, Ron is a nice guy. For a while, we would battle to see who could mow the other's lawn first. We have tiny front yards, so it just doesn't make sense to only mow your tiny yard and not your adjoining neighbor's as well.

Ron recently hurt his foot and so now I always mow his lawn with the agreement that I get to use his electric mower rather than my human-powered mower. Much faster and much nicer.

So you can see the nice people that live around us.

The weird stuff happens just beyond those neighbors. Last fall a row house several houses down from ours (not attached to our group, thankfully) burnt. It was a rude awakening at 3am to hear glass shattering and people shouting "get out!" Fortunately no one was inside. Then later from the neighborhood gossip vine (of which Charlene and Mary Jo are old and founding members of) we learned that the burnt house had turned into a drug house and the neighbors had called the cops on them numerous times.

So people weren't that unhappy to see it burn. And then we learned that it was the druggie homeowner who burnt it - he threw a burning bottle of gasoline through its back window at 3am - like no one in our neighborhood would see that happen.

That home has sat as a burnt out shell since then. I feel bad for the immediate neighbors, and yet it makes the whole neighborhood look bad when you have a burnt out shell on your block. Who knows what will happen to it.

The title of the book about the policeman laying in my front yard - that also happened. I came home late one Saturday in November. Amy was out of town that weekend. Anyway, it's about 11pm or so, very dark outside. We have few streetlights at the our end of the street. As I walk up to my house after parking down the street, I notice a man laying in the grassy area between the street and the sidewalk in front of our house. I stop and stare. He's laying halfway underneath a car there. He must know I'm behind him because he quickly leans out from underneath the car and sits up looking at me. He puts his finger to his lips and goes "shhhhhh..." and then leans back down and lays again half under the car.

Just imagine what would go through your mind at that point, and it probably matched what went through mine.

"What the hell...?"

I think, even though this dude is not laying under my car, I'll do this for my neighbor. I would hope if they saw some guy laying under a car near them, they'd do the same and check on what the heck was going on.

So I respond to the "Shhhh..." with a logical question.

"What in the hell are you doing?!"

The guy leans back out again from beneath the car, pulls a police badge from out of his jacket, shows it to me, then puts it away and goes back to his under car position. I then whisper "Sorry!" and run up my stairs and into the house - where I then call Amy to tell her that there's a policeman laying in our front yard and no, I don't know what he's doing.

That experience was interesting because I like how his badge was a reasonable excuse for his odd position on our grass and under a car. The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was hiding and trying to watch somewhere on the other side of the street from his vantage point beneath a car. And I probably blew his cover - but that could have easily been avoided by him showing me his badge the first time he emerged from its wheel well rather than just trying to have me understand his position with a simple, "Shhhh..." Like he's some strange automotive librarian or something.

After that policeman yard incident, things quieted a bit on the street. Then sometime this winter, I forget exactly when, a new family moved in four row houses down from ours.

I'm trying to figure out what to refer to them as - The Crackhead Family or The Douchebag Family. Let's go with The Crackheads.

I'll share more stories about The Crackheads in another post. Highlights include
-Fireworks in their backyard
-Is that a real or toy gun?

And then another upcoming story: Why you shouldn't attack someone with a hammer. Stay tuned!