Every city has its calamities.
Loss of industry. Middle-class flight. Being Cleveland.
Why, oh why, though, is Baltimore’s secret chord a jarring country twang that brings down the rain?
Yes, I’ve got heartaches by the number, troubles by the score ...
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The Baltimore Banner wins a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the city’s opioid crisis, and the City Council finally, finally decides to hold public hearings on the problem.
“We should have had this discussion a long time ago,” Council Public Safety Chair Mark Conway said in a story by my colleague Alissa Zhu, lead reporter on the award-winning series. “I think we can do a lot more work when we have an open discussion about what we’re seeing.”
Understatement of the year, that is.
One day later, more than two dozen people were hospitalized after overdosing on a possible “bad batch” of street drugs.
Police and paramedics filled Penn North shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday and discovered a dozen men and women out on the street, literally unconscious or near it on the pavement. The health department closed half a block outside the Pratt Library branch to set up a pavement triage center.
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Lots of people want answers. How did this happen? Who is to blame?
More importantly, why does karma or fate or just plain bad luck always show up to bite Baltimore in the ass? The city suffers a constant, heartbroken pace of one step forward, two sucker punches to the kidneys.
None of these laments capture the emotional flexibility required to call this city home quite like Jordan Anthony, a jelly-legged “Baltimore Bop Creator” who has a quarter million followers on TikTok as @runitupjordan.
What does the universe have against Baltimore?
If you think I’m exaggerating, here’s a quick reminder.
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The Francis Scott Key Bridge falls, the city responds with a hero’s grace and is embraced by a president with Baltimore ties, Joe Biden, who rushes to offer support.
And then, Donald Trump replaces him and reminds the nation that the city, a favorite target, has rats.
A young, charismatic mayor, Brandon Scott, announces a bold plan to reduce Baltimore’s blight of vacant homes.
And then, the city burns from below with underground utility fires that seem to break out whenever BGE is looking the other way.
Talented Ravens teams keep falling short of the Super Bowl, but the NFL team has a nice-guy star kicker who rarely misses in the clutch and loves Royal Farms fried chicken.
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Then Justin Tucker is accused of inappropriate behavior by massage therapists and has to slink away from a town that still loves him, but now has a broken heart.
Work finally gets going to replace the 150-year-old B&P Tunnel, a choke point for East Coast passenger train traffic through the city.
And then, an Amtrak train loses power and strands passengers for hours in a hot, dark passageway called the Union Tunnel.
The Orioles are freed from the shackles of out-of-touch ownership and reach the playoffs in a pulse-pounding moment of collective cheer.
A season later, they’re six games out of the wild card slot on the back end of a season that’s putting off a stink like a Patapsco River low tide in August.
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Baltimore’s homicide rate hits a 50-year low — half a century! — in the first half of the year, and the 164 nonfatal shootings represent a 19% drop from last year.
And then, Baltimore Police are involved in four fatal shootings in less than two months, including of a 70-year-old woman.
Every day you love me less, each day I love you more ...
Baltimore’s hard-luck chord strikes differently on opposite sides of the city line.
If you live in the city, the high notes are the ones that stay with you.
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My colleagues at The Banner have helped me appreciate the city in ways I never had before, telling me about the food at Blacksauce Kitchen, George Dennehy playing the National Anthem with his toes, the Creative Alliance’s BIG Show and neighbors like Ulysses and Chrysalinn Archie at Peace Park.
My suburban brothers and sisters don’t hear this.
They’re often afraid of the city, thinking of it only as a place of gun violence and mass drug overdoses.
It’s unfair and it’s untrue.
There will be questions about the Penn North day of overdoses. If this is a new variety of drug, there could be overdoses elsewhere.
Answers will come — not easily, not quickly. Eventually. Solutions will be harder to find.
The world will move on, and few will hear what Baltimore learns from this sad afternoon in July.
Yes, I’ve got heartaches by the number, a love that I can’t win ...
I’ve long said that Maryland, my home for six decades, would be a much better place if Baltimore were strong, vibrant and a success story.
Little did I know that it always has been. I just wasn’t paying attention the right way.
So take the punch, Baltimore.
Get up. Laugh off the references to Murdermore and the City that Bleeds, and figure out where we go from here. Dance like @runitupjordan and seek out the next joy.
Just remember to steel yourself for the punch that will inevitably follow.
You’ve done it before.
But the day that I stop counting, that’s the day my world will end
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