Artist Weiss explores concepts of time
The night before Michael Weiss’s 10th birthday, he found himself in the middle of an existential crisis about aging. “I was in tears because I was never going to be single digits again,” he said. “The notion of time, the passage of time, the delicacy of life, the fleeting nature of it — it’s been with me since I was that age.” Now 57, Weiss can laugh about this childhood ... READ MORE
‘Room Service’ delivers laughs at Vagabond
It’s a trope we’ve seen in films and theater over the years, usually for comic effect: a hall or wall of doors that open and close as characters spring in and out, surprising, shocking, and saying all sorts of salacious and sappy things. It’s used to slapsticky effect in John Murray and Allen Boretz’s farce Room Service, which debuted in New York in 1937 and returns in 2025 in... READ MORE
Toby’s brings on the boomer nostalgia
“Took a walk and passed your house late last night. All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight. From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade.” If you read that sentence and feared a stalker, then most likely you don’t recognize the lyrics of “Silhouettes,” a 1957 song by The Rays. However, if you broke into song, then Jersey Boys, the current musical... READ MORE
‘Merry Wives’ features a youthful Falstaff
“What is honor? A word. What is in that word ‘honor?’ Air.” So maintains Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare’s rotund, vain, drunken and “sanguine coward.” A standout character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, Falstaff commands sole attention in the comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor performed by the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in a delightful outdoor production in... READ MORE
Remembering East Baltimore in the 50s
Those who’ve ever lived in a Baltimore row house may remember scrubbing the front steps with a strong brush and brown soap or Ajax until the stone brightened and the white marble gleamed. “There was something about the cleanliness of the vestibule,” author Janet Vanik Divel remembers. “It was pride in ownership, maybe old-fashioned thinking,” but owning a home “was the end ... READ MORE
On top of the world with a Baltimore artist
Baltimore native and visionary artist Ernest Shaw Jr. is a unique storyteller. In his decades-long career, Shaw, 53, has won numerous awards and accolades for his dignified and spirited images of the people of the African diaspora and their impact on American culture. This month, Shaw’s paintings of this complex story are exhibited in his solo show, “Continuous Line,” displayed at... READ MORE
Made in Baltimore with love
A few years ago, Teresa Stephens was working in a community garden in West Baltimore when a disheveled man stumbled in from a nearby alley, alcohol on his breath. The man, who told her he had grown up on a North Carolina farm, seemed interested in her work. Stephens, now 52, offered him a plot of his own. “I provided everything: a shovel, a hoe, the seeds he said he wanted,” she... READ MORE
Appreciating Maryland’s heritage
How has nature nurtured you during the pandemic? That’s the question Patapsco Heritage Greenway Inc. — the conservation group that oversees the Patapsco Valley Heritage Area — is asking Marylanders to respond to this month in the form of poems, essays, drawings or even songs. Based in Ellicott City, the nonprofit Patapsco Heritage Greenway (PHG) works to preserve and protect the ... READ MORE
Conversations on race, culture
The new director of Maryland’s museum of African American history and culture has bigger things in mind than cataloguing or explaining events and artworks of the past. Terri Lee Freeman takes over as executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore on Feb. 15, at a time when the country is focused anew on the issue of racism. She hopes to involve the museum and its... READ MORE
Beloved waitress writes fiction
Everyone in Baltimore, it seems, knows Peachy. Leonora “Peachy” DePietro Dixon has waited tables at Sabatino’s restaurant in Little Italy since 1974. (She received her childhood nickname for her peaches-and-cream complexion.) With a wide circle of friends from all over Baltimore and celebrity acquaintances, she is well known for her warm-heartedness. Among the famous people... READ MORE
