Author: Dan Rodricks

My Sun column today is about someone many from the newspaper knew -- and someone I wish the rest of you could have known: Ernie Imhoff, longtime reporter and editor for the Sunpapers of Baltimore, an assistant managing editor of the bygone Evening Sun and its last managing editor. Ernie, who died the other day, … Continue reading E stands for Encouragement, Enthusiasm and Ernie

This Saturday, December 4, from 1pm-3pm ET  the #breathewithme Revolution and the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project present the World Premiere of Hidden in Full View, a short film that documents the lynching of 23-year old Matthew Williams in Salisbury, Maryland 90 years ago. The release is part of a national campaign that includes the upcoming publication of a book about the Williams … Continue reading Online premiere: ‘Hidden In Full View,’ the Matthew Williams lynching in Maryland

The guilty verdicts in the murder trial of the three men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia bring to mind something I’ve thought about a lot: How we in the news media missed the story so many times over so many years.  I’m in my 48th year in the newspaper world. I go … Continue reading After Arbery verdicts: All the injustices we missed or ignored

Haudenosaunee refers to the Six Nations of Native Americans commonly known as the Iroquois — that is, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Tuscarora and Seneca. The Haudenosaunee (pronounced hoe-dee-no-SHOW-nee) are known for a tradition of giving daily thanks. “Haudenosaunee people give thanks everyday, not just once a year,” says the National Museum of the American Indian. … Continue reading Giving daily thanks: A Native American tradition

After sitting in the sun and listening to him for close to two hours, I asked Kenny Braitman to spend a few minutes elaborating on something he said during our conversation at his permaculture farm in Western Maryland — that having been in the Marine Corps was one of the best things that happened to … Continue reading Thanksgiving column: Kenny Braitman and a life of gratefulness

In the wake of the Rittenhouse trial and verdict, here's a hypothetical to ponder from Arnold "Skip" Isaacs, former Baltimore Sun correspondent and editor: Isaacs Imagine that last January 6 a concerned citizen -- let's call him LyleKittenhouse -- became worried that the Capitol police were beingoverwhelmed by the mob, that he picked up a … Continue reading What if Rittenhouse had taken on the Jan. 6 mob?

This terrible week in Baltimore got worse Thursday night with a 13-year-old girl shot to death in West Baltimore. My column in Friday’s Sun was written and filed before this happened so this girl's death is not listed among the others I cite from a week of violence that took the lives of a 69-year-old … Continue reading This I must do, this you should know

I always have more to share after I write a column, and today is no different. There are more things you should know about David Gordon and about the whole question of what we — this state, this country — do about teenagers who kill.  Clearly, there needs to be punishment for the taking of … Continue reading On time, crime and punishment: More on the David Gordon case and juvenile justice

Today is Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, originally meant to commemorate the end of World War I and the sacrifice of Americans who died in that absurd war’s last 18 months. But here’s the thing about 11/11/18: There was a period of time on the final day when, instead of quietly receding into history, The … Continue reading 11/11/18: The horrible, absurd end of the War To End All Wars

My Wednesday column in The Sun is about a depressing series of break-ins of establishments in the 1700 block of North Charles Street, in Baltimore’s Station North, but it could have been about graffiti. Graffiti and grime in the blocks north and south of North Avenue, along Charles Street and Maryland Avenue, are particularly disturbing. … Continue reading An epidemic of grafitti in Baltimore