Dan Rodricks

On Monday night, City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett of the 8th District said if squeegee workers were white, the narrative around their plight would be different. “The response would be different,” he said. While that comment makes headlines today, I thought it important to share the longer prepared statement Burnett made earlier in the day. Burnett … Continue reading A City Councilman challenges the angry narrative about squeegee workers of Baltimore

It’s an old story, the stuff of legend and joke: In a 1981 televised interview, Barbara Walters (later of The View) supposedly asked the great Katherine Hepburn, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” But the question wasn’t quite as New Agey as it sounds.  At some point in the … Continue reading What part of nature excites you most? What’s your Nature Family?

I no longer assume we know what we are celebrating on the Fourth of July, or that we're celebrating at all. So I ask the question of myself and others. In 2022, the United States is still great for many of us — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and all that — but its … Continue reading What are we celebrating this Fourth of July?

A few years ago, I suggested that electric ferries across the Chesapeake Bay could relieve some of the traffic congestion on our bay bridges, avoiding the multibillion-dollar proposal of Gov. Larry “Road Warrior” Hogan to build a third span. Of course, while many readers thought my suggestion was worth exploring – even exciting – Maryland’s … Continue reading Europe moves ahead on electric ferries while we burn expensive gas to get across the Bay

Photo above: A statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, was removed from the Maryland State House on Aug. 18, 2017. Another Taney statue was removed from a Baltimore public park about the same time. Until Friday, when the Supremes’ decision to overturn Roe v. Wade … Continue reading Among the worst decisions in Supreme Court history.

In the NYT photo above, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Georgia election worker, is comforted by her mother Ruby Freeman during the fourth hearing held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. "Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?" Moss … Continue reading ‘Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?’

My Sun column for this Friday should have a tagline: “To be continued.” That would have committed me in print to something I already have in mind — to follow the Resurrection Sandtown Project in the coming months and years to see if the people behind it, starting with Rev. Rodney Hudson, can get the … Continue reading Resurrection Sandtown: To Be Continued

I reached back to my New England roots and read some Robert Frost to Wally Vait in his final days. I read “Birches,” probably my favorite Frost poem, and one I thought the naturalist in Wally — and that was really all of him — would appreciate.It starts:When I see birches bend to left and … Continue reading The guide: Wally Vait and the all of it

Allow me to respond to an email I received about my Sunday Sun column on Trump and his supporters. Though the column was pointedly not about President Biden, readers who support Trump naturally tried to make it about the current president. From Michael Ernest, who calls himself “a Trump supporting democrat,” came this: “Joe Biden … Continue reading Responding to a letter from a ‘Trump supporting democrat’

I might have completely lost my mind when I wrote this Sunday’s column on talking to Trump supporters about why they need, finally, to dump him. It probably strikes most of my readers as a futile exercise and an experience they wish to avoid. I write from the blue state of Maryland, where Joe Biden … Continue reading Trump supporters won’t hear it from Fox, so they need to hear it from the rest of us