Dan Rodricks

What was that? You're still thinking of voting for Trump? He just suggested that ultraviolet light and the ingestion of disinfectant could kill the coronavirus in people. You did hear that, right? Everyone did, unfortunately. People were calling emergency hotlines on Friday to ask about it, and companies that produce disinfectants had to put out … Continue reading What? You still support Trump because you think Biden will be worse?

People in Maryland, and the Baltimore area, in particular, go a little nutty when there's snow in the forecast. Between 1989 and 1993, when I hosted evening shows on WBAL-AM, I used to have to read weather-related cancellations, and there were a lot of them: Chair-caning classes, meetings of Overeaters Anonymous, yoga classes, lamaze classes, … Continue reading Nesting and fixing stuff during the pandemic

Trump and his crowd want to defy governors who have issued stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of coronavirus and save lives. Maryland’s only Republican member of Congress, the extreme conservative Andy Harris, is among those saying it’s time to loosen things up and let people return to work. (Harris has a medical degree and … Continue reading The Trump crowd hates the smart people, even in a matter of life or death

Because Trump and his administration delayed — with willful ignorance and claims of hoax and media sensationalism — our nation’s response to the coronavirus, I went back to 2014, Obama and Ebola. I had to. I wanted (needed) to review how a wise and well-informed American president responded to the outbreak of a lethal disease … Continue reading Comparative history: How Obama managed the Ebola outbreak

The two brothers are on their backs in the grass, talking about what they’d like to be when they grow up. “What are you gonna be?” the older brother, Norman Maclean, asks the younger. “A professional fly-fisherman,” says Paul. “There's no such thing,” Norman snaps. “There isn't?” Of course, that would have been Paul Maclean’s … Continue reading Living the dream: An inspiring film about a professional fly fisherman

If you want to be comforted in this terrible time in American life, I recommend watching 85-year-old Gina Petitti cook Italian comfort food on her Buon-A-Petitti YouTube channel. These 15- to 35-minute videos are well-produced, but without a lot of slick editing. They are shot almost in real-time, in Grandma Gina's home in New Jersey, … Continue reading Need comforting? Watch Grandma Gina cook Italian comfort food

Ever go up there? Ever go up past the bend in the river, up past the section you’ve fished many times before? You almost always catch fish within 200 yards of the parking lot, so why bother? Why go up there? No one else ever does. There are probably no trails; you'll get caught in … Continue reading On the river: Why go up there?

I don't usually pull columns from the old days, but this is the one I wrote on 9/11/2001 for the Baltimore Sun print edition of 9/12/2001, and it came to mind as the coronavirus pandemic became very real here in Maryland across the United States. I wrote the column at my desk in the Sun … Continue reading Remember that 9/11 feeling? Feeling something like that again?

Just as a followup to my March 3 column, about Trump's attacks on the "bad people" -- read that "disloyal people" -- he claims to have purged from the federal government, let me offer this: Trump brags about spending billions more on national defense and building a border wall, yet he shuttered a special unit … Continue reading Trump’s assault on good government, science and expertise

Trump’s smearing of career intelligence officials, FBI agents and federal prosecutors -- his hounding of the bloodhounds -- is repugnant, and it remains stunning to me that the Republican Party, once the law-and-order party, stands by and lets this happen. Trump's trashing of honorable federal employees inflicts profound damage -- and not just superficial wounds -- … Continue reading Damages: Trump’s costly smears of honorable public employees