A Life For Itself

Tag: blog

  • Five Things – 12 May 2016

    1.

    Ahhh yes. O’s are on a 5-game winning streak with a nice come-from-behind win at home vs. the Tigers. Those games vs. the Twins were really fun to watch.

    2.

    So much for the DH. Mets pitchers are mashing.

    3.

    Disappointed that Agent Carter got cancelled.

    As much as I enjoy the MCU movies and TV shows that take place in the current day, I enjoyed seeing Carter take on the bad guys without helicarriers, Quinjets, teams of super smart scientists, and powered people around to help.

    Plus I very much enjoyed the Dr. Wilkes character.

    ABC didn’t pick up the Bobbi and Hunter spinoff, either. Hopefully, they’ll show back up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

    Fortunately, Supergirl got picked up for CW. It should have been there from the beginning.

    4.

    Shocking development: Scrivener for iOS has moved into beta testing. They first announced this app a few years ago and writers –myself included– have been waiting. The wait might be over by the summer.

    I still use Scrivener for Windows for this blog and my other writing projects. That and Google Drive, since there isn’t any Scrivener for ChromeOS.

    However, they are talking about an Android version in the future …

    … and with Android and ChromeOS possibly converging soon, who knows what the future holds with writing on my Chromebook.

    5.

    And people are still driving up to it towards the end of the video.

    Before they took Weather Channel off the cable, Storm Chasers was a major guilty pleasure. If you’re into big storms and tech porn, that’s the show for you. They’d load up in these vehicles –sometimes specially fortified vehicles– with cameras, laptops, sometimes tablets, and head out.

    They’d use GPS to go find tornadoes, sometimes going between states to get the shot to sell to Weather Channel and whoever else buys those pictures. One episode, they got too close and were debating hanging out in a fast food restaurant freezer.

    And that’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t ever do that. As much as I’d love to drive around with a laptop (and probably also a tablet) mounted in the car and maybe get pictures from a mile or so away, what’s depicted in that video is way too intense. It takes a different breed of person to get that close to a killer storm on purpose. Same for the storm chasing scientists who work the same way. And for the pilots and meteorologists who fly into tropical cyclones on purpose.

  • Five Things – 5 May 2016

    1.

    O’s won the series with the Yankees, but I was really hoping for the sweep. The further under .500 the Yankees are, the more comical their fans are when they call in on the radio.

    Plus, with the back of their bullpen being what it is, the more losses they take early, the better. Seasons are never decided in April or early May, but if they do hit that hot streak in June or July, it’s better the further they have to go to catch up.

    Especially with that back of the bullpen. It’s like that 2014 Royals bullpen.

    2.

    What is up with Matt Harvey? I’m sure he’ll snap out of it, but he doesn’t seem to be all there in some way.

    What is up with the Mets hitting all these home runs? Certainly a pleasant surprise.

    What is up with the Royals? I thought they’d do us a solid by at least taking 2/3 from the Nats. Guess not. They can redeem themselves in my eyes by putting it down on the Yankees next week.

    3.

    To answer the popular question from the beginning of the week: yes, I was pleased with the Ravens’ draft. Oz is usually right more often than not, it seems, so I never sweat it. Some folks like to go back and look at picks like Matt Elam and Courtney Upshaw (I enjoyed his tenure in Baltimore, but he ended up not being enough of a pass rusher I guess), but look at the last few drafts and who’s contributed along the defensive line and who stepped up last season on offense with all the injuries. At this point, I’m expecting nothing less than the same, especially on defense.

    4.

    I wasn’t surprised the Ravens pulled Laremy Tunsil off their board immediately after the video and pictures hit social media. This is the same team that cut Bernard Pierce mere hours after a DUI arrest in Baltimore County. Arrest. Not conviction. They cut Terrence Cody after his animal cruelty charges (but in their defense, he had one foot out the door based on performance as it was) came out, too.

    Since the fallout from the Ray Rice situation, the Castle has been highly sensitive to the team’s public image. If they were willing to cut one of their own as quickly as they did Pierce, there was no way they were going to take Tunsil, since they were about to pick and had no time to dig deeper into the story and find out the video was old and someone was releasing all of this on draft day, seemingly to destroy the kid.

    They say they had Stanley rated higher than Tunsil and only they know for sure. But I’m pretty sure that if there had been a chance they would take him while they were on the clock, as soon as the picture came out of him in the gas mask bong, that chance evaporated.

    However, NFL Network had the time to let the story unfold before allowing their talking heads like Mike Mayock pass judgment on the kid without knowing the whole story. At least Mayock backtracked on his comments later in the night.

    The rest of them sure didn’t. I wonder if they’ll all be cheering for the more famous and local Baltimore weed connoisseur, Michael Phelps, as he represents the whole country in the Olympics in a few weeks, though.

    Oh, and according to Kevin Byrne, Ozzie reads tweets from college players. Kids, if you think you have a shot at playing pro football, watch what you say on the Tweeter, okay?

    5.

    What a mess.

  • Five Things – 27 April 2016

    1.

    Catherine Pugh won the Democratic primary for Mayor of Baltimore. So, it’s very likely she’s going to be the next mayor. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is already pledging to work with her to make the transition go well.

    Deray didn’t get many votes, but hopefully the long-term effect of his candidacy is the involvement of more of Baltimore’s youth in the political process as well as other means of change and empowerment. Baltimore must find ways to include more people in its growth and prosperity. It can’t just be concentrated in Southeast Baltimore without the same sort of unrest we saw last year happening again.

    I was happy to see my old classmate, Elizabeth Embry, polled at 12%. Given that this was her first time running and that she didn’t have the same recognition coming in as Ms. Pugh and Ms. Dixon, she did really well. I think she could win in a future run at the office if she stays visible. 12% might not seem like much, but Ms. Dixon had people waiting to vote for again at the time she left office the last time. To do well against that kind of support is really impressive, especially in Baltimore.

    2.

    On the anniversary of last year’s unrest/uprising, Baltimore police shoot a 13-year old with a BB gun.

    3.

    Tomorrow night is round 1 of the NFL Draft 2016. I’m still unsure who the Ravens will pick, but I’m fairly certain the first pick will be made in current slot and it will be a defensive player.

    One thing I am 100% sure of: I’m glad I’m not a Browns fan. Or an Eagles fan. Two things.

    4.

    Lifting again. It’s fun and I feel good after, but I miss the old days, lifting in Mr. Scott’s back yard. Lifting in the weight room at school. I’m going to write more about this one of these days.

    5.

    The writing is going really well in the class, still. Unfortunately, this is the last week. I’m going to miss being in such an environment, but the class has given me lots of material to build on and means to develop more and keep myself going. I’m going to do another bootcamp when I can.

  • A Genius of Prince

    I didn’t understand Prince when I was 7-8 years old when Purple Rain came out. All I knew was most of the talk I heard surrounding Prince was that with all the frilly, purple clothes, blouses, and such, he was too effeminate to be straight. Too effeminate for the real men I’d hear talking about him. Same for the boys talking about it at school and other places.

    Didn’t matter how many women around adored him and wanted to be with him and whether or not he got the girl in the movie and whether that was his girl in real life –because the rumors were always there– Prince had to be gay and gay == bad.

    Even if you liked the music, which by the way, wasn’t necessarily for us, it was said around me a lot, because it was laden with rock guitar.

    Let’s go crazy. Let’s get nuts.

    I didn’t know enough not to join in.

    #

    I wasn’t quite there in my teenage years, either.

    Even if songs like “Adore” and “Diamonds and Pearls” weren’t just fun to sing, they told the stories of my growing infatuations with the girls I’d have feelings for or outright fell in love with.

    Love is to weak to define
    Just what you mean to me

    Even if “Scandalous” and “Insatiable” and often mirrored the puberty-driven thoughts I would have in the later hours.

    I got a jones, Martha.

    Prince was still supposed to be too weird. And that weirdness, with the dress and the symbol and all of that, was still supposed to be too much. Especially with all the other reasons added in. Especially with a more religious-based homophobia that I’d added..

    I still wouldn’t listen to my own conscience about the man.

    #

    At some point, once I became interested in my own art; and quite frankly, when I developed enough confidence in myself to not follow the pack and try to fit into what others did or thought, is when I discovered what I think is one of his greatest geniuses.

    It wasn’t the fact of his musical virtuosity. Playing 27 instruments on an album says enough, but it wasn’t that.

    It wasn’t even the blend of sexuality and sensuality and spirituality in his music. Historians and musical historians will probably write volumes about the introspection and investigation of sexual identity in all the various forms that it manifested in his music and where it crosses with his notions of spirituality and love. Prince is one of the only artists who could merge the vulgar and the sacred to the point where you had to question for yourself where, if anywhere, the line of demarcation was.

    But that’s not even, for me, his greatest genius.

    As I think back to all of us talking about him, making jokes about him, mocking him and what we thought about his sexuality, there he was, not just making great music, not just beginning to change the world, but he was doing something that none of those people back then, I think can say they were doing — Prince was living life on his own terms.

    As folks went back to their crap jobs and their crap coworkers and hated the whole thing, Prince was living his life by his own rules.

    Yeah, look at the frilly blouses. Where was Prince’s supervisor or employee handbook that told him he could or couldn’t dress that way? Where was his compliance officer or HR director to ensure his pants were tight or purple enough?

    Nowhere. That was just him. No bullshit. Sure, in a sense, he performed off-stage as well as on, but that was how he decided to live. Prince wasn’t being told when he could get off or go on vacation. How to dress. How to keep his hair. None of the same bullshit people had to do to get by. Looking back, that looks like it was always his plan.

    Hell, he changed his name to a symbol to be able to continue to do his work the way he wanted to. Up until he died, he was working to get control of his masters.

    He even redecorated Carlos Boozer’s house to suit himself and when he was finished renting it, he changed it all back the way it was. Regular people might ask why Prince would spend the money to do something like that, but he had a vision for himself and his life and compromise wasn’t part of it. How many compromises do many of us make before noon on any given weekday?

    I wish I could go back and tell my child self to look closely — there was someone who knew who he was, knew his worth and value to the world, and lived that. He didn’t follow others and he didn’t try to fit in. He was who he was and anybody that didn’t like it, too bad. My child self could have used that lesson. Many of us now could use that same lesson.

    Do I believe in god? Do I believe in me?
    Some people want to die so they can be free
    I said life is just a game, we’re all just the same, do you want to play?
    Yeah, oh yeah

  • Bootcamps

    I wonder if I should combine aspects of the exercise bootcamp with the writing bootcamp. Write a poem for 30 seconds, write prose for 30 seconds, write a scene for 30 seconds, take a 2 minute break, repeat for 30-45 minutes. Maybe not 30-second intervals, maybe 15-20 minute intervals. Keep the 2 minute break. Drink copious amounts of water during the break. Stretch and keep loose. Hopefully walk away from the experience without the same sort of pain I had in my quads after the first HIIT session.

    Last Monday, I started the exercise bootcamp. After putting it off for a couple of weeks, I finally went. I’ve been losing a decent amount of weight through diet alone, but the exercise is the missing piece in the plans my doctor and I have been discussing.

    So I show up in sweats and a couple of shirts I’d eventually sweat through, ready to jump back into exercising after a long, very long layoff. (I paid the first month’s membership fee and a joiner fee just before the bootcamp and I was not about to back out after that). And after just a few minutes, my whole body felt the layoff. Stiffness, soreness, exhaustion.

    And after the 45 minutes of kicks, squats, planks, step ups/step downs and other maneuvers, all meant to kick and shrink your ass, mine was indeed thoroughly kicked. Towards the end of it, I kept reminding myself to just finish, it would get easier, and it was all a part of a larger plan. That didn’t stop me from questioning, as I left, whether I’d just rather keep the damn weight so that I wouldn’t again feel like I was going to die, but it did also convince me as the pain subsided, that I was definitely going back the next Monday. That it wouldn’t be as bad. And certainly not as bad as checking out too young.

    All in all, I’d still rather be dancing, because at least then, I was learning something I might be able to create some art out of. Or perhaps not.

    But it is still always about the art and the art is getting better after 3 weeks of the writing bootcamp. The soreness of struggling through 300 words a day has subsided. I’m rocking through those words and writing others, even as I’m doing it after I come home from my day job. That was always an issue before. Not as much now. I just hope to keep up this momentum once it all ends in a couple of weeks (I should have signed up for the 10 week one).

    Monday, my barber’s wife was at the gym and asked me if I was bothered by being the only guy in the exercise room besides the instructor. Nope. I was just there to work and hopefully do something that might help save my life. The desire to go on was more powerful than too much worry about looking stupid, which I figured was going to happen anyway. Besides, being in there with so many all working hard, working through the pain and the exhaustion, was inspiring. Those women fought for it. Wasn’t no BS in there. No showing off.

    It’s the same with the writing bootcamp. I’m the only guy in that class, too. And the women in there are churning out some badass pages of essay and memoir. All the good stuff. Classically styled work. Experimental forms. Fun reads. Reads that hurt. Reads that make you question how you look at things you thought you had a good bead on. It’s a blast. And the writing is coming on a daily basis. I don’t know how much the folks in there are sweating, but they’re fighting for it just like the exercise room.

    Sunday has certainly been a day of rest (then again, so was yesterday), but tomorrow, it’s back to the grind, both at the gym and the keyboard. Doing both to live, to keep on going. And getting just enough inspiration to help me decide to keep hitting the finish line.

  • Opening Day Came and Went

    I wanted to talk about Jake Arrieta and the Cubs. It was late for me, but still early for my father. Especially since he had retired and no longer left home in the dead of night to beat the L.A. traffic to work.

    I wanted to talk about the buzzer beater that had just happened, what he thought of his Angels’ chances this season. If he thought the O’s had enough pitching to make it to the postseason, if he thought the Mets could get back to the Series this year.

    We probably wouldn’t have agreed on any of it. We didn’t agree on much sportswise. The only thing I can remember us finding total common ground on recently was whether Andrew Luck would become a top-five QB in the NFL. And even then, his thoughts were twinged with some excitement as Luck was on his team. I didn’t care much for that. Despite the independence he’d instilled in me, part of me always wanted to be able to say that I rooted for the same teams as my father; that we he had shared that, even if he hadn’t passed it down to me.

    I was ready to call. The impulse doesn’t immediately leave. Even when it’s almost been a year since he’s passed on. Sometimes, I need to call my father.

    #

    I did call on my birthday. Out of habit. Muscle memory, perhaps. The phone still rang. Nobody answered it, obviously. At some later point, I texted him. Just needed to say I missed him.

    I wasn’t there when he died. Nor was I there when my sister buried him. We had a small, memorial get-together back in Baltimore. But with no ceremony, no artifact, not even the closing of a casket, the finality didn’t feel as final.

    #

    I shared baseball with my mother. I lived with my mother, so she shuttled me to practices and games. Ran me up and down the highway looking for the right black and orange cleats or 32” Easton aluminum bat. She learned how to keep a baseball scorecard. Until she couldn’t do any of those things anymore.

    Back in California, my father got game recaps. Mailed copies of the player pictures they made like little baseball cards.

    We never even talked much baseball until I reconnected with him.

    #

    He bought me a whiffle ball set for my 5th or 6th birthday, the summer I spent out there with him, his fiancee, and my sisters. It came with a little, blue hat. I told him I wasn’t going to become a Dodgers fan. I loved the Orioles and besides, my mother would be mad. He said he didn’t want me to. He wouldn’t explain to me until later years how loathsome he found the Dodgers. After the 1988 World Series, we agreed on that.

    That summer, whenever we played any games, we’d take on the persona of a player we admired. He had a badminton set in his tiny back yard, but we didn’t know any famous people who played badminton, so we substituted tennis players. He called out that he was Jimmy Connors. I was John McEnroe (not a bad choice considering how pissed I got when I was losing). My younger sister, Kellee, was too young to know anybody, so I tried to assign her Martina Navratilova. My father said she should be Billie Jean King.

    When we played with the whiffle ball set, I was Eddie Murray. Eddie was Mr. Oriole to me. My dad was Reggie Jackson, who had left the East Coast for California around the time my father did.

    We hit balls towards the house. I wanted to hit one over the roof and into the pool in the back yard. Perhaps I dreamed I had a little Frank Robinson in me, too.

    That was the only time my father got to see me play.

    #

    Since we reconnected, calling on these nights became a habit: opening day for the O’s. Sometime on the first Sunday of NFL football. Sometime during each O’s/Angels series. The day of Ray Lewis’ last home game was fun (mostly since the Ravens had put a hurting on Indianapolis in Baltimore, always a welcome occasion). He still wouldn’t let me recruit him to Baltimore’s new team from the team carrying the name of its old one.

    #

    I wanted to say “I told you so” about the Rams moving back to L.A. He swore no team would ever return there. Everybody there was a fan of some other team, he’d insist for years, whenever we’d talk about it. I told him that wouldn’t matter, the NFL would stick a team there. Probably the Rams or the Raiders.

    I would have called and lorded my moment over him and we would have had a good laugh. I would have asked him how his golf was going and if he was finally ready to buy himself the new computer he’d been talking about. He would have asked me how my aunt was and if I’d been eating right. We would have talked at the next big moment.

    When I was younger, I used to be sad about how much we’d missed, the things we hadn’t shared. Now it’s the big moments. I know they’ll come. The Mets may win the Series this year. The O’s aren’t too bad, either.

  • Back From Outer Space

    I guess after not posting for a month, posting today would seem like a late April Fool’s joke. No such intent. No, I just took an unscheduled break from blogging and some of my other writing.

    Call it writer’s block or not, depending on whether you believe in it or you don’t, sometimes a writer can go through a rough or fallow patch and output dwindles. For one reason or another.

    Fortunately, my online class started this past Monday and I’ve been writing like mad since last week. One big thing I’ve learned about myself is I write well under deadline. I’ve also regained more of the sense of fun I used to have writing. I even managed to scrawl a couple of fresh, first draft poems.

    I’ve also journalled more this past week than usual. I had been confining my journalling to first thing in the morning. Now, I’m writing in my journal in the evenings and at work when I’m taking a lunch break. Which is good because my writing is a small slice of nirvana in the work-a-day cycle I’m in.

    —

    Five (other) things since I’ve last posted:

    1.

    It’s baseball season again. Thank God. O’s won this evening on a walk-off single by Matt Wieters. If he keeps it up, he may get that $30M contract for the Yankees this fall after all.

    Opening night with the Mets wasn’t as good. In fact, it was like the World Series never ended. It had all the elements:

    1. A Mets fielding error that leads to a run(s)
    2. Harvey struggling immediately after the error
    3. Met inability to hit Royals pitching
    4. Mets coming back to within one run late
    5. Royals winning in the end

    Thor will be back on the mound tomorrow, so hopefully there will be a better outcome. And if not, it’s all good. The Mets will open their 2016 home campaign vs. the Phillies this weekend.

    2.

    Read a really good article just today about Oriole Park at Camden Yards, with pictures of some of the early renditions of the ballpark. They were tossing around the idea for a multipurpose stadium at Port Covington as well other ideas. One of those is from the 70s. Wonder how things would have gone had they built that multipurpose stadium.

    I am happy with the stadium(s) we ended up getting; unfortunately, the processes to get them done were painful for a lot of sports fans.

    http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-camden-yards-0404-20160404-story.html

    3.

    I’ve been watching college basketball, still. Not as much since the Maryland women got upset by Washington and the men ran into the Jayhawks, though.

    I am getting sick of these Kansas/Kansas City teams beating my favorite teams. Royals will host the O’s in a few weeks. Hoping for the right outcome, the outcome of the birds winning.

    4.

    Looks like the mayoral race back home has become a two-person race between Sheila Dixon and Catherine Pugh. I expected Dixon to have a larger lead this close to the primary with Pugh still in 2nd. It may come down to the wire. Deray is around but in the pack with the others. He undoubtedly has access to a lot of money, but Ms. Dixon, for certain, started off with more people.

    The general election should be far less interesting. Part of me hopes that one or two of the people in the Democratic primary decide to make a go as an independent in the general election.

    5.

    I’ve been accepted to a writers’ conference later this summer. Still have applications out for two more.

  • Five Things – 11 February 2016

    1

    My Chromebook is back to life.

    I ordered a new screen, but the one I received didn’t work. So, I had to order another one and send back the original. The second one worked, fortunately. Since I’d already taken apart the machine by the time it got here, all I had to do was connect the new screen, screw it in place, put the bezel back on the machine. Back in business.

    Easy for me to say, some of my coworkers might think if they’re reading this. But here’s more or less what I did:

    Just follow the video and you’re cool. You don’t have to have been working in IT forever to do this. And it doesn’t take long.

    And it’s definitely worth it. I use my Chromebook most often to write –I’m writing this on it– because of the really nice keyboard. I’m still getting often between 6-7 hours of usage from it when I’m not watching video (I will watch video on it while it’s charging because I’m obviously not killing the battery).

    2.

    Reading and very much enjoying Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy. So far, I’ve learned I’m too serious in my writing. I need to have more fun, write longer about more fun topics. It’s not life and death. It’s just life.

    3.

    Supposed to be really cold over the next few days.

    4.

    Last night, the talking heads on MLB Network were discussing the exit velocity of balls batted by various players around the league. Looks like MLB Network is full-on sabermetrics. Which is cool and I’ll be playing the home game this spring and summer, but I need to remember to turn it off sometimes and just enjoy the games.

    Watching a full baseball game is still a great pleasure. Always has been. Never changed. But I can’t talk baseball with just anybody anymore. I’ve met a few folks who only want to dig so deeply into the stats and their arguments that I wonder if they actually enjoy baseball or really enjoy statistics or argumentation and their chosen outlet for those is baseball.

    It’s cool if that’s their thing. I just don’t share their passion. As much as we can look into every stat to discern what we think might have happened or what might happen (and it is often fun, just not all the time), I enjoy the poetry and drama and spectacle of baseball as much. People who understand and appreciate those, as well as the numbers, are the people I want share baseball with now and in the future. Otherwise, the joy of baseball quickly leaves.

    5.

    I’m working on a short piece about Earth, Wind, and Fire, and how their music has been part of my life. Obviously related to the recent passing of Maurice White, the band’s co-founder.

  • Five Things – 4 February 2016

    1.

    And calamity befalls my poor Chromebook again. I opened up my little workhorse machine to do this exact entry and again, the screen was cracked. And again, I have no clue how it happened. So, just as I did just before Christmas, I ordered a replacement, which will be here in a few days, and I’ll fix the thing. Fortunately, it’s very easy. There are a couple of videos that show how to repair the thing. Easy.

    In the meantime, the things that I want to write are delayed a day or so, now. I’m just glad I had other options available at the ready.

    2.

    There was a time when I wouldn’t even have a thought of replacing a laptop screen. I broke my older HP’s screen circa 2009. I left it laying next to me when I went to sleep and rolled on top of it. I had to send it back to get them to put a new screen on.  

    When I got it back, the machine back, the screen was still acting up. I had to send it back a second time. That time, they replaced the motherboard and the screen. Never have had another problem with it, but all that back and forth was frustrating.

    I even went and got a new set of computer tools for the job.

    3.

    They’re calling for snow for next week. Done with it.

    4.

    Yay, it’s Black History Month. Back in the day, this was the very time of year that we’d learn about Dr. King and if we were lucky, Malcolm X. Not that we got lucky often. But we’d learn about some other fine folks in between, so it wasn’t all bad.

    We had Great Blacks in Wax back then, but not the Reginald Lewis Museum. That would come much later. This generation’s school kids will have the National African American History Museum by the end of the year, which is great.

    However, I have a proposal.

    Let’s not study any Black history. Let’s not let another February go by with kids and young people learning that racism and inequality are things of the past when they’re still present these days.

    Okay, maybe that’s too much. Sure, spend a lesson on the I Have A Dream speech, but In addition, have conversations around situations like Ferguson and the Laquan McDonald and Freddie Gray killings. Have a conversation about the two Baltimores (and no, neither of them is one from the Wire. I’m talking about the real thing). I’m not the only one that refers to the “Real” Baltimore as being the one outside of the Inner Harbor.

    Progress has been made, for sure. But there is still a way to go. Have a conversation about where we go from here because looking back into the past and thinking the conditions that people like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Audre Lorde and Angela Davis lived through and fought have not entirely abated.

    5.

    Super Sunday is in a few days. It’s cool. I’m looking forward to baseball season.

  • Vote Deray?

    Perhaps the biggest news story coming out of Baltimore in the last 24 hours is the last-minute entry of human rights activist Deray Mckesson into the race for Mayor of Baltimore. Deray joins an already crowded race of nearly 30 candidates (it’s a high number, but most of them never had any shot anyway) seeking to succeed Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is not running for re-election. The Baltimore Sun quickly reported his filing and reaction came in just as quickly.

    The tone of response online was generally positive, especially from people outside of Baltimore. Among locals, sentiments ranged from surprise and increased interest in what’s now a much more fascinating campaign, to some less positive feelings, particularly as I understand it, among those who have been active locally as Deray has been active more on the national stage.

    Also, quite a few folks were questioning whether Deray actually had fulfilled the residency requirement for running. The news generally shows him working and demonstrating in one place or another at any given time. The Baltimore Sun reported today, though, that he’s been living in North Baltimore for the last several months.

    Regardless of any criticism, the race now will find itself under a larger national lens with Deray’s entry.

    ***

    Hit The Ground Running

    Anybody living in or from Baltimore knows that with so many voters registered Democrat in the City, that party’s primary usually determines the winner of the November general election. Deray is running as a Democrat, which puts him against the other dozen or so hopefuls, including former Mayor Sheila Dixon. That election is April 26, 81 days from now.

    Eighty one days to overcome Sheila Dixon’s comfortable lead in the polls.

    To put it in perspective, local businessman David Warnock is trailing badly, even as he’s loaned his campaign close to a million dollars. Whatever money Deray may be able to bring in to compliment his sizable online following, his chances will rest on convincing the probable 21% of current undecideds as well as a probably unknown number of unregistered voters to sign up, the latter before the April 5 deadline. As it stands right now, Ms. Dixon is leading in the key demo of older black women voters, people who are probably much more familiar with her than Mr. Mckesson, regardless of his larger national following.

    ***

    Who’s on the Team?

    Another interesting issue I saw being discussed is who’s on his team. The Sun and Guardian have both reported that fellow activist Johnetta Elzie (a powerhouse herself) is moving to Baltimore to work on his campaign. I can’t help but think the local activists I hear already weren’t happy, weren’t thrilled with another high profile activist —one who is definitely not from Baltimore— coming into their turf.

    Don’t count out our provincial attitudes. Deray, who even mentioned growing up listening to Miss Tony on 92Q in his statement, has been a powerhouse nationally. But I’m sure he’ll still be painted as a carpetbagger, especially by people who have been working on issues locally, if his campaign starts with much more out-of-town support than local support.

    For the record, I grew up listening to V-103 and then 92Q. Frank Ski.

    ***


    Where is the Downtown money going?

    People who know Baltimore solely from watching on TV or reading poverty porn might not get that Baltimore isn’t entirely poor. The segregated parts of Baltimore certainly are, but that doesn’t go for the City as a whole. The City is base to quite a few rich people. Outside folks have probably watched Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles or worn clothing made by Kevin Plank’s Under Armour. But it’s the people most outsiders have never heard of who have the deep pockets that make things move in the Harbor City.

    Or in other words: real estate developers exert a lot of influence in Baltimore.

    Last election cycle, a bunch of those sweet developer campaign dollars went to Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

    Regardless of how much he brings to the table (and so far, it’s a bunch), Deray’s running where there’s a huge machine in place. He’s not going to get far without fealty to, detente with, or a fight from Downtown developers (then again, neither would any of the other candidates). If they feel they’ll lose money or power from his being elected, expect a mess, regardless of how the elections turn out.

    ***

    It’s going to be an interesting 81 days until the primary.

    Can the local guy who made good outside really come back and be given a chance to lead? Or will his candidacy ultimately be about raising issues and pushing the next person in the job to make the changes the real Baltimore (outside of the Harbor) needs?

    Has Baltimore really forgiven the former Mayor?

    Will we see the real emergence of a new political family dynasty?

    Will this family’s legacy of public service continue at 100 North Holliday?

    Where will Downtown’s elite continue to throw their support?