What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?

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The longer I live here the more the land is so beautiful it makes me weep. The people are the problem. It’s just hard to work together and hard to keep the astounding beauty in mind as the goal. Plus, we all have different ways we can and will contribute, so it’s a mess. Think “church committee from hell” because of the scale.

When I say “the people are the problem,” I am including myself. I am a Methodist preacher’s kid, so I have a shit ton of experience in “God is perfect…. us? Not so much.” Maryland is a variation on a theme, because I feel God everywhere I walk. 

You just feel the pull of the divine in everything, particularly swimming in the Bay at Sandy Point State Park. Where you absolutely do not feel the divine is being stuck in a long line at Giant Pharmacy. There’s a trick to Baltimore.

Slow your ass down.

It will be so much more enjoyable to you if you realize that the culture is asking everyone in line how they’re doing. Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, which was Richard Pryor’s advice to Bill Cosby when Cos complained to him that Ennis was a fan.

I like Richard Pryor a lot.

That quote also makes me wonder if Aada and Tiina’s kids are fans, or if Dana has remarried and she has kids that are fans. I doubt it, but the ecosystem of lives I’ve touched is interesting to me. My stats say that someone in Northern Virginia loves me, but I cannot assume it is the people I think. I can only think in universes, not specifics.

Because I can imagine that it would be fun to peek inside your mom or dad’s life, and I’m aware of it on a different scale because of 16yo & 10yo. At the same time, I cannot disappear into my friends’ lives, either. I cannot stop writing my thoughts because it is uncomfortable for them, because that is letting my friends run over me.

For instance, being aware that nothing I said is a reflection on Heytch, Mummo, Jonna, anyone. Reality is knowing that they’ll take it that way, anyway….. with the added bonus of not talking to me to get their story straight, just changing the ecosystem that reads on their own. I am not for everyone, so I have to be for myself.

The same struggle between individual and city that lives in me lives in Baltimore itself. I am an internet institution. It is an American institution. 

Baltimore knows who it is, which is older and more established than DC. It was founded by the English and is now culturally Jewish and Black in a way that no city can match. If you love DC but want to stay out of Congress’s way, come here. It makes the monuments and the pageantry something you choose instead of something you live.

Brandon Scott is like all mayors- incredible wins at some things, losses at others. But for the most part, Baltimoreans are content and I admire any mayor who can do that. I wish I could be as helpful to him as my sister is to the mayor of Houston, but that is not my gift. Best I can do is take your number and pass it along.

Lindsay is DC, I am Baltimore. In terms of political personalities, she is clearly the Michelle, and I am clearly the Barack. I can do all the speeches and stuff, but you have to point me in the right direction. I would rather be at the law library, and I am fully aware that Lindsay is in charge.

My job is to build a life in Maryland that fits, and Baltimore does. I just need to put more shoe leather into meeting up with people outside of group therapy and all that. What you are seeing now are the results of exhaustive work on myself and not being ashamed of the path it took to get me to stability. I feel comfortable in my skin here, because I don’t identify as Baltimore or DC or Annapolis. I treat it like a triangle and do things in all of them. This is not a slam against Baltimore. It is respecting a boundary.

You’ll never be from Baltimore if you didn’t grow up here, so stop trying. Recognize your otherness.

I think that one thing that could be improved is the welcoming committee. It is hard to know how to plug in when you move here. Maybe that’s an initiative I could take on. I’ll ask Brandon about it on Threads because that’s the least intrusive way to pitch an idea.

Yes, a welcoming committee is old fashioned.

They also work.