Good Morning, Baltimore!

No, the title doesn't presage a review of the musical "Hairspray", although my violinist daughter Isolde was once dragooned by a close friend into playing in the pit after the scheduled violinist herniated a disc. I took in the performance, and while we are not talking Wagner's Ring here, the vim and vitality of the cast made the event a worthwhile one. No, my reason for citing Baltimore had to do with two things that transpired.

The first thing involved a close colleague in The Trade who had taken out a very bad person indeed, but had not come out unscathed. In fact, he was recuperating at John Hopkins Medical Center, after having a bullet removed from his neck. I offered what comfort I could, and in the process learned an amazing fact. The surgeon who operated had discovered yet another bullet logged in his cranium that had gone undetected for years. This, I realized, would explain John's (not his real name) rather weird habit of quoting certain cantos of Ezra Pound at odd and invariably inconvenient times. One hopes for a full recovery.

The second thing concerned Isolde, who had an engagement with the Baltimore symphony and the playing of the Sibelius violin concerto. I knew this to be tricky stuff, given the pieces' somewhat Oriental cast, and was looking forward to hear how Isolde would deal with it all.

It was, however, in my hotel room at the Hyatt Regency (not a bad little hostelry) that I got somewhat rattled. In perusing the "What's On In Baltimore" brochure kindly provided by the hotel I noticed yet another sign that America's regard for education was not where it should be. To wit: the University of Baltimore was proudly offering a course in Zombies. I thought, not them too, for I recalled reading somewhere that Simpson College in Iowa used the entire spring semester writing a book on 'The History of the Great Zombie War'. (No wonder Sarah Palin is popular in Iowa.)

Ridiculous. I mean, it was not that long ago -- 1989 to be exact -- that a survey undertaken by the National Science Foundation discovered the following. "93% of Americans cannot distinguish between a proton and a crouton, think that DNA is a food additive, that radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling, and that Chernobyl is a ski resort." Zombies aside, surely things have changed for the better?

To test this, I went to the hotel lobby and asked several guests what they thought Chernobyl was. To a person all replied, "Easy. That's Cher's real name."

There are times I despair. But at night the stars do sparkle on Chesapeake Bay....