Dan Rodricks

Dan Rodricks Commentary and conversation on life in Baltimore, Maryland and the USA

Wells Fargo stepping up again in Baltimore with $6 million toward homeownership

When I got to the part about Wells Fargo in “Broken Bargain,” Kathleen Day’s excellent book on American financial institutions and the disasters they have wrought, I had to ask: “How is this company still in business?”

Reverse Baltimore's population slide: Green more city neighborhoods

Demolition seems to be Larry Hogan’s top priority when it comes to Baltimore; he gets a real kick out of it, too. The Maryland governor put on a hard hat the other day and got behind the controls of a CASE excavator to knock down an abandoned rowhouse.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But, as Miss Peggy Lee famously asked in song, “Is that all there is?”

Followup: A correction about Nancy Pelosi and that white dress

In the interest of setting straight the record of Nancy Pelosi’s time in Baltimore, allow me to provide a brief follow-up to Sunday’s column about her family portrait and that white dress she wore for it.

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives grew up in a Baltimore political family. She was born in 1940, the daughter of Annunciata Lombardi D’Alesandro and Thomas J.

A deeper look at Baltimore's population loss: smaller households

So, last Thursday morning I’m driving back into Baltimore on O’Donnell Street, having just attended the annual business showcase of the Dundalk Chamber of Commerce at the Best Western Plus. I’m westbound on O’Donnell. I pass Ponca Street, then Newkirk. I look to the left and suddenly I have a Shocking Baltimore Moment, or SBM.

This city has always been capable of producing SBMs.

Nancy Pelosi in a white dress, and an 'unnerving question' about her Baltimore family portrait

Nobody asked me, but somebody must know how a large oil painting of the famous D’Alesandro family — including a Baltimore mayor, a future Baltimore mayor and a future Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives — ended up in a Little Italy restaurant. “That’s a billion-dollar, unnerving question,” said Nick D’Alesandro, grandson of the late Mayor Thomas J.

In Baltimore, turning an abandoned church into the 'Ministry of Brewing'

And so, later this year, there will be a brewery where priests once celebrated Mass, where thousands of couples were wed, where thousands of babies were baptized. In fact, large stainless steel tanks have already been installed in the sanctuary of old St. Michael the Archangel Church, at Wolfe and Lombard, in Upper Fells Point.