Nobody asked me, but unless there's a sudden reversal of a trend in the counting of absentee and provisional ballots, the results of the Baltimore mayoral primary election will stand: Cathy Pugh will be certified as the winner and Sheila Dixon will have lost by about 2,900 votes. That's my raw calculation and I'm sticking to it.
Haint blue on the porch ceiling: Last week, at the Owings Mills branch of the Baltimore County Public Library, Angela Flournoy asked for a show of hands: How many in the audience had ever heard the word "haint" before they read Flournoy's breakout novel, "The Turner House." A few hands went into the air, and, as she surveyed the response, an amused Flournoy noted that the number always increases as she travels farther south to speak to audiences.
That's because "haint" is a word from Southern folklore for "ghost," or "goblin," or 'haunt." Characters in Flournoy's novel, which was a 2015 finalist for a National Book Award, believe they see the "haint." It apparently followed the Turner family patriarch from Arkansas to Detroit during the Great Migration. The haint becomes an obsession with one of the main characters and visits him throughout the novel.
All through the South, homeowners take precautions against the haint, Flournoy said, by painting their porches or porch ceilings a minty or tealish blue, symbolic of water, to keep the haints away. Those old ghosts hate water, and "haint blue" keeps them from crossing the porch. "Haint blue," Flournoy said, is marketed commercially. "You can Google it," she said, and I did. I found it among colors offered by Benjamin Moore, with this explanation:
"Haint blue, which can be found on door and window frames as well as porch ceilings, is intended to protect the homeowner from being 'taken' or influenced by haints. It is said to protect the house and the occupants of the house from evil."
I once owned an old house with a front porch with a wainscoted ceiling painted blue. I took it as symbolic of sky, and kept the color through two repaintings, never realizing that it was part of a home-protection plan.
Nobody asked me, but … if attorney Billy Murphy is contemplating a lawsuit against the city for the way Baltimore police handled Dedric Colvin and his mother last week — the eighth-grader was wounded by an officer who spotted the boy with what turned out to be a BB gun — he might serve his client and mankind better by suing the manufacturer of the dangerously realistic gun. It's insane that a society drenched in firearms allows such replicas to me made, marketed and sold, especially to children.
Free to a good home: One never-read copy of "A More Perfect Union: What We The People Can Do To Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties," by Dr. Ben Carson (Sentinel, $26.95). Certainly one of the 5,798 Marylanders (1.3 percent of primary voters) who voted for Carson for president would like this book. No charge for shipping.
Recommended podcast: The Gist, hosted daily by Mike Pesca, part of the Slate.com array of podcasts. Pesca, familiar to a lot of NPR listeners for his years of sports and culture reporting, is fast, funny and fair when he spiels about newsy stuff, and he is the king of the aside. He gets good guests, too. Pesca also shows up on "Hang Up And Listen," Slate's sports-talk podcast.
Nobody asked me, but … I don't see how we Mitch McConnell the Port Covington deal. As Senate majority leader, McConnell refuses to even consider President Obama's nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, saying the nomination should be made by the next president. It's a lousy continuation of McConnell's dissing of Obama, and it's wrong. Here in Baltimore, some argue that the next City Council, and not the outgoing one, should vote on the Port Covington deal — half-a-billion in infrastructure improvements for the massive redevelopment of Baltimore's southside waterfront.
Short of a City Hall sit-in, I don't see how citizens can McConnell this.
But I understand the call for a delay: Too many no-brainers pushing this project. The no-brainers think the deal is a no-brainer for the city: Floating bonds to finance major improvements, then using new property tax revenue to pay down the debt over time. Under Armour's hard-charging founder Kevin Plank invests more than $5 billion to create a whole new city attached to the city, bringing more jobs, housing, taxpayers and revenue. What's not to like? "It's a no-brainer." The deal, first made public in March, already has steamrolled through various stages of approval, including the Board of Estimates, and in the midst of a busy political season, too. That should make citizens nervous, or at least skeptical.
But ask yourself: If this deal passes to the next City Council, will the outcome be any different? Nobody asked me, but I doubt it.