Buzz

While @chrismaddox had a bit of fun with those who rush to grocery store at the mere mention of snow, "It is 51 right now... really snow! EVERYONE PANIC!!! I only a full gallon of milk and 6 rolls of TP left! AAHHAHAGGG"

Once the wet stuff started to fall, there was wonderment and joy...

@baltimoresun says, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (Or, oh, no! Depends on if you don't mind shoveling.) http://bit.ly/8jps9K"

@MDbeerspotter wonders, "Snow! what kind of soup or cookies do we make?"

@TaharkaBros says, "Perfect day to build a fire, get a movie and eat an entire pint of ice cream."

@jasonrashaad says, "I don't think I've ever been happier to see snow."

@BaltimoreGal shares a pic, "http://twitpic.com/s94wh - Stella enjoying the SNOW"

@contactjeff notes that, "http://twitpic.com/s96x4 - They take girls' club lacrosse tryouts seriously in Maryland."

The weather didn't keep everyone at home, though...

@MissMktr says she was "Driving around Baltimore dropping off postcards for Union Square's Cookie Tour on 12/13. Cookies!! Open houses!! Starts at noon."

Sometimes a pic is worth a 1,000 words...

@BaltimoreMD, "Looks like I stumbled into the Annual Santa Pub Crawl at Ropewalk. http://twitpic.com/sbklq"

And, finally our favorite funny tweets this week...

@Just_Ericka jokes, "You will travel both far & wide" ...I think my fortune cookie just called me fat!

@marioarmstrong says, "I (I mean) my son wanted to start a Star Wars tree! http://twitpic.com/sbma6"

@mykeln, "Just saw a guy hanging off the end of a pickup going up Charles St. In a chicken suit. #fb"

CNN honored Dr. Carnell Cooper as one of it's "2009 Heroes". Dr. Cooper, a shock trauma surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), saves the lives of trauma victims on the operating table as well as through the "Violence Prevention Program" which he founded in 1998.

Here's an excerpt.

"Dr. Carnell Cooper, a Baltimore surgeon, is saving lives inside and outside the operating room. Since becoming a trauma surgeon 16 years ago, he has dedicated himself to treating the many young African-American men who've been shot, stabbed or beaten, only to see them return to the ER with another severe injury just months later."

Read more here.

Former City Paper writer, Simon Dumenco, travels back to Baltimore and catalogues the city's quirky character.

Here's an excerpt.

"Barack Obama, microphone in hand, stares off into the distance of a nearly empty room, a bemused grin on his face that seems to say, ''Where is everybody?'' Suddenly, a woman beelines to the president, climbs to join him on his platform � there's no security around to stop her � and leans in for a kiss. The guy she's with laughs and says, ''Don't mess up his face!'' before snapping a picture."

Read the entire article here.

Lela, the newest arrival to the Baltimore Zoo will soon make her Zoo debut in the next week or so.

Here's an excerpt:

"Named "Lela," which means "dark-haired beauty" in Swahili, the calf weighs 11 pounds, and is strong and healthy. Her parents are five-year-old Jahari and ten-year-old Joanie. Joanie is an experienced mother, having given birth to two other calves at the Zoo in the past few years. She is very attentive to the calf's needs and the two are just beginning to explore the exhibit together. Zoo visitors will be able to see Joanie and Lela in the next week or so (weather permitting) along with the rest of the herd.

The sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) is a species of antelope native to Central Africa. They live in semi-aquatic swamps, marshes and flood plains. The Maryland Zoo's sitatunga herd is made up of five animals, including Lela and can be found along the boardwalk in the Africa section of the Zoo."

Read the entire article here.

Patterson Park made the grade and has been named one of "America's Best City Parks" by Forbes magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

" From botanical gardens to ice skating rinks, from jogging paths to bison paddocks, a great city park can contain multitudes. But beyond their physical features, the best urban oases may well be defined by a feeling.

"Your whole sense of place changes when you go into a successful city park," says Alan Tate, author of Great City Parks. "They give you a feeling of going away without leaving town."

Tate explains how Frederick Law Olmsted, the founding father of American parks, talked about the need for "long spaces that you could dream away in"--one of the prominent features, in fact, of the Long Meadow in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, which Olmstead designed with Calverty Bowyer Vaux shortly after the Civil War. 

Olmstead's work, says Tate, "was very much based on the whole idea of the mental health effects of going into green space."

But if a great city park has a transporting effect, it must also be deeply connected to its urban surroundings."

Read the article here.

Here's another example of the power of "The Wire." Fans, sociologists and academics met recently in Leeds, England to examine and discuss the Baltimore-based drama and its impact.

Here's an excerpt:

"The session on "Omar: Ethics, Power and Performativity" was about to begin, but Josine Opmeer, sitting at a low table in the lobby of Leeds town hall, had decided to give it a miss. Opmeer is the manager of the centre for research on socio-cultural change (Cresc) at the University of Manchester, which was co-hosting the event, but by the standards of this gathering, she was an outsider, an ing�nue. She's only watched up to the end of season three.

"I finished it last night. I thought I'd better at least do that, but someone suggested there might be some spoilers in the presentation."

It was a reasonable assumption. For two days, more than 100 sociologists, criminologists, historians and cultural theorists from Britain and abroad came together in Leeds this week to discuss and debate a subject which had united them across sometimes jealously-guarded faculty and disciplinary borders: the HBO series The Wire.

Was the programme social science fiction or genre TV? Had it succeeded in its distillation of the US polity? Could Bourdieu's theoretical technologies help us in understanding its significance? In this gathering, mention of an obscure line of dialogue from an unremarkable incident in an early episode would meet with sage nods. Giving away what happens to McNulty, it is fair to say, was not their principal concern."

Read the full article here.

The Library of Congress belongs to every American. Drive down the road. Use it. Enjoy it.

And, don't forget about all the great resources provided by our own Enoch Pratt."

Read the full post here.

A Washington Post staff writer takes a tour of the recently proclaimed National Scenic Byway, Charles Street, and experiences 400 years of history.

Here's an excerpt.

"Statues don't get much better than the one atop the Washington Monument. You haven't noticed? There's the father of our country, resigning his commission, wearing his uniform -- and wrapped in a gently flowing toga.

If you've missed it, that's because a true appreciation of the Washington Monument requires traveling to Baltimore, which has the Washington Monument, the very first undertaken in this country to honor our first president. It was completed in 1829. The one in the District, also the work of architect Robert Mills, wasn't begun until 1848 and took forever to finish -- until the end of 1884.

Baltimore's Washington Monument stands, quite rightly, in the middle of enchanting Mount Vernon Place. To me, the square is one of the most beautiful spots in the city, and a fitting adornment to Charles Street, which last month was proclaimed a National Scenic Byway by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

City street as scenic byway? Let Webster's call a byway a side road; federal regulations include cultural or historical significance in their definition. So Las Vegas Boulevard swanned onto the most recent byways list, too. Know why Vegas wanted the title? So it could get help putting up more neon signs, and restoring and bringing back old-timey ones.

Charles Street hardly needs neon."

The Baltimore based soccer team, Crystal Palace Baltimore, will play in the new North American Soccer League (NASL) in 2010. The team is building a 5,000 to 7,000-seat soccer-specific stadium in the Port Covington neighborhood of Baltimore.

Here's an excerpt:

"The Tampa Bay Rowdies and Crystal Palace Baltimore have joined the new professional soccer league announced last week, beginning play in the United States and Canada in April 2010.

The addition of Tampa Bay and Baltimore brings the new league to nine teams, as they join the owners of the Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina Railhawks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, Montreal Impact, St. Louis Soccer United and Vancouver Whitecaps."

Here's one way that seems pretty good to end a holiday week...

Forget shopping, @designbyblake was just chillin on Black Friday "Beer purchased, movies rented, pizza ordered, ass on sofa.Today is good day."

Book lovers take note! @prattlibrary, "Don't blow your budget today at the mall. Next week is Central's annual BOOK SALE! Great deals: $.50 hardback $.25 http://bit.ly/7koLLf"

And we end this week with this funny fact...@PortDiscovery, "Whaaat!? Crazy! RT @NatlAquarium: Safer in water than on land, cows kill nearly 10 times as many humans as sharks do!"

Want to see your tweet featured in our TWOT? Follow @bmoremediame.

KIPP-Ujima Village Academy was among three Baltimore schools visited by a seeming political "odd couple" as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and political activist Al Sharpton on their multi-city tour of schools. The tour is designed to promote bi-partisan support for future education legislation.

Here's an excerpt:

"Conservative Newt Gingrich and liberal Al Sharpton agree. And, they are using that headline to draw attention to the problems with U.S. schools. On Friday, the two political leaders spent the day with U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan visiting three schools in Baltimore, talking to students and educators about what makes schools better."