I've been so busy lately that I've barely even been able to see an end to it. Baseball season is always incredibly busy, but adding moving onto it, plus a lost cell phone, it just makes it all the more busy.
I'm soldiering through, though. I got home tonight at 10pm, after practice until 6:30, then rides home to kids until 8:00, then a trip to the mall to get a new cell phone, then to the grocery store for some odds and ends, then to the old house to pick up the mail, and then, finally, to the new house, where I'm trying to set up negotations between my dog and the roomate's 12-week old kitten. He's a chaser, she's a runner, it's not working.
The strangest thing happened on the way while I was driving the kids home. I was driving on The Alameda, near Harford Road, when a group of six or so youths started coming from either side. They were doing a strange dance, and the kids I was driving immediately identified it as Bloods Dance. The miscreant youths started walking through the center of the busy intersection, somuch that I couldn't turn left when I wanted to, and had to swerve to miss one of them. My carmates told me they must have just banked someone, and, as we continued to drive along, we saw a bunch of police cars and an ambulance up ahead. There, as we drove right by it and ended up being stopped in front of the crime scene (one block up from Erdman/Bel Air, which just happens to be walking distance from the new house) and, there, I encountered my first real visceral experience with the Baltimore murder rate: police lines drawn out, caution tape up, and a copious splattering of blood on the sidewalk. I don't know if it was a gunshot or a stabbing, but, with the amount of blood we saw, I don't think the victim lived.
Scary shit.
Tomorrow's our first game. Thursday, Friday, and Monday follow. I'm not telling anyone but you all that this is a great team and that a city championship is possible. Depends on how those other teams are, though, I guess.
The Draw Of Daft Punk
-
In a visually engaging Pitchfork cover-story, Ryan Dombal puts the duo in
perspective: Zoom out for a second, and this entire scene can seem deeply
silly: ...
1 hour ago
10 comments:
Reading about that actually gave me chills. I'm a small town girl, and in the nearly 3 years of living in Baltimore I've become somewhat desensitized to violence and police activity. There have been times when I've driven past a house with yellow tape up and five cop cars outside and casually thought to myself, hmm maybe someone got murdered. But the part with the Bloods dance and actually seeing the blood on the ground - that would really freak me out.
Hi,
Somewhere in an earlier post, that I don't want to look for again, you mentioned teaching Paradsie Lost. I teach in PG county, but live in Baltimore, and somehow last year I ran across your website, which I read occasionally. Anyway - any tips on PL? It sounds like you might have some "how not to" advice? I loved reading the book when I was a senior, but I'm a pretty big dork. My kids are looking at graduation in 2 months, and I don't know how I will hold thier attention with Milton - any hints would be appreciated. Thanks!
rachael.rossi@pgcps.org
Wow. That's really disturbing. To see stories on the news is one thing, but to see kids celebrate a murder...
That's cold, and it made my blood run even colder. You don't even see that kind of stuff on "The Wire".
I sure it's simply dripping with irony that the video brings to my mind nothing so much as a Klan rally...
I originally came from a big city in the midwest, and just prior to coming to teach in Baltimore was in a small town school in Southern Illinois. We dealt with an influx of "The Folks" aka the Gangster Disciples as they tried to push their drug peddling power down-state. We were pretty successful as we were proactive and did not burry our heads in the sand.
I'm not in a zone school. I'm in one of the supposed better ones. About a year or so ago I began to see graffiti of both bloods and disciples. I tried to get through to our higher-ups and our school Police officer what was going on (I received gang awareness and prevention training back in Illinois).
For a long time it got worse. Eventually they started to get rid of the biggest tagging, but it continued, particularly where I did not frequently go in the building and those that did either did not recognize what they saw or no longer cared. Dress code violations morphed into open wearing of colors and teaching gang signs in the halls.
Our so-called city leaders, when asked about this growing problem showed astounding acumen by claiming the problem was far smaller than people were making it out to be. In all my training, communities that took the exact opposite approach to gangs appearing in their area were the most successful in containing or ridding themselves of these miscreants.
Currently, there is less overt wearing of caps or other colors, and the tagging is of a less grandiose nature, but it still is there and still gets added to.
I wonder, if this is what is happening at my school, what must YOU be dealing with at yours? Will adults who have the power to do things to quell this, even if only in our halls, continue to drag their feet until it escalates to a killing in or on the grounds of a city-wide school?
I teach 9th grade at one of Baltimore's danger list high schools. Just yesterday we had the city's gang unit come into the building to talk with teacher's about the growing problem. Their view was so fatalistic. In short, they told us that the gangs were getting bigger, and they couldn't do anything about it except hope to arrest more people eventually. When I asked what we, the teachers, could do to keep ourselves and our students safe in the school building... they had no answer. Every day more Crips wind up in our once all-Bloods school because of school closings and neighborhood shifts. This job was always risky, but over the last year it's become just plain scary.
What are your personal opinions on the new Baltimore gang initiative? I personally find them a bit laughable (D.A.R.E?! Not everything retro works/is plausible in present times)
no bloods or big gang activity here in central WI where I live (other than some Asian gangbanger wannabees), but yikes, we have MAJOR drug activity, so I'm sure the gang activity will follow soon enough. I live in a very nice neighborhood in a small town of about 2500 people. Murder isn't supposed to happen here -- I live in "God's country." And yet, four people were recently murdered in two different attacks, both drug related. Central WI has become a "hub" between the bigger cities of Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, LaCrosse, etc. It's the perfect spot for pickups and drop offs....and as we recently learned, also murder. I'm convinced even the smallest rural towns are no longer safe.
-- Dawn
...Im am X member of the "Red Stone Rydaz" A blood gang in eastbaltimore on Bradford&lanvale and ive shot stabbed and beat alot of people for wearing the color blue. after being in a heated gun fight i was left with one leg. an AK 47(military rifle) struck me 6 times and left me with 3 shots in the chest. a punctered lung & a missing knee cap..My best friend. & fellow gangmember "Eazy B" was killed after a shotgun shell completely decapitated him..pretty scary..sense then ive been talkin to high schoolers all around baltimore about gang awareness..juss imagine seeing sum one you loves head basically exploding in front of you...
Post a Comment