Author: Shirley K. Washburn
We say goodbye today to Jerry Ceppos, a gentle soul who believed in the importance of America’s daily newspapers even as those around him were insisting the whole business was over. We lost Jerry over the weekend. He was 75. The obit in the San Jose Mercury News said the cause of death was sepsis, brought on by an infection. The obit also said he’d been editor of that newspaper and helped bring it into the era of digital media. Jerry Ceppos (Facebook) The digital part sounded a little jarring, since Jerry was part of that last generation to come…
By Milton Kline Rabbi Jacob S. Green, who died last month at the age of almost 98, was my first rabbi while he was serving the old Har Zion Synagogue on North Avenue in West Baltimore. My first meeting with the rabbi was a day after my mother died, when I was 11 years old. My mother died suddenly at the age of 33. Ironically, the first day of my saying Kaddish for my mother was Rabbi Green’s first day at Har Zion. At the end of the morning service, the rabbi beckoned me to come over. He asked if I…
Coming off the bottom of the Jones Falls Expressway, we found the unexpected awaiting us at President and Lombard streets: where there previously were entire platoons of squeegee kids, there was now only a Baltimore Police squad car sitting there with its lights blinking. The good news: nobody in the car was going to feel threatened by having our windshield cleaned against our will. When so many people today tell you, “I won’t go downtown anymore,” this is the beginning of their anxiety: these kids who advance on cars paused at red lights who reach for some spare change before…
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony May 4 attended by local and state dignitaries and VIPs, LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope announced that construction on the Jill Fox Center for Hope building is nearly complete. Located on Sinai Hospital’s expanded campus at Belvedere Avenue and Preakness Way, the Center for Hope will be a 32,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility for the region’s only comprehensive violence intervention and prevention center. The new center acts as the hub for all of LifeBridge Health’s violence prevention and response programming, addressing issues ranging from child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, elder abuse and community violence. “After years of…
By Stephanie Bolster McCannon What are you doing this weekend? It’s important to take advantage of all that Baltimore has to offer this spring and summer, and use these events to boost your happiness and stay healthy. Music makes us feel uplifted and can benefit our health, whether performing or listening to it. But what is it about music that makes us feel so good, and how can we use that to ramp up our happiness? Neuroscience indicates we have a whole host of physiological responses to music, including reducing stress and improving mood and brain function. Research has also…
Dr. Morton Maimon Mower, a noted American cardiologist and co-inventor of the Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator — a device that detects when a heart beats too rapidly or inefficiently and delivers a shock to produce a normal rhythm — died of cancer on Monday, Apr. 25, in Denver. He was 89. “As a medical inventor, his innovations restarted the hearts of millions, yet he also gave a heartbeat to an entire nation — the land and people of Israel,” said Jewish National Fund-USA Chief Executive Officer Russell F. Robinson. “The world has lost a philanthropic luminary and I have lost a friend.…