NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday Feb. 21

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

•  FCC PLAN TO INVADE U.S. NEWSROOMS:  INNOCENT INVESTIGATION… OR ‘THOUGHT CONTROL’ (AS IN GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984)?

Is a plan by the Federal Communications Commission to place investigators in newsrooms throughout the country simply an innocent attempt to assess how editorial decisions are made and whether media outlets are biased?

Or is it an extreme violation of Freedom of the Press and the First Amendment?

The FCC “does not and will not interfere in newsrooms or editorial decision making” nor does it intend “to regulate the speech of news media” in America, the agency emphatically declared in a statement released Thursday via email exclusively to Voice of Baltimore’s media partner WBFF Fox45-TV.

“Any suggestion the Commission intends to regulate the speech of news media is false,” the statement continues, adding that the draft questions in its study for the plan “are being revised to clear up any confusion.”

The FCC proposal is the latest Big Brother “intrusive surveillance of the press” by the Obama Administration, Investor’s Business Daily charged in an editorial late last week following an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal whereby one of the agency’s Republican minority commissioners, Ajit Pai, warned that a plan to dispatch researchers into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms — known as the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” — is proceeding apace, despite the grave danger it presents to the First Amendment to the Constitution and the right of free speech and Freedom of the Press.

“The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories,” Pai maintains.

The FCC insists however that broadcasters’ participation in the study would be strictly “voluntary.” But Pai questions that assertion, since the agency has control over TV and radio licenses, the denial of which would put such broadcasters out of business — constituting a conflict of interest on the part of the FCC, he says.

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BALTIMORE GETS BETTER
DIGGING  OUT  FROM
WINTER STORMS

Shoveling snow, however,
remains a health hazard
 
By David Maril
 
For years, Baltimore was labeled Panic City when it came to predictions of snow.

Few who lived here would disagree.

The threat alone of frozen precipitation would launch the city and counties into activating snow emergency plans. Schools would open late and close early at the sign of a few snowflakes.

A slightly ominous weather forecast could spark a stampede to grocery stores as fears grew of being stranded at home for weeks without bread, milk and the necessities of modern life.

If we had an inch of snow, the Jones Falls Expressway often turned into a giant parking lot of cars headed for body shops after fender benders caused by petrified drivers slamming on their brakes when encountering slick spots and spinning out of control.

Don’t get me wrong, Baltimoreans still don’t like snow.

Stores continue to become mobbed after predictions of bad weather. And this latest snow episode we’ve had, sporadically dumping as much as 20 inches over several days in parts of Maryland, has sparked a wave of complaints that are symptomatic of extreme winter weariness.

However, let’s put this in perspective.

It’s important to recognize that we no longer seem to have as many accidents from panic in tough winter driving conditions.

The real telltale thing that has changed is, we now have plenty of company around the rest of the country in not adapting easily to snow, sleet and cold.

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NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday Feb. 14

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]

 
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

•  ‘PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL’ BUSTED IN MD.

Or so claim the Anne Arundel County police, who allegedly “arrested” the famed Groundhog Day celebrity from Pennsylvania in the midst of Thursday’s snowstorm and charged him with “excessive winter” and “failing to do right.”

The “excessive winter” charge apparently relates to “Punxsutawney Phil”’s Groundhog Day prognostication two weeks ago when he emerged from hibernation and saw his shadow, thereby predicting six more weeks of winter.

Media outlets were informed of the 127-year-old rodent’s arrest via a tweet from Anne Arundel police spokesman Lt. T.J. Smith.

Groundhog Day has been celebrated in the United States and Canada since 1887 and is rooted in the Celtic tradition that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow on February 2nd, winter will continue for another six weeks.

So if Phil had not seen his shadow this year, according to legend Spring 2014 would be coming early and the Anne Arundel County Police Department would not have had grounds for their alleged arrest of the Punxsutawney, Pa. celebrity, who is the most famous resident of the Jefferson County borough located 84 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, and which claims to have popularized the legend for more than 127 years — or at least since the popular 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” in which the legendary rodent was captured by actor Bill Murray, who played a Pittsburgh TV weatherman condemned to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney again and again in perpetuity.

According to Punxsutawney elders, there is only one Phil, who has been providing annual weather prognostications since 1887, making him the longest living groundhog in history, since groundhogs typically only live from 9-14 years.

The Anne Arundel police mugshot shows him to be nearly seven feet tall. (Groundhogs typically measure 16 to 26 inches in length and weigh 4 to 9 pounds, although those that live in areas with fewer natural predators and large amounts of alfalfa have been known to grow to two-and-a-half feet in length and weigh up to 31 pounds.)

It was unclear at press time when or even if the centenarian rodent (also known as a woodchuck, whistle-pig and ground squirrel) would be tried and/or incarcerated.

Or if Maryland law provides for prosecution of legendary animals.

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SALT ON WOUND  OF  PERSONAL TRANSPORT:
BETWEEN JANUARY & MARCH IN BALTIMORE,
VEHICLES  WON’T STAY CLEAN  FROM SALT

Is it car preventative maintenance or therapy for drivers?
 
By David Maril
 
Even weeks before making the switch to Daylight Savings Time, the car wash lines start forming early in the morning when we have a few dry, warmish days.

Every time the temperature climbs into the upper 40s in January, February or March a procession of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks can be seen idling on the side of roads and highways, waiting to proceed into a car wash. It’s as if they are positioning to participate in a Fourth of July parade.

One clear, 35-degree morning last week, in between snowstorms and bouts with sleet, I saw a guy on a side street in Northwest Baltimore off Greenspring Ave. wiping down his windshield and side windows with Windex.

“Why are you doing that?” asked his young, around 10-years-old daughter.

“I want to get all this salt and junk off and I know the car wash places will be too crowded,” he answered.

The higher the deposits of salt grow on roads, waiting to help create potholes before seeping into the ground and polluting our water supplies, the more motorists become obsessed with having their vehicles blasted by soap and water.

No matter how high the heating bills rise this cold winter, car washes remain with many as a necessity rather than a luxury. No matter how tight the budget, a surprising number of people still find ways to afford having their vehicles scrubbed and buffed.

“I’ve got to get that salt off the car — it will destroy the paint,” many will explain while waiting for up to half an hour in line to pay anywhere from $10 to $50.

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1970 FORT McHENRY CONCERT WAS CLASSIC;
SLOOP CLEARWATER DRAMATIZES NEED
TO CLEAN UP INLAND WATERWAYS

Lead Belly’s ‘Goodnight, Irene’
was first big hit with Weavers
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
When the quintessential folk singer of 20th Century America died last week at the age of 94, Voice of Baltimore searched for a local angle to justify eulogizing this iconic figure who returned to Charm City in May for what may have been the first time since his classic Fort McHenry concert on Independence Weekend 1970.

Pete Seeger performed in Maryland any number of times over his long career, but his 1970 visit was significant for several reasons, not the least of which being that he sailed into the Port of Baltimore aboard his newly minted Hudson River sloop, the Clearwater, launched just a year before, a replica of the sailing ships of bygone days before America’s inland waterways — like the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay — surrendered to pollution.

Seeger performed at Fort McHenry in the Inner Harbor that day, at the birthplace of our national anthem, and included in his repertoire the original version of the erstwhile barroom melody whose high notes nearly all of us find so hard to reach, “To Anacreon in Heaven” — that was in Francis Scott Key’s mind when he penned “The Star Spangled Banner” while being held captive aboard a British warship here in 1814 — a tune whose original verses glorify wine, women and song.

Seeger loved those lyrics, although he stayed married to the same woman for nearly 70 years — a rarity in show business these days — until her death last summer at age 91, just days before their wedding anniversary. The couple married in 1943 and raised three children.

His parents, who divorced when Pete was seven, were both classical musicians, as was his stepmother, who his father married six years later.

His purpose in being in Baltimore on that July 4th weekend was to protest — a Pete Seeger specialty — against chemical and biological warfare. As usual, his protest was in song, the way in which he best expressed himself, and which often got him into trouble for his left-wing political views.

In 2011, despite physical frailty that prevented him from carrying his beloved long-neck banjo, Seeger led an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York, two miles through downtown Manhattan.

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