What Happened to my Child?
Some parents say a debilitating psychological disorder associated with strep infections caused their children to change overnight—and turned their families’ lives upside down.
Brave New World at IJ
Michelle Jaconi left behind 18 years in broadcast journalism—12 with NBC’s Meet the Press and six with CNN—to become executive editor of the Independent Journal Review, a brash social-first media upstart based in Alexandria, Virginia, with an out-of-the-mainstream, right-of-center approach. (more…)
City Living
Driven by millennials and baby boomers, a demographic shift is remaking Montgomery County, morphing suburbs into cities. It’s part of a national transformation that some say signals a whole new way of life. (more…)
Ronnie’s Encore
As a young guitarist, Ronnie Younkins wanted rock ‘n’ roll to take him as far as he could go. Now, music brings this Blues Vulture home. (more…)
The Last of the Arabbers
As he leads a painted horse cart brimming with oranges and bananas and peaches past housing projects and boarded-up buildings, B.J. looks like the king of West Baltimore. Friends shout his name, grasp his hand, lean over to share hugs. He greets, chats, and moves on, calling out his wares in the grimmest part of town, through streets strewn with garbage and smelling of urine.
“Yeah, pretty red tomato, tomatoooo. Yeah, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon.”
The syllables melt into a tune that, to the uninitiated, might sound like nonsense.
“Wat-oh, wat-oh, wat-oh, oh-oh…”
It sounds like a voice from the past as it echoes off brick and formstone walls, and many Baltimoreans fear that it will be. B.J. may be the end of a nearly 150-year-old lineage. The last of the arabbers.
Go to the story on Eater.com.
Rescue Day
A silent killer turns a day of celebration into one of the biggest emergencies the B-CC Rescue Squad has ever faced.
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Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad Chief Ned Sherburne awoke around 6 a.m. at the squad station, where he had spent the night, as he often does. He knew it would be a busy day. Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013, was the Taste of Bethesda, and the station would be welcoming the public for its annual Rescue Day open house. Kids would be checking out the shiny fire trucks, dousing cardboard cutout houses with a fire hose and watching as members of the station’s crew rip apart a car to show what a real rescue looks like.
Sherburne busied himself getting the station ready for the event. He cleaned up, moved the trucks out to the parking lot, then jumped into the chief’s car, a Chevy Tahoe stocked with communication radios and incident command equipment, to drive home, change clothes and come back to the station to greet visitors when they began showing up at 11 a.m.
He made it only a few blocks.
Go to the story at Bethesda Magazine.
Welcome.
I’m a freelance journalist based near Washington, D.C., where I specialize in writing about food, the environment and travel writing from a shrinking globe. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to contact me at david@davidmfrey.com.