Some out-of-towners’ perspectives on Baltimore
May 17, 2018
The Daily Record
by Joe Nathanson
Daily Record 2018 05-18 Spotlight on Baltimore by Joe Nathanson
“The conference planners were concerned. Early in 2017, when the planning got underway in earnest, the headlines coming out of Baltimore were not heartening. Just two years earlier we had experienced the uprising in response to the death of Freddie Gray from injuries while in police custody. Since that time the city had been experiencing a spike in violence, with a record pace of homicides as part of the persistent narrative. The police department itself was under a cloud following a series of scandals. Then, as we approached the April 2018 meeting dates, two of the long-established neighborhood restaurants selected as dining venues were closing down.
As conferences go, the semi-annual meetings of Lambda Alpha International, the land economics society, are not very large. For planning purposes we budgeted for 80 participants for the gathering, dubbed the Land Economics Weekend or LEW. With the bad headlines, would they come? …”