War No Bore

Will wonders never cease? I can’t ever remember reading anything in your paper concerning the War of 1812 in the last 25 years at least, but maybe I missed something. (You did. –ed.) Congratulations on running Geoffrey Footner’s fine review of the new book Perilous Fight: America’s Intrepid War With Britain on the High Seas, 1812-1815 by Stephen Budiansky—truly amazing! The paper has actually shown that it has an interest in the history of this country—who knew?

This bodes well for all Marylanders, considering the fact that we are already well into the launching of the Bicentennial of the War of 1812 that will run during 2012-’15, and that the State of Maryland—for once, to its great credit!—has had an outstanding commission in place for some years now to help ensure that the Free State will have a fair, complete, and unbiased commemoration of the war statewide. Maybe for the very first time, your readers will learn about places and events other than the battles of North Point and Ft. McHenry, such as how Marylanders fought at Bladensburg, St. Michaels, Havre de Grace, Ft. Washington, and yes, even in Virginia waters defending the USF Constellation.

Our state is fortunate in that we have many writers who can bring these and many other such unheralded stories to your readers. These might be as well received by your cosmopolitan readership with as much enthusiasm as, say, your Deathfest cover story this week. Who knows? It’s worth a shot, and you would be performing a great public service in educating all of us in this way. Having covered the last such Bicentennial—of the American Revolution during 1975-’81—I’ll be looking forward to it. 

Blaine Taylor
Towson

By the Numbers

The wars are not over. Please keep posting the number of our citizens sacrificed for lies.

You may want to use the actual number and not what the “official” number is (see the information at tinyurl.com/4ytvcjm and tinyurl.com/62xco68).

Jacqueline Chesbro
Baltimore

Editor Lee Gardner responds: We use the “official” number in large part because it is updated (all too) regularly and reliably. As discussed in this week’s Static (p. 5), we have no plans to stop running the number unless it stops rising.

Correction: Due to a fact-checking error, our review of Everyman Theatre’s production of Pygmalion in last week’s issue incorrectly credited James Black as Col. Pickering. In fact, Stan Weiman plays Pickering. City Paper regrets the error.

Editor’s note: Due to an early holiday deadline, this week’s installment of Murder Ink will run online only; check it out at citypaper.com/murderink.