She notes kinkier behavior as well, such as a penguin stopping to gawk at two other penguins having sex in public, so to speak. She shows a clip of “panda porn,” which is actually used by zoo professionals to encourage the seemingly cuddly bears, who have a small window of fertility, to procreate.
Later, she notes female primates will, at times, consciously increase their volume of noise to “help” male partners ejaculate sooner rather than later.
“I think we have all been there ladies,” deadpans Jacks, originally from Alabama, in a sweet Southern drawl. “For me, it’s usually so I can watch The Walking Dead, and it’s coming on in 10 minutes.”
Monkton
Jarrettsville Pike
February 17, 2013
23. Sweet Trees
On a blustery, biting Sunday afternoon, Sheryl Pedrick is leading a Maple sugaring tour—mostly parents and their young kids—at Ladew Topiary Gardens and she explains that other trees produce sap as well, just with lower sugar concentrations. According to legend, a Native American squaw first discovered the sugar maple’s precious sap after her husband left a tomahawk planted in a tree, Pedrick says.
Fifty years ago, the gardens’ founder, Harvey S. Ladew, placed several sugar maples up the hill purely for aesthetic reasons. But blowing seeds from those trees produced other maples in the woods away from the gardens—now, decades later, old enough to be tapped.
Jocelyn Weinbaum and sister Courtney Nurre, who grew up in Vermont, have brought their husbands and children. Each fills a gallon jug of Maple sap to turn into syrup at home. “My mom made syrup in our kitchen,” Courtney says. “We used to pour it into the snow and eat it like candy.”
Traipsing through the mud, Pedrick shows the kids how to use a hand drill to make a hole in a tree and insert a tap, known as a spile. Another volunteer demonstrates how the watery sap is traditionally boiled over an open fire, down to a sweet-smelling consistency.
But it’s the parents, reconnecting to their childhood memories, who remain more engaged than the kids. A towheaded girl repeats for a third time, “My toes are freezing” and finally, Pedrick asks everyone if they’re ready to go inside to eat pancakes with 100 percent Ladew maple syrup. The group enthusiastically nods their heads. Except for Courtney’s son.
“I’m still my chewing my gum,” he says.
Towson
Osler Drove
March 2, 2013
24. Basketball Diaries
Towson trails Hofstra, but former Tiger forward Chuck Lightening isn’t worried. “These guys can play,” he assures another alum. “This is their last game and they’re feeling that.”
Lightening’s referring to the Towson mens’ final game this season, but it is also the last ever at the 37-year-old Tiger Center Arena. Next year, the team moves into a $75 million, multi-purpose facility. With two dozen other former players, including several from the first team to play here, the 1976-77 squad that went 27-3, and former coach Terry Truax, who led Towson to three straight conference titles and back-to-back NCAA tournaments, Lightening is among those introduced at halftime.
There are other memories, too, of this gym. Ray Charles, Styx, and Bill Cosby all played the Towson Center. Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin
Hagler’s 1987 fight was shown here on closed circuit TV, and President Barack Obama came last season to watch Towson play Oregon State, which is coached by his brother-in-law.
Ultimately, the Tigers rally, completing the greatest turnaround in NCAA history, going from 1-31 mark last season to finish 18-13 and in process, give the Towson Center a proper send-off. As he watches the comeback, Truax reminds former guard Quintin Moody, who, of course, doesn’t need reminding, that his three-pointer on this floor sealed Towson’s epic 1995 upset of Louisville.
“The fans stormed the court,” smiles Moody.
Meanwhile, Lightening recalls Truax, at his family’s kitchen table, telling his mother that he was offering her son a college scholarship. “I wasn’t sure what to do after high school, then I transferred and sat out a year,” says Lightening, an explosive, if occasionally inconsistent performer, who once scored 29 points in a near-upset of Syracuse and hung 26 on Ohio State in the NCAA tournament. “Good players were arriving and he could’ve given away my scholarship, but he kept his promise.
“He yelled at me every day in practice,” continues Lightening, a Towson Hall of Famer and Ellicott City IT staffing agency owner today. “Some things he said probably would bring [criminal] charges today,” he adds with a laugh, “but I’m grateful he did it.”
Did Truax, who built a reputation as a mentor who cared as much about his players’ grade-point average as their scoring average, actually yell at his star forward at every practice for three years?
The retired coach doesn’t turn his head from the game. “He needed it.”
(Postscript: Tery Truax passed away in 2015 after suffering a stroke.)
Franklin Square
North Bruce Street
March 14, 2013
25. Nether World
Stepping from his “wheat paste mobile,” a battered, pale blue compact, street artist known as Nether unfurls his latest work. It’s a 7-foot-by-5-foot black and white drawing of a fictional character he’s created—the dark, unseen city employee who secretly nails the (real) ubiquitous red “X” marks on Baltimore’s vacant rowhomes and buildings deemed unsafe for firefighters.
Nearly every house on both sides of this West Baltimore block has a red “X” on its boarded windows.
Sometimes the 23-year-old travels by bicycle, with a basket attachment holding his bucket of homemade paste in place—while he straddles his 16-foot pole and brush—riding, he jokes, “like Harry Potter.” Today, he drove because he needs his collapsible ladder.
Meanwhile, a girl, maybe 10, in a pink sweater, large black-rimmed glasses, and a big Afro, peers from a door in one of the few inhabited homes behind him. A couple of dolls, a ball, and several plastic cars sit on her front stoop and her younger brother, still in his school khakis and blue shirt, leans out to watch, too. Nether takes just 15 minutes to set his ladder and paste his poster, alternately dipping his brush into the gooey bucket and pushing it across his two-piece poster, placed side-by-side on the boarded window across the street from the kids.
Suddenly, the image of a bandana-masked man, hammer in one hand, red “X” in the other, stares down from the vacant brick rowhouse, as if the character had been caught in the act on the near-desolate street. As Nether steps from the ladder, making sure he hasn’t missed flattening any spots, the little girl opens her door. “I like your art,” she says. Her brother agrees. “I like it, too.”
“Thank you,” Nether responds, turning around. “Do you like to draw?” he asks the children, who nod, affirmatively.
“Well, you know, I’m sure you’d get in trouble if you drew on the walls inside your house,” Nether tells his young audience. “But I bet if you drew outside on the sidewalk or on the walls, no one would mind.”
(Postscript: Justin Nethercut and Elise Victoria founded Arts + Parks in 2017, an organization that seeks to blend street art and purposeful landscaping to create holistic spaces for Baltimore neighborhoods.)
Upton
Pennsylvania Avenue
March 30, 2013
26. Sneaker Show
“How much for these?” asks a 20-something man, gently holding a pair of red Nike Air Jordans IIs, originally released in 1986.
“Gimme a price,” responds Ahmad Bennett. “I’ll