Mary Corey, a Baltimore native and 23-year veteran of The Baltimore Sun who got her start as an intern at the paper, has been named senior vice president and director of content, The Sun’s top editorial position.

Corey becomes the first woman to lead The Sun newsroom in its 173-year history, replacing Montgomery Cook, who left the paper earlier this year. Unlike Cook, who many Sun staffers disdained as an unqualified outsider in our 2009 story on the state of the paper, Corey is generally well-liked in the newsroom.

[Photo courtesy of The Baltimore Sun]

As part of the pre-Preakness festivities, the 20th annual “Crab Derby” was held at Lexington Market today. Local celebs like 92-Q’s Konan, 98 Rock’s Stash, and WMAR’s Kelly Swoope each competed in the races, trying to coax a snappy blue crab—fresh from the Faidley’s stand nearby—across the finish line.

WJZ’s Stan Saunders (left) was one of many who simply couldn’t motivate the snappers, despite ample water-spritzing and toy-dangling. The odds-on favorite was Fox Sports 1370-AM reporter Anne Boone-Simanski, who won two of the past three years and cruised to the finals again this year, with a controversial technique that looked suspiciously like poking the crustacean (if that isn’t a euphemism for something, it should be).

Joining her in the finals were Konan, West Baltimore developer Ron Kreitner, and Michael Filipelli of 100.7 The Bay. At the starting pistol, longshot Kreitner—a perennial contender, never a winner—watched his crab take off, crossing the finish line in seconds. “The trick this time was, I talked to the crab,” Kreitner said after the victory. “He said he likes a sloppy track, so I just gave him all the water he needed.”

The race for second place took considerably longer. Filipelli frequently checked his watch, while his lay-about seafood played dead. He ultimately lounged on the Market floor (left), waiting for his contender to get back in the race. Ultimately, Boone-Simanski took second and Filipelli claimed third. Let’s hope the horses show a little more spunk…

By Amy Mulvihill

John F. Kennedy once said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” I don’t think anyone would argue with the logic of this. Who wants to be perched on a roof during a driving rainstorm, furiously trying to minimize damage that could have been wholly prevented had we acted with a little more foresight and initiative?

I think about this quote a lot whenever I hear U.S. environment policy being debated. To belabor the metaphor, it seems to me that for far too long, with regards to our environmental practices and policies, we have been that house with the gaping hole in the roof and ignored the storm clouds looming on our horizon.

And then, lately, it’s started to rain. With literally millions of gallons of oil currently sloshing around in the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention the much-discussed geopolitical ramifications of a fossil fuel driven economy, it seems like now is a perfect time to embrace cleaner, greener energy alternatives.

An opportunity to do just that can be found this weekend at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium where the 2010 Solar and Wind Expo opened today. The expo, which is co-sponsored by, among others, the U.S. Department of Energy and Baltimore magazine, aims to “make green a reality by matching home and business owners with producers, financiers, and top experts in the field of green technologies.”

According to event organizers now is an optimal time to make the switch to green living for numerous reasons: “Both state and federal governments are providing unprecedented incentives to encourage home and business owners to utilize green technologies,” the events website thesolarandwindexpo.com says. Plus, as the—believe it or not—wealthiest state in the union and one of the top ten greenest states, Maryland “has both the desire to eliminate its carbon foot print and the financial means to do so.”

The expo runs through Sunday and features numerous speakers, including a keynote address tomorrow at noon by Bob Dixon, the Mayor of Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely leveled by a tornado in 2007 and has rebuilt itself using green building practices.

All lectures and seminars are free with admission, which is free for children under 12 and $12 for adults. There are discounts available, however, for purchasing tickets online (no paper), arriving by Light Rail (less gas consumption), and bringing any article or ad referencing the expo (um, not sure how this is green, but, hey, it’s still a discount!).

And anyway, what’s $12 when you think about what’s at stake?

The connection between Utz potato chips and Baltimore is legend. Yes, as many a would-be smarty parts will tell you, they’re manufactured over the border in Hanover, PA, but Baltimore was the first major market to embrace the Utz brand, founded by Will and Salie Utz in 1921. As Wikipedia tells us, “After Salie cooked the chips, Bill delivered them to local grocery stores and farmers’ markets in the Hanover and Baltimore, Maryland areas.” For years thereafter, our own Lexington Market was the primary distribution point for Utz products. Utz embraced its Baltimore connection with its Old Bay-seasoned “Crab Chips.” Utz even made a cameo on The Wire! We owned you, Utz!

Well, not anymore. Consider yourself disowned. Feel free to hangout with your soulless Yankee friends and all their bought-and-paid-for championships. But remember this Utz: New York doesn’t care about you. You may have made some Miltonian deal to become the “Official Snack Food of the New York Yankees,” but New Yorkers will never claim you the way we have. To them, you’re just a second-rate Dorito. And now, that’s all you’ll ever be.

Governor Martin O’Malley launched his re-election campaign just before noon today at the Bond Street Wharf. Before the event began, I ran into City Councilman Bill Henry—always up for a chat—who joked that he was looking up at the Wharf building’s windows for one or two lanterns, to see if the Governor would be arriving by land or by sea.

After introductions by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, O’Malley arrived by land (above, left) with his wife and kids, and offered a stump speech citing his administration’s achievements on education, crime, and the economy, all-too-frequently punctuated with his new campaign slogan, “Moving Maryland Forward.” The slogan is an inherent jibe at his returning Republican challenger Bob Ehrlich, as O’Malley made clear when he said, “Some run for public office to take Maryland back, I run for office to move Maryland forward.”

There were a few protestors at the event. Three held up signs urging the Governor to save Maryland’s film industry (above, right). “When Governor O’Malley came into office, Maryland offered $6 million dollars [a year] in tax incentive [for the film industry]. We were sorta holding our own,” says Michael Davis, a set-builder based in Highlandtown. “Now, it’s down to $1 million.” As a result, he says, filmmakers that once flocked to Maryland are going elsewhere. Davis worked four days in Maryland in all of 2009 (on David Fincher’s Social Network, about the founder of Facebook, which briefly filmed on Johns Hopkins’ campus). “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have had a day of work in Maryland for the first time since 1986,” he says. See our story on the state of the Maryland film industry, “Flicked Off,” in the current May issue of Baltimore.

And on the next dock, there was a lone protestor referring to the Governor as “Owe Malley,” lampooning him for “the largest tax increase in history.” I could be wrong, but I would bet that O’Malley is likely to see more of this kind of protestor on the campaign trail than film industry advocates.

By Jeanne-Michele Vigna

The National Katyn Memorial in Baltimore’s Harbor East has become an impromptu meeting spot for mourners of President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, who died in a plane crash along with 95 others, including several cabinet ministers and legislators, in a devastating plane crash early Saturday morning.

Mere hours after the crash—which occurred shockingly close to the site of the massacre marked by the memorial—a group of approximately fifty formally-dressed people gathered around the site, an event that kicked-off a week of nightly vigils there.

On hand that Saturday, were members of the Polish League of American Veterans Ladies Auxiliary outfitted in matching navy blue blazers. Senator Barbara Mikulski, among others, sported red clothing, while some simply held the Polish flag. A representative from the Polish embassy, donning an armband, began to explain the significance of Katyn in Polish.  A member of the crowd shouted out that all Poles know the history, so it would be better if he just spoke in English. After a speech by Mikulski, the assembled sang the Polish national anthem and said prayers for Poland and victims of the crash. Flowers and wreaths were laid at the feet of the memorial and candles were lit.

After the ceremony, some mourners moved on to the Polish National Alliance Lounge for shots of the popular Polish honey liquor, Krupnik, in honor of the fallen President and others on the plane.

The Baltimore Sun has announced that top editor Monty Cook will resign from his position to accept a job at the University of North Carolina, his alma mater. 

Cook will step down in April after a stormy 15-month tenure during which he oversaw 61 layoffs at the paper, as reported in our September, 2009 cover story. 

[photo courtesy of the Baltimore Sun]

A couple months ago, we gave Baltimore Sun editors a lot of grief over a pretty atrocious front-page error. This morning, we noticed an equally egregious error in The New York Times (left). Granted it wasn’t on the front page, but the Times‘ error is even more laughable. Is “Po Basketball” what poor people play in the South?

Also, given that media-watching blog Gawker recently reported that the minimum salary for Times staff reporters is $90,500, I think they ought to at least get their section headers right. Of course, I know that reporters aren’t responsible for those, but if they’ve got that kind of money to throw around, you’d think they could afford to hire people to make sure they don’t embarrass themseleves—and maybe even to stop laying people off

The Cardinal Gibbons School—one of Baltimore’s oldest and most storied Catholic high schools—announced about an hour ago via its Facebook page that it will close its doors at the end of the current academic year. The move comes as the Archdiocese of Baltimore rolls out its plan to consolidate the city’s Catholic schools progams, which has suffered in recent years from dwindling enrollment and contributions.

The school, opened in 1962, occupies the same space as St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys, which dated back to 1886 and counted George Herman “Babe” Ruth among its alumni. The field where Ruth played high school baseball is used by Cardinal Gibbons athletes today. The school counts several other prominent players among its alumni, including 1970s NFL star Jean Fugett and NBA players  Quintin Dalley and Norman Black.

According to political magazine National Journal, Maryland’s U.S. senators are among the most liberal in the nation. Sen. Ben Cardin tied with four other senators for the number-one slot, while Sen. Barbara Mikulski landed at number eight. Only Rhode Island—which had both of its senators tied with Cardin in the number-one slot—had a more liberal senate duo. Maryland’s delegation to the House of Representatives ranked as the 6th most liberal in the country.

Depending on your political leanings, this will either come as an affirmation or a call to action in the coming elections. Check out the full rankings here.

[photo courtesy of the Women's Suburban Democratic Club of Montgomery County]