Dan Rodricks: 18 items on the agenda for 2024 | STAFF COMMENTARY

In this final column on 2023, a look ahead to 17 things I’d like to know, see, do or hear in the coming year, plus one thing I will definitely not be doing:

Things I’d like to see:

Huge television production vans parked in Camden Yards for the World Series.

Continued progress against gun violence in Baltimore. Significantly fewer lives were lost in 2023 after eight dreary years of 300-plus homicides each, and the trend is not merely organic. Several players made this happen: Anti-violence programs, like Roca, aimed directly at young men at highest risk of being shot (again, or for the first time); effective coordination of local, state and federal resources by the U.S. Attorney’s Office; successful prosecutions by the Maryland attorney general’s organized crime unit, and impressive results in homicide trials under Ivan Bates in his first year as Baltimore state’s attorney: As of Dec. 27, 136 guilty verdicts against 19 acquittals, according to his office.

I’d like to see Marlo Hargove and Archie Lee of F.A.C.E. (Freedom Advocates Celebrating Ex-offenders) get the support they need for the re-entry center and transitional housing program they were trying to establish for guys coming out of prison before the pandemic.

Chesapeake oyster farmers augmenting their crops with soft-shell clams. Morgan State University’s Patuxent research lab has been studying that possibility. If it happens, we might finally see more Maryland seafood restaurants with fried, whole-belly soft shell clams, New England-style, on their menus.

I’d like to see more small houses, like those in Hope Village, under construction on vacant lots in Baltimore. It doesn’t happen without philanthropy or government subsidy, but few undertakings are more worthwhile. Small houses are an answer to homelessness and the affordability problem. They can be the first step in homeownership for people of modest incomes. They create the kind of density that leads to whole new neighborhoods. It would be great to see something like the villages created by the Veterans Community Project. That Missouri-based nonprofit has built dozens of tiny houses (240 to 320 square feet each) for homeless veterans in St. Louis and four other locations. Why not here, and why not for anyone in need of an affordable place to live?

Things I’d like to hear:

The voice of Michael Bloomberg on my phone, pledging to give $1 billion of his estimated $96.3 billion to Baltimore Community Lending so it can finance the renovation of thousands of vacant houses here. Mike: What are you waiting for?

I’d like to hear, at the Lyric or Hippodrome, a big, happy production of “The Most Happy Fella,” the superb Frank Loesser musical seldom staged.

I’d like to hear that Netflix or Amazon picked up the rights to Scott Shane’s excellent book, “Flee North,” a great story about a Maryland-born freed slave and abolitionist who deserves to be the subject of a movie.

A Maryland theater company or a collaboration of theater companies devoting an entire year to the “20th century cycle” of August Wilson’s plays. Imagine seeing all of those decade-by-decade plays — “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and “Fences” among them — on stages throughout the state in a year’s time. That would be epic.

An MTA bus driver willing to remind passengers yapping on their cellphones that nobody else is interested in their business.

Things I’d like to know:

Why the humongous widening of Interstate 95 between White March and Fallston was necessary. Looks like a boondoggle — that is, as the dictionary says: “Work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.” That’s about the size of it.

Why so many Americans vote against their own interests by supporting politicians who oppose a higher minimum wage, affordable health insurance, regulating polluters, developing green energy jobs and, above all, holding democracy sacred.

Though I long ago lost my appetite for understanding “MAGA discontent,” I will consider one more book about it: “White Rural Rage,” by Tom Schaller, political science professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and journalist Paul Waldman. Due out in February, it’s pitched as a “searing portrait and damning takedown of America’s proudest citizens, who are also the least likely to defend its core principles.”

One thing I won’t be doing:

Watching the new season of “Worst Cooks In America: Spoiled Rotten” on the Food Network — even with a Marylander as one of the competitors for the $25,000 grand prize. Asked by a reporter for the Cumberland Times-News what she would do if she won, Leona Chapman of Cresaptown, in Allegany County, said she would “spend the prize money on cosmetic surgery, specifically on lip work to complement her Botox injections and face fillers.” I’m out.

Things I’d like to do:

Finally, after talking about it for nearly 30 years, I’d like to bake a large and delicious timpano like the one from “Big Night.”

Organize, with the help of Sun food writer Amanda Yeager, an investigative taco crawl through Fells Point, hitting 10 taquerias on a Saturday in March. Who’s in?

Take my First Day Hike in Baltimore’s Leakin Park; the place needs people, it needs love, it needs far more attention than it gets from the city. If you’re interested: Meet Monday at 10 a.m. at the Winans Meadow, 4500 N. Franklintown Road. The more, the merrier.

And I would like to hike the full distance of Charles Street, from Gittings Avenue on the north to Winder Street on the south, with stops for hydration at Dutch Courage, Mick O’Shea’s and, if we get that far, Delia Foley’s.