Book #6 of 2018

Reveals the dastardly machinations of an array of sordid operators who exacerbated and profited from racial divisions in Baltimore City and County. Political machines, bookies, loan sharks, hustlers, lawyers, accountants, future City Councilmen and even a future Vice President of the United States--all had a stake in stoking racial divisions for profit whether fiscal or electoral (or both). There was a lot of indignant embarrassment among residents of Baltimore County recently when Dallas Dance went down for corruption and covering it up. But read Pietila on the routine and profound corruption of Baltimore County leadership at all levels--on a level that even the City couldn't match at the time--up into the 70's and Dance seems a quaint and unworthy throwback to those good old days of truly astounding graft. It was the district where Spirow Agnew launched his political career after all...though most of the corruption was centered in the old Democratic Party machine.

The cast of characters is astonishing. Many are crooks and charlatans who have a genuine drive to desegretate the City by moving Black families into Jewish or white enclaves, but who profit heavily on "blockbusting" techniques while challenging redlined disctricts. Moral ambiguity abounds as some villains prove more empathetic than others.

But there is also plenty of downright acid racism and appalling degrees of hate, often saturating all local civic and public institutions, be they fiscal, secular, religious, cultural, or educational. This history is shameful but deeply fascinating in a city with a long history of economic, cultural, religious and racial diversity. Baltimore, as site of the first bloodshed of the Civil War, and as the hometown and burial place of John Wilkes Booth, serves as an interesting microcosm of the evolution of the civil rights movement and of racial attitudes and relations over the past 150 years.

The book is most entertaining as a rich historical record of race relations and realities in Baltimore from the industrial revolution on. Pietila tells good stories and evokes place and character well. It was fun to read his sympathetic and engaging accounts of people I knew little or nothing about and neighborhoods I know quite well. I recommend Not in My Neighborhood strongly as an indispensible work of popular history by someone with obvious expertise about the city,its past, and its national significance.

UGH

Moving sucks. Every aspect of it sucks. Looking at houses, selling a house, buying a house, signing contracts, doing inspections. It's a pain in the fucking arse long before one even has to endure the actual physical move itself.

All systems were go for our move this week until late Friday, at which point our title company found a ground rent lease attached to the home we're buying. This was not disclosed by the seller, who had claimed it was a fee simple property on their listing, and our contract of sale was written and accepted with this understanding. (A ground rent indicates that somebody owns the lot upon which your house sits and that instead of owning the ground you lease it. There has been much scandal of late in Baltimore over this practice, with good reason. Fee simple designates the more traditional whole-kit-and-caboodle, lot and house included in the sale.)

The sellers, notified of the problem, said that the property is indeed fee simple and that they would resolve this easily.

Now our mortgage underwriter wants to delay settlement because they are suspicious of such a title discovery this late in the process. ANY delay in settlement on the new house could fuck us, because we have to move out by the end of this week, and settlement is scheduled for Wednesday. If settlement got pushed back to next week we'd have to put our stuff in storage, settle on the new house, and then move again. That's assuming the ground rent/fee-simple issue is easily resolved, and doesn't result in lawsuits and breach of contract claims, which could result in us starting the house search over again, this time based out of a studio apartment or--worse yet--based out of the in-laws' basement.

I can't do anything but wait for the hired guns to wrangle over this. I'm not sure if that's good or bad for my mental health.