Your recent article about Ed Rutkowski and the Patterson Park Community Development Corp. was comprehensive and described well the relatively rapid accomplishments of this man and organization, demonstrating just how much can be accomplished when people are committed, smart, and persistent (“Patterson Park Place,” Dec. 7). Although you mentioned several times the service of an architect, you should give credit to Jim Shetler, who has served well for years as that architect.

What really jump-started folks buying houses in the neighborhood was PPCDC’s ability to provide custom-designed homes. The planning and design staff constantly introduces environmentally sustainable and energy-efficient products and materials into their houses. They also work on multifamily and commercial development projects, and look for new uses for rowhouses as schools, community theaters, art studios, and more. The very successful PPCDC has demonstrated that the professional training and creativity of an architect improves the quality of design in new construction and historic rehabilitation as well as the quality of life for people in all socioeconomic groups!

Karen Lewand
Executive director, American Institute of Architects Baltimore
Baltimore

 

Love, Love

As the year 2005 ends, I want to give City Paper a compliment. In my opinion, under the leadership of editor Lee Gardner, City Paper has become a “must read” newspaper because of its investigative reporting, opportunities for everyone to write editorial letters, a staff of writers who know their assigned subjects, and a gifted editorial staff who provide City Paper with stories about Baltimore City politics that reveal that the real criminals are some elected politicians.

As an Afrocentric feminist, I was deeply hurt to lose Rosa Parks. She took us down a sacred walk through civil-rights struggles and beyond to America’s lack of humanity. God is good. Before the end of 2005, God gave us Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, who is the newly elected black female president of Liberia. She will give all black women and women of color hope in our divine human essence; to reveal our poverty is God’s door of opportunity for us to change the ugly face of humanity in America and throughout the world.

Recently I found on my son Horatio Kitwala’s desk a book titled Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World, by Edward S. Casey. I read in the book that all of us travel different journeys to reach a place to belong or to be together with other people. Can a place in the world that is home, or a favorite book or newspaper, be a place to fear because wild places are not safe?

I read City Paper because it takes me to places between my home and the world outside my home. City Paper has a soul spirit. I have a weekly homecoming with City Paper every Wednesday. I am in Place when I read City Paper. I travel mental voyages.

Larnell Custis Butler
Baltimore

 

Editor’s note: Right Field is taking the issue off and will return next week.

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