The New Mercury Readings

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We don’t really plan things ahead that carefully, but this one involved two sharp political commentaries, sandwiched between two peeks into the shock trauma ward. First, Amy Lakis talked about her son’s close call after a car crash. Political columnist Brian Morton read two of his pieces on Supreme Court Justices, demonstrating remarkable prescience regarding Mr. Roberts, and then, as a freebie, dazzled us with a couple of  card tricks. Then Edit  Barry took the stage and reminded us that a public school isn’ t something we use; it’s a place to grow. Finally, Ramsey Flynn narrated his own near death (or, technically, death), as experienced while under the knife at Johns Hopkins during open heart surgery.

For all New Mercury fans who’ve been wondering what’s happened to us: we’ll be back on Saturday, January 28th, featuring four more Baltimore writers who also reflect the depth of diversity and talent. Brian Morton, City Paper columnist and magician; Ramsey Flynn, journalist, author, and one-time Baltimore Magazine general editor; recent journalism graduate Amy Lakis; and Edit Barry, blogger, visionary, writer/editor.  More on all of these people as soon as we can get the photographs up. Posters too!  But for the moment, save the date. This should be a good one. As usual, it’s at the Windup Space, at North Avenue and Charles Street in the Arts District. No entrance fee, and the Windup Space is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, so bring friends and buy drinks!

Spots for readers have been filling up, so check this site soon for listings for February and March.

Brian Wendell Morton is an award-winning radio reporter and newspaper columnist. He began his career as a student journalist at the University of Maryland where he and a partner won the national spot-news award for print journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists for covering the drug trial following the death of collegiate basketball star Len Bias.

He continued as a reporter at all-news radio station WTOP in Washington where, while covering everything from local politics to the inauguration of George H. W. Bush, he won awards from the Chesapeake Associated Press and the Dateline Chapter of the Washington Society of Professional Journalists. At WBAL Radio in Baltimore he distinguished himself with another AP award for his coverage of a freak tornado landing in a Baltimore suburb.

In 1994 he originated the “Political Animal” column for Baltimore’s City Paper, which he wrote until 1996 and then resumed in 2002. In 2006 he also he hosted the “Weekly News Roundup” for Baltimore’s public radio station WYPR.

Edit Barry writes a blog called Re:education in Baltimore (http://editbarry.wordpress.com), about her experiences as a city mom working to improve her neighborhood public school in the face of a massive overhaul of the public education system in America. For a living, Edit writes viewbooks, capital campaign case statements, and entire magazines and websites for an award-winning agency that markets colleges, universities and independent schools. (And which gives her access to the InDesign software she uses to create The New Mercury Readings flyers each month.) Edit has written recently for Baltimore Fishbowl and less recently for Baltimore City Paper, In These Times, Slingshot! and a defunct literary magazine called Croonenbergh’s Fly. She lives in Hampden with her husband and son.

A winner of the most prestigious prize in American magazine journalism, the National Magazine Award, Ramsey Flynn has deep experience in a wide range of work as a reporter, writer and editor. He has worked at magazines that include Baltimore, Washingtonian, Philadelphia and New York-based Brill’s Content.

As chief editor of Baltimore magazine from 1993 to 1998, Flynn delivered a magazine that in 1994 won more awards than in any previous year. In 1998, his reportorial essay for Esquire about his own heart surgery at Johns Hopkins, “You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Died,” was also one of five finalists for the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism.

His definitive investigative book on Russia’s much-disputed Kursk submarine disaster, Cry From the Deep, was published by HarperCollins in 2004. Flynn has served both on camera and off in documentaries for NBC News, The History Channel and National Geographic Television.

During a five-year turn with Johns Hopkins Medicine that started in 2005, Flynn specialized in clinical features for its flagship magazine, a thrice-yearly publication aimed at 45,000 readers comprised mostly of the medical school’s faculty, alumni, students, friends and donors throughout the world.