How do you mend a broken heart?

Baltimore's 20-some colleges ponder how to help in the wake of the riots.
http://chronicle.com/article/Baltimore-s-Colleges-Ponder/229751/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Thoughts about Baltimore:
When I was a college student in Lancaster (PA), my fraternity brothers and I would occasionally drive to Washington, where we'd fill the trunk with liquor in anticipation of a big weekend such as homecoming.  On the way back we'd stop in Baltimore and visit "The Block."  The O-ass-is Cafe stands out in my memory... Nancy Muckinfutch taking off her clothes and dancing in the middle of the floor... a fat Hispanic mama sitting down beside me at our table and stuffing my face into her 'ample bosum' while from the corner of my eye I see a ten-dollar shot appear in front of her.

Fast forward many years and The Block is reduced to a touristy impersonation of its former seedy self...  not unlock "Fifty Shades of Gray" giving sexual tourists a safe-sex taste of the world of BDSM.  The Harbor developed... the ballpark that was in walking distance of the neighborhoods replaced by the fancy field and surrounding shops that now dominates the summer scene.

And yet... the violence festers beneath the surface.  While colleges wrestle with sexual assault as their hot issue of the year, the denizens of the inner cities wait their excuse to loot and rampage.  Just let a black man die in at the hands of white police and the green light is on... the balloon is up.  Attack!

A dear cousin of mine ran a foundation in Crabtown for more than 20 years.  His organization tried hard and, I hope, made a difference.

And yet...we had this week's riots.

Our cities burned in '68.  A half century later they are burning again.  The more things change, the more they seem to remain the same.

We have a black face in the White House.  And this is no fluke of the The Great Recession.  Yes, the Democrats could have elected a yellow dog in 2008.  But Obama's reelection in'12 proved that a sea change has happened.

And yet... as the gap between the haves and have-nots widens in America, the African Americans inner-city communities continue to get the shittiest end of the economic stick.  

The rich couldn't care less, I suspect, as capital becomes ever more globalized.  The moderately well-off settle for bread and circuses... the aforesaid "Fifty Shades of Gray," Ellen and Opra, the raging housewives of wherever, and the Carvetchians or Carpathians or whatever the heck they call themselves.

And at the bottom, the drugs, the guns, the jailhouses and the rage.

Have a great day, America!