Random thoughts on a Sunday morning walk in Baltimore

BALTIMORE -- The Baltimore Waterfront Marriott is about 2 miles from M&T Bank Stadium. After seeing the weather forecast Saturday that Sunday would be mild and without rain, I decided to walk.

Before I left my room, which is on the 25th floor, I looked out the window. I saw a building boom around the hotel, tall office buildings and housing on the Inner Harbor side of Little Italy. Beyond the Little Italy neighborhood, not far at all from the yuppie playground of the waterfront, I spotted the unmistakable sight of post-World War II era public housing; the three-story, brick buildings look like military barracks. It stretched for blocks.

All of these dots connect. Let me explain. This morning, for the first time since my mother's funeral Mass and burial Tuesday, I had some energy. I could hear her voice, and that of my father.

When I first started to write as a high school student and considered the possibility of a newspaper career, my parents -- especially my mother -- told me to write about what I saw and heard and, consequently, not to hesitate to write about what those sights and sounds made me feel inside.

Thanks again, Mom -- 27, 28 years after the fact -- for that advice. I needed to hear it again.

I look out my window, and I see the haves and have-nots. Out the window near the elevator, I see the Inner Harbor and all of the attractions for the middle- and upper-class. I never will be able to resolve the stark differences and inherent inequality of the classes in this country. Why do I have so much? Why do others have so little? True, some people don't want to work. Yet just as many of the haves are the benificiaries of inherited wealth. The rules are stacked in their favor. If you want to label me a liberal, go ahead. I really don't consider myself liberal or conservative. But I wonder how many on the "right" can say people on the "left" don't love their country and are absent of God.

The walk through the Inner Harbor area was pleasant: past the National Aquarium, up Pratt Street. The street was crowded with football fans: most in Ravens jerseys, a few in Bengals jerseys. Ravens fans calling to Bengals fans, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

I walked past Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the gold-standard baseball park, one that did not turn its back on its city, unlike Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park (Celebrate the development of Newport!).

The walk down Eutaw Street, behind right field of the ballpark and beside the B&O Warehouse, is cool. The deepest home runs to right field are remembered with in-laid metal markers in the wide sidewalk.

Baltimore's civic pre-game area around M&T Bank Stadium is the best I have seen in seven years of traveling around the league. Ravens Walk is lined with food booths and games, and people actually participate. Then you walk into (Johnny) Unitas Plaza that recalls the former great Baltimore Colts quarterback. Outside the day-worker gate I see something I spot at every stop in the league. The grunt, minimum-wage workers, except for one white female, are all African-Americans. I can't stop thinking about the racial disparity in my country that's drawn along racial lines.

M&T is my favorite stadium in the league. It's incredible how quickly and fully the Ravens have created their own identity in just their 11th year in Baltimore.