Just what the city of Baltimore needs: a new study declaring life here is pretty tough and everybody’s stressed out of their minds, so get out of town while you still have what’s left of your sanity.
What a bunch of baloney.
A personal finance website called WalletHub, created four years ago in Washington, has just issued a study of American cities – rating them on 30 issues such as personal finances, weekly work hours, family relationships, debt load and suicide rates, all of this computed by government statistics – and has declared Baltimore the 11th most-stressed city in America.
Newark’s No. 1, followed by Detroit, Cleveland, Jackson, Miss., and Miami. Baltimore’s down there between Shreveport, La., and Las Vegas.
Have I mentioned this is a bunch of baloney?
A city is more than a collection of government statistics, more than an accumulation of anxieties, more subtle than the size of its bankrolls. You want a refutation? Try going down to this weekend’s Artscape, the annual summer gathering of nearly half a million people that features music and art and food and crafts and dance and street theater and hysterically decorated cars and …
Hell, even this list doesn’t cover the real meaning of it all. It’s Baltimore’s largest outdoor group therapy session.
The outfits like WalletHub can put together all the government statistics they want, but numbers can never capture a couple of salient facts: a city as big as Baltimore is never just one city. The stress level in Guilford’s never going to be the same as it is in Sandtown-Winchester. Bolton Hill’s not the same as Cherry Hill.
And statistics can’t measure the effects of gatherings such as Artscape, which bring us together from every neighborhood (including surrounding counties) and remind us of so much that binds us. Such gatherings – which include, across the years, ethnic and neighborhood festivals – bring out the delights of city living, the great American cultural mix. They rejuvenate us.
And it’s not just the one-shot deal of this weekend. Artscape’s stretched across the mid-town area that includes Mount Royal Avenue, Bolton Hill, the blossoming Charles Street arts area, the campuses of the University of Baltimore and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
You drive through that section of the city any day of week, and it has the feel of a bustling college town, with so many young people moving about between classes.
So, yeah, the city of Baltimore has its problems. This is a bulletin to somebody?
But put aside the stress factors for a moment. Do your soul a favor. Artscape’s a winner every year, and a reminder of the human connections – that treasured American mix — that keep so many of us here, even when our anxieties do run a little high.
See Jmore’s Guide to Camp Artscape 2017.
Top photo: Artscape 2016 main stage (Handout photo courtesy Baltimore Office of Promotion & Arts)
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
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