On Thursday, residents of Reservoir Hill, with help from the Baltimore Ravens and national non-profit KaBOOM!, built a glorious playground in a previously blighted part of German Park in a single day.

Dozens of volunteers started early in the morning and by 3 p.m., when Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake cut the ribbon to open the playground, only some finishing touches were left to be done on the massive play area, which was designed with input from local kids.

This kind of a one-day build is becoming more common, something The New York Times called "the playground movement" in a recent blog post, comparing it to Amish barn raisings, in that the entire community works together to accomplish something concrete—or, in this case, rubber, plastic, and metal.

This Sunday, June 19th, the community will celebrate the grand opening of the new playground, located at Linden and Whitelock, with free ice cream...

I don't know what the worst part of this story is. There's the fact that a rat was able to crawl up inside a moving vehicle and bite the driver, who happened to be a police officer on his way to a crime scene. Naturally, you would think that would take the cake. But then there's also the vignette wherein the police officers are sent back to retrieve the rat so that the hospital can test it for diseases, and one of them has to "beat the rat to death with an umbrella."

I mean, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do in that kind of situation, but, yeesh. 

I woke up this morning to headlines about new riots. Were they in a Middle Eastern country looking to topple an oppressive government? No. Were they in some European nation facing economic collapse? No. They were in Vancouver, of all places. Vancouver, Canada. Why? Because a small black disc slapped with a piece of wood—but not just any piece of wood; a piece of wood held by a Boston Bruins player!—slid past the Vancouver Canucks goalie and landed in some netting. And it happened four times!

So Canucks fans—a bit like Terps fans in College Park—took to the streets to throw bottles, smash windows, set fires, overturn cars, and clash with police.

That’s pucked up.   

Tupac Shakur is back in the headlines. Two weeks ago, the PBS website claimed the late rapper—who lived in Baltimore, for awhile, and attended School for the Arts—was spotted in New Zealand. The report, which looked legit, lit up the blogosphere and brought to mind Elvis sightings of yore. As it turned out, the PBS site had been hacked, and the report was false. Shakur was, of course, shot and killed in Las Vegas in 1996.

Now, there’s a report circulating that some knucklehead claims to have shot Shakur in 1994. That shooting didn’t kill Shakur, but, according to many observers, it did set off a chain of events that led to his murder, which has never been solved.

Today would have been Shakur’s 40^th...