Eat a little and think you know Baltimore

Laura Lippman describes her character Tess in the novel Butcher Hill as a very strong and confident young woman . In the novel, Tess moves to a new area in Baltimore and becomes a partner in a detective agency in Butcher Hill. She appears to be extremely intelligent and very aware of her surroundings; however Tess is unable to mentally and emotionally connect to the city of Baltimore.
The novel begins with Tess walking her dog through the city of Baltimore. She describes the beautiful arrangement of the city. She depicts the parks, the streets, and the weather. She states, “ But this was a perfect day. Spring had started out cool and wet in Baltimore this year, then settled into a pattern of eerily exquisite days(19). Tess appears to understand the city. She explains the checkered pattern of the city with it poor areas and its neighboring wealthy developments. Tess continues to walk and explore Baltimore. She stops and even purchases “Berger” cookies to eat on her walk. The Berger cookie is the cookie of Baltimore. Tess is actually consuming Baltimore. Lippman presents Tess’s understanding of Baltimore as a very shallow comprehension. Yes, Tess can observe the city and judge the city and it inhabitants. She can even claim to be physically a part of the city, but she does not connect to the city. Tess emerges herself in the city, and even engulfs the city, yet she is not fully a part of the city . Tess cannot completely understand or connect with Baltimore. Through the novel Tess believes she knows everything about the city and everyone. She has preconceived notions of her clients and the areas she investigates.
Tess’s view on Baltimore reminds me of the simple view Loyola students have on the city. Loyola students might think they understand the lay out of Baltimore, its museums, its inhabitants, and even its food. But this does not necessarily mean that students can cannot and truly comprehend the true nature of Baltimore.

Laylah, Layla

Laura Lippman's character, Tess, represents the drive towrds independant success, accompanied with a hesitation of truly succeeding individually. This drive coupled with hesitation is reminiscent of the attitude of almost any new college gradutae I've ever encountered, aspects of the discussion with our group on Tuesday, and particularly inherent in the attitude of the boys of the St. Ignatius Loyola Academy in Baltimore City. Perhaps the boys' reservations with the possibilities of such success our different from mine, but the principle of why they wish to be educated and established parallels mine, or any other student's for that matter.
There is a wonderful example of the reality of the cultural divide found in this, or any other city: when Tess finds out that Keisha Moore's daughter is named Laylah, she automatically sings a riff from Clapton's classic, "Layla", then stopped abruptly citing her embarassment at the fact that Keisha probably hears that all the time. "Keisha looked puzzled. 'There's a song with my baby's name? Isn't that something? I'd sure like to hear that sometime.' 'Yeah Derek and The Dominoes.' Keisha looked blank. 'You know, Eric Clapton.' 'Oh yeah that guitar player. The one whose little boy fell out the window. The one who did the song with Babyface.' Funny, the different contexts people brought into the world."(55)
The passage illuminates the cultural divide between the two women, but not does not impose any sort of judgment on either reference to Clapton, the icon; I think this exemplifies the importance of the union of the two references, and what you can learn from those outside of your "cultural comfort zone". The St. Ignatius boys often converse about a Baltimore that I know nothing about, but consider it a privelaged window through which to learn about it. Whenever any of the Loyola students discuss school work, or evening plans, the boys are more than enthusiastic to hear all about it, exhibiting their desire to someday participate in a college education, and those very same activities. Our commonality is in the desire to learn form each other, and our divide lies in what we already know about ourselves; the boy shave taught me the value of what I can bring to the table, and the invaluability of learning about others.

Living in a Novel World

The first thing I noticed while reading Laura Lippman's Butchers Hill was how much I could identify with the surroudings, so much so that I found myself nodding my head at the end of almost every page. I've never before read a work of fiction about a place that I have lived, and I almost wish I didn't know anything about Baltimore so that I could fully experience Lippman's talent for description, not just my own memory of what she describes. I wish I knew how an outsider would read Butchers Hill - how would they imagine Fell's Point, the Domino Sugar sign and Patterson Park? Would it have the same effect on outside readers or is the power of Lippman's description and insight only truly understood by her fellow Baltimoreans?

I was very much intrigued by the passages in which Tess consults her friends for insider information about Destiny, Treasure, Salamon and Eldon. These kids were forgotten for years; to most people, they seemed unremarkable with neither potential nor promise. How easy it was for the investigators to find information about them once Tess showed interest in locating them! Sometimes I feel like everyone suffering in Baltimore is so distant, lost and beyond reach. But Tess demonstrates how simple it is to actually connect with a person once you care to reach out to them. Sure, she was motivated by a paycheck, but she proves that a person once faceless can, in a moment, be a body with a name, a history and an identity. This is interesting to consider when contemplating Baltimore's pressing issues; all that seem lost are really one person after another who can be touched.

At the end of chapter four, Laura introduces the issue of parental responsibility and children who are influenced negatively by their environments. Tull relays Beales' shocking comment: "'He said to this woman, grieving for her only child, 'If you had been a good mother in the first place, Donnie wouldn't have been living in my neighborhood, and he wouldn't be dead now.'" (44). Tess defends Beales by saying that the boy would have been alive if the mother had done her job and kept him from hanging out on the street in the middle of the night. I'm not sure who to agree with, but one thing is for sure: this takes Jane Jacobs idea about the neighborhood watch to an extreme concept. Beales was so concerned about the vandalism that the kids were causing in the neighborhood that he took it upon himself to kill one of them. It makes me wonder how far we should take the neighborhood watch idea and if Jacobs ever considered a situation like this.

Baltimore: A Wealth of Diversity

In her novel Butchers Hill, Laura Lippman gives us an interesting first hand look at the different faces of the city of Baltimore. She describes many different areas, from the ritzy to the run down, thereby illustrating the cultural diversity of Baltimore.

In reference to Butchers Hill, Mr. Beale says, “This neighborhood is worse than it was when I went in. I guess hell got even hotter” (Lippman 11). This area is described as particularly unsafe and decrepit right from the beginning of the novel. Later on in the novel, another economically deprived and unsafe part of the city, Washington Street, is mentioned. Tess says, “The children of Washington Street couldn’t even afford the luxury of running barefoot through their own dreams” (Lippman 57). This bold statement describes the true atmosphere of certain parts of Baltimore, and on a larger scale, all cities. In addition to her description of these areas, Lippman incorporates wealthy areas of Baltimore into her novel, which gives us a full picture of Baltimore. Tess says, “Clarkesville is home to some of the ritziest subdivisions around” (Lippman 77). However, this town had changed, according to Tess. She had remembered it as “farmland, a few simple houses scattered among trees” (Lippman 78). Therefore, even newly developed areas may have started as something completely opposite, which illustrates the ever-changing nature of all cities. The upper class area of Columbia is referred to as “utopian” (Lippman 118). In addition, the Harborplace is mentioned as one of the newer, more “touristy” areas of Baltimore. Clearly, there are many different sides of Baltimore, as is true of any city.

The more I explore cities, the more apparent it becomes that cities can be summed up in one word-diversity. Even a city that is considered somewhat wealthy has its poor sections and multicultural areas. Cities attract all different types of people, which can be appealing or not, depending on the individual. The novel Butchers Hill sums up this recurring theme of diversity perfectly when Tess says, “Rich Baltimore, poor Baltimore. Old Baltimore, those folks who can trace their blue blood all the way back to the Ark and Dove, and immigrant Baltimore. I just never thought I’d feel like I was in a foreign land less than a mile from my own apartment” (Lippman 110). Although the feeling of being a stranger amidst many people can be intimidating to some, it can also be an eye-opening experience. I believe that exposure to the areas of Baltimore other than Fells Point and the Harbor can allow everyone to expand their horizons a bit and perhaps discover something exciting. Either way, encountering diversity in the city is a chance for everyone to broaden their limited vantage point. Loyola College may be one of the most homogenous campuses around according to Princeton Review, but we have opportunities for encountering diversity, which most college students do not have available. If we venture out into the city (especially the lesser visited, but still safe parts), we may be able to at least witness, if not interact, with the diverse Baltimore that Lippman describes.