Baltimore Lost More Than a Bridge

You could see the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Fort McHenry, the pentagon-shaped keep that inspired the bridge’s namesake to write the verses that became our national anthem. You could see it from the pagoda in Patterson Park, another strangely geometric landmark from which I’ve cheered on teams at Baltimore’s annual kinetic-sculpture race. You could see it from the top of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the city’s biggest employer. This morning, my husband sent me a photo of the familiar view out his window at work—now dominated not by the soaring bridge, but by a hulking container ship, halted in the middle of the water with metal strewn over and around it.

by Joyce Cary