I have not seen a single frame of news nor heard a single sound bite. I have time only for working, writing, training and traveling.

Last night I took the bus from Towson, the seat of Northern Baltimore County, which was saturated with police coverage. This is the choke point where the police have gathered to stop the hood rats from hitting the white people who matter. Police coverage was 5 times normal.

The bus was at half capacity. These riders, and everyone I met through the night, other than Columbine Joe, were in a deep funk. The mood was precisely that after a World Series or Super Bowl loss. Some of the men my age were close to tears as they mumbled about the riots. Where the mood on Monday and Tuesday was that morbid pre-hurricane sense of impending doom, last night’s mood had nothing but despair about it.

As the bus dips into the city for three miles I note a total of five pedestrians waiting at stops, 4 young women and one old man, all black. No military age males are in sight. There is zero police coverage. I would normally see two cars and a chopper. There was nothing.

Western Baltimore County was just as empty with no military age males and only two girls. There was zero police coverage. I normally see five cruisers, and saw none. I walked to work with the only character out and about, a guy by the name of Columbine Joe who will get his own Harm City tag later today. Last night netted me material for 31 stories, and I’ll see how many I can post before I have to take care of my security commitments.

This morning on the way home teams of black youths, working in twos and threes, used the busses to get to staging points. They were not headed to school, but rather hitched their bikes to the rack on the front of the bus and fanned out into the residential areas. There were two teams of two on my bus, listening to hard core rap, cranked up to see if the driver would challenge them. She normally does, but did not today. Two of them followed me for a mile and a half through side streets. I eventually stepped out in front of them hoping to dump one and they took evasive action and sped off; not joking, posturing, threatening or engaging in any of the juvenile simian antics they would normally. They seemed to be on a mission, and evaded me as soon as I proved a retaliatory target.

A coworker whose mother dates a cop said that military contractors—including snipers—have been brought in to protect the two stadiums.

A national guard member told me that the hood rats are avoiding them like the plague and either ignoring, or trying to get at, the police, of whom they appear to have no fear.

Police sirens are already 4 in Hamilton this morning, where we normally only have 2 per week in the morning. This is a an inversion of the pre-riot pattern of having police sirens waling through the night, silent in the morning, and sporadic in the afternoon. We now have near-silence in the afternoon, total silence at night, and moderate activity in the morning.

Baltimore, I think, has changed, for the interesting.