There are more than a few ghosts left behind by Johns Hopkins, the 19th-century Baltimore businessman; the man himself remains a generally benevolent apparition, others veritable poltergeists. Johns Hopkins is the ghost of a better Christmas Past and his institutional legacy the best hope for Christmas Future but there haven't been many lessons learned in the interim and Ignorance and Want attend constantly to the story of that great and unfortunate city.
As for Hopkins' biographer, Antero Pietila's own story is a fascinating later piece of the churn of immigration to Baltimore: a Finn who arrived in the United States at 20, he was employed by The Baltimore Sun a mere four years later in 1969 and wrote for them for 35 years, with stints spent at the Sun's bureaus in Johannesburg and Moscow (just that fact is tangible evidence of Baltimore's institutional decline).
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