The Mencken Graveside Memorial will once again be conducted by Oleg Panczenko at the Mencken gravesite at Loudon Park Cemetery, 3620 Wilkens Ave, Baltimore, MD.

The brief memorial will be held Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 2:00 PM. Attendees are invited to retire to Spirits West, 2601 Wilkens Ave. after the memorial.

Loudon Park Cemetery: enter at 3620 Wilkens Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229. Note: the Frederick Ave entrance is closed. Enter through the Wilkens Ave entrance.

Location of grave: N 39° 16.693′ W 76° 40.683′ (39.278217°, -76.678050°)

Spirits West Country Club: 2601 Wilkens Ave (Cor. Millington Ave), Baltimore, MD 21223. (Make a left turn from Loudon Park onto Wilkens Ave. and drive 1.6 miles. Spirits West will be on your right at the end of Baltimores’s longest block of row houses and across the way from St Benedict’s Church.)

Please check here before coming to Loudon Park as things may change due to inclement weather.

Map showing the way to Mencken’s grave.

[Updated 2019-01-22]

[Cross-posted from Posted in Events | Leave a reply

The Gathering outside the House at the Ribbon-cutting ceremony

On November 24th 2019 an invitation-only ribbon-cutting ceremony was conducted at the Mencken House. Dignitaries and those who over the years gave any time and effort to the cause assembled outside the House. Brigitte Fessenden delivered the opening remarks with following brief remarks by Ethan P. Cohen, Senior Project Coordinator, City of Baltimore; Johns Hopkins, Baltimore Heritage; Bif Browning, President of the Union Square Association; and Shauntee Daniels, Executive Director, Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA). Light food was served.

Brigitta Fessenden delivers her opening remarks

The proceedings went smoothly with the exception that the pin holding up one end of the ribbon failed in its duty. Dr Stacy Spaulding, Towson University, stepped in to uplift that end of the ribbon.

Dr Stacy Spaulding lends a handnd

[Cross-posted from www.menckenhouse.org]

Mencken Day 2019 will be observed September 21, 2019.

Please note the date. Breaking with long-standing scheduling, Mencken Day 2019 will be observed a week later than would be expected as the Pratt Library is celebrating the opening of its renovated facilities on September 14 with a ribbon-cutting and an “open house block party.”

When: September 21, 2019

Where: Wheeler Auditorium, Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St

10:30 AM Annual Meeting of The Mencken Society. Speaker: Walter Olson, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, on “Mencken and Anti-Lynching Legislation.”

Mr Olson was graduated with a BA from Yale University in 1975 and undertook graduate study at UCLA, 1976–77. He is author of The Excuse Factory (1997), The Rule of Lawyers (2003), and most recently Schools for Misrule (2011). Mr Olson founded and is the main writer for www.overlawyered.com which is devoted to “chronicling the high cost of our legal system.””

2:00 PM The 2019 Mencken Memorial Lecture will be by Will Englund, former Moscow correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post.

Mr Englund received his AB in English from Harvard College and his MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 1998 he and Gary Cohn, also of the Sun, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their investigative reporting on the shipbreaking industry. Mr Englund and his wife Kathy Lally were foreign correspondents in Moscow for the Baltimore Sun from 1991–1995 and 1997-2001. He joined the Washington Post in October 2010 and today is the Assignment Editor of the foreign desk. Mr Englund is author of March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution.

The map posted on the 16th (see below) has been revised.

The road we have been taking to get to Mr Mencken’s grave-site has been blocked. We have posted a map showing another way of getting there.

We regret there will be no directional signs.

A road crossing the Maiden’s Choice Run is blocked.

Map showing the way to Mencken’s grave.

[Updated 2019-01-22]

The Mencken Graveside Memorial will once again be conducted by Oleg Panczenko at the Mencken gravesite at Loudon Park Cemetery, 3620 Wilkens Ave, Baltimore, MD.

The brief memorial will be held Sunday, January 27, 2018 at 2:00 PM. Attendees are invited to retire to Spirits West, 2601 Wilkens Ave. after the memorial.

Loudon Park Cemetery: enter at 3620 Wilkens Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229. Note: the Frederick Ave entrance is closed. Enter through the Wilkens Ave entrance.

Location of grave: N 39° 16.693′ W 76° 40.683′ (39.278217°, -76.678050°)

Spirits West Country Club: 2601 Wilkens Ave (Cor. Millington Ave), Baltimore, MD 21223. (Make a left turn from Loudon Park onto Wilkens Ave. and drive 1.6 miles. Spirits West will be on your right at the end of Baltimores’s longest block of row houses and across the way from St Benedict’s Church.)

Correspondent AG (many thanks!) informs me that because of flooding due to the heavy rainfall June 27, 2018 (which devastated Ellicott City) the road along Heritage 2 which crosses Maiden Choice Run, the one we had been taking to get to the grave-site, has been blocked, rendering the map to the grave-site obsolete. Updated directions will be posted on this website.

Updates and changes due to inclement weather will be posted here on the Society’s website.