Today's column on crime and establishing community norms in Belair-Edison focused on a small area of the community known as the 4X4, one of the oldest sections of what is a sprawling neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore. It's located north of North Avenue off Belair Road, across from the Lake Clifton school complex.

Our intrepid reporter and columnist of all things neighborhoods, Jacques Kelly, showed me an old map in our library -- the Aerial Map of Baltimore completed in 1927 -- that shows the 4X4 as the only developed plot of land in it's immediate area. There were no rowhouses until much further up Belair Road and none to well south of North Avenue. In fact, the reservoir on which the Lake Clifton schools now sit was still a really a reservoir.

Anyway, that brings me to reader John G. Egger, who took exception to the column: Here's his email, reprinted with his permission:

As a 3+ year resident and home-owner in Belair-Edison, I feel your article could have been more balanced. It paints a picture of a neighborhood quickly slipping away and does not highlight very much promise of hope, save for an exhausted pastor caught in an endless loop of lessons on neighborly manners.

I live east of Belair Road, on Dudley Ave, north of Mannasota. It has been my experience that, the farther south one heads toward the "4x4," the worse the crime gets, and that area was bad far before Hopkins displaced poor residents as it expanded. If you were to take a drive up from the south portion and cross that Mannasota line, you'll suddenly be presented with a more residential, family-oriented, well-groomed part of Belair-Edison. And for that matter, follow Herring Run Park as far south as you like, and you'll see house after house taking pride in their street.

Low income residents of Baltimore City often don't have a lot of positivity around them. Or at least that's the prevailing perception around town. The flip side is the nightly TV news and print media never have far to look to find violence and drama that reinforces what shows like The Wire and Homicide have shown the world. This includes my neighborhood, but could also hold true in Fells Point, Canton, or Federal Hill. Why not write an article about muggings or home break-ins in those neighborhoods? Is that a reversal their progress?

30 kids trying to take over the corners in a neighborhood of 14,000 hardly constitutes such a reversal. For every kid on a corner, there is surely a low-to-middle class family (or two or three families) buying a solid, reasonably priced home. My feeling, it could be fruitful to dig a little deeper. Belair-Edison is a fairly diverse neighborhood, with many unique stories. You would be doing the city a service by reporting both sides of the tale.