Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/1/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... In Calvert Citizens...

$2.4 million federal grant resolves the conflict

The little Puritan tiger beetle has it way better than many other bugs in the news. Stinkbugs and emerald ash borers: We’re dead-set on eliminating those alien destroyers. But the Puritan tiger beetle was here long before us, and to keep it here we go to great lengths. And great expense. Last week, a $2.4 million federal grant, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, came to the...

Article - Cooking; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/1/11

What’s Cooking Locally

This month’s recipe from the 2011 Maryland Buy Local Cookbook

September 12’s full moon, a week after Labor Day, will bring another harvest of soft-shelled crabs. Likely you won’t have to wait that long, for some shedding occurs under all the phases of the moon. For summer’s swansong recipe, we’ve chosen the Lily Pad Café’s Soft-Shell Crab Salad with Summer Squash, Heirloom Tomatoes and Roasted Garlic Tarragon Dressing from the 2011 Maryland Buy Local Cookbook. Soft-Shell Crab Salad with Summer Squash,...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/1/11

What Was Your First Job?

Do your first job well, and you’re likely to get a second

Colleen McCaig got her first job last week. Having delivered fliers door to door in her Fairhaven community, the 10-year-old waited by the phone. “It will never work,” she wailed to her mother. “Nobody will call.” A two-hour vigil tested the girl’s patience. But the phone did ring, and, sure enough, a neighbor enticed by Colleen’s enthusiastically lettered promotion asked her to walk a pair of dogs. ...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/25/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... A New Tree Grows in...

Pumpkin Ash found at Jug Bay adds to number of native species

When your official list of trees includes only 29 species, the addition of one more makes a big boost. Anne Arundel’s rise to 29 from 28 came from the addition of Fraxinus profunda. Profunda, familiarly known as the pumpkin ash, was identified and measured at Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary this month by Maryland Big Tree volunteer Dan Wilson of Harford County. The pumpkin ash has its peculiarities, one of which is its territorial preference for the...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/25/11

Back to Learning

Is this fall your time to soar?

Do you envy the kids, just a little bit, as they load up on school supplies, dress up in new clothes and walk to the corner to meet the school bus? Maybe not the school bus part of the proposition. At least for me. My first day on the school bus, which coincided with my first day at a new and distant all-girls’ high school, ranks as one of my life’s traumas in a minor key. Those were the days before backpacks, and we carried our books in our...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/18/11

What’s in a Name?

Your dog’s name may say more about you than about him or her

We love our dogs. Forty-six million of us share our homes with 78 million dogs. So when the constellation Sirius brings us the Dog Days of summer, Bay Weekly goes to the dogs to pander to that audience. Chuck or Chester; Cheyenne or Cassie; Mack, Magic, Max or Moe; Nipper or Norman; Roscoe or Rusty; Winston or Whiskey; Brandy or Bourbon; Brown Dog or Bruno; Poncho, Polly, Peaches or Peanuts; Sandy or Sophie; Sugar or Scamp; Snuffy or Sparky; Dexter, Tucker, Cooper or Caper....

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/11/11

Eat Local, Read Local

Locavores need loads of newsprint

On Sundays, my husband — a lifelong print newspaperman — can imagine himself happy in a world of paperless newspapers. That’s because I’ve never managed the skill of neatly refolding a read newspaper. “How can a tidy person like you throw your newspapers on the floor in a heap?” he asks. Husband Bill is not tidy by my standards, except in his management of perused newsprint. Even so, he does not live up to his tidy father’s standards...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/11/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Travels with Buck

Like John Steinbeck, this osprey wanted to see America

In between migrations most osprey are homebodies. Conventional wisdom holds that male osprey almost always return to the vicinity of their nests to breed. Not every osprey is conventional. That’s the latest from osprey scientist Rob Bierregaard, who’s been studying the birds since 1969. Since 2000, he’s been tagging juvenile and adult birds with satellite transmitters and following their lives and adventures. Each bird has its story, and...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/4/11

Don’t Hold the Applause

Rod ’n’ Reel’s Cancer Crusade and Annapolis Rotary’s Crab Feast are acts worth clapping for

Fishing for compliments was one of my mother’s seven deadly sins, and she passed along her aversion. So I cast a fishy eye at all the liking social media specialists urge on us. I’m not much more comfortable at events — from Major League Baseball to business booster meetings —where you’re told who to clap for, when and how loud. In my book, as in my mother’s, applause wants to rise spontaneously. When I feel like...

Article - History & Lore; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/4/11

Lighting the Way

Celebrate National Lighthouse Day right here on Chesapeake Bay

A couple of hundred years ago, the Congress of the United States of America could get things done. On August 7, 1789, that august body passed an act establishing and supporting lighthouses. Mariners and their families rejoiced. Between 1791 and 1910, the dangerous waters at 74 sites on Chesapeake Bay were illuminated by over 100 cottage, tower and screwpile lighthouses. Moving ice and shifting sands unseated some of those lighthouses...