Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/27/11

This Week’s Creature Feature

Coyote Call

Fifty feet away, just where open land tumbled into kudzu, a large, shaggy, mottled, gray canine was devouring the carcass of some small animal. Certainly not a fox, which are the size of cats or lapdogs. Nor a wolf. Wolves are not resident in Maryland, according to Harry Spiker, Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ man on big furbearing mammals. Likely it was a coyote. In Fairhaven. “We’ve got coyotes statewide,” Spiker told me. “They’re good at not...

Article - Features; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/27/11

Out of the Ashes

After a New Year’s Eve fire ravaged The Old Stein Inn, owner Mike Selinger looks to rebuild his dream

“No more tears,” says 41-year-old Mike Selinger on the 12th day since flames ravaged his family restaurant, The Old Stein Inn in Mayo. The predawn fire on the last day of 2010 shook his world, stole his livelihood and made him find words to explain to his parents what happened to the restaurant they founded 28 and left in his hands 15 years ago. Day by day, it’s getting better. He has reassured his German-born parents, Karl and Ursula Selinger, who now live in Mexico....

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/20/11

Another Year of Thinking Sustainably

Bay Weekly loves a success story — no matter how small — especially if it’s yours

How are your resolutions coming? Are you on the road to being healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2011? We’re talking about sustainability in the human sense here. Our own sustainability. It’s not only the Bay we need to sustain in health and productivity. Small as each of us humans is, we count too in the big picture of Earth’s sensitively calibrated and mysteriously linked ecosystems. So we’re included in Bay Weekly’s theme of sustainable living. Good thing, since...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/13/11

It’s Been a Very Good Year

So far, every issue of 2011 has moved you

It’s been a good year. True, 2011 is less than two weeks old. But I believe in counting my blessings while they’re fresh. (Apparently, I also believe in musical clichés, as I’ve used two in 21 words. Eddie Fisher crooned Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep) into my teenage consciousness, where it stuck. Frank Sinatra did the same with A Very Good Year. Both are thick with syrup. So is the Ray Charles and Willie Nelson [!] Very Good Year version on my iPod, but I can’t...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/6/11

Thank God It’s 2011

With the year comes new hope. Grab it now before it ages.

“You Catholics think you can do anything and then go confess,” said my Lutheran-reared husband as we watched the connivances in The Crime of Padre Amaro, a Mexican-made Academy Award finalist of a couple years back. If you think I have anything more to say about religion or movies, guess again. Except to say that the New Year brings us all a bit of the kind of relief confession grants Catholics. I’d be going too far to imagine it’s the grace of God that washed over...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/30/10

We’ve Saved the Best for Last

Vol. xviii, No 52 brings you The Best of the Bay

For a few moments this time of year, it’s possible to escape into weightless time. The Christmas Express has arrived and gone, so you no longer need to keep up to speed. 2010, that admirably round year, has nearly run its course. But not quite. Now’s the time to wrap up old projects. Now’s the time to call the roll of the past year, look at what we’ve achieved — and conceive our hopes for the new year. In that reflective spirit, Bay Weekly’s last issue of the...

Article - Special Editions; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/30/10

Best of the Bay

We asked you to choose your favorites of 2010. Here’s how your votes tallied.

Standing out as the Best of the Bay is no accident. Championship is essential, but it’s not enough.In a competition so wide, to stand out you’ve got to be a champion in your field — whether that field is Best Restaurant, Best Cheap Date, Best Place to People Watch or Best Place to Pick up Bay Weekly. Just as important is the chemistry you spark with the voters, for it’s got to making energy to get out the vote — make that many votes — in your favor....

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/23/10

What’s Up with bayweekly.com?

Success is a heavy burden

bayweekly.com is not the Emerson College Lady Gaga lipdub. (Find that link below, in Correspondence.) Considerably fewer than a million people read Bay Weekly online. Nor are we the viral video How to Wrap a Cat for Christmas, which brought the Hartford Current 3,800,442 viewers on You Tube. (See for yourself at http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/sns-viral-video-wrap-a-cat,0,135253....) But we’ve got enough viewers to crash the server that hosted Bay Weekly’s own web site. That...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/16/10

Our Guide to Giving

Warm your heart over the stories of neighbors whose giving satisfies the ache of real need

All Elsa’s grandparents are stumped. What can Santa bring to a nine-year-old who already has two of everything and sometimes 22? She loves Webkinz, but her mother and father say their Webkinz population has already exploded. There are plenty of things I want to give this granddaughter, but few of them fit in a box that can be wrapped up with a bow. Ten-year-old grandson Jack, on the other hand, knows just what he wants. Jack wants an iPad. Those real-world dilemmas played at the...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/9/10

’Tis the Season ...

That timely phrase keeps us happy as Chesapeake oysters

Chesapeake Bay oysters, at the peak of their season, contribute to our seasonal well-being by starring in many of our favorite traditional recipes: oyster dressing; its succulent who-needs-the-bird cousin, oysters au gratin; oysters on the half shell; oysters Rockefeller. To enjoy favorite dishes new and old, we need oysters. Of course we now know that oysters have even more important work to do than feeding us contentment. So important, that Maryland and Virginia have made restoring the...