Features (All)

Article - Boating; by Steve Carr - 8/9/12

The Greatest Race in the World

After almost a year at sea and nearly 40,000 miles, the Volvo Race is a true endurance test

The 39,270-mile Volvo Ocean Race is the greatest test of human endurance in the guise of sport on the planet earth. It’s life at the extreme with its own curiosities. Starting the nine-month race in Spain is always fun. The Spanish know how to throw a good party, and the royalty-crowned pomp and circumstance befits such an epic voyage. But starting from Alicante, Spain, means sailing across the Mediterranean Sea to Gibraltar, a boat-busting, upwind...

Article - Gardening; by Sharon Brewer - 8/9/12

From Your Garden

Heaps of Beautiful Tomatoes

I’m so pleased with my garden this year. In early spring I built four new raised beds out of some reclaimed lumber scrounged from a local sawmill. I was rewarded with heaps of beautiful tomatoes by early July. My best producing tomatoes are Cour de Bue, an ox heart variety, Brandywines, Romas, and June pinks, another early potato vine type. I’ve been freezing tomato sauce for a while now. My herbs and peppers are also going gangbusters. My basils are wonderful...

Article - News; by Ashley Brotherton - 8/9/12

Nipping It in the Bud

Cleaning the Bay starts on land

A thousand acres of forested buffers will keep a lot of gunk from streaming to the Bay. Buffers so well protect the 10,000 miles of Maryland’s waterways that the state is spending $6 million over three years to plant more. The money comes from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Maryland State Highway Administration and the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund through taxes, fees and contributions. The millions will trickle down to local...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/9/12

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Fast, Faster,...

Cheetahs named to honor America’s fastest man and woman

On top of their Olympic medals, America’s fastest man and woman have another cause for pride. They’re the namesakes of two of the world’s fastest animals, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s cheetah twins born April 23 at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. Girl cub Carmelita is named in honor of Carmelita Jeter, the fastest American in the 100-meter dash. On Saturday, Aug. 4, Jeter ran the 100 meter in 10.78 seconds...

Article - History & Lore; by Donald G. Shomette - 8/9/12

Making the Music of History

Stretching Your Comfort Zone: We dug deep to give the War of 1812 lyrics and song

“I write books, not music,” I told the big man with the guitar. “I’m a historian, not a songwriter.” Gary Rue — St. Mary’s County composer, musician and proprietor of the small recording company Millstone Landing Productions — had invited me to step outside my comfort zone. “Write the lyrics for a CD album on the War of 1812,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.” ...

Article - Creature Feature; by Michelle Steel - 8/2/12

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Praying Mantis

Good for the garden and for myth making

Masters of disguise, praying mantises camouflage themselves to capture beetles, bees, spiders, lizards and even frogs, then dine on the prey head-first. Mantises don’t hunt their prey. Instead, they wait unmoving and invisible on a leaf or twig, ready to seize any insect or amphibian unfortunate enough to cross paths. Turning their triangular heads up to 180 degrees in search of an insect, mantises are efficient and deadly predators. Excellent...

Article - News; by Michelle Steel - 8/2/12

Growing Bottle Trees

Plastic bottles sprout into art in Annmarie’s newest sculpture garden

Reuse. Reduce. Recycle. That’s Dale Wayne’s motto on merging the arts and the environment. This summer’s artist in residence borrows from the African tradition of bottle-trees — whose branches have been capped with bottles. Her bottle blossom trees are made from plastic bottles salvaged from Calvert County’s Appeal landfill. Nothing goes to waste making these blossoms grow. Cut, curled and glittered, the...

Article - News; by Ashley Brotherton - 8/2/12

A Makeover for Broadneck Park

Touch a Truck fundraiser adds to $35K from county

Kara McGuirk-Allison was ecstatic that Anne Arundel County approved $35,000 to update the Broadneck Playground built in 1991. “There isn’t really a playground in Anne Arundel County that serves the needs of kids with disabilities,” says McGuirk-Allison. “We want it to be so cool that people go out of their way to the playground.” The park will follow the American Disabilities Association’s requirements, including ramps...

Article - Humor; by Jesse Furgurson - 8/2/12

Workshop of the Dead

How I learned to defend against zombies

I can’t claim to be unfamiliar with the living dead. I logged enough hours watching zombie movies as a kid that I could have received a PhD in zombiology from the George A. Romero School for the Aaaaaarghts. However, I suspect in the event of an actual zombie outbreak I would get eaten pretty quickly. In a zombie movie, I would be the type of character who might not get eaten first but who will get eaten before the end credits. Thus it was to my...

Article - Good Living; by Michelle Steel - 8/2/12

North Beach Farmers Market

A starting bell “makes for an orderly market”

Clusters of customers and a couple dozen sellers wait along Fifth Street for the bell to ring at 6 o’clock sharp. That’s the signal to start at North Beach Farmers Market. “We need a bell at a market of this volume,” says Mike Cox, a Mennonite farmer from White Oak Point Farm. “It makes for an orderly market where everybody’s on the same footing.” “This is my first night market, and it’s been a great...