Word spread fast across marine radios from New Jersey to North Carolina, via e-mail, telephones and cell phones, Facebook, the Internet and Twitter on March 14. Captain Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association for 40 years, passed away at age 75. Watermen, environmentalists, seafood processors, politicians, state bureaucrats and many more of us stopped in our tracks. I did, though I knew Larry’s passing was coming.     Larry was known throughout...

On March 25, 1634, voyagers from the ships the Ark and the Dove erected a cross on St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River and offered prayers for surviving their four-months’ voyage. Thereupon, they took “possession of this Countrey for our Saviour and for our soveraigne Lord the King of England.”     The Piscataway Indians who already lived there likely suggested the colonists go elsewhere, and St. Mary’s City became the seat of Lord Baltimore...

Local cheering for a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs has seemed misplaced.     The economics of nuclear power are next to impossible these days with the federal government no longer able to provide loan guarantees and cheap natural gas the happening new energy source.     Then there’s Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster two years ago that rekindled safety concerns.     But the overriding issue here is that UniStar Nuclear, which...

Editor’s note     Three report cards come to us in the early months of the year, each asking us to consider the health of the Chesapeake Bay and where — if anywhere — all our work is getting us.     Each arrives at a different time, uses different criteria and grading systems and supports a different agenda. How to make sense of any — let alone all — of them? Here staff writer Ashley Brotherton offers a cheat-sheet on the basics....