Features (News)

Article - News; by Aries Matheos - 10/7/10

Sailboat Show Sideline

There’s a lot of life in those old sails yet

The Haughwouth sisters’ parents had passed away, and the boat was long gone, but when their childhood sail resurfaced, Penny and Pixie couldn’t bear throwing it away. Instead they turned it into two jackets. Then they turned it into a business, Sea Fever Gear. Sailors don’t have many options for worn-out sails other than throwing them away. “So many hold onto them,” says Haughwouth, “because they carry an emotional tie. Who owned it before? Where has it been...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 9/30/10

The Tall Price of Power

For SMECO, it’s a big job feeding our demand for electricity

Something alien is growing in Calvert County. The aliens have sprouted up in the front yards of homes along quiet, winding Bowie Shop Road. Still more are appearing on Route 4. They are big, very big, towering over the landscape. Eventually there will be 23 of them. These aliens are behemoth power poles, erected by Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in the name of progress. The new metal poles bear little resemblance to the old wooden poles they are replacing, and they don’t exist...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/30/10

Pulling Pennies from the Air

A new breed of wind-sellers can lower your utility bill while saving the environment

In wind power, the money is in the marketing. We learned as much long ago from the experiment of William Wrigley Jr., the millionaire whose success you’ve no doubt chewed on more than once. The maker of Juicy Fruit and Doublemint gum, among other chewables, kept a weather eye on opportunity. How he put chewing gum in vending machines at about the turn of the 20th century is a milestone of entrepreneurial capitalism. Gum sans machine was already sold in New York. Would vending...

Article - News; by Katie Dodd - 9/23/10

Bonfire of the Politcal Vanities

Discarding the remnants of the race to the polls

Maryland’s September primaries are over, the polls have closed, and — for the most part — the results have been determined. For most winners, the looming general election — where the stakes are all or nothing — leave little time to celebrate. For the losers, there’s plenty of time to rue and wish Maryland had enacted late, rather than early, voting. Plenty of time to pick up — and pack up? — all the signs that proclaimed their hopes and...

Article - News; by Aries Matheos - 9/23/10

Ooh-La-La!

á la mode lingerie wins in European Flair

More pressurized than a mammogram. More daunting than a marathon. Able to break women shoppers in a single trip. That’s my definition of buying a bra. So when my first assignment sent me to cover an award-winning brassiere shop, I felt like the new kid in first grade. Worse, this was a lingerie shop. I imagined the lewd should-be-unmentionables sold in Boardwalk sex shops in Ocean City. If lingerie translates from the French in other ways, I hadn’t learned them yet. Until I...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 9/23/10

Amazing Maize Mazes

Making these marvels is just as much a puzzle as finding your way through them

Well-trod paths lead to dusty dead-ends. Back to the last turn. Go right instead of left, left instead of right. Until, finally, light at the end of the corn row. High fives all around. A corn maze has been successfully navigated. A sure sign of fall, these tricky trails through acres of dried cornstalks are a growing business as agri-tourism blossoms. It’s next to impossible to see on foot, but the maze-trekker has just walked the outline of a giant pirate ship. Or a soldier. Or a...

Article - News; by Sandra Lee Anderson - 9/23/10

Playing the Shell Game

There’s plenty of fun to go around

Growing oysters is about the future of our children — and about the child in us. Watching the squigglies living among the oysters is fascinating fun for all ages. Len Zuza, of Southern Maryland Oyster Conservations Society,left, lifts out an oyster cage for the students. Growing oysters is also about the adult in people of all ages, responsibly working to restore our Bay. So it’s useful to know if our efforts come to anything — beyond the playfulness of...

Article - News; by Diana Beechener - 9/16/10

Vote Early, Vote Often

For Pride of Baltimore II, every vote counts

The Pride of Baltimore company’s Pride II historic tall ship is sailing into the world of grants. The clipper ship is attempting to beat out 1,000 other candidates for a $50,000 grant from Pepsi. Pride II wants the money for boating-safety courses to teach under-served students in American port cities. The grant will fund supplies and travel. To pay for all that good work, Pride II needs your vote. Vote once a day every day thru September 30 for the boat safety program to help the ship...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 9/16/10

Help Calvert Honor Eating Local, from Farm to Table

You have until Sept. 20 to nominate three for awards

Calvert County is taking local to a higher level with its new annual Sustainable Agricultural Awards Program. Emphasizing the once-rural-county’s continuing pride in its agricultural heritage — and to preserve that heritage — the Calvert County Board Commissioners seeks nominations for three new awards. Two will recognize businesses that make it their priority to support local producers; one will recognize a local farmer who makes good on the promise of sustainable farming...

Article - News; by Aries Matheos - 9/16/10

Fire Weather

September’s low humidity feels good, but it can spark fires

Was the Sunday shower of .66 inches of rain enough to extinguish the “critical fire weather conditions” blanketing over half of Maryland? The rain “wasn’t enough to alleviate the drought conditions,” according to Monte Mitchell, the State Fire Supervisor with the Maryland Fire Service. “Until we start getting in a regular pattern of rainfall,” drought — and with it the danger of wildfires — is here to stay. Forty percent of Maryland...