Julia Bennett, 18, North Beach My pregnancy wasn’t easy. I was in and out of the hospital because Carter wanted to come out three months before he was due. I was constantly worried about him being a preemie, but the doctors kept him in my belly. Then once his due date came, he decided to be stubborn. I heard about the problems that could happen if he stayed in my belly for too long, and I worried some more.     The second he was born on July 22 and was placed into my arms...

"The library is poppin’,” Bay Weekly calendar editor Ashley Brotherton tells me late Monday.     Her report means I have a couple of hours of editing ahead of me on a hefty 8 Days a Week calendar muscled up by Anne Arundel and Calvert libraries.     At the 20 libraries in the two counties this week are programs for babies, toddlers, kids, teens, parents, computer novices, e-device users, gamers, job-hunters, locavores, knitters, memoirists, movie...

The Chesapeake Bay is not any old park. When is the last time you saw a park that was entirely on the water?     When John Maounis started work as superintendent at the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay office seven years ago, he had never seen such a thing either. His job was to find the best way for the National Park Service to be a part of Bay protection.     Maounis was no stranger to parks. He’d worked at parks and historic sites across the country...

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...