Letter from the Editor (All)

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 2/9/12

Why We Celebrate Valentine’s Day

This day invites us to express the heavy burden of affection our hearts carry all year long

Card companies are into their third century of making Valentine’s Day big business, and they’ll help us exchange millions of Valentines this year. But commercial mobilization doesn’t make February 14 a Hallmark holiday. It’s neither by accident nor artifice that we celebrate Valentines’ Day. The urge is way stronger than paper or binary codes creating pretty pictures on a computer screen. The holiday devoted to love is a fact...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 2/2/12

One Good Story Demands Another

From the movies to your own tales

Ah, we’ve already used up one of the irreplaceable months this no-longer-quite-so-new year gives us. Which brings us to Groundhog Day, that frivolous-seeming cross-quarter day whose significance in the forward march of time hides behind a furry hibernating mammal. We’re great fans of the frivolous. In the words of Jeff Thompson, “It is what it is; might as well have fun along the way!” (I’ll remind you who he is in a few...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/19/12

Scratching the Itch of Curiosity

This week bedbugs make our news weird

In our Mission Statement, Bay Weekly eschews doom-and-gloom news and commits to a world where people enjoy a high quality of life in a sustainable way that they’ll be able to hand down for generations to come. So why are we writing about bedbugs? Truth be told, we also savor a taste for the strange. If you’re a regular reader, you know that. News of the Weird has been with us from our beginning 19 years ago. You might well...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/12/12

PlanMaryland: It’s a Name You’re Going to Be Hearing

Here’s what all the fuss is about

Read any good plans lately? Maryland’s state plan has no suspense, sex, violence or drugs, not even any characters. Yet PlanMaryland, which Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proclaimed by executive order last month, is becoming notorious. The 11-page document has a web page, a Facebook page with nearly 500 likes and a game you can play. PlanMaryland was four years in the making and a half-...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 1/5/12

Change Begins at Home

A New Year’s lesson

When the clock struck 12, pushing Saturday, December 31 into Sunday, January 1, in that moment it was thinkable that a new you would rise from bed and into the world on New Year’s Day. Not too early that day. A lot of energy rises from that possibility. That’s the kind of energy that propelled three or four hundred people into the 43-degree Bay at 1pm sharp New Year’s Day for North Beach’s Polar Bear Swim. I say 300 in this week...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/29/11

Best of the Bay

Meet the winners and learn their secrets of success

We’ve saved the best for last. The Best of the Bay is our last word for 2011. It’s the news of the 11th hour of the 12th month. It’s your judgment on who gives you the best value, service and satisfaction for your buck. On where you go for a good time. On what you like to do best in Chesapeake Country. You cast your votes during September and October, in ballots appearing in every week’s paper...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/22/11

Away in a Manger

One great story calls for many others

Editor’s note: I write out of my Christian tradition on December 21, which is the Winter Solstice as well as, this year, the first day of the eight-day Jewish celebration of Chanukah. Whatever tradition we come from — Jewish, pagan or Christian — this time of year we celebrate, and tell our stories about, the coming of light into our world. The Christmas story reported by Luke and Matthew a couple of thousand years ago is so compelling that its retelling in...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/15/11

Read Any Good Books Lately?

I bet you find your next book here

Are books following the horse and carriage down the road to obsolescence? Obsolescence is short of extinction. But it’s also short of popular use, which books have been in since not long after Gutenberg invited moveable type, which soon brought printed books to the Western world. Obsolete puts you in museums, where you’re let out for special nostalgic occasions like horse-and-carriage rides around West Annapolis at this weekend’s It’s a Wonderful Life...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/8/11

The Call of the Water

Answer that December call with the Parade of Lights and the Volvo Ocean Race

Like you, we’re playing carols, stringing lights and decorating the Christmas tree. (Practicing what the Bay Gardener preaches, we sawed a fire-safe Canaan fir at his Upakrik Farm, plunged it into a bucket of 100-degree water and stored it in the shade before it came inside.) The holidays are a time we savor. They bring us into the universe, husband Bill Lambrecht suggested the other day, as we counted the homes signaling their welcome to the season in codes of colored...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/1/11

Do You Believe in Magic?

In December, lots of people do

There are people who believe that December brings magic into the world. They want more than sparkle of terrestrial and celestial lights against the deep, dark velvet of the long night. More than the decorations of yard, house, door and home. More than full-scale illuminations of parks and gardens. More than Christmas trees and candy canes and gingerbread houses. More than the round of parties that gives us places to...