Letter from the Editor (All)

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 5/12/11

The Fate of Naptown barBAYq Is In Your Hands

Your job: Party hearty

About now, the men and women of Parole Rotary must be regretting their dedication to good works. True, doing good is even more intrinsic than weekly meetings to Rotary, with its motto of Service Before Self and its logo wheel that keeps turning because some 1.2 million members worldwide keep pushing. But by now, the Parole Rotarians have figured out that staging a signature festival, particularly inaugurating one, is a lot of trouble. Not more trouble...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 5/5/11

Oh Mother!

Splendid though our stories are of Mother’s influence, I bet you can top them

Margaret Tearman’s bright idea for Bay Weekly’s annual Mother’s Day story has kept me chuckling since its light popped on in her brain months ago. In the instant of illumination, she wrote her Mother Made Me essay, and that was all it took to sell me on the idea. The Bay Weekly family of writers reacted the same way. Within minutes after I sent out the call for stories on that theme, I had five early reservations and one completed story. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/28/11

William Donald Schaefer, 1921-2011

I’m sorry to see you go

Like newspapers — I mean the print variety — politicians are news one day and fish wrap the next. That was not the case with William Donald Schaefer. On a Maryland scale, Schaefer was God in his heavens. We might not think of him everyday, but if we ignored him too long, the thunder would roar — and lightning might strike. So I got in the habit of reckoning his existence. When he was out of office between 1995 and 1999, I could feel his...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/21/11

41st Earth Day and Bay Weekly’s 18th Birthday

We stand with our feet in the water and our hands dirty from digging in the earth.

If you’re a mechanic, you open a garage. If you’re a cook, you open a restaurant. If you’re a horsewoman, you open a stable. If you’re newspaper people, you open a newspaper. You do what you know. That’s why we — husband Bill Lambrecht, son J. Alex Knoll and I — opened New Bay Times, on 1993’s chill, rainy Earth Day. Back then, the decision wasn’t so apparent. Bill — whose hardworking parents...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/14/11

It’s Easy to Be Green — Two Days a Year

Policy’s fashion color of the year is pale green

Earth Day is a lot like of St. Patrick’s Day. We dress up in green both days, and we throw parties and maybe march in a parade. But the next morning, the green washes off. In both Washington, D.C., and in Annapolis, the advance of the 41st Earth Day didn’t incline lawmakers to green enthusiasm. In Maryland, tight money pushed environmental causes to the rear. In Washington, tight money was the excuse for policy-directed...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/7/11

When It Comes to Memories, Everyone’s a Writer

Plus triumphs in words and deeds

Eighty degrees on April 4! With sweat on our brows, women in sleeveless dresses and men in shorts, summer insinuated itself into early spring — and into our hearts and minds. Midafternoon, editorial production stopped on this week’s issue. (Only the next day’s cold snap brought us back to the here and now and this paper into your hands.) We fast-forwarded in time to Memorial Day’s issue six weeks hence. Two whole months away, the calendar says. But...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/31/11

Bay Weekly’s 2011 Spring Home and Garden Guide

Approved by Mother Nature

Mother Nature may be sending us a message that our continued enjoyment of her earthly garden is contingent on our good behavior. When the message of climate change is written in the language of melting ice caps and glaciers, some among us scoff and say Not us! We didn’t do it. So she repeats her message in clearer terms. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. Including a half dozen or so nuclear reactors adds italics to...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/24/11

Good Dogs and Bad Dogs

Often bad dogs make the better stories; this week, good dogs have their day

Who can resist a dog story? My favorites star villainous dogs, like Muggs, the hero of James Thurber’s story The Dog that Bit People.* Nipper, Bay Weekly’s collections manager, would like to bite people and sometimes sneaks in a nibble. He’s a Jack Russell terrorist — as proofreader Dick Wilson calls him — and most anybody who has had a dog of that breed has a collection of bad dog stories. For better and...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/17/11

From Osprey to Farm Fields, Spring Is Here

Will ‘tweaking’ help shrink the Bay’s dead zones?

The osprey is in. Promptly on March 15, the first osprey appeared in my part of Bay Country, no doubt hungry and tired after flying from as far away as deep in the Brazilian Amazon. Fast, determined birds can make the trip in as little as a week. Pussy willows are fat catkins. Weeping willows are chartreuse with life. Crocuses, daffodils and forsythia are screaming the yellow message of the returning sun. Earlier warming Washington, D.C., is pinking with...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/10/11

Libraries Are Chesapeake Country’s Town Squares

Where would we be without them?

“People want and use their libraries in pretty tremendous ways,” Anne Arundel County library administrator Skip Auld told me when we met. His words rang true to my experience. When I moved to the Calvert-Anne Arundel border 26 years ago this month, I promptly got cards for both libraries. (Now any county’s library card works in every other county throughout Maryland.) For me, libraries were the substitute for town squares. In Deale, I...