Letter from the Editor (All)

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/12/10

Extra, Extra! Read all about it!

Bay Weekly’s new and improved online edition gives you a voice

I’m writing these words on a screen, and it’s more likely than ever that’s where you’ll be reading them. Not that newspaper readers have abandoned print pages in their run to e-journalism. Millions are still print readers: 385 million people buy a newspaper each week, meaning we print-makers have, conservatively, one billion weekly readers. Count me among them. It’s no doubt conditioning, but I love reading a newspaper. Having the known world delivered each day to me in five or six sections...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/5/10

The Wonders of Water

In the water, humans become amphibious. Try for yourself; you can feel the magic.

Wonders happen in water. Capture water in a pool, and creatures can’t resist it. We gather in the liquid, and make magic. Here’s what I mean. Consider that the narrator and title character in the novel Life of Pi, named Piscine for swimming pool in French, devotes pages to second-hand elegies to the early 20th century swimming pools of Paris — despite sanitation far beneath the standards of modern pools. Consider that the Druid Hill and Patterson Park swimming...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/29/10

Catch a Fish in Bill Burton’s Honor

The Choptank River piers named for him get you to where the big ones are

As Bay Weekly — which is also the name of the Albin 28 in which husband Bill Lambrecht and I fish and cruise — passed under the Choptank River Bridge and through the extended arms of the Bill Burton Fishing Piers, we saluted the Old Man of the Bay. But salty stories in his honor were interrupted by the shriek of an engine alarm. A clogged fuel filter sent us back to Cambridge. Clearly, Bill Burton wanted to keep us around. Since Bill Burton’s death at 82 last August 10,...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by - 7/29/10

The Wonders of Water

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/29/10

Catch a Fish in Bill Burton’s Honor

The Choptank River piers named for him get you to where the big ones are

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/22/10

Wind in Our Own Backyard

Bill Burton’s wish blows closer

Bill Burton wanted a windmill in his backyard. Not as decoration, and certainly not to chase away birds, for Bill was their dedicated friend. No, he wanted windmills because he believed our future depends on them as one no-longer optional choice we must make to save our planet. “Should we persist in ignoring global warming, there’s more than a good chance that future generations won’t be able to make up for time lost.” Burton wrote those words in his Earth Day...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/15/10

Sings of the Times

Yard signs make your first introduction to many candidates

You may not agree with me in welcoming political signs as a sign of the arriving season. I can’t claim to love political signs quite the way I do spring’s greening or autumn’s gilding, but I do relish the spice of seasonal change — even electoral season. I like political signs for other reasons, too. They’re news, another thing I love. Yard signs make our first introduction to many candidates. Even in the age of the Internet, signs often go up before press...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/8/10

Out of the Blue

On vacation, your mind wanders

The Sailing Emporium, Rock Hall, Maryland—Don’t you love how things fly into you out of the blue? Only the good things, of course. Last week’s letter, Who Says You’re Reading Less?, tickled the memory of an old university friend, who in turn set me remembering another life. “Loved your essay on books and reading choices,” wrote John Knoll. “Walter Ong is smiling.” This week’s letter should keep Father Ong smiling down from the heaven...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 7/1/10

Who Says You’re Reading Less?

With more books and more formats than ever, only time stands in your way

My husband worries that you’re not reading books. He worries because he’d like to be writing books. As a Washington newspaper correspondent, he’s an endangered species because everybody knows you’re reading fewer newspapers — and shorter stories — though not less news. So here he is in the age of tweets, with many more words still in his computer. Books are his hope of last resort — if only you’ll read them. But you’re not, according...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 6/24/10

Love a River

The Patuxent is hungry for your love

Do you love a river? We’ve all got good reason to. Rivers wrote the American story. This land was penetrated, mapped and settled on the backs of rivers. You crossed an ocean so full of peril that the old maps told no lies in populating the big waters with sea monsters. You bumped ashore on some care-worn ship and began scratching out a living in the hard dirt. When you were ready to pick up and move farther inland, seeking something better, you rode a river. The ride wasn’t...