Letter from the Editor (All)

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 12/6/12

We All Need Traditions

Children of the revolutions, we make them out of bits and pieces

After the war was over, the Founding Fathers must have been at loose ends. Winning your independence from the past is one thing. Creating a future from scratch is entirely another. Like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution’s laid out a map of lofty principles. But if every step of daily life had to be invented anew to conform to those principles, revolutionary life would have been very existential. It’s easier to change our belief...

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

Didn’t Clean Your Plate?

Food waste is good business

Did you get enough to eat at your Thanksgiving feast? Yes, thank you. For most Americans, enough is not the problem. We live amid abundance so great that, try as we might, we can’t eat it all up. Whole cultures could survive on our waste. Indeed, the cultural dropouts who call themselves Travelers make a lifestyle of doing just that. Dumpster diving is a compound in our dictionaries, and...

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

Blessings on the Run

Steal a minute of mindfulness from cooking turkeys and playing Santa

Blub … blub … blub … blub … That’s the rhythm that tells you your Southern Maryland stuffed ham is boiling its way to perfection. So says Celeste Furey of St. Leonard, hostess of an annual pre-Thanksgiving all-day stuffing party. Blub … … … … blub … … … … blub … … … … blub … … …...

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

’Tis the Season

Embracing time as it comes, from the Thanksgiving feast to the New Year

Lucky us! Chesapeake Country is far enough north on Earth’s temperature grid for us to be feeling the chill. Degree by falling degree, we draw into our homes, layer on our wool and fleecy clothes and light our fires. Turning inward and homeward, we’re in sync with the season that celebrates hearth and home. (How our neighbors in southern climes enter the spirit of the winter holidays I’m not sure. That, I figure, is their story to write...

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

What Election Day Tells Us

How close we are despite how far apart

Well that’s that. The votes are counted. Losers are mourning, winners celebrating their mandates, that word pundits love. The future is beginning. There’s a finality to those black-and-white results that’s too simple for real life. To see the fuller truth, read down any column of figures. Bite into any pie chart. You see that we are of two minds, often divided by the thinnest of margins. President...

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

Sandy Was No Treat for Chesapeake Bay

But storms’ worst tricks give us reason for hope

Sandy was forecast to bring the kind of days Noah knew, with wind, rain and water overwhelming land and livers. Coastal New Jersey and New York sampled a day of floods of biblical proportion. Thank God it wasn’t 40 days. Chesapeake Country got off easy. Winemaker John Autrey of Huntingtown called Sandy “a wimpy storm.” Scientific sampling is reaching the same conclusion. “Less flooding and flow of nutrients than...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/25/12

On Halloween, the Living and Dead Take to the Streets

Complete streets, shared space and peopleways improve their mingling

On Halloween, when the living and the dead come out to play, you can never tell who you’ll bump into. Which makes this the best week I can think of to talk about complete streets. That’s a byword I learned when I bumped into former Maryland governor Parris Glendening in Zü Coffee in the Bay Forest shopping center. We’d both driven, though we could, in other circumstances, have propelled ourselves, as Zü is a little more than a mile...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/18/12

Thanks for Talking Back

I have a lot to say, but you make Bay Weekly a conversation

I’m writing to you. I don’t see your face when I’m writing. I don’t imagine the finished paper in your hands, so it’s always a thrill when I do see you pick up a Bay Weekly. When I catch sight of you reading over breakfast or lunch, you probably catch sight of me, too, trying to steal a glance at what page you’re on while looking inconspicuous. Whenever, wherever you read, my words belong to you. They...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/11/12

In Chesapeake Country, a Good Man Is Not So Hard to...

You meet them in newspapers and boatsheds, street corners and museums

It is a good thing that we live in Chesapeake Country, not Pagford. Muggles muddle into miserable messes in the scenic village of J.K. Rowling’s first novel set outside the world of wizardry. A teen antihero whose only value is trying to live authentically gets into particularly nasty trouble. Maybe living authentically is not one of those things you can achieve by trying. If you trust the lessons of fiction in general or, in particular, Rowling’s Casual Vacancy...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/4/12

Spotlight on the U.S. Boat Shows

The best show in town reminds us that Chesapeake Country’s marine trades are alive and well

Faceting makes a stone into a gem. Brilliance shines from the cut faces and their interactions. That may be true of places, too. Chesapeake Country is a well-faceted place. The central facet is natural beauty, but the sidelights cut by human imagination and endeavor make this place shine still brighter. With seasonal and calendar changes, new facets catch the light. Week by week, Chesapeake Country turns new facets to fascinate us. ...