Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Why We Love Our Libraries

Calvert Library’s Pat Hofmann discusses what makes libraries special places — for us and for our communities

"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...

Article - People; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/18/13

Tuning into the Bay Weekly Forum

Animal stories spark the most talk

Forums are few and far between in Chesapeake Country. Like the forum of ancient Rome and town squares of cities around the world, Annapolis City Dock is a natural. It’s also a work in progress, with vision evolving and conflict between people and parking seeking resolution. The libraries of Anne Arundel and Calvert counties give us 20 such forums. This Library Week, we celebrate that role in our Bay Weekly conversation with Pat Hofmann, who’ll leave us a...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/18/13

Taking on the Atlantic

30-year-old Bay-built has no fear of “young and modern boats”

The brotherhood of Dickerson sailboats stretches far and wide. Built on the Eastern Shore under three owners from 1946 to 1987, Dickersons became so beloved that afficionados compete in the Find a Lost Dickerson Sailboat contest to complete the registry of every Dickerson ever built. So it’s big news that Polish Sailor Krystian Szypka plans to race one of the Chesapeake-built boats across the Atlantic in OSTAR 2013. The challenging single-handed...

Article - People; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/11/13

Heeding the Water's Call

This week read how each in our different ways, gets back to the water

The water is calling, and throughout Chesapeake Country we hear and answer. With the windows open for the first time this spring, I woke to watermen’s voices rising uphill through cherry blossoms. Crabbers Steve Smith and Billy Scerbo, both at the job for decades, lifted bright red and yellow unfouled pots onto their trucks, joking their way into the new season. Sure, as Smith told me a cold week earlier, the scarcity and the high price of the best...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/11/13

These Are the People in Our Neighborhood

Bay Weekly tells you their stories

Chesapeake Country has so many denizens, and each has a story. Those stories flood into Bay Weekly. Nowadays most come to us by email, though personal visit, phone, fax, the postal service still add to the flow. Writers with open eyes and noses for news alert us to still more. Our advertising team adds to the volume, bringing us news of the many businesses of Chesapeake Country. They all come across my desk, on the way to making each week’s paper. Sitting in that...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/4/13

How Dreams Come True

Spring Home and Garden Strategies could change our lives

I welcome the annual return of Bay Weekly’s Spring Home and Garden Strategies. In this guide, home and garden professionals give us just the sort of expert advice we do-it-yourselfers don’t know — and don’t even know we need to know. We’ve designed it in a handy pull-out-and-keep format so you can use if for months to come. I’m the guide’s first audience, and as I prepare the tips for publication, I keep thinking...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/28/13

Springtime in Maryland

Dress warmly to explore our shared history

With spring and winter still grappling in their annual wrestling match, I’m hoping the gentler season will gain the upper hand with its official arrival at 7:02am March 20. In truth, I’m longing for a nice spell of sunny warmth. For spring is clearly inching into control. Look around and you see the truth: Nature’s palette is brightening with sap greens, lemon yellows and ultramarine violets. Nature’s music is lilting with bird and frog song. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/21/13

Shad: Our Failing Fish

Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s 2012 Grade F (9 on a scale of 70)

Inspired this time of year by the earliest signs of spring to carry on their ancient species, shad don’t know they’re failing the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s survival test. They’re just doing what comes naturally. That’s returning from ocean to Chesapeake to the river headwaters of their birth. To fish used to cold oceanic waters, 40 means spring. When water temperatures top that mark,...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/14/13

What’s the Score?

Grading the Bay’s health and Maryland’s congressional delegation

Sister Ignatius enters her final week at Bay Theatre Company, but Sisters Alphonse, Clotilda and Extrema cast an eternal shadow in my memory. I suspect it’s the image of numbers inked in their neat hands that makes me to this day averse to report cards. My grades were pretty good, in the 90s (except in arithmetic). But what we endured to earn those grades, 50 of us in a single classroom presided over by a nun whose patience had long since ended! ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/14/13

Farewell James Hoage

Bay Weekly wasn’t many issues old when the first letter from J.A. Hoage, Severna Park, arrived. It was a duplicate, not an original, for letters from James Hoage fell like rain on every newspaper covering Anne Arundel County and his larger area of interest, state, national and global politics. I’m sure it was photocopied, but in my mind’s eye Hoage’s letters are mimeographed, as his handouts to his Severna Park High School and Severn School students would once have...

Article - People; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/14/13