Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Can You Draw a Duck?

Bird artists flock to 2012 competition

Duck stamps have been preserving marsh and wetlands for waterfowl since the Great Depression, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the federal Duck Stamp program to support the purchase of land for national wildlife refuges. Maryland adopted that good idea in 1974. In 38 years, our state Migratory Game Bird Stamp Design program has earned around $5 million from the sale of the stamps to hunters and collectors. This year’s $9 fee buys hunters the right to...

Article - Creature Feature; 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; 1/5/12

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; 12/29/11

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; 12/22/11

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; 12/15/11

This Week’s Creature Feature ... It’s Not Just...

Arsenic additive accumulates in poultry, soil and us

It’s not just chicken feed; it’s arsenic as well that fattens chickens in their short seven-week lifespan from egg to market. The chicken we love to eat fried, sautéed, roasted and broiled contains traces of the poisonous element. That’s one finding of a new study commissioned by the Maryland General Assembly and done by the University of Maryland’s Harry R. Hughes Center for Argo-Ecology in Queenstown. Arsenic in any of several formulas is added to...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 12/15/11

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; 12/8/11

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...

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

Our Cornucopias Overfloweth

So now’s the time to turn thanks into giving

On last week’s visit to St. Louis, six-year-old granddaughter Ada showed us how high she can count: all the way to 100. On Thanksgiving Day’s annual inventory, she needs all those numbers and more to count her blessings. Like Ada, most of the family and friends with whom I share three Thanksgiving feasts need good math skills, especially addition and multiplication, to count their blessings. Like our Thanksgiving tables, we are weighted with...

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

Good Food, Good Times

Welcome the Season of Bounty

This may be my favorite paper of 2011. The reason is simple. It’s the winning combination of good food and good times. Summer is the season I love best, but these dwindling weeks of the year are hard to beat. The light leaves us early, but before it goes, it’s as golden as the leaves. Under the warming influence of the Chesapeake, temperatures are often balmy. Early twilights rage in hot pink and smoky blue. ...

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