Stormwater doesn’t stop running, especially in a Chesapeake season Noah could appreciate.     Neither does money stop flowing. Thus Maryland’s Board of Public Works — governor Martin O’Malley, comptroller Peter Franchot and treasurer Nancy K. Kopp — still have money to spend. Last week, they spent $16 million of several continually refilling pools, including the Bay Restoration Fund and the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Nonpoint Source Fund...

The Odd Chance In 2002, a Maryland dark horse named Magic Weisner came within a half-length of stealing the Preakness Stakes from front runner War Emblem. Local small-scale trainer Nancy Alberts believed in Magic, who she named for the vet who saved the magically resilient foal’s life. That horse could run.     Cheering with the rest of Maryland, I followed the story to Laurel Racetrack, where I interviewed Alberts and Magic.     Odd chance has been again...

My Monday morning began with the news that loyal reader Chuck Erskine was mad at me, at Bay Weekly and at cruciverbalist Ben Tausig.     Please inform Ben Tausig that the pages of the Bay Weekly are no place for his ethnic bigotry. The clue for 10 down in the crossword puzzle in Vol. xxi, No. 6 [Switching Sides] is an outrage. What purpose is served by using the adjective ­[Polish] before dude? Would Ben use his own ethnicity in an unnecessary and belittling manner?...

In the literary economy, poetry is an art more in supply than demand. Nearly everybody writes poetry, or so it seems. But who reads it?     Little kids love its melody and meaning, but by high school it’s force-fed. Most of the rest of us take it, often in the form of Hallmark verse, to help us express emotions for which we seem to have no words of our own.     It takes a clever poet to sneak in under our defenses.     When a poem catches...