“Could it be me …” Allison Felton wondered in amazement as eyes turned her way in the Annapolis High School auditorium Wednesday, January 24. “When I first started teaching, I really questioned whether teaching was for me, but thanks to support from my colleagues I decided to stick with it,” she said through tears.          Felton, an algebra teacher at Annapolis High School, had just found out she was the winner of the $25,000 Milken Educator Award.

       Can you sign your name in cursive?

       Kathy Wolfstone-Smith took an artistic gamble last summer.        Wolfstone-Smith, who teaches arts and humanities at Shady Side Elementary, asked the Captain Avery Museum to display her students’ work.         “Kudos to them for being so supportive,” she says. “At the time we set this up, I had no way of knowing how it was going to turn out.”

Over $10,000. That’s what the average American spent for health care in 2016, and up is where that number is heading.      “My wife’s health insurance jumped 38.9 percent,” laments a friend recently retired. “My pension is disappearing.”      Across the age spectrum, you hear endless variationa of the same story.

     The civil rights movement raised its courage and renewed its hope on the music of faith that sustained black America through slavery, Jim Crow and oppression. The national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday makes this a weekend to hear that music loud and clear.       Two local African American choruses sing in Annapolis this weekend, both at St. John’s College.  

      Important African American history is being lost with each passing year. You can help preserve the past before it disappears forever by sharing a story about the civil rights era and historic sites in Anne Arundel County.       The Lost Towns Project wants to hear your stories about African American history for two grants sponsored by the National Park Service Civil Rights African American Historic Preservation Program and the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority. 

      Like a holiday box of chocolates (thanks Bill Vance, Betsy and Alex), this week’s paper brings you a variety of choices, all I hope to your taste. (And none, I hope, that sticky cough-medicine flavor that makes you say yuck!)

      All the best stories are about dogs. This is the opinion of my 10-year-old daughter, so her claim carries some weight.       But for me, all the best stories take place at Christmas. Whether I am watching Southern High School’s production of A Christmas Carol or reading the story of Nativity from the Gospel of Luke, I am reminded that miracles happen in the presence of those who believe, and all the best stories contain miracles.

      Every year we bring them out. The boxes come up from the basement or down from the attic; in from the garage or just out of the hall closet. Among them, there it is, brimming with memories, the Christmas box brought out once a year that tells the stories of our lives in the ornaments collected over the years. 

     During the fall of 1783, 51-year-old General George Washington wanted nothing so much as to spend the upcoming Christmas at his Mount Vernon home. The Revolutionary War was all but over. Once the British evacuated New York and the peace treaty was signed in Paris, Washington could head for Annapolis to resign his commission as commander in chief. Only then would he ride home.