Next time you cruise down Cedar Park Road in Annapolis during school hours, you may well do a double-take as you pass the field next to Phoenix Academy. You’re likely to see rabbits munching greens in a sturdily built hutch, hear nanny goats bleating or glimpse teens carefully weeding a row of curly-leafed kale. Three years after a Curriculum for Agricultural Science Education was launched at this K-12 Anne Arundel County public school, there’s plenty of evidence that impressive hands-on learning is going on both within and outside the school walls.

If you’ve ever biked or driven down Muddy Creek Road in Edgewater, you may have caught a glimpse of its namesake: a small stream called Muddy Creek, roughly half a mile south of Mill Swamp Road.

Annapolis has a really strange layout. Is it on purpose or due to hundreds of years of use and expansion? Church and State Circles are close together by design. Their proximity serves as an illustration that church and state were linked in Colonial times.

Spirited conversation keeps the atmosphere companionable at Zü Coffee, home of the friendliest wait staff as voted by readers of Bay Weekly. At the Waugh Chapel location, customers chat with the staff about their spirit animals.     Spirit animals arise from the shamanic tradition where they are paired with initiates to the practice, who can then turn to them for guidance in their lives. Informally, New Age seekers may identify with spirit animals that represent qualities they wish were theirs.

Stand at home plate, close your eyes, tilt your head just right and you can hear the whoosh of a fast ball, the sharp crack of a wooden bat connecting for a line drive down centerfield and the echoes of cheering fans.

How did Parole get that odd name?     Today’s sprawling malls at Festival Plaza and the Annapolis Towne Center at Parole are built where once sprawled a Civil War prisoner of war camp, called Camp Parole because the prisoners had given their promise, their parole, not to escape.

Plunge into the Water      Are you thick skinned enough to run into the January Bay? On Jan.1 at 1pm, join the plunging crowd at North Beach. Register ($25) to raise funds for Meals for Wheels with the reward of a T-shirt and I Plunged certificate. Or plunge for fun and free. Warm up after with hot drinks and a bonfire on the beach. rsvp: 301-855-6681.  

The Potomac River continues to bear the legacy of World War I — which ended 97 years ago this week — in one of the Chesapeake watershed’s secret places, Mallows Bay.     Tucked into the coastline of Charles County, Mallows Bay is the final resting place for 88 World War I wooden steamships of the U.S. Emergency Fleet. Built between 1917 and 1919, these ships were to supply European and American troops with much-needed supplies.

Words that are sure to kill my children’s enthusiasm for an outing: exhibit, collection, display. Thus my two sons did not approach our trip to the Annapolis Library display on library technology with much vigor and vim.     Technology saved the evening. Once inside the 50-year-old West Street library, Jonah, 11, slunk away to work on homework. Jordan, 7, ­headed straight for the children’s area. There he eagerly attacked the scavenger hunt honoring the library’s 50th birthday. Then on to the Library Tech Then & Now exhibit.

A pair of Cove Point protestors dropped from the upper deck of Bank of America Stadium during Nov. 2’s Monday Night Football game. In the Charlotte, N.C., stadium, an anticipated sellout crowd of close to 75,000 people were on hand for third-quarter play between the Carolina Panthers and the Indianapolis Colts.     Based on recent Monday Night Football audiences, an estimated 12 million more were watching on television.