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.

In John White’s boyhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, schools and water fountains were separated for whites and colored. Rising from the final years of segregation, he could not imagine his future self, as the first black man in command of Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, ushering in its 100th year of service in 1975.     He got a glimpse of his future when his two older brothers were drafted into the Army for the Vietnam War.     In 1969, the year he graduated high school, White too was drafted.

Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Lothian is one of those treasures we sometimes forget in our jewelry box of Chesapeake natural wonders. More than just one park and beyond typical county offerings, its ever-expanding boundary lines encompass more than 1,700 acres of wetlands, marsh, upland forests and meadows. The park includes the main sanctuary, the Parris Glendening Nature Preserve, the Patuxent Wetland Park and Wootens Landing.

If you could design your hometown, what would you want?     North Beach townsfolk just considered that question, describing their ideals to a team of planners from the American Planning Association. The pros listened, and in four late summer days, returned a quick-sketch plan complete with start-up instructions.

From shells to polished pebbles to driftwood to fossils, Bay beaches aren’t just for sunbathing and fishing.