Hopes and Challenges
Happy New Year!
2020: a new year, a new decade and, in the words of friend Louise Dunlap — a Bay Weekly reader since Volume I, Number 1 — new challenges and new hope.
My hope in introducing Bay Weekly Volume 28, Number 1 is that we continue to bring you enlightenment, entertainment and resources to improve your life, your family, your community and our shared place in this world, Chesapeake Country. This, our 1,360th encounter, is dedicated to wellness.
Starting afresh in your personal prime condition has been a regular theme of our first-of-the-year issues. Over the years, we’ve asked all kinds of experts — including one another — what we do to keep our bodies, minds and spirits working in such sweet harmony that, if you could hear the music they make, it might sound like The Beach Boys in full voice. Not necessarily the young Beach Boys, either, for we can age in different versions of wellness. Even illness can be managed so it is not the opposite of wellness, though that takes some doing.
In recent years, we’ve asked our nearest experts — the health and wellness partners who sponsor Bay Weekly — to tell us how their practices not only restore us to health but also lift us to wellness. This year’s answers are illuminating.
Many have addressed both problems and solutions, from life-altering to simple.
Among simple steps to wellness, Ginni Morani from AFC Urgent Care — where you’d seek relief when your body is suffering — offers tips to avoiding the season’s worst maladies, colds and flus. Dr. Aelia Syed of Deale Family Dentistry tells what a difference a toothbrush can make to your overall health. Dr. Rose Susel of Dunkirk Vision says sunglasses can save your sight. Ali Dohne of Charlie Rae Skincare explains how caring for your skin has way more to do with wellness than with vanity.
At the other extreme, Gary Franklin of Response Senior Care alerts us to signs that may be telling us we need to seek help for an aging relative, friend — or even ourselves.
In between are all kinds of practical ways to overcome problems and take steps to wellness. Prevention is often their theme. Thus you’ll learn about low-cost cancer screenings (Calvert County Department of Health). And you’ll find classes from diabetes prevention and Mental Health First Aid Training (Bay Community Health) to FUNctional Fitness and HIIT the Barre (Chesapeake Health and Fitness).
Stepping outside the ordinary, this first-of-the-year issue looks at the contributions alternative healing approaches can make to your wellbeing. Healing practitioners explain the benefits of massage, chiropractic and acupuncture. If you’ve had those treatments, you know they can feel good, but you may have no idea why they work. Now you’ll find out, as massage therapist Lisa Johnson and Dr. Errol Silva chiropractor explain their healing arts. Dr. Sara Poldmae of Meadow Hill Wellness offers clarifying detail on the philosophy and methods of acupuncture. Acupuncture and chiropractic patients add their insight to aid your understanding.
One or maybe more of these lessons will, I hope, reveal answers you were looking for — whether you knew it or not. Guiding you to wellness in this new, uncharted year is the right farewell at the right time, I think.
Next week, as you know, Bay Weekly goes under new ownership. That’s the new year’s challenge for both Chesapeake Bay Media and for us, your old friends at Bay Weekly. Alex and I will have to let go. Betsy Kehne, Kathy Knotts, Audrey Broomfield, Susan Nolan and Krista Pfunder will go to work for new people in the new year.
Chesapeake Bay Media has the hardest challenge of all: on-the-track training for taking the controls of what is, to them, a rumbling, earthbound express train. I wish we were handing over an advanced new MagLev kind of technology. Instead, Bay Weekly is a classic, hand-run operation with all work done to-order by real people on the spot. That’s what has made us a community paper, and what made us attractive to this savvy media company. Fortunately, they are in the prime and flexibile state of wellness they’ll need to be up to the job.
They’ll be bringing you next week’s paper — and we hope many years of papers after that. Alex and I will assist as advisors at least into spring.
Contacts and emails will change. [email protected] will move to Chesapeake Bay Media. I will no longer receive mail at that address. Other @bayweekly accounts are expected to continue. So to reach me you’ll use my [email protected] account. (My personal account is now [email protected]).
Farewell into this new year of hopes and challenges.