If You Want to Know It All
Do you know how to hide crematorium ashes when training a cadaver dog? Do you know how to bake a Smith Island cake? Do you know where to go for the best nativity play in Calvert County?
I do, and it’s all thanks to Bay Weekly.
I was just supposed to write the calendar.
That was the job I signed up for when I met with Sandra Martin in a small Deale office. Five days a week, writing up local events and organizing them into a document. It was essential work, but Sandra, as always, had bigger plans for me.
I started off small, writing a few creature features. I remember bringing home about five copies of the paper with my name in print to show my parents. From there, I took baby steps, writing small stories and eventually getting a cover story under my belt. I remember every agonizing moment of Sandra editing my first feature story. She slices away superfluous words and paragraphs like a surgeon. And while I felt every one of those cuts acutely, I grew to realize the story was always stronger thanks to her touch.
I had a knack for animals, or maybe I just loved dogs more than most. I wrote about cadaver dogs, search dogs, guide dogs, bad dogs. If it had four legs and a tail, chances are I covered it for the paper. I even managed to get my own dogs into the paper a few times.
Dog pictures aren’t the only way that Bay Weekly became a part of my family. I wrote essays about my love of the Orioles, tributes to the grandmother I lost while working at the paper. I even appeared in my wedding dress in one of Sandra’s columns. I have happy memories of rushing to Fresh Market to pick up lunch with Betsy between deadlines, and lovingly picking out chocolate treats for the late, great proofer Dick Wilson (who constantly saved me from embarrassing typos). The paper and those who made it what it is, are woven into the story of my life.
Bay Weekly also gave me a chance to do something I truly love: Talk movies incessantly. I lept at the chance to become the paper’s Moviegoer when the spot opened up, and even when watching terrible movies in the dead of January, I’ve never regretted that decision. Bay Weekly allowed me to find my voice as a reviewer and become a member of the Washington Area Film Critics Association. Now when I ramble about the cinematography of a movie, it’s because I’m a professional, not just a weirdo with a love for deep-focus lenses.
And while I’ll always cherish my memories of finding every possible dog tale I could tell and writing scathing reviews that generated angry phone calls from Seth MacFarlane fans, the main thing I’ll always remember about my time at Bay Weekly is the experiences I was granted. I must have lived a hundred lives, spending the day with perfect strangers trying to understand their lives or causes. It’s an amazing feeling to bounce from screen-painting seminars to tracing the footprints of African American communities via street names. I saw Aretha Franklin sing live, I interviewed captains from the Deadliest Catch and survived a murder mystery weekend (twice). I also got the honor of visiting Walter Reed’s Mologne House, where I watched a group of women play music for grievously wounded soldiers. You could never predict where your week would go, just that you’d get a good story out of it.
And to think I was only supposed to write the calendar.
Diana Beechener continues as Moviegoer as Bay Weekly moves to Chesapeake Bay Media.