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New Bay Times Interview
Sailor's Log: Author Anne M. Hays Is Living Her Dreams
In her latest book, this racer-turned-cruiser teaches how to reach yours
by Sandra Martin

With October, the year’s best winds come to the Chesapeake, filling even earthbound minds with dreams of being blown off course. Annapolitian Anne M. Hays has followed those dreams — and more.

From weekend racing sailors with a crew of small boys, she and her husband slowed their pace and stretched their time, spending a year and more setting their course as freely as the wind.

From a homemaker who spend her time doing “all the things that the rest of the family didn’t really have time to do,” Hays has earned that most envied of all titles, “author,” with hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and three well-read books to her credit.

What’s more, Hays has managed to combine those dreams, which is more than a little like having your cake and eating it too.

Now, just in time for her 63rd birthday — and, not coincidentally, the 26th Annual United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis — comes her latest book, "Through the Spyglass, A Sailor Looks at Cruising and Tells What and Why."

We visited Hays’ Eastport home to learn the secret of living your dreams.

Q How did you get started as a writer?

A I married Jim Hays [described by Hays in the dedication to Through the Spyglass as “my partner in cruising and the love of my life”] the day after I graduated from Syracuse University, and I became an Air Force wife. Then I began to have children, so I never have had a full-time job outside the home.

We moved about every three years and at one of our stops, I got a second degree in journalism, at the University of North Dakota.

When we came to Washington, for the very first time since I’d been married, nobody came home for lunch and I had a little more time. In fact, everybody in the family decided it was time mom got some kind of a job. I thought I better do something, or somebody’s going to find me a job I don’t like.

My mother, Alice McKenzie, had always written as a hobby and we’d always been encouraged to write, so it wasn’t something foreign to me. I found a YWCA class and the woman who taught the class was just wonderful. She taught like a cheerleader. She kept saying, you can do it. All you have to do is work hard at it and sit there and write and try hard and send out your stuff, and she told us a great deal about marketing. I would be driving home around the Beltway thinking, I really can do this!

Q When you began, what did you write about?

A I really only did two kinds of writing. I wrote about cooking for a family, which I knew about with my degree in foods and nutrition and the fact that I fed four hungry children

But mostly I wrote about boats, and the reason I did that was that our life was so filled with boats.

Q Do you remember the first piece you sold?

A I wrote a little thing about christening our boat in France when we were stationed in Germany for a little magazine called Yachtsman’s Wife, from Fawcett Publications. They don’t have it anymore. It published “condensed seagoing articles of lasting interest.”

Q How did you come to live on the Chesapeake?

A When my husband worked at the Pentagon and we lived in Alexandria, we were avid racing sailors and we would drive over to race every weekend. We had four children of an age to go with us, so we had a family crew. That was enough years ago that things were not quite as dead earnest as they are now. You could leave cruising gear on the boat and still win a race.

When he retired, we moved over to a big house on a creek in Chestertown and lived there for nine years. But we kept coming back to Annapolis for the racing functions, so when boys graduated from high school and we didn’t need a big house anymore, we thought we’d come back here.

Q How did a racing family turn to cruising?

A When the kids grew up and went away to college we didn’t have as much crew anymore — nor it was it as much fun — we turned to cruising. We then had the freedom to go and look for adventure in different places.
When we were about to set off for a year, one of my racing friends asked me what was the longest time I’d every been aboard. When I said “10 days or a week,” he said “you’ll never make it.” To the contrary, we found it very easy to adapt.

QYou’ve become quite an expert on the Chesapeake.

A When you’ve come here from somewhere else, you want to know everything about it, things that to people who live here already are not a big deal.

My friend Harriet Hazleton, who I met through that first writing class, also came to the Bay from the Washington area to boat. We did our first book together. Chesapeake Kaleidoscope, published by Tidewater Press in 1975, is all sorts of odds and ends about the Chesapeake Bay, past present and future, in, over and around. We have caveated a lot of things by saying “It is said,” or “History tells us.” We kept quite good notes about what our sources were, because we always thought someone would call us some day and say “that’s not right.”

You can’t get a copy right now. It’s out of print. I think redoing it is my next project.

Later, I came to Chesapeake Bay Magazine, as an interim editor, which led me to become editor of their Guide to Cruising the Chesapeake Bay. Then I worked with William T. Stone on updating his two books, A Cruising Guide to the Chesapeake and A Cruising Guide to the Caribbean. On each of those, I checked all the facts to see that they were still accurate.

Q Your luck must be extraordinary or you must be very good indeed. You were, for example, sailing writer for the Baltimore Sun for five or six years, until 1984.

A The Baltimore Sun thing just fell into my lap. We were living in Chestertown at the time and I had been writing a lot about sailboat racing and of course doing a lot of it. Somebody from the Sun who knew my work called and asked me to do a particular event. They apparently were looking for somebody who could do a weekly Sunday column. So I did it all from the Eastern Shore by mail and telephone. It would have been much easier now with E-mail and fax.

During those same years I worked at the Naval Academy doing public relations for their sailing program. It was a program I really believed in, so I found it very easy to promote it.

Q It seems that you went at writing with a great confidence, certainty and purpose.

A I think that would be an exaggeration. I think all writers have moments when they are discouraged, when they submit articles and they come back and you are just in despair. But apparently I was able to sell enough and enjoyed it enough that I continued at it.

Q How did Through the Spyglass come to be?

A I wrote the first of the essays for the viewpoint column in Sail, and two or three were published as viewpoint articles. One was written for Cruising World.

I found I really enjoyed writing in that form and that I had a lot of ideas I wanted to put down on paper. At the same time, for a number of years, I had been interested in writing short stories.

The winter before last, I decided it would be fun to have a Christmas job, so I got one. I asked my husband what he thought, and he said if I was going to get a job, he’d get one too. His lasted months longer than mine, and in those months when he was working I started writing.

Q How do you write?

A I go into my study after breakfast, and, breaking for lunch, work about six hours a day.

I have a computer at home, of course, but when we went cruising the first time I took an old typewriter. Later on board, I had a laptop and then a notebook computer.

When we are cruising, I keep a daily log. When I read back through that log, I find that I’ve forgotten a lot of that stuff, so I’m so glad I’ve kept it.

Q I’ve enjoyed the rhythm of work, pieces shorter and longer, reflections and stories. How did you choose the structure?

A I wanted to publish both essays and fiction together because I thought the fiction has a point to it like the essays do, just a different way of saying it sometimes.

I thought about putting the stories in the back, but then I through it was good to vary the length of pieces. If you write essays all of a length, even if they were very good, if you read several of them in a row, it would not be very good. So I thought that’s perfect, I can mix them up.

Q I particularly like the story you call “The Trip.” about the cruises of a 91-year old man. About it you say: “When the mind is still active, even the body’s infirmities can’t stop it from going cruising.” Where did that come from?

A I felt very strongly about that and got a lot of insight when my father, Henry McKenzie, was living here with us.

People often say, is this about someone? Short stories are often about someone in the sense that someone gives you an idea and you want to write a story about that idea. But a sure way to kill your story is to try to follow the truth. You have to say, this is my idea and what if something happens.

Q You’ve published Through the Spyglass yourself. Why is that?

A I did try to find a publisher, but they all wrote back and said “this is a nice book and we think it will sell to a certain number of people, but not enough.”

I’ve found two things good about not having a publisher. For one, I can do whatever I want to. My experience with large publishers is that they’re not at all responsive about what you want to do. They’re sorry about it, but it’s going to be this way. If you as the author don’t like it the way it’s going to be tough.

In the end, I was reading one of the short stories and decided it wasn’t up to the standard of the rest of the book, so I took it out. I had a lot of freedom, so that the book is going to come out more like I want it to be.

The other advantage is in the promotion. In this last month between after I sent the book off to be printed, I’ve spent all of my time sending out releases. Really it will be up to me how well the book sells.

Q Have you had much help along the way?

A I did basically all the proofreading myself. One friend read a version through carefully, but that was not quite what’s on the pages. I’m pretty fussy and do a lot of rewriting. A lot. I was really getting to the point of getting bored with it.

Our son Peter, who does a lot of newsletters and things, encouraged me to do the page layout. I really hadn’t started out planning to do that, but he showed me how.

Jim and I think that when we get to be this old, it’s a good thing to try something new. Otherwise you get into a rut, which can be comfortable but sort of deadening.

Q Lured as you are by the Great Lakes, Caribbean islands and Venezuela, you return to the Chesapeake Bay. What’s a favorite Chesapeake memory?

A I remember a particular night about this time of year or a little later, spent in Emory Creek on the Corsica River, a tributary of the Chester. It turned out to be one of those very bright moonlit nights where there were rafts of geese all round us, and they were restless because of the moon. We were sitting on deck after dark, wrapped up in our sleeping bags watching the geese and listening to them as they moved around. It seems to me the days were clear and sunny, but you needed a jacket and hat, perhaps even gloves, late in the evening and early in the morning.

This is a good time on the Chesapeake, when the wind begins to blow again after the doldrums of summer.

Sidebar
“What Is Cruising Really Like?”
A Through the Spyglass Sample
“What’s it really like?” people ask, trying to get at the essential substance of our year-long trip on our 40-foot sailboat, mentally putting themselves in our deck shoes, trying to give long-term cruising a vicarious try before making the commitment themselves.

“Cruising,” I usually reply, “ is kaleidoscopic.” …

For me it was a time when new experiences — good and bad — brought highs and lows back to a life which had settled into mediums. My learning curve, nearly flattened into a straight line by repetitious days, weeks and years, once again achieved at least a modest incline. …

I felt a terrific natural high in that one moment of leavetaking, with its rush of exhilaration and anticipation. The interminable and uncompleted lists were left behind in the trash; we began to break free from the nagging concern we felt about those things we had filled our lives with which would now be left undone, at least by us. …

— AMH

Eight stories and 23 essays comprise the 160 pages of Through the Spyglass. Get your copy from the author any day of the Annapolis Sail Boat Show (Fri. Oct. 6 thru Mon. Oct. 9 ) when she joins the all-woman panel at the 10:30am workshop moderated by Doris Colgate, founder of the National Women’s Sailing Association, at Annapolis Waterfront Marriott.

Or order by mail: POB 3577, Annapolis, MD 21403.

The price is $14.95 plus $2.50 postage and handling. Maryland residents add 5% tax (75 cents) for each copy.

'70-'95-HIKE: Redskins Fans Rewarded
She didn't give a hoot about football but was mighty sweet on a guy who had played guard for Southern High.

She wanted to give him something nice. To him, nothing was finer than Sundays — the day the Washington Redskins play.

So Heidi Griffith decided to give Ray Mudd something special indeed: Washington Redskins season tickets. The year was 1970, and she sent in his name. Then she waited. And waited. And waited some.

Finally, 25 years, five presidents, three kids and two or three moves later, something very special arrived in the mail. And Heidi Griffith — whoops, make that Heidi Mudd — knows special deliveries since she's post-mistress at Tracys Landing Post Office in Anne Arundel County.

You've figured out by now that you wouldn't be reading this story unless those doggone season tickets had finally showed up. You're right.

"I knew there would be a little wait , but I didn't think it would be 25 years," said Heidi, who, along with Ray, have been to two home games this year in the exalted status of Redskins season-ticket holders.

Everybody knows that Redskins long have been a sizzlingly hot ticket — even the past couple of years, when they were so pathetic that Ray's old Southern High squad might have convened and given them a game. But isn't a quarter-century wait a little ridiculous?

Well, yes. But maybe not, considering that the Redskins have a backlog in season ticket requests that is approaching 50,000 names, a spokeswoman for the team said.

For Ray Mudd, the tickets couldn't have come at a better time — just when his team is exciting and, finally, a winner. Mudd didn't even mind a requirement that he ante up $35 each for 16 tickets, at least five times the going rate back in the 1970s. Nor is he troubled that the seats are in the end zone.

"I never thought we'd get them until they built a new stadium," said Mudd, 43, a real estate agent and former fire chief.

The tickets are, to say the least, a testament to Heidi Mudd's determination. She kept on the Redskins, replying to correspondence and telephoning to check on the status of her long-ago request.

You'd think that Sunday afternoons would be smooth sailing now at the Mudd residence as Ray and Heidi, former high school sweethearts, grab their sweaters and cushions and head toward Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.

Wrong. As they prepare to enjoy the fruits of uncommon patience, they hear plaintive noises coming from their two sons, Ray Jr., 20, and Albert, 16.

Says Heidi: They're claiming that they're the ones who should be going, not us."

— NBT

Maryland's Top Poet Named
Roland Flint, Maryland's new poet laureate, is a man with worker's hands, a teacher's soul and a mandate to reach audiences across the state during the next three years.

He has taught for 36 years, worked as executive editor of Poet Lore magazine for 10 years and had six books and three chapbooks published. This unassuming braw of a man became the new laureate in the State House reception room last week in front of dozens of friends, students and admirers — among them Gov. Parris Glendening.

Kathy Magan, poet and head of the selection committee, observed that poetry has been called "useless but indispensable."

Linda Pastan then presented her successor in the unpaid laureate position with a laurel branch snagged from her yard in Potomac. He promptly stuck it in his suit jacket's handkerchief pocket. The audience laughed and clapped.

The word laureate, Pastan noted, comes from laurel wreath, with which leading poets once were crowned.

Glendening, a long-time teacher, said that poetry and literature helped him to frame public policy. In 1708, the governor noted, Ebenezer Cook declared himself Maryland's first poet laureate and then satirized the state in verse. Glendening said he hoped his state would be treated better under Flint.

Maryland's first "official" laureate, Vincent Godfrey Burns, was chosen by the Maryland Poetry Society in the 1950s but "overturned" in the 1950s in what one historian described as a political brouhaha.

Few states have poet laureates. Glendening said that Maryland is also a rarity in increasing funds each year for the arts.

Flint is scheduled to join the governor soon in marking the annual "You Are Beautiful Day" for top community volunteers from around the state.

"I take the place of a reverend," he remarked later.

Flint confirmed plans to retire from teaching at George Washington University next year. He'll read, write and as laureate take poetry to prisons, hospitals, senior centers and schools.

Flint, 61, of , grew up on a bare-bones, hardtack farm in North Dakota that his father, now 91, lost during the Great Depression. He has know tragedy in his life, losing a son in an accident nearly 25 years ago.

Life's sad times show through in "Follow," among the works of Maryland's new poet laureate:

Now here is this man mending his nets
After a long day, his fingers
Nicked, here and there, by ropes and hooks
Pain like tomorrow in the small of his back,
His feet blue with his name, stinking of baits
His mind on a pint and supper -- nothing else
A man who describes the settled shape
Of his life every time his hands
Make and snug a perfect knot.

I want to understand, if only for the story
How a man like this...
Could just be called away.

—Eli Flam

Yachts on Parade for Academy’s 150th
Have you asked what yachts with names like Blue Guitar and Jazz Fish are doing in Annapolis lately?

Ships from ports of call as far flung as London, Toronto, and Rhode Island have come to Annapolis to celebrate the Naval Academy's 150th Anniversary with a week-long series of power- and sailboat races co-sponsored by the Naval Academy and the New York Yacht Club.

"David Dixon Porter, a Civil War hero and Navy member of the New York Yacht Club, was superintendent of the Academy in 1870, the year it participated in the first America's Cup, then called Yacht America. So began the relationship between the two institutions," said Richard Von Doenhoff of the New York Yacht Club.

That relationship continues to this day. Although their last Chesapeake race was sailed 25 years ago, the New York Yacht Club donates vessels to the Academy in wartime and for peacetime programs. This year’s the club’s committee came to Annapolis in the elegant 82-foot, Black Knight, which sailed in the 1983 America's Cup.

Before the final race of the series, all 110 competing and cruising vessels looped around the Severn at the bridge and crossed back toward the sea wall at Robert Crown Sailing Center, parading for spectators.

Following the parade was the final race to St. Michael's. A return leg was planned for Sunday was scratched due to lack of wind.

Taking first place in the International Measurement System race was Nicole, a Cal 40' piloted by P. Coleman Dupont of Easton. Jazz Fish, a Freedom 35' from East Greenwich, R.I. and Gannet, a J 42, piloted by its builders, Robert and Rodney Johnstone of Boothbay Harbor, Me. in the cruising race.

Now you know it's the Naval Academy's 150th Anniversary that brings us yachts of the like of Blue Guitar, Jazz Fish and Black Knight.

— Liz Zylwitis

Satellite Sharing: St. Mary's Plugs In
Anne Arundel and Calvert countians aren't the only ones who want a say in future development. A national push for wise development is encouraging communities from around the country to go high-tech.

Last month, communities swapped ideas with help from a satellite and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Locally, the National Teleconference on Sustainable Communities was down-linked by satellite to St. Mary's College of Maryland.

"We will use your experiences to help us define what the future federal role should be in support of these efforts," said Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown of the teleconference.

The session featured segments offering advice and success stories in building communities that are economically strong as well as healthy and safe.

• Chattanooga, Tenn. cleaned up its environment after being named the most polluted city in the country 25 years ago.
  
• Santa Monica, Calif. created an electronic bulletin board where citizens can voice concerns about government.

Communities searching to redefine themselves with the aid of technology may find the concept of community shifting from local to national as they share success and failures with their new, high-tech tools.

— Jenny Wierschem

Guzzle-Fest: Gas Hogs Ratted Out
The message from the EPA this week was simple: Your Lamborghini, your Rolls, your Jaguar XJ12 or your Mercedes S600 are slurping up fuel as swiftly as you can say, 'Fill 'er up."

Of course you probably never say that, because you pump your own gas while standing alongside something decidedly more austere. So you don't have to worry that the Lamborghini Diablo gets just 9 miles per gallon in the city or that no Rolls Royce gives you more than 17 on the road.

More likely, you're concerned about your truck or the compact you hope to have paid off next Easter. If so, here's some of the results of the 1996 EPA fuel economy estimates that may have a bearing on you:

Highest Mileage Cars by class:
Subcompact Geo Metro—44 city, 49 hwy.
Compact Mazda Protege—32 city, 39 hwy.
Mid-sized: Mazda 626 —26 city, 34 hwy.
Full-sized: Toyota Avalon—20 city; 29 hwy.
Small station wagons: Ford Escort and Mercury Tracer—31 city, 38 hwy.
Mid-sized wagons: Eagle Summit—24 city, 29 hwy.
Large Wagons: Chevy Caprice, Buick Roadmaster—17 city, 26 hwy; Honda Del Sol—34 city, 39 hwy.

Highest Mileage Trucks:
Toyota RAV4—24 city, 30 hwy.
Geo Tracker Convert (2WD or 4x4)—24 city, 26 hwy.
Izuzu Hombre Pickup—23 city, 30 hwy
GMC Sonoma—23 city, 30 hwy.
Chevrolet S10 Pickup—23 city, 30 hwy.

Lowest Mileage Trucks:
Dodge Ram—city, 4 hwy.
Ford E250 Econoline—12 city, 14 hwy.

Will Radio Fee Become Radio-Free?
Boaters don't often get good news when it comes to their checkbooks. But in case the Federal Communications Commission forgot to remind you, here's a sliver of positive information.

Starting two weeks ago, the FCC fee for VHF marine radios dropped to $75 from $115. That cost had soared from $35 just two years ago to cover the cost of the FCC's regulatory activity.

Few boaters had paid this tax happily. For one thing, $115 is about the cost of the radio. Next, VHF radios are primarily for safety. Faced with this affront, some boaters decided to simply do without a VHF.

Richard Schwartz, president of Boat/U.S., called the fee reduction "a small step in the right direction." Schwartz added: "This is still a substantial amount to pay for advice which recreational boaters use primarily to call for help, listen to weather forecasts or hear another's call for assistance."

Wording that would repeal the license feels altogether have been tacked on to legislation in Congress.

Way Downstream ...
In the Sakhalin Islands near Russia, you don't want to get in a ruckus over fishing. A Russian coast guard vessel last week opened fire on two Japanese fishing boats, injuring one crew member. The Russians then impounded the boats.

The incident is one among many as countries collide over the world's dwindling fish stocks ...

China could be a beneficiary of Exxon's new Save the Tiger Fund, which will donate $5 million over the next five years to protect the world's five remaining tiger species from extinction. Some preservationists were skeptical, observing that the program was aimed at politically safe measures rather than a main cause of the tiger's extinction — the medicinal trade.

An Exxon spokesman replied that the company needed to be "sensitive to the culture" of Asian countries where tiger parts are used for medicines ...

If you're in Ft. Worth, you might want to shop at the Kasal boutique — but only if the air is bad. Owner Kathryn Bryan is offering a quite unusual sale, but only on the days of an ozone alert. What's more, the savings is tied to how you arrive at her shop.

If you come with a friend, that means you've carpooled. So you get a 20 percent discount. If you show up with a friend and a bus transfer, it means you didn't drive. So your discount goes up to 25 percent.

Said Bryan: "The day we have an ozone day, we're going to be swamped."

Our Creature Feature this week comes to us from Cambridge, Mass., where, on Oct. 6, they'll be dispensing the unique and cherished Ig Nobel Prizes. Each year, this unusual gathering of scientists and strange human creatures who know how to laugh is presented the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), which bills itself as the journal of record for inflated research and personalities.

The subject this year? DNA. Speakers this year include Sally Yeh, president of Bijan Fragrances, Inc., the creators of DNA Fragrances for men and women; and Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR's Car Talk.

We won't give away this year's Ig Nobel prize-winners, but we'll tell you about some in the past:

• Ivette Bassa, inventor of bright blue Jello (Chemistry);
  
• Former Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates (Peace Prize)

Our favorite luminary from the past is Dr. Robert Lopez, who won an Ig Nobel in 1994 for an experiment in which he placed cat ear mites in his own ear. The topic of his speech? "Dare To Be Bold."

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Life in an O.J. Daze
It's been more than a year now since gremlins hijacked our brains. A year since the trial of now acquitted football hero O.J. Simpson commandeered channel changers, occupied every talk-show babbler's tiny brain and devoured untold tons of newsprint.

A lot can happen in a year, and it did. Unfortunately, many people haven't noticed. They've been too busy hitching a ride with Marcia Clark from Bundy to Rockingham. Too focused on blood samples, gloves that fit tightly and Judge Ito's scraggly beard. Too slapped in the face by race.

Whatever its allure, the Trial of the Century has diverted our attention from Big Stuff over the past year. Along the Chesapeake and beyond. With the trial finally over, let's hope brains will be returned.

Here are a few of things those brains missed in the year since the O.J. Trial began:

• In the Chesapeake, you have trouble if you live in a shell. Yet another crummy crab harvest has propelled us into a new era of stiff regulations, an era from which we may never escape. Meanwhile, drought let the diseases Dermo and MSX slip back in the Bay like killers in the night, devastating fragile oyster stocks.
  
  
• While many sat hypnotized, extremists hijacked the Republican Party on issues from environmental protection to abortion. The second-to-last moderate-with-a-chance — California Gov. Pete Wilson — was drummed out of the sweepstakes a few days ago. Republicans may have one more moderate in the wings. Can you guess who it is?
  
  
• Back in the Bay, rockfish remain abundant and fishing has been tremendous, a boost for our recreation industry and our psyches. The rockfish recovery is a true success that can help planners withstand Congress’ assault on the environment.
  
  
• Republicans fell off the deep end because Democrats aren't there to stop them. Why's that? They’re suffering from BL disease. That's right, Brain-Lock — the condition exhibited by a mule that never knows why he was whacked upside the head with a two-by-eight.
  
  
• While the country's brain was in cold storage, more and more people grew weary of Republicans' greed and Democrats' failure to tell people what they stand for. As a result, third-party and independent politics has a new jolt of energy that is leading us in directions hard to figure.
  
  
• Verdict aside, the O.J. trial demonstrated some deep frictions in race relations in this country. (There's our obligatory O.J. coverage for the year.)

Good thing you've got your brain back so you can try.

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Shop Where Your Business Is Appreciated

Dear New Bay Times~Weekly:
Your editorial “Death at the Local Level” (August 24-30) was right on target and pitifully true in so many ways.

The discount or department stories ususally carry a larger selection of merchandise at sometimes lower prices. Where do you go for a peculiar item that you need, or something that just is a bit unique or is a one-of-a-kind item? To a smaller, local hardware store or bakery.

The sales staff in these larger stores don’t have the knowledge to help out someone in need of information or instruction for their particular project. (Sometimes one may shop for guidance or instruction as well as the gadget that is needed.) A person can get lost in the aisles of gadgets and thing-a-jibs and especially in the paint aisles, looking for one small washer or a particular type of nail or tack. It can take hours to get in and out of the larger stores. You go into a store for one particular item and come out with things that you don’t really need. There’s generally no one to help carry out your larger purchases, and parking is never just outside the entrance to the store.

You may find it comfortable to go into a smaller store, see the same clerk or proprietor, know their name as they know yours. Occasionally, words may be exchanged regarding the status of each other’s family or how a child is doing in school.

There’s a lot to be said for the old time stores, where periodically shopping was really a pretense and in reality you went there for the local news and especially the gossip of the neighborhood — for the neighborly socialization. Nowadays, about the only place you can go for this type of information is the local beauty shop or local pub. These stores can’t compete financially with the chain stores, but the conglomerate chain stores can’t compete with the personal service you receive at Mom and Pop’s Local Market.

Shop places where your business is appreciated, and your hard-earned dollars are valued. Don’t let the small business owner become a victim of this disposable world.

I realize this editorial was written a few weeks back, and this letter is late. Even if you don’t print it, I just wanted to let you know it was appreciated. All of your articles are great, but his particular one struck home with me.

— Barbi Shields, Fair Haven, Md.

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Clip and Save
First, let’s put things in perceptive: Yard waste, like grass clippings and raked leaves, constitutes about 16 percent of what goes into landfills.

In contrast, plastic waste is about 9 percent and glass about 7 percent. During peak seasons, such as in the fall, yard trimmings can create up to half of all waste.

So forget about those bottles and jars for a moment. Let’s talk about grass.

The very idea of removing from the earth of your yard as rich and vital a source of organic material as grass clippings — then choking a landfill with them — makes me mad.

The solution: Grasscycling. Or simply put, leaving the clippings on the lawn where they’ll recycle themselves.

It wasn’t that long ago that such a practice was frowned upon. Leaving clippings on the lawn would lead to dreaded thatch buildup, warned gardening pros.

But now those pros recognize that as long as the clippings are less than an inch long, they will make their way through live blades of grass and own into the soil. The clippings will soon decompose and add organic material to the soil, including nitrogen, a critical element that encourages growth. In fact, lawn clippings can provide between 20 and 30 percent of a lawn’s fertilizer needs.

Not to mention the fact that avoiding bagging all that grass saves energy — yours.

Grasscycling may mean cutting grass higher, resulting in shorter clippings. That’s better for grass anyway. experts say to foster healthy standing grass, don’t cut more than a third of the blade off, and no more than one inch total at any one time.

While were on the subject of mowing, take care not to spill fuel when filling your mower’s gas tank. It can cause more damage than you thing to the ground, water and air.

A little spilled gas can go a long way. It kills grass, poisons the soil, contaminates groundwater and releases toxic fumes that mix with sunlight to produce smog. Nationwide, Americans spill about 17 million gallons each year.

Some safe pouring tips:

• Use a small gas container and pour slowly.
  
• Avoid overfilling. Gas expands in the heat.
  
• Store gasoline in a cool place.
  
• Refuel on a flat, nonporous surface, like a driveway, never on the lawn.
  
• Refuel in the morning or evening, when it is cooler and less gas will escape into the air.

An even better solution: Switch to an electric-powered mower. They pollute almost nothing. In contrast, the exhaust from mowing just one hour with a typical gas-powered motor is equivalent to driving a late-model car 50 miles.

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Growing the Soul: In Praise of Dirt
by Pat Piper

I still remember where I herd the words. All three of us were in the front seat as the pickup rolled along Rt. 261, just past the apple tree on the right but before Boyds Turn Road appears on the left.

We were talking about gardens, specifically why the horseradish was doing so well while the tomatoes, after a grand entrance in July, just weren’t showing up for work anymore. See, this is what happens with gardens: you question why things are so good and you question why things are so bad, all the time being grateful for the sun as well as the rain.

As a matter of fact, if you ask three gardeners advice on how to grow something, my experience is you can expect to receive close to seven answers. That’s why there are as many gardening books as philosophy books in the library. Nobody has a clue why dirt and seeds do (or don’t do) what somebody says they are supposed to do.

So when Ronnie said gardens show the state of a person’s soul, I remarked how Louis XIV built the Palace of Versailles and he sure wasn’t any walk in the park. That’s when both Ronnie and Ed replied that Louis XIV had about as much to do with those gardens as the three of us did, a point on which I had no rejoinder. But it got me thinking.

A few hours later, I’m standing over the barren plants drinking a beer and still trying to find the missing link between bounty and desolation. They may have been Better Boys once, but now I’m seeing only Dead Boys.

I though back 20 years to one of the three meaningful classes I took out of four years in college. Then, I had presented a paper to Professor Eckert (who later shot himself on Christmas Day — no connection here, it happened a few years after I graduated) for a class he taught called “Walden Pond” (yeah, I know). A line from Thoreau had stayed with me and I built an entire essay on the premise. In talking about water, he said, lying between heaven and earth, it partakes the colors of both.” Water, I concluded, has no color so it reflects what it, excuse the word here, “sees.”

Looking at the dying tomato plants, I began wondering if Ronnie was right and my garden was a mirror, in this case, of negatives. It’s enough to make a guy mad. But the sun had dropped below Fairhaven, so I figured this was something upon which to sleep.

And that’s what I did for a few hours, but by 4am I was back out there next to the raised bed, talking to the Dead Boys and offering encouragement even though the sun, still a few hours away, promised to continue overstaying its welcome. I told the plants about a number of mistakes I’d made and as I spoke, the anger that attached itself every time the topic came up seemed to walk away in the darkness. On and on I went about fears and jealousies, about my problem in getting a client to pay without being insulting or, worse yet, losing the whole account. I went on for at least an hour, the tomatoes and green peppers quietly taking it all in and, as vegetables tend to do, not making any judgments.

It was Ronnie who found me sound asleep next to the raised bed later that morning, the sun in full bloom throughout the yard, the purple martins making every possible noise from their 12 room house above and higher still, the silent loblollies swaying obediently in the wind. I stood, saying something about being up at sunrise and coming out to look at the garden and then falling asleep when Ronnie pointed to one of the Dead Boys.

There, on the end of a brown vine wired to a stake, was a blossom. And after what seemed an eternity, I knew I was feeling the same somewhere inside.

— Pat Piper, of Rosehaven, promises more reflections and reporting.

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Burton Changes His Mind
Maybe rebuilding Poplar Island’s not such a bad idea — if profit’s not the only guiding light.

So they're going to recreate Poplar Island on what little is left of the island across the Chesapeake Bay just north of Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore. I wish them well.

But after checking around, I harbor this haunting uneasiness that the main purpose of the agenda is to find a suitable, less costly area to dump 38 million cubic yards of sludge dredged from the southern approaches to Baltimore Harbor. Hopefully there is no basis for my concern — but I know about those fellows at Port of Baltimore and their bedfellows in commerce, industry and in city and state government who will do anything, simply anything, to keep the ships coming and going.

It's said the Port of Baltimore built the city. Now they want to remain in the competition, and probably at any cost. The Port of Baltimore might have built a city — and kept it in the forefront — but are we to believe that all the shipping and the industry it attracted has been beneficial to the Chesapeake Bay, the upper Bay and its tributaries, especially the Patapsco?

I'm reminded of this daily since I live at the mouth of Stoney Creek, which affords me a view across the Patapsco River where the mills of Bethlehem Steel rise. I see industry, shipyards and huge vessels going to and from the Port of Baltimore.

I've watched the Queen Elizabeth II go by a couple of times; on the first occasion, visitors and neighbors sat in land chairs all along the northwest side of irregular peninsula where I live to observe the Queen's visit, an impressive parade indeed as she was escorted by many scores of official port craft, DNR police boats, and sail and powerboats of the recreational fleet. It was spectacular.

But after that big show and a tinge of pride in the city and its port, back came some old lingering concerns. I've been around long enough to remember incidents involving ships that dumped bilge waters indiscriminately or otherwise fouled the waters.

That big steel plant across the creek has been involved in some incidents also, though certainly not as many as it is accused of. Many years back, a Bethlehem Steel strike closed the facility for a stretch in the summer — and whether by coincidence or not, the fishing for rock suddenly became great.

Most everyone claimed the bounty of rock could be attributed to Bethlehem's shutdown, and since then more fingers than ever have been pointed at the steel plan and its shipbuilding facility, which of course not only depend on the Port of Baltimore but are also big players in the business of the City of Baltimore and its environs.

Possibly there is some justification to such accusations, but I don't point all my fingers at Bethlehem — maybe just one at times. I've not witnessed any of the ominous discharges described to me by some who work there or others who fish or boat thereabouts. When fish aren't biting, it's easy to gripe about an industrial giant.

Earlier Dredge-Island Wars
But I was around when toxic and otherwise contaminated spoils from farther up the Patapsco and the port itself were dumped at the Hart and Miller Island complex. The controversy was a bloodbath.

I don't recall how many millions of cubic yards of dredged materials created that spectacular island complex at the mouth of Middle River, but I remember the fight environmentalists and preservationists fought to keep the islands in their natural state.

From the beginning, it was a losing battle. The state, the city, leaders of business, industry, the port and others had the power. The channels had to be dredged to accommodate bigger vessels, and the Hart and Miller Island complex was the only cost effective and "practical" solution.

If not, Baltimore and the state would lose out in commerce. You know the rest — blah, blah, blah. Discounted were fears that an unusually severe storm could damage the dikes holding the contaminated spoils that had accumulated on the river and port bottoms for a couple of centuries. If that happened, they would wash or leech into the Bay, protesters cried.

That's history. The battle was lost, the harbor dredged, the mountain of gunk created at Miller Island, and the big ships come and go with a better channel than ever.

Thankfully, the dikes have held; no problems are evident and I must admit I have enjoyed some of my best upper Bay fishing practically in the shadows of that mountain of spoils at the mouth of Middle River. Maybe they were right after all, but it's not easy to forget how intimidated we of the opposition felt at the time — or to forget the power of the powers that be.

This year, we've got some dandy fishing for rock and blues at the mouth of the Patapsco, with maybe a few caught at the port itself. The Francis Scott Key Bridge has been one of the most popular spots for white perch, sometimes rock, for years. Possibly under recent environmental guidelines, dredging, commerce, industry, business and even huge mounds of spoils can be combined without threat to marine life. I certainly hope so, because realistically there is no other choice.

Poplar Island Cautions
So Poplar Island, which is gradually vanishing as Bay storms accelerate erosion, is planned for "restoration," with the target of 1,110 acres, the approximate size it was 150 years ago. The island would be half wetlands, half uplands.

Of the wetlands, 80 percent — that’s 444 acres — would be low marsh, which we're told has the highest habitat value for living marine resources. We're also told that fish reefs will be created on the western shore side of the island — which is now eroded to only about four acres — to replace fish habitat lost to the island renewal.

All of this is figured over a 20-year period, which prompts one little concern within me. What happens to the fish and wildlife thereabouts as all of this eventual $120 million project proceeds? I'm too old to figure on attending the ceremonies when restoration is completed, but I have an interest in this island, around which I have for years enjoyed great fishing.

There is more than one island in this little complex, the bigger Jefferson Island that many confuse as Poplar Island because it’s treed and much bigger, though is being cut in two by storms. Coaches Island is still a couple of acres. Another has vanished.

Black drum, blues and rock come to those waters. Some of the best drum fishing can be enjoyed near the complex once the fish move up from the Stone Rock. Poplar Island Hook is noted for rock and blues, and between the islands and the mainland, in more shoal waters, anglers find protected waters to fish when the open Bay turns wild.

After thinking all of this over, perhaps this project isn't so bad if ... If all those promised to-be-clean dredged spoils actually are, and if the project’s boosters show more concern for what they're building than for enhancing commerce at the Port of Baltimore.

Incidentally, I can’t help but wonder what all the dredging will mean at the approaches to the Port of Baltimore. More silt to threaten aquatic life practically in my back yard?

We won't dwell on that. Hopefully "sponsors" will, through either good will or force, uphold environmental integrity. There's a long list of those sponsors, including my favorite watchdog, the EPA. But the way congress treats EPA these days — again I get a bit antsy. Other boosters include Maryland Port Administration, Baltimore District Court of Engineers, Maryland Environmental Service, DNR, Maryland Department of the Environment, National Marine Fisheries Service, Chesapeake Bay Program, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Biological Service.

As they approach this project, may they consider the heron rookery at what's left of Poplar Island, the eagle nesting nearby, and whatever wild and marine life is thereabouts.

Old Times on Poplar
Now let me remind you of what Poplar Island was when many years ago I drove down Lowe's Wharf Road to its end at a thriving commercial crab operation (which has long been closed) to park my car and go by boat that wooded paradise.

In the late '50s, one of the best crow rookeries anywhere was at Poplar Island. Hunters came from hundreds of miles to take part in some of the fastest shooting anywhere. Long ago, I gave up crow shooting — why kill anything that isn't suitable for the table? But then we thought we were doing farmers on the Tilghman Peninsula a favor while enjoying a day afield. Probably we were.

Talbot countian Dan Hodgman Sr., a retired big city businessman, for years operated a gun club that offered some of the best waterfowl shooting, lodge accommodations, food and camaraderie anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic region. How the fowl flew, with sometimes a few geese and always some diving ducks and dabblers.

The lodge was warm and cozy, thanks to a big fireplace where many a hunting experience was re-lived. No phones, no interruptions, just a place among trees — none of which are left, at least left alive.

I won't be around to enjoy Poplar Island again, but many will. If that consortium can bring just part of that back — without creating environmental woes there or elsewhere in the Bay — more power to them. In the meantime, from my back yard I'll monitor the dredging and watch the barges move down the Patapsco loaded with spoils I'm told can undo what the powers of nature have done to Poplar Island for many decades.

Enough said...

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