Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ March 13-19, 2003 Issue #11
On Exhibit
A thin metallic line glimmers blue, pink, gold or silver and outlines a photograph, a sketch, a pastel drawing. Local artist Carole Pressnall creates metallic images, drawings, enhanced photos, soul portraits and clay work with Chinese calligraphy and brush lines on Madras and iridescent papers.
Pressnall looks for the soul in photographs of young girls’ and boys’ faces, in ink sketches of nudes and in nature landscapes composed of shimmering blue pastels. Some of the pastel drawing incorporate womanly anatomy into mountain-scapes, suggesting humanity’s elemental nature.
Ordinary people posing for a picture or cleaning up snow from a Baltimore townhouse are enhanced by paint overtones and metallic gel pen outline in a new style that, says Pressnall, “I’ve just started experimenting with.”
Buzzing from all forms of her art, shades of metallic blue capture the electric energy surrounding breathing and inanimate objects, convincing viewers that the soul must indeed vibrate.
Thru Apr. 27–Artist Carole Pressnall’s Electric Blue. 10am-3pm, M-F; noon-1 Su @ Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, 333 Dubois Rd.: 410/266-8044.
— Sara Kajs
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ March 6-12, 2003 Issue #10
Music Festival du Jour
Dance to the grooves of reggae Mama Jama, blues Ruby Hayes and jams of End2Deep. Presented by DAG Ontime Productions. Doors open 6pm. Curtains rise at 7pm @ Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St., Annapolis. $25; rsvp: 410/481/SEAT.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ Feb. 27 - March 5, 2003 Issue #9
Mermaids and More at Calvert Marine Museum
Sirens and sirenians have set their lures at Calvert Marine Museum. Sirens, of course, are well-known lurers, the sort whose intoxicating song called ancient mariners from the sea to sure death. Sirenians are the creatures the voyagers were really seeing: sea cows.
Together, they’ll take you in from the cold on a graphic journey back millions of years in oceanic and Chesapeake history.
Other exhibits highlight Calvert County’s Bayside culture, history and prehistory with artifacts of water working, shipbuilding, archeology, war and more. Drum Point Lighthouse shows the lightkeeper’s life. J.C. Lore Oyster House remembers Solomons’ once-bustling oyster industry (weekends & holidays).
See Bayside history for yourself daily from 10am-5pm @ Calvert Marine Museum, across from the Route 2-4 exit, Solomons. $5 w/discounts:
410/326-2042.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ February 20-26, 2003 Issue #8
The Washington Monument
by M.L. Faunce
What with drifted snow and mounted anti-aircraft guns surrounding the Washington Monument, Presidents’ Day 2003 reminds us that democracy has not come easy.
Which is one good reason to time your visit to the Washington Monument with the week we honor our presidents. You can’t quite see the Chesapeake from the 555-foot-high obelisk, but you can see just about everything else in — and beyond — Pierre L’Enfant’s grand scheme for the capital city of a new nation dedicated to democracy. If you act quickly, the Presidents’ Day blizzard will show you all that as white and pure as democracy’s ideal.
Dedicated in 1888 to honor our first president, the monument reopened last year after a $10-million facelift and overhaul that kept the gravity- challenged landmark closed and under wraps (literally) for four years. The exterior marble has been cleaned and repaired and the elevator updated (walking up isn’t an option any more). From the expanded observation deck, the view is better than ever.
Open daily (except July 4 and December 25) from 8am to 4:40pm. First come, first served, with free tickets for timed entrance each day at the Park Service kiosk at Madison Drive and 15th Street, N.W. For a $2 per-ticket fee, you can reserve ahead — though this time of year crowds are unlikely: 800/967-2283 • www.reservations.nps.gov.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ February 13-19, 2003 Issue #7
Warm Your Heart at Historic Surrat House Museum
Surratt House has a dark history as the meeting place for the conspirators who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. But in its recent life as a well-preserved museum of 19th-century domestic history, the old road house has downplayed that chapter in its life. Every year at this time, the musuem warms hearts with its sumptuous collection of some six dozen Victorian-style valentines from the 1840s thru the turn of the century. Continuing the tradition of extravagantly staged love messages into the 20th century are the 3-D box and mechanical valentines created by a Franciscan brother during the 1960s and 1970s for his parents.
See them with envy — which you can sate with some nice modern imitations from the museum shop — thru Feb. 24 from 11am-3pm ThF @ Historic Surratt House Museum, Clinton on Rt. 5 in Charles County. $3 w/discounts: 301/868-1121.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ February 6-12, 2003 Issue #6
Join Alex Haley and Company at Annapolis City Dock
They look so at ease: Alex Haley sitting for a spell on the wall at the head of Annapolis Harbor with three children gathered at his feet. Don’t be fooled by their comfortable integration into the city scape. They speak to a past of chains and struggle. For Alex Haley broke the nation’s long silence on slavery in his landmark genealogical history, Roots. These spellbound kids of different ancestries — African American, European American and Asian American — listen to the shameful story of how Haley’s forefather, Kunta Kinte, came to Annapolis in chains to be sold into slavery. Think of that as you sit with them, then join them in a journey of reconciliation this Black History Month.
It’s easier to make that leap since last summer, when the final elements of the memorial — a wall of plaques quoting Haley’s Roots and a compass rose pointing back across Atlantic shores — were dedicated in downtown Annapolis. The wall’s dedication reads, “to those nameless Africans, brought to the New World against their will, who struggled against terrible odds to maintain family, culture, identity, and above all, hope.”
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ 01/30/03 - 02/05/03 Issue #5
Lifelong Learning at Carrie Weedon Science Center
by Sonia Linebaugh
There’s no longer an excuse for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. You’re the chef when Anne Arundel Community College brings cooking classes for adults and kids to Carrie Weedon Science Center in Galesville. February through April, learn how to find, store and create recipes using a computer data base, take to the kitchen to get a handle on cooking with a wok or prepare no-fuss meals for families on the run. There’s a wok class for kids 10 to 12 and safe and easy microwave cooking for ages 8 to 10. Anna Chaney and Beth Lennon of Herrington on the Bay will help you get ready for entertaining with catering tips. Chef Roger Tomko takes on guys who can’t cook. Adult cooking classes are one session. Kids classes run five to seven sessions.
Cooking is not the only talent you can nurture at the center. In all, 32 different classes are on the menu with topics like financial planning or yoga for adults, Spanish for families and music for munchkins. In a 16-computer lab, adults or kids 8 to 12 can get started with computers or refine their web navigating skills.
For navigating the waters, basic boating classes — required by Maryland for any boater born after 1972 — discuss weather, waterways and regulations. The course meets the state requirements for Maryland Boating Safety Education certification.
There’s a lifetime of learning to be had — without traveling to Arnold.
4:30-10pm T & Th Carrie Weedon Science Center, Galesville Road off Muddy Creek Road: 410/222-1625. Or call AACC to register 410/777-2325. Cost varies. Registration is underway.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ Jan. 23-29, 2003, Issue #4
Eastport Historic Walking Path
by Karolyn Stuver
The best part of the Eastport Historic Walking Tour is that you get to do it in the context of the present. In other words, as you stroll from marker to marker — each narrative plaque commemorates an aspect of the neighborhood’s rich maritime heritage — you get to ponder what was against what is.
There are 13 stops on the tour, which begins on the Eastport side of the Spa Creek Bridge, near the north end of Sixth Street. From there, continue along the waterfront toward the Severn River, around Fort Horn Point and back along the Back Creek side of the peninsula. Markers turn up near most of the street ends.
The path traces the historic roots of Eastport’s maritime industry to the present. The famous John Trumpy & Sons Inc., yacht yard is immortalized at stop three. Learn about Heller’s, Eastport’s first ship yard, at number five. Stop seven explains the significance of Fort Horn during the Revolutionary War. Plaque 12 describes the history of black Americans in Eastport, highlighting the area’s first primarily black boating club and two black-owned boat yards.
The path complements today’s Eastport, populated with the next generation of marine businesses.
And if you need a break from reading, simply look up and out across Space Creek, the Severn River or Back Creek for a first-hand perspective on how this community has been shaped by its past.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ Jan. 16-22, 2003, Issue #3
Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary
by Scott Hertzberg
Prince George’s County Merkle Wildlife Sanctuary is the winter home to the largest concentration of migratory Canada geese on the western shore of the Bay. Each year more than 4,000 geese fly from Canada to the 1,670-acre state sanctuary by the Patuxent River.
Visiting Merkle is a good winter outing even for people who don’t want to be out in the cold.
One of the best places to view the geese is from the windows of the sanctuary’s warm visitor center. If you’re lucky, you’ll see flocks feeding in nearby fields of corn and millet the sanctuary plants for them. When flights move, they are an impressive sight and as loud as a helicopter.
Off limits to goose hunters, Merkle is the only wildlife sanctuary run by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. It’s named for Edgar Merkle who owned the farm that was the foundation for the sanctuary and donated to the state in 1970. By improving habitat and launching a breeding program, he was the first to introduce large numbers of Canada geese to the western shore.
Sanctuary open 7am to sunset daily; visitor center MFSaSu 10am-5pm. Parking ($2) is the only fee. Take Rt. 301 south, turning left on Rt. 382, Croom Rd. After a second left on St. Thomas Church Rd., follow the signs to the sanctuary: 301/888-1377.
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Destination: Chesapeake Country ~ Jan. 2-8, 2003, Issue #1
Hilda Mae Snoops’ Fountain of Government House
On the first warm day this new year, Marylanders in the know will be making pilgrimage to Hilda Mae Snoops’ fountain on the backyard of Government House, spouting again after a long dry spell, during Gov. Parris Glendening’s administration.
Make no mistake. What looks like nothing more than an ornamental tiered fountain, its spout rising in rainbowed droplets, is in fact the power point where the wills of three governors (and one defeated candidate) converged and conflicted. Decreed by former governor and bachelor William Donald Schaefer’s official hostess Hilda Mae Snoops, the fountain was turned off by the next governor, William Donald’s arch-foe Parris Glendening, who claimed drought as his reason. Schaefer’s outrage lead to his eventual outing of his successor’s courtship of a new wife. Turning on Hilda Mae’s fountain became an issue in the gubernatorial contest between a third generation of would-be governors. Now, before governor-elect Robert Ehrlich can be sworn in and flip the switch, Gov. Glendening has pre-empted his successor. The drought has ended, and Hilda Mae’s fountain spouts again.
See it in the back yard of Government House on Church Circle at College Avenue.
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