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Dock of the Bay A Tale of Two Hurricanes As the seven feet of water receded, Hurricane Isabel wasn’t done yet. Some flood victims were buoyed up by the good deeds of neighbors, while others would barely hold their head above water in the bureaucratic nightmare that’s still continuing.
“It’s a forgotten story unless you’re in the middle of it,” says Price. Two weeks before the scheduled March 3 reopening of the flooded creekside oasis, Price and her husband John received a county stop- work order, effectively shutting down any hopes of opening on that day. At issue, the county says, is expansion beyond the current business footprint, which is not allowed under the reconstruction permits. “It just doesn’t stop,” says Price who has fought for months with insurance companies, the county and contractors to reopen the bar and restaurant, an outside deck and tiki bar. “Anne Arundel County set up multiple organizations under one roof at the Arundel Center, which was smart and convenient, but no one knew what was happening. There was no communication,” says Price. She complains of redundancy in the paperwork and no notice of looming deadlines. Thanks to a loan from the Small Business Administration, Price has continued paying the salaries of six full-time staff and begun renovations. But as the funds have dwindled, she’s had to dip into her personal savings and line of credit. She claims the insurance companies she’s paid over the years are offering her pennies on the dollar, and that she is faced with suing them to get what she deserves. “We only pay for what has been touched by flood water,” says Judy Marvel of the National Flood Insurance Program. “Which means if a building is under water and the roof collapses because of damage to the walls, flood insurance only pays for the walls.” Tougher still, insurance pays only replacement value minus depreciation.
Forty miles up the Bay, another flooded business owner faced a much different hurricane. “I woke up at 4:15 in the morning and heard the constant wind,” says Gary Amoth owner of Hard Bean Coffee and Booksellers on Annnapolis City Dock. “I nudged my wife and said: We’re screwed. Then I went back to sleep.” By the morning, water had run up Main Street and four feet into his store. With the help of customers and Annapolis officials, Amoth has recovered without the entanglement of red tape. A sump pump cleared the water, and safe city officials checked on his welfare until power was restored. The city then hosted a Hurricane Survivor’s Party to boost spirits. Amoth credits his regular customers for supporting him while he worked with a third of his usual power and made coffee from a simple burner and a portable espresso maker that belonged on a boat. One regular baked two dozen cookies for employees working in the dim light with no air conditioning. “All’s well that ends well,” says a cheerful Amoth now. Price, on the other hand, is still struggling. “We’ve both wanted to quit at one point or another,” says Price of her ordeal. “Luckily, when John’s down, I’m up and vice versa. If not, we would have walked away along time ago.” — Louis Llovio Humor Alert When The Capitol Steps take the stage at the Elephant Club in Annapolis Feb. 26 for the first of three local performances in two heavily political weeks spanning the Maryland Primary, the comedy troupe will perform their political satire in a climate far different than when they formed 23 years ago.
— WRL For Calvert’s 350th, Bay Bard Sings a New Song Tom Wisner is the break-through song-writer who made singing about the Chesapeake and her rivers an act of personal and political radicalism back in the 1960s. Singing with Wisner, you feel connected to the Bay.
Now Wisner’s helping Calvert County celebrate even more years. Settlers sailed into Calvert territory in 1640, just six years after Ark and the Dove colonists settled in St. Mary’s City. Calvert became a county in 1654, when Lord Baltimore in England decided there were enough people in that fair land to need more government. He sent a distinguished lawyer and minister, Robert Brooke, over as a commander to organize (and tax) the Calvert countians properly. Three and a half centuries later, Wisner lives on land that was part of the very first settlement of Calvert in the 1640s, off St. Leonard Creek. (A spouting fresh-water spring near the mouth of the creek drew the adventurers in, and they stayed.) He’s written a new song to celebrate the spirit of the people who risked their lives to find fertile land and waters in this world. To build a boat and follow on the water Search for hidden lands across the sea. Do all the things a people of the water do To realize their destiny. I’m seeking fertile ground. The song could as well be celebrating the native people who sailed in 10,000 years ago as settlers eager to earn their freedom and prosperity by growing tobacco for English smokers. Wisner’s continuing theme is the core desire to search out destiny. For this early event in a year of celebration, he’s brought back to Calvert two of the friends who played and sang with him back in the ’60s and ’70s. Singer and storyteller Teresa Whitaker and singer and bass guitar player Frank Schwartz, formerly also of (Mayor) O’Malley’s March in Baltimore, fly in from Connecticut to join Wisner. Sat. Feb. 21 @ 7pm @ Calvert High School-Auditorium, Dares Beach Rd. (off Rt. 4), Prince Frederick. $5; rsvp: 410/535-0291. — Sara Ebenreck Leeland In Annapolis, Constellation Energy Group, the holding company that eventually pockets your utility bills, announced last week that it will spend some of that money — $500,000 to be exact — to help sponsor the local stopover for the next Volvo Ocean Race. The race begins in November in Spain. Annapolis and Baltimore will be the only U.S. ports of call during the global race… In Calvert County, Cove Point liquid gas terminal intends to double its capacity as a result of greater demand and escalating prices for natural gas, Dominion Resources Inc. said last week. Fishermen are still irked by the closing of the fertile fishing ground at the facility for security gas tankers unloading...
In Washington, news arrived during the rush for Valentine’s Day chocolates: the cocoa bean, the source of all things chocolate, is threatened by disease. That was the conclusion of geneticist Raymond Schnell, who told a conference last week that diseases like witches’ broom and black pot rot may soon endanger the global supply of cocoa, 70 percent of which is grown in West Africa… Our Creature Feature comes from Germany, where bank security cameras caught an unusual suspect last week: a cow. Yes, those four frames that turned up in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed a cow strolling through a bank in the village of Wunstorf in rural northern Germany. |
“It was nothing like the attitudes toward Bill Clinton and now the attitudes toward George W. Bush,” Bill Strauss — co-founder of The Capitol Steps, a writer for the comedy troupe and participant to this day — told Bay Weekly.
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Last updated February 18, 2004 @ 11:59pm.