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See How Global Warming Makes Us All Smith Islanders
Dear Bay Weekly:
The cost of our energy use is rising. All of Southern Maryland is bracing for SMECO’s proposed 23 percent rate hike for electrical power, which will take prices to an all-time high.
Calvert, Charles and Prince Georges county residents are struggling with the location of a natural gas pipeline that Dominion Energy Company would run from the Cove Point terminal to Marshall Hall on the Potomac. At issue is whether the new line will cause increased environmental harm to streams, farms and forests, or follow existing rights-of-way.
These proposed policies and developments take place in the shadow of increased energy use by an expanding regional population. Burning fossil fuels like gasoline, coal, natural gas and oil to run our vehicles and power plants contributes mightily to rapid climate change through global warming.
The impact of higher temperatures is already evident around the Chesapeake Bay: Islands and marshes are disappearing as sea level rises due to melting of glaciers and polar ice caps.
What can we in Chesapeake Country do to slow or stop the effects of global warming? Energy conservation through reduced use and more efficient appliances and vehicles is a start. Supporting clean energy sources like solar and wind will help.
I recently saw a great short film, We Are All Smith Islanders, that vividly portrays the dangers and solutions associated with our changing Chesapeake Bay climate.
A free program sponsored by the Southern Maryland Greens and the Sierra Club will show the film at 7pm Tuesday, November 30, at the St. Mary’s County Library in Charlotte Hall. Following the 35-minute film, there will be discussion of what we can do to lessen the possibility of adverse effects on the Chesapeake Bay region.
—Frank L. Fox, Mechanicsville
MacBeth Review Got It Right
Dear Bay Weekly:
Thank you for your good review of the U.S. Naval Academy’s MacBeth. For me, working with director Christy Stanlake and her Midshipmen and women was like being harnessed to a think tank that achieved art free of the usual artifice.
It was very gratifying to have your observations, especially as it so strongly defined theatre in its reality as opposed to film. We have recently had to work in competition with the reality shows, which have raised the bar on what we have to tackle on stage.
It is not often that Shakespeare himself receives such a good review. About your comment “a bridge undamaged by the four hundred years separating him from us,” he would have been pleased. I believe he was then writing a cryptic message for his own time, which still reads true today.
—Richard Montgomery, Annapolis
Editor’s note: Production designer and Annapolitan Montgomery works with directors and playwrights around the globe, from Naval Academy’s Stanlake to Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcot and Wole Soyinka.
Bay Weekly Gets the Word Out to Audiences
Dear Bay Weekly:
Thanks for including Baltimore Children’s Theatre’s Cinderella in your calendar 8 Days a Week over the past weeks. Opening weekend was the company’s biggest yet. Then last week we sold out both shows. Can’t wait to see what happens at the final weekend.
And thanks for your coverage of Twin Beach Players’ production of The Foreigner. The audience was small opening week, so we hope for bigger audiences to follow. The finished set looks much different from when your reviewer Carrie Steele [The Curtain Rises: Vol. XII, No. 46: Nov. 11] attended.
—Sid Curl, Chesapeake Beach
Editor’s note: Director Curl works with both companies.
November 18’s Cover Pretty as a Picture
Dear Bay Weekly:
Absolutely beautiful watermen’s picture on the cover of November 18’s paper [Vol. XII, No. 47]. It simply doesn’t get any better than that.
Might I get permission to have a copy for our new Bayside History Museum in North Beach?
—Grace Mary Brady, Leonardtown
Editor’s note: The cover photo of an oyster boat unloading after harvest at a newly opened reserve was lent to Bay Weekly by Chris Judy, Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ oyster manager. We’ve forwarded Brady’s request. Read up on the new museum in Dock of the Bay, Vol. XII, No. 45: Nov. 4.
