Bay Weekly: This Week's Lead Story

Over the Top
Crosby, Stills and Nash Earn 12 salaries for Calvert Marine Museum
by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Sex and drugs have fallen on hard times, but rock and roll endures. It’s the 21st-century’s best prescription for altered consciousness.

Once upon a time, the thousands of sweating semi-centenarians who rocked with Crosby, Stills and Nash on David Crosby’s 64th birthday might have broken whatever laws stood between them and getting high. But at the last Waterside Concert of Calvert Marine Museum’s 2005 season, the sell-out crowd only broke time’s laws. The long chords of “We Have All Been Here Before,” twisting like the helix of DNA, sent many among the 4,500 time-traveling. Over 22 songs, through sweltering sunset into steamy moonrise, old hippies remembered when personal consciousness rose so high it was easy to believe “we can change the world.”

Over four decades, there’s been plenty of evidence that even rock and roll hasn’t gotten far in changing the collective consciousness.

“I wrote this song about my father going to World War II,” said Stephen Stills of “Military Madness.” “Yet we’re still doing the same stupid s@*!.”

Still, this old trio hasn’t given up hope. Along with ballads romantic enough to stir any age heart, their two-and-a-half hour concert included plenty of protest. Whether or not opinions were swayed, songs protesting war — “the same, stupid s@*!.” — and hunger — “why not feed the people everywhere and let peace begin?” — set the crowd swaying.

Nuclear waste was also on the agenda. “Don’t Dig Here,” the concert’s seventh song, protests the effort of the federal government and the nuclear industry to locate a spent-fuel repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nowadays, retired fuel rods are stored in pools or in steel casks on concrete pads outside nuclear plants. No long-term storage solution exists in any country.

How did an anti-nuclear song play in Calvert County, where county commissioners and the chamber of commerce are lined up behind a possible addition of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant?

“I like their music, but that doesn’t mean I have to embrace every message,” said County Commissioner Linda Kelley. “It was just one more song from their history.”

Consciousness aside, Crosby, Stills and Nash raised money, which is rock and roll’s other staying power.

With receipts still being counted and bills not all in, museum director Doug Alves anticipates the sell-out concert will bring in $80,000 to $100,000. Balancing the summer’s other two concert — including a money-losing try at comedy with Bill Cosby — Crosby, Stills and Nash’s harmonies will pay 12 salaries at the museum and support special projects. One of those, Alves said, is a “new bigger and nicer touch tank in the Discovery Room.” Shaped like a horseshoe, it will feature salt and freshwater tanks full of Bay and river creatures.

Annapolis Rotary Club Annual Crab Feast Surpasses Last Year
by M.L. Faunce

It’s too early for final figures of funds raised this 60th anniversary year. Rotary volunteers have other fulltime jobs as they calculate both sides of the ledger. Net proceeds donated to local charities and nonprofits from last year’s crab feast was $30,000, a figure Lisa Edler, Silent Auction chair, says will be easily surpassed because of this year’s corporate sponsors.

Brisk Internet online ticket sales boosted attendance this year to about 3,000, straining the steaming capacity of Shoreline Seafood, who supplied, cooked and served some 393 bushels of crabs. Patiently waiting in line, more than one patron weighed the delay in crab flow: $45 for all-you-can-eat crabs, corn, hot dogs, BBQ and beverages versus as much as $60 a dozen at restaurants. No contest.

Crab feasters who stayed until the end got even more for their money. With 20 minutes left until closing time, a storm blew in from the west, announcing itself with a bolt of lighting that struck a flagpole outside the gates to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Feasters under cover continued to pick crabs. The soaked sought cover with their crabs under the Silent Auction tent, untroubled by the rising water beneath their feet. Fire department pros on hand minimized effects of the deluge and momentary chaos. Intense as it was, the storm was no match for the tornado of activity unleashed as Rotary Club volunteers swept into motion to clean up after 3,000 satisfied human crab-picking, crab-eating machines who finally forfeited their tables for another year.

Calvert County Cancer Crusade Celebration of Life Richest Ever
by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Excesses of weather couldn’t stop a couple of thousand party-goers from making Calvert County Cancer Crusade’s 24th Celebration of Life the richest ever.

“We’ve exceeded our goal, by how much they don’t even know yet,” gala sponsor Gerald Donovan of Rod ’n’ Reel restaurant told Bay Weekly.

Donovan attributed the big increase to the number of people who bought VIP tickets, entitling them to two additional hours of partying at the start of the gala.

“The regular ticket price is $100, while VIP tickets were $500 and had to be bought in a minimum of six, which amounts to $3,000,” Donovan said. “We had over 600 people there, and that was a tremendous increase in dollars.”

Those early feasters compensated for the price of their tickets in lobsters. “We added to the number of lobsters we had last year, but we should have had still more,” Donovan said. ”We will next year.”

In the balance, said Donovan, “this year we had more than enough desserts.”

Along with lobster and champagne, Rod ’n’ Reel’s dessert bar sweetened the fight against cancer some $350,000-worth.