Double Duty

Many Maryland legislators don’t quit their day jobs to serve us.

About three-quarters of Maryland senators and delegates don’t quit their day jobs when elected. Out of 187 lawmakers in the General Assembly, 45 — only one-fourth — regard representing you as their one-and-only job.

Politicians aren’t all lawyers, though 33 lawyers were elected to legislative office. More, 35, are businessmen and -women; 12 are public administrators; 12 are educators; about six are consultants. After that, the jobs get interesting.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 3: JAN. 17

February

Still Serving after All These Years

How World War II ships came to catch Chesapeake menhaden

Their names have changed many times; their origins are often obscure. Yet each ship has a legendary history: of war, tropical islands, foreign ports and now, fish.

Only two facts are certain in these ships’ murky histories. They were built to haul cargo in the South Pacific during World War II. Today, they are fishing out of Reedville, Virginia.

–BEN MILLER: NO. 7: FEB. 14

African Americans Paving the Way

Mapping the routes of Maryland’s black history

You can travel through Maryland’s African American history in Anne Arundel and Calvert Counties.

Glossed over by mainstream history books, the everyday history of Maryland’s black communities is signed on small lanes, boulevards and roads throughout
the state.

Bay Country’s Haiku Champion

How Arnold poet Alexis Rotella ¬ translates an ancient art

She calls it the Muse. That ancient word is the name Alexis Rotella gives to inspiration, which drops in on her for an afternoon or stays for years. Then, like the wind, the Muse disappears.

The Muse’s demands paid off last year, winning the Arnold acupuncturist and nutritionist grand prize in the 12th annual international Kusamakura Haiku Competition. Judges chose Rotella’s haiku about a fishing boat over some 700 other entries from poets in Japan to Serbia to New Zealand and beyond.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 9, FEB. 28

March

Finding Common Ground

To connect with kids, Bay area churches
welcome skateboarders

Skateboarders are uniquely resourceful; almost any paved surface is fair game for these renegades to stage daring maneuvers. Which means you’ll find them at unlikely and sometimes illegal spots.

Even behind a church.

As odd a pairing as church and skateboarding are, it’s not an uncommon one. But finding common ground requires compromise and sacrifice from both boarders and youth ministers.

–BETHANY RODGERS: NO. 10: MARCH 6

Gargantuan turbines aren’t the only wayMarylanders make energy out of thin air

The roar of March’s lion sets off gusts good

for turning wind turbines, creating clean energy.

Wind energy is on the cusp of becoming as widely used as solar power, says Crissy Godfrey, of Maryland’s Energy Administration.

Four-hundred-foot turbines aren’t our only wind option. There are smaller approaches you could erect on your property or install at your business.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 11, MARCH 13

Carving Her Niche

Local sculptor Deborah Banker chiseled a person from a 683-pound stone

When Annapolis sculptor and teacher Deborah Banker turned half a century old on March 1, 2007, she wanted a rock. She didn’t want the sparkly kind that comes in karats. It didn’t have to come from husband and Bay Weekly Sporting Life columnist Dennis Doyle.

What Banker wanted was a 683-pound chunk of raspberry alabaster.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 13, MARCH 27

April

Home, Green Home

Ways to make your abode a more eco-friendly place

About the time birds rebuild their spring nests, we humans get the itch to re-think our living quarters, too.

If you’re a green-conscious home improver, you’ll want to beautify your home and leave a light footprint on the Earth — as well as keep your living space healthy. The good news: Nowadays you can buy green products to accomplish both goals. The bad news: The bounty of choices can confound.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 14: APRIL 3

In with the Old

Use discards, not credit cards, to spruce up this spring

Home improvement usually means out with the old and in with the new. But sometimes the new can be old.

Before you toss your old stuff into the landfill and head to the local big box store to buy new replacements, consider these alternatives.

Habitat for Humanity and Community Forklift operate retail stores that accept donated new and slightly used building material and re-sell it at terrific savings.

–MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 14: APRIL 3

Dessert Decision 2008

In the contest for State Dessert, Smith Island takes the cake

In the midst of decrying taxes, circumscribing windmills and regulating recycling, Maryland state government took time out for cake.

This frosted piece of legislation may seem like a debate more suited to after-dinner conversation. But for all who spoke at hearings on the title of State Dessert, Smith Island Cake is serious business.

–DIANA BEECHENER: NO. 15: APRIL 10

15 Ways to Save the Bay

Bay Weekly’s green choices you can make today to make a difference

Green choices tap on our shoulders with nearly every decision we make. These 15 suggestions — in honor of our 15th birthday — can be achieved in a week or less. Primed with small successes, you’re more likely to step up to a loftier goal.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 16: APRIL 17

May

Paint, Mulch and Elbow Grease

Calvert homeowners prepare for ¬ hundreds of visitors

Spring heralds a time-honed tradition: home and garden tours. On the annual Maryland Home and Garden Pilgrimage, tour-goers are greeted by weed-free, blooming gardens, spotless homes and smiling hosts and hostesses who make it all look effortless.

Visitors naively believe these beautiful homes and gardens are perfectly put together all year long.

For most, this is far from true.

–MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 18: MAY 1

Get on the Ball

We owe our punctuality to the Father of Timekeeping

Until the late 19th century, nobody was on the ball. Before then, few people knew for sure what time it was.

Watches were put into people’s pockets in 1852, but precision remained elusive. For a train conductor, the time on a pocket watch was a matter of life or death.

In 1891, the industry hired Webb C. Ball to develop clocks that kept precise time, all the time. Thus America got on the ball.

“Webb C. Ball is, in a way, an unsung American hero — the father of modern, accurate timekeeping,” says Steve Hammalian, owner of Little Treasury Jewelers in Gambrills, where you can buy a Ball to keep you on the ball.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 19: MAY 8

Sandwiched Between Young and Old

Mothering takes on a new meaning when you’re caring for family in two generations

Terese Wells’ job demands long hours and superb organizational skills. On call around the clock, she needs to be prepared for anything. At times, it’s a scene from a three-ring-circus.

Yet she doesn’t bring home a paycheck.

Mothering her teenagers and her parents back to back, day in and day out, is Wells’ full-time job.

–MICHELLE STEEL: NO. 19: MAY 8

Outracing Cancer

Four friends plan to pedal coast to coast in just one week

Ken Shuart’s an adventure racer who’s persevered 48 straight hours, surmounting rough terrains on foot and bike to win. He’s competed in marathons and triathlons. He’s checked off both Mount Rainier and Mount Kilimanjaro from his climbing list.

There’s one challenge Shuart, of Galesville, has still to take on. In just under three weeks, Shuart — with three teammates — will attempt the longest bike ride of their lives. They’ll be one cycling team among some three-dozen competing in Race Across America, a 3,000-plus-mile non-stop trek from Oceanside, California, to Annapolis.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 21: MAY 22

The Searchers

Genealogists are as relentless as John Wayne in tracking their families

John Gadd is a man with a mission. He haunts his favorite library — researching his family’s history, digging through public records in musty old books, on microfiche and microfilm and on the Internet. He’s spent 13 years meeting his family. It will take a few more, he estimates, to complete just the research on his paternal line.

In his driven quest to reconstruct his family history, John Gadd is not alone.

–JANE C. ELKIN: NO. 22: MAY 29

June

Turning Dreams into Action

Johnnies’ trade mission exports the ¬ college’s liberal education

You might never visit the country of Georgia, halfway across the world and 17 years out of the shadow of the USSR. But if you send a dollar there, you can start a revolution.

No, this is not a Spam scam.

Your dollar will help Georgian Nini Aduashvili, a freshman at St. John’s College, revive her country’s culture by exporting the values St. John’s is famous for: liberal arts education.

–ERICA STRATTON: NO. 23: JUNE 5

15 Years of Tale-Telling with Bill Burton

On June 17, 1993, the famous Bill ¬ Burton hitched his star to our six-issue-old paper

Without Bill Burton, where would Bay Weekly be?

The answer to that question we’ll never know. Since June 17, 1993, Bill Burton — famous for his outdoors stories not only through the Baltimore Evening Sun but also radio and television — hitched his star to our six-issue-old paper, and you’ve been reading him in our pages ever since.

This week, we celebrate those 15 years with a look back on his columns and some of the letters they’ve evoked.

–NO. 24: JUNE 12

The Kindness of Strangers

On some voyages, you can’t get home alone

Because I trailer my sailboat to launch sites going sailing can include long periods when the hull is dry. Often I travel Eastern Shore roads, heading to Atlantic coastal bays or remote parts of the Chesapeake. There is no water or land more beautiful, and the folks I’ve met are among the kindest of strangers. If, in fact, you can call someone who treats you like family a stranger.

–AL MCKEGG: NO. 25: JUNE 19

The Big Bang Theory

How to stop worrying and learn to love the bombs

Each year at major events from Independence Day to New Year to monthly bursts at the Baysox or Orioles games and nightly illuminations over Walt Disney World, spectators enjoy bombs bursting in air with no fear for their safety. Fireworks have become such staples of celebrations that it’s easy to forget the glittering colors lighting up the night sky are actually carefully choreographed explosions.

–DIANA BEECHENER: NO. 26: JUNE 26

July

The Greening of Good Works

Charity takes an eco-turn

With 400 needy people depending on Vicki Callahan, rain gardens and compost privies are pretty far down on her priority list. Yet she’s building a new, green $9 million home for her 300 differently abled workers and the 78 staffers who help them do their best.

Thus Opportunity Builders joins a select group of local non-profits with environmentally friendly homes.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 28: JULY 10

The Joy of Eating Locally

The locally grown food on my plate tastes better — but that’s only part of the story

My husband and I sat down to a delicious dinner of roast chicken, red potatoes tossed with rosemary, and zucchini saut8Eed with onion. Dessert was peach crisp.

Other than a little olive oil to saut8E the squash and the flour, butter and spices that put the crisp in our dessert, everything on our plates was produced no more than 10 miles from our home in Calvert County.

This wasn’t by chance.

–MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 29: JULY 17

Listening to the People of the Fields

How a local artist found his calling, friendship and community

William ‘Billy’ Poe walks down the lane to find his inspiration from the people at home in Calvert County. An author, photographer and budding filmmaker, Poe’s mission is to get these stories told before the storytellers disappear.

“Calvert has a deeply rooted community of beautiful people just outside of Washington, D.C., with a lifestyle so completely at odds with life in the city,” says Poe.

–MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 30, JULY 24

Proving Her Metal

Kate Costello emerges on the art scene

Kate Costello’s latest creation is cooling on a wire rack in her mother’s kitchen. The 25-year-old artist typically works with steel, mixed metal, oils and acrylics. Today, she takes a break to fan zucchini bread.

Her award-winning sculpture, Pores, sits on a side table. The steel base mimics the layers of skin, with squares of copper welded to the top, representing the epidermis. Costello’s dermal deconstruction earned her Annapolis’ First Sunday Art Fest’s emerging artist award.

–DIANA BEECHENER: NO. 31, JULY 31

August

Having a Ball

Freezing out the recession

The recipe is simple: A little crushed ice, a few squirts of syrup and a spoon. Yet cars squeeze into gravel lots alongside clapboard shacks to line up for summer’s most satisfying treat. The snocone’s a practical and effective way to keep cool without breaking the bank — and good business for seven local entrepreneurs.

–DIANA BEECHENER AND BAY WEEKLY STAFF: NO. 32: AUG. 7

Catch that Downspout Deluge

The new generation of rain barrels fuses fashion with function

Catching water off your own rooftop has been catching on for eco-minded homeowners.

To do its job, a rain barrel need not be plain. Artists and schoolchildren are dressing up a second generation of rain barrels to offer fashion with function.

–CARRIE MADREN: NO. 33: AUG. 14

Working for a Living

Labor Day sketches of the jobs we do

With the last days of summer looming large before us, the post-Labor Day working world can look as bleak as the last-minute beach traffic along Rt. 50. But all is not lost. The daily nine-to-five doesn’t have to be a chore.

Our roving reporters profile 14 workers, 12 by land and two by sea. From chimney sweep to rabbi to funeral director to harbor master, Bay Weekly found a common thread: Job satisfaction.

–DIANA BEECHENER, RACHEL RABOLD, ERICA STRATTON AND MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 35, AUGUST 28

September

On the Seventh Anniversary of 9/11, How Safe Are Our Skies?

A Bay Weekly Conversation with Bobby Sturgell,

Chesapeake neighbor Bobby Sturgell — of Owings, on the Calvert-Anne Arundel line — was a United Airlines pilot on September 11, 2001. His wife, Lynn, was an American Airlines flight attendant.

Since that darkened day, the U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Top Gun pilot and lawyer has moved to the front lines of recovering and assuring the safety of our skies — first at the National Transportation Safety Board, now as Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.

On the seventh anniversary of 911, Sturgell reports that terrorists are still out there and continue to view aviation as a means of destruction.

–SANDRA OLIVETTI MARTIN: NO. 37, SEPT. 11.

Taking On the Great One

A local adventure

On May 12 — after six months of preparation — six climbers, one of them my husband, spread out their gear for one last inspection inside the airplane hanger near the tiny town of Talkeetna, Alaska.

Roped together, each climber will carry up to 60 pounds of personal gear in a backpack while dragging another 50 pounds of food, fuel, tents and other shared gear on a sled. To reach the summit of Denali, they’ll hike 16 miles up, to 13,000 feet.

Unless the weather, luck or their own limitations stop them.

–KATHY RESHETILOFF: NO. 38, SEPT. 18

October

Ranching Oyster-Style

Can aquaculture save the industry — and maybe the Bay?

Richard Pelz, the trailblazer, brought oyster ranching to Maryland. On Circle C Oyster Ranch, in St. Jerome Creek of St. Mary’s County, he proved that floating oysters in low salinity protected them from killer parasites and gave them rich grazing. The oysters responded by growing plump and marketable in 18 to 24 months.

Sixteen years later, Pelz’s style of ranching is spreading up Bay tributaries, giving us what may be our best hope for restoring native oysters.

–SANDRA LEE ANDERSON: NO. 40: OCT. 2

Row Your Boat

Like wind and engine power, human power can master the waves

Starting in a seated crouch called the catch, Jean Tucker lowers her blades into the water and begins the drive by pushing back with her legs, arms straight. Feathering the blades out of the water, she reverses the pattern in the recovery. The continuous motion is elegant, powerful and addicting.

This heady conversion of strength into grace and speed is drawing so many rowers to the open water of Chesapeake Bay that Tucker’s organized a club for them: Wave Rowers.

–DOTTY HOLCOMB DOHERTY: NO. 41, OCT. 9

Photographer Jackie Niles

Country ghosts inspire her art

Give photographer Jackie Niles a season, and she’d ask for this one, for it is the season of ghosts. Her photographs are of a wishful past, some serene in their abandoned state, others haunting odes to a life long lost.

Niles’ love of rural landscapes and their afterglow has taken her photography career in an unexpected direction: to Hollywood — California, not Maryland — where her brother, Steve Niles, writes comic books and screenplays. Steve’s new script book “Freaks of the Heartland” is seasoned with Niles’ Calvert County images.

–MARGARET TEARMAN: NO. 42, OCT 16

Over the Bridge, A History

of Eastport, is a Scrapbook of Community

A you-can-do-it approach to history

People interviewed by historian and writer Ginger Doyel remember how it was.

Her new book, Over the Bridge, A History of Eastport at Annapolis — published by the Annapolis Maritime Museum — is filled with engaging photographs and has the energy and appeal of a good scrapbook, plus the depth of Doyel’s scholarship.

Like a good scrapbook, the book is fun to read or to leaf through. Pictures of people catch your eye. You’ll see, as Doyel said, “the evolution of the peninsula from working boats to pleasure boats” and learn “the stories of people, the lesser known stories.”

–BEN MILLER: NO. 43: OCT. 23

Could You Be Living with a Ghost?

Is that static in your life a short circuit — or a stuck spirit?

Ghostly curiosity is heightened in autumn, as Halloween nears.

But ghosts keep paranormal expert Beverly Litsinger of Randallstown busy year round. Litsinger, president of the Maryland Ghost and Spirit Association, has been helping people with their ghostly dilemmas for a dozen years. But she has been talking to ghosts — and photographing them — all of her life. She was with one when I called.

–EILEEN SLOVAK: NO. 44: OCT. 30

November

The Thanksgiving Feast

Beyond the basics, how we make it our own

Thanksgiving dinner is served out of the great American melting pot. Don’t get me wrong. I like turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

But there are icons at my Thanksgiving table beyond idealized pilgrims and ceramic turkey salt and pepper shakers. Nowadays, I prepare my feast to honor my culture, family and mother as well as the great American ethos we all share.

Is it not the same for you?

Here is the Bay Weekly family’s collection of recipes and stories that add the spice of personal and local tradition to each Thanksgiving feast. Yes, downstream from Baltimore, many include sauerkraut.

–SANDRA OLIVETTI MARTIN: NO. 45: NOV. 6

Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole

Does the Parole Plaza saga have a happy ending?

With ye olde English spelling, the grand new Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole wants us to believe we’ve arrived at a fairy tale ending.

Will Prince Parole and Princess Towne Centre find happiness ever after? Will the mega retail/residential/office Centre live up to its name for the 14,031 residents of the Parole area? Or will it be the center of an exclusive club for those who can afford to live in what will eventually be 685 apartments and condos (starting at $469,000) towering above the retail shops?

–SONIA LINEBAUGH: NO. 47: NOV. 20

Money, Time and Talent

How We Make Our Communities Richer

Grand places with great names: Carnegie Hall. Rockefeller Plaza. The generosity of these givers is carved in stone.

But many charities keep going because of everyman and everywoman’s philanthropic gifts. For even in tough times generosity abounds, at large and small ends of the scale.

–MARGARET TEARMAN WITH DIANA BEECHENER AND SANDRA OLIVETTI MARTIN: NO. 48: NOV. 26

December

Bay Weekly’s 2008 Holiday Guide to Gifted Giving

Shopping locally makes our villages strong

A year that taketh makes simple work of what to giveth.

This holiday season’s advice from Bay Weekly: From local sources give the people on your list what they need and want — for otherwise they may have to do without.

Here at Bay Weekly, we can’t do without our advertisers. So they’re where we’re shopping in this year’s annual Holiday Guide to Gifted Giving. Follow us through their offerings, and you’ll find, as we have, gifts for every taste and body on your list.

–SANDRA OLIVETTI MARTIN, MARGARET TEARMAN AND DIANA BEECHENER: NO.49: DEC. 4

Water in His Eyes

From Annapolis, Matt Braun has taken a seat at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Water got in Matt Braun’s eyes: its spectrum range from blue through green, its sinuous motion, its explosive force. Ocean water got in Braun’s eyes as a kid on North Carolina beaches.

Chesapeake water got in his eyes as a skateboarding Annapolis High Schooler, here from 1994 to 1996 to live with his brother.

Water stayed in his eyes in Philadelphia, where he’s been a hip DJ and off-and-on art student since the late 1990s.

–SANDRA OLIVETTI MARTIN: NO. 50, DEC. 11