Correspondence

We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, 1629 Forest Drive, Annapolis, MD 21403 •E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters on-line by clicking here.

Analemma Dilemma

Dear Bay Weekly:

I visit Annapolis fairly frequently and usually read a Bay Weekly having J. Alex Knoll’s Skywatch articles. I enjoy reading them, and the illustrations are especially helpful.

I would like to solicit his advice. I am designing a small sundial with an analemma. It would make a very good training aid for school teachers. The sundial complete with analemma would enable teachers to instruct on all aspects and characteristics of real-world observable phenomena as driven by the orbit of the earth around the sun.

Regarding the analemma, I cannot explain to myself why the equinoxes are not at the point in the analemma where there is no correction to the solar time. This is due to my lack of understanding of earth’s orbital position at the equinoxes as well as its orbital position where the time correction is zero. In other words, it seems to me that the equinoxes should appear at the zero time correction near the lower half of the analemma, but they do not.

Perhaps you could enlighten me.

–Charlie Scheck, Centreville

J. Alex Knoll’s reply: I’m stumped. Perhaps our readers can help. Send your answers to [email protected].

Bay Weekly’s Years of the Oyster

Dear Bay Weekly:

In the March 18 editorial “The Year of the Oyster,” Bay Weekly once again informs Marylanders of both the history and the stakes involved in saving the Chesapeake’s Crassostrea virginica. Editor Sandra Martin could have said, “The Years of the Oyster,” for in nearly two decades this paper has brought to the public’s attention all the news of the promise and the problems of restoring the Chesapeake’s native oyster.

If finally, “people are listening to one another and even moving toward consensus,” according to insiders, we can roundly thank Bay Weekly for its role in the discourse of “the long and interesting story” of the only oyster we call our own in Chesapeake Bay. Thank you for your commitment to all things Chesapeake.

–M.L. Faunce, Churchton

Editor’s note: M.L. Faunce has written prize-winning stories on oysters for Bay Weekly. Take a look at “Stewin’: Despite Dismal Health, Native Virginica Oysters Are Still Caught and Served: www.bayweekly.com/year05/ issuexiii52/leadxiii52_1.html.

Xword Upsized

Dear Bay Weekly:

I really enjoy reading Bay Weekly and the articles included every week.

I also enjoy working the crossword puzzle included. I noticed in the paper of March 11 that the puzzle is printed much smaller than usual. this makes it very difficult to read the numbers in the squares as well as fit the letters in each answer square.

Please return the puzzle to the original size in future editions.

Thank you for a much-welcomed hometown newspaper.

–Lois Phillips, Annapolis

Editor’s reply: Ms Phillips is right, and we’ve enlarged the puzzle square for easy reading. Achieving Ben Tausig’s verbal contortions is exercise enough for any puzzler.