Dock of the Bay
Volume VII Number 51
December 23-29, 1999
The End is Near! Calendars You Can Count on for the New Millennium
The '90s are soon yielding to the aughts. Those are zeros, if you're not yet up to date with 21st century lingo.
Will Y2K ruin your life? Who knows?
Computers may crash, clocks may stop ticking and VCRs may blink forevermore, but your calendar won't fail you.
With so many choices and so little time, we've rounded up a baker's dozen of special interest to Chesapeake Country.
Boaters Calendar
Both landlubbers and seasoned boaters get quizzed in this day-to-day desk calendar that tests you with not-so-Trivial Pursuit-type questions. For example: To facilitate quick tie-up and one person jumping on the pier and handling both the bow and stern line simultaneously, rig a stern line that is six feet longer than the _ _ _. Answers appear on the following day. To learn this, answer you'll have to check May 7, 2000. $12.99.
Chesapeake Bay
This wall calendar, featuring a local scene of Annapolis' City Dock with a skipjack in the forefront, brings the beauty of the Bay indoors. Its scenes cover the Bay from Maryland to Virginia. No magnifying glass required. $11.99.
Maryland
Take a look at your homeland through the eyes of former National Geographic photographer Steve Uzzell. Each month of this wall calendar features a spectacular scene, from a full sky view of Baltimore's Inner Harbor to a tiny sailboat drifting across the Choptank River underneath streams of billowy clouds. Extras: a basic road map plus historical and interesting Maryland facts. $11.99.
Mid-Atlantic Lighthouses
Lighthouse lovers will enjoy this calendar filled with photograher Walter Choroszewski's colorful portrayals of the Mid-Atlantic's best. Starting from an upward view of Barnegat Lighthouse, New Jersey, on the cover, you'll flip to sensational lighting surrounding Chesapeake Country's Sandy Point Shoal Light in March and the Inner Harbor's Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse in October. $10.95.
Mid-Atlantic & Mid-South Gardener's Guide
The wall calendar for people with green thumbs. Inside, find lovely photos to inspire your own planting adventures plus handy seasonal tips on cultivating and caring for outdoor and indoor plant and veggy gardens. $11.95.
Mid-Atlantic Weekenders Calendar
Do you know what you're doing next weekend? How about next summer or fall? This wall calendar tells you what's happening all year long. If you want to know the date of the 2000 Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk or the Nautical/Wildlife Art Fest in Ocean City, flip to the center page for an alphabetical fingertip guide to events.
Not only is this calendar handy for planning future weekend adventures, it's pleasing to the eye too. Adding color are pastel drawings by award-winning artist Marsha York, including Annapolis' waterfront on the cover. $13.95.
National Register of Big Trees Calendar
In this wall calendar, America's biggest trees remind you that some things stay constant, even in the new millennium. These champions are the successes of a fight to preserve our woodlands. Look and learn about such winners as the 100-foot Slippery Elm of Sugar Grove, Ohio, in January, and 106-foot American Chestnut of Cicero, Washington, in June. Extras: a nugget of tree lore for each month. $8 + $3 shipping and handling from American Forests: 202/955-4500.
Smithsonian: America's Treasures
Dorothy's ruby red slippers grace the cover of this wall calendar so nicely you almost don't want to open it. But when you do, you'll find a year's worth of the Smithsonian's most treasured artifacts. Among them, for June, is Neil Armstrong's on-the-spot photo of fellow moon walker Buzz Aldrin on the silvery plains of the moon's Sea of Tranquility. Extras: explanations, quotations and museum anniversary dates throughout. $12.99.
The State of the Bay
Chesapeake Bay Foundation's 2000 wall calendar keeps you current on Bay health with Bay-saving information as well as Chesapeake scenery and wildlife, often close to home. In October, you'll enjoy an underwater close-up of a swimming rockfish at the University of Maryland's Horn Point Environmental Lab near Cambridge; in December, it's icy clear water flowing from the Patapsco River. Extras: it's printed on recycled paper. $10 from Chesapeake Bay Foundation at www.cbf.org.
Out On The Porch
Remember when families hung out on the porch sipping lemonade and telling stories? The once-forgotten porch is making a comeback. This wall calendar renews the tradition with a new and cozy colorful porch for each month of the year. Extras: delightful explanations, interesting porch trivia and large dates in many colors. $9.95.
The White House
This wall calendar celebrates 200 years since John Adams first settled into a new White House. It's filled with quotes, historical descriptions and charming portraits ranging from city views to architectural details. There are abstract watercolors to impressionistic scenes to realistic paintings donated by 14 artists. All exquisite. $12.95 the White House Historical Association: 800/555-2451 or www.whitehousehistory.org.
Wild & Scenic Maryland
This wall calendar is doubly easy on the eyes, with its big numbers as well as its photos of Maryland's natural treasures from the west to Calvert Cliffs State Park. Extras: detailed information on international holidays and each month's phases of the moon. $11.99.
Darcey Dodd
It's hard to get any more local than the calendar produced jointly by the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society and the Galesville Heritage Society. Familiar Scenes 2000 features drawings of local landmarks by local artists to benefit local causes.
Each year since 1994, the societies - both keepers of the culture and
heritage of Southern Anne Arundel County - have drawn up a list of local
sites, houses and historic structures and invited artists to submit their
original drawings to compete for a month in the next year's calendar. In
the months before Christmas, the calendars are sold to raise money for projects
dear to the societies. Familiar Scenes is the brainchild of Newell Cannon
of Galesville, who has been project manager ever since.
There's so much to keep up with, it's a good thing Cannon has a calendar handy.
First, sites are selected and announced. The societies know their turf so well, they're not worried about running out. In 1999, Granny Annie's Shop in Shady Side, the Deale Public Library and the Galesville United Methodist Church were featured. This year's millennial calendar recalls the past, honoring sites no longer standing or much changed.
By June, the call goes out to artists. For this calendar, artists used old photographs to sketch the residences, a grocery store, marina, chapel, post office and parsonage, all no longer standing but still alive in the history of the area.
A gallery in Annapolis used to select the winners, but now board members from each society do the job. The calendar is printed by Lithopress Printing of Edgewater, completing the local connection.
By fall, the winners are announced and celebrated at an artists' reception, where hot-off-the-presses calendars are sold. This year's cover illustration, from the month of July, features artist John Niedermair's pen-and-ink drawing of the Steamboat Emma Giles. Built in 1887, she steamed up and down the Bay for 52 years carrying passengers and freight to landings from Baltimore to Galesville.
December 2000 depicts artist John Bryan Gall's rendering of The Rural Home in Shady Side where Robert Nowell began taking summer boarders in the late 1880s. Later called the Andrews Hotel, it became a fixture for summer dinners and dances after Nowell's daughter and son-in-law, Ethel and A.W. Andrews, purchased the property.
What is now the Captain Salem Avery House Museum in Shady Side, home of calendar co-sponsor Shady Side Rural Heritage Society, was once the National Masonic Fishing and Country Club. You'll see it all through the rare days of June, again thanks to artist John Bryan Gall.
So if you're looking for continuity in this new century and millennium, get these Familiar Scenes: $7.50 at Smith's Building Supply in Churchton; Mali Office Supplies in Deale; Heritage House (behind Galesville Market) in Galesville (open Sundays); or Captain Salem Avery House Museum in Shady Side (open Sundays).
-M.L. Faunce
By George: Locals Rebury Our
First Pres
"As soon as we walked onto the grounds, we felt in character," said Richard H. 'Sandy' Stromberg, who, with his wife Pamela J. Howett, joined 300 mourners in reenacting George Washington's funeral at Mount Vernon. The Dec. 14 ceremony was the culmination of a national mourning period commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of our first president.
Stromberg is a direct descendant of John Morton of Pennsylvania Washington's contemporary and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He is also a historian, fascinated since childhood by colonial history, as well as historian general for the Maryland and national societies of Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The funeral procession of townspeople, militia and Masons (of Washington's own Order #22) circled Washington's estate and accompanied a 600-pound replica of his casket from the mansion to the first president's original tomb. (Washington now lies in a newer, nearby tomb.) All wore colonial dress, eschewing eye glasses, mustaches and beards.
After the funeral and symbolic entombment, Stromberg and fellow signer descendant Anne Ledbetter of Chestertown laid one of 13 wreaths at the new tomb where Washington lies.
"It was majestic," said Stromberg. "We slipped into our roles as if 200 years had been dropped in the blinking of an eye. It was solemn, somber, awesome."
-Val Hymes
Virginia may be taking a cue from Maryland's conservation leadership. Virginia delegates, led by Republican Vincent Callahan Jr., said last week that they intend to push for $40 million in the General Assembly for land preservation in the new year. This year, Virginia spent just $2.5 million ...
In Mississippi, Robert Anderson has had problems in the past with thieves snatching a tree or two from his commercial Christmas tree lot. But a holiday heist last week did not bespeak Yuletime good will in the South: Somebody, possibly a rival dealer, made off with 1,000 of Anderson's trees ...
Our Creature Feature comes from Chicago, where a beluga male has been dispatched on a sensitive holiday mission. Inuk, the 2,200-pound,18-year-old beluga whale, was flown recently to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut with the assignment of impregnating two female belugas.
Whale experts have faith in Inuk, who has sired several calves in recent years. "He has a proven track record," said one expert.
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Volume VII Number 51
December 23-29, 1999
New Bay Times
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