Your Say: March 22-29, 2018
March 15 Bay Weekly: Antidote to a Snowy First Day of Spring
What a wonderful issue to read on this wintery first day of spring. Your March 15 paper pushed all of the buttons for me, starting with the Rev. Lowcock-Harris’s eloquent plea for trees. Our local Calvert County commissioners recently permitted plowing down a last bit of forest near the county seat for a fast food business which I, pointedly, will never patronize in honor of those lost trees.
Speaking of forests, while a scientist for the U.S. EPA Chesapeake Bay Program, I worked closely with U.S. Forest Service staff trying to preserve woodlands and encourage stream buffers to improve Bay water quality. My favorite associate in this work was enthusiastic and intelligent Coreen Weilminster. I’ve watched her career since the birth of her first child, but your issue opened a whole new side to this wonderful woman, who, as you indicate, works daily for the benefit of Chesapeake Bay.
On the South River, John Flood’s energy did indeed kindle public advocacy, but Nancy Merrill Sullivan brings real stewardship for Chesapeake history to her work for the river. She was deeply involved during the work we did sorting out Capt. John Smith’s epic discoveries on the Bay in 1607 to 1609.
As I write this, there’s a guy on the creek fishing in all this raw rain. Dennis Doyle’s apt comparison of casting and spin gear comes to mind. Of course he’s right, but I’ll still treasure my late father’s ancient Bethabara surf rod with its 1915 Meisselbach (Newark, NJ) reel, though since the hurricane (which broke its tip) this rod is consigned to hanging over the cottage front door.
Finally, here at Osborn Cove, thanks to Mark Hendricks’ article on Chesapeake Abloom, we wish for a more mature spring, not snow. Our myriad Jack-in-the pulpits and the valley’s showy orchids are still a ways off. Uhhhh, one small flaw, the lovely bleeding hearts (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) are related to the poppy and are neither orchids nor natives.
Don’t Bug Me!
Puzzler-solvers promptly let us know — by phone, email and in person — that we’d printed the wrong grid for Don’t Bug Me, the Kriss-Kross puzzle for the week of March 15. Comments ranged from mild — the grid layout does not fit the clues or the solution, Caren Fitzpatrick wrote — to the outraged.
I really enjoy the puzzles in your weekly paper, but I have to tell ya, you really bummed me out with the Don’t Bug Me! Kriss Kross puzzle. It’s unsolvable! It’s bugging me, so I had to bug you. Not fair, get it right next time!
Bugged and ticked off,
P.S. I always get irritated when Bay Weekly isn’t available in the vestibule when I look for it on the way out of the store. But I guess that’s a good thing, it shows that people are reading it.
With our apologies and promise to get it right this week. Last week’s correct Kriss Kross is with this week’s puzzles.