Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/19/12

Many Hands Make Light Work

Hundreds have helped us keep Bay Weekly in your hands these 958 issues

Nine-hundred fifty-eight issues in 19 years would be heavy lifting, were it not for all the people who’ve carried part of the load of Bay Weekly since our birth as New Bay Times on Earth Day, April 22, 1993. Each year at this time, I page back through our 19 leather-bound volume books. Each one of them making heavy lifting — not only for all the newsprint pressed in them, nor for all the words typed on that yellowing paper. The memories are heavier still, revived...

Article - Features; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/19/12

Memorable Moments

A look at the highs and lows along Bay Weekly’s 19 years

1993 • New Bay Times born April 22 to Sandra Olivetti Martin, Bill Lambrecht and Alex Knoll and delivered every two weeks. • Bill Burton, just retired from the Evening Sun, hires on as outdoors columnist. New Bay Times stock soars. • Inaugural issue of Bay Weekly’s summer guide, 101 Ways to Have Fun. • No longer black and white and read all over; our first spot color (on front and back covers) is green. • Rampant diseases MSX...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/12/12

Help the Bay When You File Your Taxes

You’ve got no control over where most of your tax dollars go. The exception is Line 35 on the Maryland state income tax form. Check that line and you make a direct contribution to Chesapeake Bay and the Endangered Species Fund. The Fund — split evenly between the Chesapeake Bay Trust and Maryland Department of Natural Resources — supports Bay restoration and conserves native wildlife and endangered species. Last year, the tax check-off amounted to more than...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/12/12

D for West and Rhode Rivers

A step up from failing is the score the West and Rhode rivers earned on their spring report card. D was the average grade of five positive indicators — water clarity, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, algae and underwater grasses — and one negative, bacteria. The grades are based on data collected in 2011 by the West/Rhode Riverkeeper, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and Maryland Department of Natural Resources. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/12/12

Who Needs More Bad News?

There’s more to April than National Anxiety Month

I could tell you that the General Assembly, which adjourned this week, managed to spin straw into gold and everybody’s happy. But you wouldn’t believe me, because you know that even in fairy tales there’s a heavy price levied on too much cleverness. Truth is that nobody’s very happy with the results. In this Assembly, one diner’s meat has been another’s poison. If you were blown over by the prospect...

Article - Boating; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/12/12

Clean Marinas Make Good Neighbors

Ask if your marina is a Clean Marina. If not, why?

Boaters love the Bay. They love the look of it, the feel of it, the smell of it, the freedom of it, the generosity of it. All the Bay’s tributaries plus its ocean and fresh waters are part of that big love. Choosing a Clean Marina as your boat’s home — and your second home — is one of the best ways boaters can, in return, protect the Bay. If yours is a Clean Marina, it may be more Bay-friendly than your first home. In fact, your...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/5/12

Litter Bugs: It’s Time to Catch ’em, Ticket ’em and...

April is Potomac Watershed Litter Enforcement Month

The results of my Fairhaven neighbors’ trudgery lined the roads: piles of tires, rusted bed springs and auto parts, heavy old televisions and fat black sacks stuffed with litter. Anne Arundel County hauled the loot away, and our roads and fields were blessedly clean — for about 24 hours. Then the litter showers resumed, starting with a sprinkling of fast-food trash and stepping up, within the week, to more tires. They, like the mattress and television and couch...

Article - Food and Drink; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 4/5/12

The Prize Is in the Eating

You may think of the snakehead as an invading monster, but Chef Chad Wells urges you to embrace it as a delicacy

The best prize you can win for catching a snakehead is the fish itself. That’s Chef Chad Wells’ take on Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ much-ballyhooed snakehead fishing competition, opening a second season as warmer waters bring the toothy invasive into catching range. Wells, chef at Alewife in Baltimore, is an avid snakehead fisherman, which is how he came to be Maryland’s first chef to serve the fish commercially. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/29/12

I need Home and Garden helpers

Mother Nature’s Got the Jump on Me
You and I will find them in this Bay Weekly

“I’m in energy,” said the woman seated to my right at the long table where she and I, strangers heretofore, made conversation. “Ah, so you’re following in Mother Nature’s footsteps,” I replied. Magnetic energy — and no, not the kind new age healers use — was my table companion’s current favorite energy source, followed by geothermal. Wood, coal, hydrokinetic, atomic, nuclear,...

Article - History & Lore; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/22/12

Sampling 378 Years of History

Maryland Day offers so much, it takes a full weekend to celebrate it all

Maryland Day is our version of Columbus Day. On March 25, 1634, voyagers from the ships the Ark and the Dove celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving for surviving their long voyage, coming to land safely on a Potomac River island and negotiating a peace accord with the Piscataway Indians. Those were smart Indians; they suggested the colonists go elsewhere. Thus St. Mary’s City, not St. Clement’s Island, became the seat of the Lord...