Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/30/12

Finding Your Way in Our Capital City

Good signs make ‘meaningful experiences’

Are we there yet? No, dear. But in a couple of years, visitors to our capital city will arrive surely at their destinations, guided by a new Wayfinding Master Plan. Wayfinding is a fancy word for signs with a lot of thought behind them. Sixty-five thousand dollars worth of thought. That’s how much Merje Designs is earning to plan a system of signs to guide visitors into...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/23/12

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Counting Clicks and...

Lend an ear for the D.C Baltimore Cricket Crawl

It’s a symphony out there. The players are crickets and their cuter green cousins, katydids. Their instruments are their wings, specifically the tooth-covered stridulatory organ thereof, rubbed one against the other. Males play this instrument to attract females and repel other males. Katydids, plant eaters, come in 6,400 species worldwide. Crickets, omnivores, are far fewer in species, with 900. How many are playing near you we...

Article - Boating; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/23/12

A Rock and a Hard Place

For some boaters, jetties are Scylla and Charybdis

Two jetties protect the Deale harbor in Southern Anne Arundel County. Neither is new. Yet 900-foot jetties are bad news to a few of the thousands of boaters entering Rockhold Creek. Saturday, August 18, What’s Next rocketed up onto a jetty. “This one must have gone quite a way up and turned since the stern is on the jetty and the bow is in the water,” said Doug Roberts of Deale. What’s...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/23/12

So Long, Summer

With all fall offers, parting is such sweet sorrow

Anticipation eases the sadness of summer’s leaving. Officially, summer is with us until the autumnal equinox September 22. But the light is already changing, and so are the temperatures. There’s less sweat, more breeze. Lovely weather, isn’t it? we say to one another. Our allocation of four seasons doesn’t do justice to the complexity of changing time or to our experience. Closer to the truth is 12, for three divisions of each of...

Article - Bay Weekly Interviews; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/23/12

North of $15 Million

Hard Traveler Kenn Roberts on making — and giving away — millions

Bay Weekly: The Hard Travelers are in their second life. How is this one different? Kenn Roberts: Buddy Renfro and I had been listening to the Kingston Trio when we started the Hard Travelers in 1958 in the basement of the Phi Delt house at the University of Maryland. We were young guys grasping for notoriety and a career in music. Now nobody’s looking to get discovered. It’s all about playing this original music for people and using that to raise money for...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/16/12

Cat-aloguing Cat-astrophes

Dog Day reflections on feline companionship

This affectionate kitty loves people and rewards you with purrs when you pet him. So says The Capital. That’s a healthy note of skepticism you read in my words. Or perhaps it’s jealousy. For assertions like this one crank up a notch or 10 the friendly competition one newspaper editor feels on reading the pages of another paper. Can every cat featured in Adopt a Pet — not just the homeless little dreamcicle pictured...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/9/12

Stretch Your Comfort Zone

That’s what the Olympics teach us about life and journalism

I’d blame it on Olympic fever, had not the urge to stretch our comfort zones begun before the Games of the XXX Olympiad opened on July 27. Certainly, aspiration is fed by the spectacle of human beings attempting superhuman feats of strength, agility, grace, speed and endurance. By back-stories recounting achievement by sweaty, disciplined years-in-and-out perseverance. By slips and falls and rededication as much as by success. By the sight of...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/9/12

This Week’s Creature Feature ... Fast, Faster,...

Cheetahs named to honor America’s fastest man and woman

On top of their Olympic medals, America’s fastest man and woman have another cause for pride. They’re the namesakes of two of the world’s fastest animals, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo’s cheetah twins born April 23 at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. Girl cub Carmelita is named in honor of Carmelita Jeter, the fastest American in the 100-meter dash. On Saturday, Aug. 4, Jeter ran the 100 meter in 10.78 seconds...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/2/12

Half a Cup of Summer Left

Drink deeply of 2012. It’s a vintage year

Summer is half over. August 2 marks the midway point between the solstice, which began our summer on June 20, and the autumnal equinox, beginning fall on September 22. That’s the woeful way of saying we have half the season of good times left. So let’s make the most of it. Over the years Bay Weekly has made an art of gathering ways to enjoy summer. You’ll have misspent your summer if you haven’t made time for these. 1. Get Cool in...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/2/12

Doubling Down

Maryland lawmakers return to take up gambling in their second special session of the year — here’s what you need to know

When? Opening Thursday, August 9 and running “two or three days,” according to Sen. President Thomas V. ‘Mike’ Miller, a champion of expanded gambling. Certainly no than 30 days; the Maryland Constitution forbids it. But in the fall of 1991, a special session on congressional redistricting came close, running from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22. Why? To prepare a ballot question on gambling for the Nov. 6 general election...