Articles by All

Article - Creature Feature; by Leigh Glenn - 5/9/13

Broody Mallards

Life is wired to birth new life

When I started to clear my herb garden to make room for a couple of sage plants, I almost jumped out of my skin: A clutch of eggs lay in a bird-made bowl under the overhang of rosemary and chickweed. But no mama, in this case, a mallard. I found her absence odd, but she always returned. When she went broody and was no longer leaving, I offered her some food. She hissed. Why did I have doubts? I know of studies where high levels of...

Article - People; by a Bay Weekly special - 5/9/13

In Her Own Words

Statistics can’t tell the stories of these average mothers

Julia Bennett, 18, North Beach My pregnancy wasn’t easy. I was in and out of the hospital because Carter wanted to come out three months before he was due. I was constantly worried about him being a preemie, but the doctors kept him in my belly. Then once his due date came, he decided to be stubborn. I heard about the problems that could happen if he stayed in my belly for too long, and I worried some more. The second he was born on July 22 and was placed into my arms...

Article - Theatre Reviews; by Davina Grace Hill - 5/2/13

Bay Theatre Company’s The Price

A brilliant staging of Arthur Miller’s moving tribute to bonds that bind

Sometimes you want a simple beach novel to bide away the time, and sometimes you want to be in the presence of a master who can control language, inflection and develop great profound meanings. If you are in the latter mood, Bay Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Price is the show to see. In The Price, Miller revisits the family dynamics he explored in Death of a Salesman. This work has some prescient lines for today, some of the most realistic (and often, painful) family dialogues...

Article - Movie Reviews; by Diana Beechener - 5/2/13

The Big Wedding

I saw this movie, so you don’t have to

The Big Wedding is a special romantic comedy. It is a movie so vapid, so devoid of genuine emotion and so mind-numbingly dull that it is, in actuality, an achievement in bad filmmaking. After a few minutes of this dreck, you begin to wonder whether or not this movie is in fact some elaborate prank. It must be acknowledged that writer/director Justin Zackham (Going Greek) has accomplished the impossible: he’s found a way to fracture time, making this 90-minute film feel like it stretches...

Article - Sky Watch by J. Alex Knoll; by J. Alex Knoll - 5/2/13

Reminders of Halley’s Comet

The Eta Aquarid meteor shower returns

The moon wanes through morning skies this week, reaching last quarter Thursday, May 2, when it shines between the faint constellations Capricornus and Aquarius and is high in the south by dawn. The sun sets this week around 8pm, revealing Jupiter high in the west, brighter than any star. However, if you have a clear view of the west-northwest horizon just after sunset, you may find the only brighter star-like object to the lower right of Jupiter: Venus, which is slowly...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Francis Gouin - 5/2/13

The Story of Compost

From low places to high

Governor Martin and First Lady Katie O’Malley may not be aware that in 1985 I tried to convince the gardeners in charge of the state properties in Annapolis to apply compost to the turf. The idea was met with great resistance because the gardeners thought it would take too much time, and they did not believe it would improve the turf. We’d already been turned down in higher places. During the Carter administration, those of us doing research...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 5/2/13

The Full Monty

Shad, perch and rockfish — why choose when you can fish them all?

It was opening day of trophy rockfish on the Chesapeake, but Moe and I were going shad fishing. Crossing the Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore, we could see that our decision was sound: The surface of the Bay was churned milky white from the breaking waves driven by near 40-knot winds. An hour later, however, casting over a rain-swollen and tannin-stained Choptank, we wondered if we had made the right choice after all. But within a few minutes a hickory shad, mimicking a...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 5/2/13

A Good Tree Is a Good Friend

And a forest is halfway to heaven

Spring is in the air, and our hands are in the earth. I’ve seen you greenscaping block-end gardens in Annapolis for Earth Day. I’ve seen you planting and mulching at St. Martin’s Lutheran School. I’ve seen you loading up at Greenstreet and Homestead Gardens and at London Town, Calvert and Four Rivers garden clubs’ plant sales. I’ve seen you digging in your garden, and I’ve seen the irrepressible flowering following...

Article - The Dish; by Lisa Knoll - 5/2/13

Cueing Up for Food, Fun and Music

Follow the smoke to the Naptown barBAYq

This weekend brings the third annual Naptown barBAYq Contest and Music Festival to the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds. This two-day fundraising event is organized by the Parole Rotary Club and has expanded to include two days of music as well as a large field of barbeque competitors with names like Que and a Half Men and Aporkalypse Now. Last year’s event raised $30,000 for local charities. The grills start rolling into the Crownsville fairgrounds on Friday, nearly 60...

Article - Green Living; by Ashley Brotherton - 5/2/13

Giving a Building Life

Hard Bargain Farm going light years ahead of just green

A living building sounds like something out of a futuristic, sci-fi movie, but it’s closer than you think — 2015 to be exact. The Alice Ferguson Foundation just broke ground for a living building at Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek. The Foundation is the first in the region to build a living building and will be fourth in the world to earn the title. What does it take to create a living building? Fifteen million dollars, a...