A century ago, Chesapeake Country was vacationland.         Hundreds of beaches and weekend communities lined the shore. Trains hauled daytrippers from the big, hot cities for Bay waters, fresh seafood and fun and amusements. Steamboats plied the coast, stopping at one pleasure spot after another. Passengers paid $5 each to board the Emma Giles in Baltimore at 4:30 in the afternoon, eat and sleep overnight and arrive fresh at their beach destination the next...

Art is Margaret O’Brien’s way back.         The way was long for this 55-year-old whose suffering from childhood abuse recurred as post-traumatic stress disorder. At Arundel Lodge, she found first a loving home, then help in remaking her past through art.     “It was the atmosphere of praise here,” O’Brien says, “that helped me overcome my past.”     In the Lodge’s Fresh Start program...

No less an authoritative body than the National Research Council weighed in this month on progress in restoring Chesapeake Bay. In a hefty report, the council, which is part of the National Academies of Science, delivered a sobering assessment of what would be required to achieve ambitious goals.     This was not one of those feel-good reports like those old Environmental Protection Agency assessments patting themselves on the back. The Obama administration may have declared war...

On the Eastern shore of Maryland, brothers Josh and Mat Shockley are hard at work with vigilantes, vampire hunters and multi-dimensional travelers. The brothers aren’t in charge of a secret government lair; they’re the owners and principal artists of PLB Comics.     They’ve been working on their business a few years, but comics have been their life since they could read.     “We started reading them around age four, and that’s how we...