Features (All)

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 10/7/10

Doggie Distractions

AAA finds that careful driving has gone to the dogs

It’s now illegal for Marylanders to drive with their hands on their phone, but according to a AAA study, we’re still likely to fall victim to another driving distraction: our animal companions. The study — a joint effort between AAA and Kurgo Pet Dog Products — polled 1,000 dog owners who have driven with their dogs over the past year. Fifty-nine percent of pet owners admit that travel with their pets distracts them from the job at hand. The trouble arises because...

Article - People; by Amy Russell - 10/7/10

Double Dipping

Sailing is Collin Linehan’s sport. It’s also his career

On a clear Saturday morning with just enough breeze, skipper Collin Linehan sits at the stern of his J22, listening to the calls of his crew. Water splashes against the hull of the racer, Funhouse Mirror, and the cool moisture from the Chesapeake relieves the temperatures of the crew on board. Linehan and his crew are competing for the J22 East Coast championship title in Annapolis, and as the sailors trim and hike, sweat beads across their foreheads. An avid sailor from Manchester,...

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 9/30/10

Bug Off

Life stinks for Marylanders

The brown marmorated stink bug has made itself Maryland’s least welcome invader of 2010. Fat from feasting on orchard and soybean crops, flocks of the Asian alien have invaded homes and gardens, causing more than a foul odor. “The populations this year have been astronomical when compared with years past,” says Dr. Joe Fiola, specialist in viticulture and small fruit for the University of Maryland Extension. “Multiple bugs per fruit, whereas with green stink bugs [the...

Article - Places; by Katie Dodd - 9/30/10

Rock the Casbah

This weekend’s final First Sunday is your last chance to join the fusion of community and arts

From May through October, the First Sunday Arts Festival transforms inner West Street into an Annapolitan Casbah. Wandering down West Street, you find the normally high-traffic thoroughfare empty of cars, replaced by dozens of artisans’ tents. Despite the weather — rain to swelter to who knows what — swarms of people stroll the brick road, admiring the treasures on display. From earrings made of bottlenecks to children’s storybooks to paintings to decorative shutters,...

Article - News; by Margaret Tearman - 9/30/10

The Tall Price of Power

For SMECO, it’s a big job feeding our demand for electricity

Something alien is growing in Calvert County. The aliens have sprouted up in the front yards of homes along quiet, winding Bowie Shop Road. Still more are appearing on Route 4. They are big, very big, towering over the landscape. Eventually there will be 23 of them. These aliens are behemoth power poles, erected by Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in the name of progress. The new metal poles bear little resemblance to the old wooden poles they are replacing, and they don’t exist...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/30/10

Pulling Pennies from the Air

A new breed of wind-sellers can lower your utility bill while saving the environment

In wind power, the money is in the marketing. We learned as much long ago from the experiment of William Wrigley Jr., the millionaire whose success you’ve no doubt chewed on more than once. The maker of Juicy Fruit and Doublemint gum, among other chewables, kept a weather eye on opportunity. How he put chewing gum in vending machines at about the turn of the 20th century is a milestone of entrepreneurial capitalism. Gum sans machine was already sold in New York. Would vending...

Article - Features; by Aries Matheos - 9/29/10

Muddy Creek Artists Guild Pops Up Again

See them this season in Galesville, October 1 thru 3

With no gallery to call their own, the Muddy Creek Artists Guild makes its followers wonder where they are going to pop up next. Surprise “keeps the Guild’s shows fresh,” says Elizabeth Ramirez, chair of the upcoming October show. The Where’s-Waldo approach for the two-year-old Guild’s three annual shows creates “a sense of urgency” that “people have to take advantage of while it’s happening,” says Bea Poulin, photographer and Guild...

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 9/24/10

This Week’s Creature Feature - Two Years into a Life...

Calvert Marine Museum’s snakehead settles into life in solitary confinement

Two years ago, the Calvert Marine Museum put a new inmate in the tank, a snakehead fish, as the showpiece of the museum’s invasive species exhibit. “It was a good example because there was a lot of press on it a few years back,” says Ken Kaumeyer, the museum’s curator of estuarine biology. Though the fish hasn’t attempted a jailbreak, Kaumeyer isn’t ready to declare it a model prisoner. Originally, the snakehead was to be part of a larger exhibit,...

Article - Creature Feature; by Diana Beechener - 9/23/10

Sucked into Battle

In the war against the vacuum, Lothian’s Juanky is declared top dog

The war between pets and vacuum cleaners is long-standing and seemingly inexplicable. Maybe it’s the noise. Maybe it’s the aggressive suction coupled with a rolling machine. Maybe pets just don’t like clean carpets. Eureka Vacuums, however, sought an armistice between their cleaners and your furry friends, inviting pet owners around the country to enter Fido’s Fight or Flight contest with videos of their pets reactions to the vacuum. The contest promoted Eureka...

Article - News; by Katie Dodd - 9/23/10

Bonfire of the Politcal Vanities

Discarding the remnants of the race to the polls

Maryland’s September primaries are over, the polls have closed, and — for the most part — the results have been determined. For most winners, the looming general election — where the stakes are all or nothing — leave little time to celebrate. For the losers, there’s plenty of time to rue and wish Maryland had enacted late, rather than early, voting. Plenty of time to pick up — and pack up? — all the signs that proclaimed their hopes and...