Letter from the Editor (All)

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 10/6/11

The U.S. Boat Shows Are in Town

And are we in trouble ...

Avoid the occasion of sin. That precept of my Catholic education should, over the years, have kept me away from the U.S. Boat Shows, which occupy Annapolis October 6 though 16. First the Sailboat Show, returning for its 42nd year, validates the city’s title as Sailing Capital of America. Yes, it’s a self-conferred title. But through October 10, it’s as hard to contest as Napoleon’s self-coronation as emperor of the French. As I write, hundreds of...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/29/11

Writing a Story Is Like Remodeling a Kitchen

They don’t call it craft because it’s fast

Astronomy tells us summer left us only last Friday, September 23. But the seasonal gears of creatures change sooner, following the light. Like farmers making hay under September’s Harvest Moon, we humans feel this is the month to get something done. So every September brings me a new crop of writers. Enthusiasm whisks them in, for you have to be under the power of some heavy confidence to call or write an editor. I love their bright ideas and...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/22/11

The Geography of Community

Farewell to one neighbor; bon voyage to another

For most of my earlier years, the neighborhoods where I lived were grids, and connections followed straight lines, side to side and front to back. Sometimes I was lucky and the next- or nearly next-door neighbors were people of shared interests beyond the chance of proximity. That’s how husband Bill and I developed dear friendships with the Kirkpatricks, next door but one, and the Ladleys, next door but two, in Holland Point, where we spent our first years in Chesapeake Country. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/15/11

So Long, Summer

Autumn’s Won My Heart Away

Summer on the Chesapeake is not a perfect season, but I sure hate to see it go. Summer 2011 showed us its terrible temper in plenty of ways: weeks in the stew pot, torrential rains, gale-force winds or none at all, stink bugs on the peaches, mosquitoes on me. But such moods don’t overshadow my love for the thrill of a breeze, the exuberance of the leaves, the moment to seize. For summer does not stay. The pool where I swim opens only one more day, inviting humans in...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/8/11

Ten Years Under the Shadow of the World Trade Center...

Editor’s note: For all each of us remembers about the day we now mark as 9/11, we have forgotten one thing: The utter shock of surprise. Disbelief has dissipated like dusty explosive smoke. Ever since those four moments of impact, we have had knowledge instead of innocence. We are like Adam and Eve driven from the garden. Ten years after, the words I wrote on the morning of September 12, 2001, are the closest I can come to before. I offer them to you to read and...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 9/1/11

What Was Your First Job?

Do your first job well, and you’re likely to get a second

Colleen McCaig got her first job last week. Having delivered fliers door to door in her Fairhaven community, the 10-year-old waited by the phone. “It will never work,” she wailed to her mother. “Nobody will call.” A two-hour vigil tested the girl’s patience. But the phone did ring, and, sure enough, a neighbor enticed by Colleen’s enthusiastically lettered promotion asked her to walk a pair of dogs. ...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/25/11

Back to Learning

Is this fall your time to soar?

Do you envy the kids, just a little bit, as they load up on school supplies, dress up in new clothes and walk to the corner to meet the school bus? Maybe not the school bus part of the proposition. At least for me. My first day on the school bus, which coincided with my first day at a new and distant all-girls’ high school, ranks as one of my life’s traumas in a minor key. Those were the days before backpacks, and we carried our books in our...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/18/11

What’s in a Name?

Your dog’s name may say more about you than about him or her

We love our dogs. Forty-six million of us share our homes with 78 million dogs. So when the constellation Sirius brings us the Dog Days of summer, Bay Weekly goes to the dogs to pander to that audience. Chuck or Chester; Cheyenne or Cassie; Mack, Magic, Max or Moe; Nipper or Norman; Roscoe or Rusty; Winston or Whiskey; Brandy or Bourbon; Brown Dog or Bruno; Poncho, Polly, Peaches or Peanuts; Sandy or Sophie; Sugar or Scamp; Snuffy or Sparky; Dexter, Tucker, Cooper or Caper....

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/11/11

Eat Local, Read Local

Locavores need loads of newsprint

On Sundays, my husband — a lifelong print newspaperman — can imagine himself happy in a world of paperless newspapers. That’s because I’ve never managed the skill of neatly refolding a read newspaper. “How can a tidy person like you throw your newspapers on the floor in a heap?” he asks. Husband Bill is not tidy by my standards, except in his management of perused newsprint. Even so, he does not live up to his tidy father’s standards...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 8/4/11

Don’t Hold the Applause

Rod ’n’ Reel’s Cancer Crusade and Annapolis Rotary’s Crab Feast are acts worth clapping for

Fishing for compliments was one of my mother’s seven deadly sins, and she passed along her aversion. So I cast a fishy eye at all the liking social media specialists urge on us. I’m not much more comfortable at events — from Major League Baseball to business booster meetings —where you’re told who to clap for, when and how loud. In my book, as in my mother’s, applause wants to rise spontaneously. When I feel like...