No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted –Aesop The truck driver approached the tollbooths on the Bay Bridge, laboring to maneuver his big five-axle rig into an open lane. Heavy traffic made it a tough job. An elderly couple approaching the toll lanes behind him saw his predicament and slowed, waving the trucker into their lane, directly in front of them. Catherine Noone, toll collection manager at the Bay Bridge toll plaza, has seen many people pay it forward —...

Small trees, tall trees — dozens of them, resplendent in holiday light and ornamentation — transform the halls of Huntingtown High School into a forested Christmas wonderland. These trees decked in holiday finery aren’t delivered to the high school in Santa’s sleigh. Instead, they are the work of hundreds of volunteers who labor for weeks, months — some all year — to create a Festival of Trees for the sake of Calvert Hospice.   Tree Art “I don...

As cold weather sets in and you fill your bird feeders, you’ll find hours of entertainment — and bafflement — in their behavior. What are they up to with all the strutting, head-bobbing, feather-fluffing and wing flapping? Get the answers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, now enrolling backyard birders in the online bird-behavior course Investigating Behavior: Courtship and Rivalry in Birds. Over five weeks, you’ll learn how to observe and interpret bird behavior in...

We lay in bed, just before lights out, and watched the small battalion of gunmetal gray tanks make their way across the top of our curtains. Three windows, three stinkbugs each. After fall’s bombardment, we didn’t get too worked up over just nine of the little buggers. But we did wonder what entrance they were using. My husband suggested our double-hung windows were probably not shut tight, and the slender gap at the top and bottom of each gave the invaders — and the now...