Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

Inside the Ultimate Secret Society: Motherhood

In this week’s paper, we tell our stories

Motherhood is the ultimate sorority. It’s also the biggest. Eighty percent of American women belong; worldwide, mothers number two billion. Like all membership societies, motherhood demands an arduous initiation rite. Passing through it is an experience no uninitiate can share and one every initiate understands. Just on the other side are rewards beyond belief until they are yours. “For me, becoming a mother turned into...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 5/9/13

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

The Weight of Memory

I hope my brain — and shelves — have room for 20 more years

Twenty years gives you lots to forget. Over the two decades of Bay Weekly, I’ve lost track of plenty. So as our Earth Day birthday approaches each year, I exercise my memory by lifting our archive books off their shelves. The book for 1993 weighs only 3.5 pounds. We didn’t start until Earth Day, and publication was fortnightly, so we printed only 19 issues that first year. The books for 2004 through 2008 are hefty, with 2006...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/25/13

Bay Weekly’s 20-Year Book

Milestones in words and pictures

1993: Volume I Vol. 1, No 1: April 22, 1993: Our First Cover Born on Earth Day 1993 as the paper Committed to the Chesapeake, New Bay Times appeared with a cover drawn to tell the whole story. No. 5, June 17: Burton on the Bay Bill Burton leaves the Baltimore Evening Sun for upstart New Bay Times. Okay, I exaggerate. After 35 years with the Sun, the famous outdoors editor was pining from an early buyout at 66 years young. In New Bay...

Article - Features; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/25/13

Why We Love Our Libraries

Calvert Library’s Pat Hofmann discusses what makes libraries special places — for us and for our communities

"The library is poppin’,” Bay Weekly calendar editor Ashley Brotherton tells me late Monday. Her report means I have a couple of hours of editing ahead of me on a hefty 8 Days a Week calendar muscled up by Anne Arundel and Calvert libraries. At the 20 libraries in the two counties this week are programs for babies, toddlers, kids, teens, parents, computer novices, e-device users, gamers, job-hunters, locavores, knitters, memoirists, movie...

Article - People; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/18/13

Tuning into the Bay Weekly Forum

Animal stories spark the most talk

Forums are few and far between in Chesapeake Country. Like the forum of ancient Rome and town squares of cities around the world, Annapolis City Dock is a natural. It’s also a work in progress, with vision evolving and conflict between people and parking seeking resolution. The libraries of Anne Arundel and Calvert counties give us 20 such forums. This Library Week, we celebrate that role in our Bay Weekly conversation with Pat Hofmann, who’ll leave us a...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/18/13

Taking on the Atlantic

30-year-old Bay-built has no fear of “young and modern boats”

The brotherhood of Dickerson sailboats stretches far and wide. Built on the Eastern Shore under three owners from 1946 to 1987, Dickersons became so beloved that afficionados compete in the Find a Lost Dickerson Sailboat contest to complete the registry of every Dickerson ever built. So it’s big news that Polish Sailor Krystian Szypka plans to race one of the Chesapeake-built boats across the Atlantic in OSTAR 2013. The challenging single-handed...

Article - People; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/11/13

Heeding the Water's Call

This week read how each in our different ways, gets back to the water

The water is calling, and throughout Chesapeake Country we hear and answer. With the windows open for the first time this spring, I woke to watermen’s voices rising uphill through cherry blossoms. Crabbers Steve Smith and Billy Scerbo, both at the job for decades, lifted bright red and yellow unfouled pots onto their trucks, joking their way into the new season. Sure, as Smith told me a cold week earlier, the scarcity and the high price of the best...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/11/13

These Are the People in Our Neighborhood

Bay Weekly tells you their stories

Chesapeake Country has so many denizens, and each has a story. Those stories flood into Bay Weekly. Nowadays most come to us by email, though personal visit, phone, fax, the postal service still add to the flow. Writers with open eyes and noses for news alert us to still more. Our advertising team adds to the volume, bringing us news of the many businesses of Chesapeake Country. They all come across my desk, on the way to making each week’s paper. Sitting in that...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 4/4/13

How Dreams Come True

Spring Home and Garden Strategies could change our lives

I welcome the annual return of Bay Weekly’s Spring Home and Garden Strategies. In this guide, home and garden professionals give us just the sort of expert advice we do-it-yourselfers don’t know — and don’t even know we need to know. We’ve designed it in a handy pull-out-and-keep format so you can use if for months to come. I’m the guide’s first audience, and as I prepare the tips for publication, I keep thinking...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 3/28/13