Articles by Sandra Olivetti Martin

From Clay Street to the Sailboat Show

Telling the stories of a city at work

“Oh my Lord, thank you. I never thought I’d live to see this day,” gushed Mrs. Beatrice P. Smith, 89, of Annapolis, after throwing her arms around former President Jimmy Carter on Pleasant Street, just around the corner from — but out of sight of — downtown Annapolis. October 5 was the kind of day that evokes enthusiasm. The 86-year-old former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter were not only visiting the Clay Street neighborhood. They were also bringing...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 10/7/10

What, Me Worry?

My unofficial readers’ poll takes you to the sunny side of the street

What’s worrying you? Thirteen minutes ago, the biggest problem on my mind was on my tail, in the form of a dump truck a lot less than four truck-lengths behind my little car across the Rt. 2 bridge over the South River. Now at my desk, my worry has changed. My chest throbs with the weekly high-anxiety, high-adrenalin pressure of getting Bay Weekly to you. For the next 12 hours, I’ll be outrunning that worry. If it weren’t for sweating the small stuff, I’d be...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 5/13/10

Endangered Species Day, International Day for...

How are you planning on celebrating?

Have you encountered any American bison lately on the Maryland range? Such a sighting would have been more likely had you been around a few hundred years ago. Like gray wolves, wild bison have been pushed out of Maryland. People did the pushing, people who believed this land was made for you and me. I note this extirpation because this is a big week for rare, threatened and endangered species. Upcoming are Endangered Species Day, on May 21; International Day for Biological...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 5/20/10

Feathering their nests everywhere

Have you ever found a hummingbird’s nest? More precisely, a hummingbird’s nest perched atop a clothespin? An Anna hummingbird found the perfect abode on a California clothesline. It’s an incorrect assumption that birds nest only in trees and hedgerows and similar places. In reality, if it doesn’t move — or seldom does — it’s a possible site for a nest. Like flower baskets, old boots and abandoned teacups. Or basketball hoops, mailboxes and...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 5/20/10

The Veterans are the Best Part of the National World...

But their living memories are dying history

The National World War II Memorial — epically situated in the memorial heart of our capital city, on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial to the west and the Washington Monument to the east — looks like it will be around for a long time. It’s solid as a rock, built of granite and brass. It’s as basic as the elements, water and sky, that join with manmade structures in defining its reach. But the animating force of this great plaza survives now in...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 5/27/10

The Week Secret Gardens Are Unlocked

Who knows what you’ll find if you step inside?

Since the Garden of Eden closed, who hasn’t wanted to get back in? It must be that archetypal connection that makes gated, walled or out-of-view gardens such an obsession. They show up all the time in literature. Oscar Wilde wrote about the frozen garden of the selfish giant, which thawed when a child was invited in. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden, written at the beginning of the 20th century, has inspired many a child to enter the magic territory of imagination....

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 6/3/10

Horseshoe crabs love a full moon

-Horseshoe crabs, one of the Bay’s links to prehistory, hear the call of summer’s new and full moon and crawl out of the water to mate. They arrive at high tide, when the greenish clumps of eggs deposited by the female are farthest from the churning waves. This is not a sight for the puritanical; the ancient creatures are polygamous, with as many males as possible clinging to a larger, fertile female. The male fertilizes the eggs as they are dug into the sand. Her golf-ball...

Article - Creature Feature; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 6/4/10

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

Diet for a Healthy Bay

U.S. EPA says Stop spoiling the Chesapeake on junk food!

If pollutants were calories, our Chesapeake would be obese, short of breath and diabetic. So it’s good news that the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan to require other states to follow Maryland’s lead in counting — and limiting — the junk they’re feeding the Chesapeake. In an historic front-page announcement, the EPA flunked the long-awaited plans of four states — Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York — on improving...

Article - Letter from the Editor; by Sandra Olivetti Martin; 9/30/10

June 13 is Bernie Fowler Day

It’s time for each of us to wade out all the way

Things will be different when 86-year-old Bernie Fowler wades into the Patuxent Sunday, June 13, for his 23rd annual checkup on the health of the river of his youth. Chesapeake bard Tom Wisner won’t be on hand to sing Fowler and his wading companions into the water. Wisner’s connection to the Annual Patuxent River Wade In is as deep as Fowler’s. He gave us the idea for the wade in — borrowed from Chief Turkey Tayak of the Southern Maryland Piscataway — and...

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