On March 25, 1634, voyagers from the ships the Ark and the Dove erected a cross on St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River and offered prayers for surviving their four-months’ voyage. Thereupon, they took “possession of this Countrey for our Saviour and for our soveraigne Lord the King of England.”     The Piscataway Indians who already lived there likely suggested the colonists go elsewhere, and St. Mary’s City became the seat of Lord Baltimore’s new colony.

I love winter. My growing up was Colorado, and cold-side Oregon, and cold and snow are in my blood.     But not in Maryland. Real winter has been missing so long that I fear global warming has turned it into a memory.     My hopes for a last chance at winter 2013 rose with this week’s forecast of snow, lovely deep snow. Rain fell instead, and with it my hopes.     But Beverly Spicknall of Owings remembers real winter.

Ann Widdifield’s Passing Through Shady Side, published with AuthorHouse in 2013 Billy Poe’s African-Americans of Calvert County, published by Acadia House in 2008 James Johnston’s From Slave Ship to Harvard, published by Fordham University Press in 2012 by Sandra Olivetti Martin, Bay Weekly Editor, with Terri Boddorff and Cameron Caswell, Anne Arundel County Public Library; Beverly Izzy and Robbie McGaughran, Calvert County Public Library

On a cold winter day, with a stiff northwest wind blowing the Chesapeake Bay south toward the Atlantic, 11-year-old twins Cole and Wyatt Greene stumbled on a strange sight as they explored the exposed mudflats of Herring Bay. Buried in the mud appeared to be the remains of an old ship. A really big ship.

At two centuries distant, the War of 1812 is unlikely to sweep away your sons, sink your boat, burn your barn or your nation’s capital. It will, however, invade your consciousness. It’s inevitable.     With $1.5 million in Star-Spangled Banner bicentennial grants, war memorials will be popping up all over Chesapeake Country. Twenty-two projects in 14 counties (and two statewide) will use the matching grants to enroll the War of 1812 in our memories.

If you can’t wait to know more about 1812, you’ll have your chance at month’s end, when skirmishes at Herring Creek are commemorated.

Once upon a time, if you lived in Chesapeake Country, you probably worked the water. Nowadays, you probably don’t. Statistics are against it.

This is what flying feels like.     I’m soaring 1800 feet above Chesapeake Bay in a plane that 70 years ago housed soldiers — and 50 years later actors.     The Liberty Foundation is touring with the Memphis Belle, a Boeing B-17 built in World War II. Restored to replicate the original Memphis Belle, it’s one of 13 B-17 still flying.

“I write books, not music,” I told the big man with the guitar. “I’m a historian, not a songwriter.”     Gary Rue — St. Mary’s County composer, musician and proprietor of the small recording company Millstone Landing Productions — had invited me to step outside my comfort zone.     “Write the lyrics for a CD album on the War of 1812,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.”

Millions of years ago, long before there was a Chesapeake, sharks thrived in the saltwater marine environment of the flooded river we now call Susquehanna. Big sharks that could have swallowed a man whole, had any men or women been around to be eaten.     The megalodon, ancestor of the great white shark, was the apex marine predator of those waters. Rivaling today’s blue whale, the megalodon grew up to 50 feet long.     He’s long gone, but his kin are still with us.