People

Bay Weekly’s Labor Day Parade

Who we are; what we do

Summer dreams aside, we Americans are working people. In our economy, employment is a blessing and unemployment a curse. That’s so true that the unemployment rate — 8.3 percent nationally as August began — could cost Barack Obama his job as president. Maryland’s unemployment rate of 7 percent is under the national average. But it’s high enough that a job is a job — and a good job is cause for rejoicing.

article – People

– by – 8/30/12

Sitting Tall in the Saddle

Exceptional Hero inspires friends, classmates to support Maryland Therapeutic Riding

Katie Parry loves going to the movies and shopping with her sister. But what the 21-year-old loves most is riding horses. Katie, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, first climbed into the saddle at two years old, following the example of older sister Dayna. She had been riding in a county program for three years when her mother, Deborah, stumbled across Maryland Therapeutic Riding while flipping through a phone book looking for a tutor.

article – People

– by Ashley Brotherton – 8/23/12

Way Off Broadway

Randy Skinner left New York to bring Dames at Sea to Annapolis

Why does a three-time Tony-nominated New York director and choreographer come to a way-off Broadway stage in Annapolis? Dames at Sea at Infinity Theatre Company is a blast from the deep past for Randy Skinner, who choreographed it as a student in the mid-’70s. Nowadays, Skinner says, “people don’t write songs so tuneful.”

article – People

– by Leigh Glenn – 7/19/12

Star-Struck

No need to check your eyes, that was Kevin Spacey in Annapolis

No, you’re not seeing things. When you thought you saw Kevin Spacey getting coffee at 49 West, drinking martinis on Metropolitan’s roof deck or throwing darts at Stan & Joe’s it wasn’t a mirage from the extreme heat wave and lack of air conditioning. It was Keyser Soze, seriously.

article – People

– by Ashley Brotherton – 7/5/12

How Do You Give an Elephant a Bath?

Would you walk 30 miles for the answer?

It won’t be the walkers who are sorest after Sunday, June 10’s two-day, 30-mile Chesapeake Challenge MS Walk. It will be the chalkers.

article – People

– by Dotty Holcomb Doherty – 6/7/12

Drawing on 14 Generations of Inspiration

A Bay Weekly conversation with local author Mick Blackistone

Mick Blackistone has a name in Chesapeake Country. Part of it came to him effortlessly, by the grace of inheritance. Blackistone is a name of reckoning in Maryland history. Mick, 66, his twin brother, two older sisters and scads of cousins are the 14th generation to descend from Nathaniel Blackistone, colonist under Lord Baltimore’s land grant, who arrived in Maryland in the party of the Arc and Dove in 1634.

article – People

– by Sandra Olivetti Martin – 6/7/12

Into the Big Leagues

Bay Weekly’s movie reviewer joins prestigious Washington DC Area Film Critics Association

After what she calls a “long history of being a really annoying amateur film critic,” Bay Weekly’s own Diana Beechener is now a member of the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association. The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association keeps its membership select with “stringent” criteria. Its critics must have history — at least 50 reviews in a year. Their publication must have scope: 50,000 readers a month for print.

article – People

– by Jesse Furgurson – 6/7/12

An Extra’s Lot

What do Netflix, Kevin Spacey and a North Beach actor have in common?

Marc Goodman followed a link on Facebook to the set of the big-budget television series House of Cards. The first series produced by Netflix, House of Cards remakes a 1990 British series set in the last days of Margaret Thatcher’s administration. This updated take transplants the story to American electoral politics. Director David Fincher is no stranger to Maryland, where he shot part of his 2011 Academy Award-winning The Social Network.

article – People

– by Jesse Furgurson – 5/31/12

Stars and Stripes Over Chesapeake Beach

Veterans recount their stories this Memorial Day

Memorial Day Weekend does more than welcome summer with parades, picnics and pool openings. Begun as a sacred day of remembrance at cemeteries where our war dead rest, the holiday has expanded to honor all veterans, including those still on active duty. What better way to honor these veterans than to tell their stories?

article – People

– by Elisavietta Ritchie – 5/24/12

Graduation Day

Mother and daughter walk down this aisle together

Each graduation is an epic, bursting with stories of human aspiration, frustration, perseverance and sweat. Here are two, intertwined. Dawn Rasmussen and her daughter Courtney Stewart shared the Anne Arundel Community College stage on May 24. At 19 and just two years out of high school, Courtney had the easier journey to commencement, with her mother and grandmother pushing and cheering her all the way.

article – People

– by Stacey Gomoljak Wynia – 5/24/12