Calvert Marine Museum keeps track of the ages. You learn about the prehistoric Chesapeake there by encountering creatures that lived in that shallow, warm ocean and on its shores. About the humans who followed ages later, and how the water enriched their lives. About the creatures that evolved, died and live in Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River.

The modern ghost hunter, also called a paranormal investigator, has many tools to help detect a spirit. These include infrared cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, thermometers, recorders and spirit boxes.     However, common sense and your senses remain your greatest tool.     “In most cases, smells, cold spots or seeing and hearing things are the first signs of paranormal activity,” reports Bill Hartley, founder and lead investigator of the Greater Maryland Paranormal Society.

When Terry Tuttle went back to school, his third-graders at Shady Side Elementary had to settle for map studies instead of cake frosting.     Tuttle’s cake work begins after the kids run free at 3:40pm. Then, after his own children are settled into their after-school routine in his Churchton home, he creates masterpieces out of batter and frosting.     Today’s creation is a four-layer Italian buttercream with amaretto and almond flavoring.

After a lifetime of power-boating on a variety of vessels, my wife and I sold our 28-foot diesel powerboat to try our hand at sailing.     You read our story — Trading Our Combustion Engine for the Power of the Wind — in Bay Weekly’s spring Back to the Water issue (www.bayweekly.com/node/32661).     How did we fare?

Each morning as he brews his coffee, long-time Arnold resident Tom Plott asks himself: Who am I today?     Well, if it’s Thursday, he’s likely to be Dr. James Craik, George Washington’s closest friend and personal physician. The good doctor often roams George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Northern Virginia on weekdays, regaling visitors with stories about his beloved friend.     Tom, you see, manages the First Person program and portrays historic characters at Washington’s home.

When Cynthia McBride was a kid driving a tractor on her family’s Minnesota farm, art was not on her mind or in her future. At her father’s right hand, she watched as he managed the farm, purchased seed and equipment, planned for future crops. The seed of art that flourishes in the largest art gallery in historic Annapolis sprouted with her mother, a painter with a home studio.     Both parents were examples of hard work, honesty and thriftiness. “Nothing got thrown away,” McBride remembers. “Everything was used.”

Summer is swell. During its short stay, we imagine a vista of fun, sun and long vacations. The reality is a little different, with heat, humidity and the necessity of working for a living.     About half of us Americans are in the work force, according to the bureau of Labor Statistics. Come Labor Day, we’re back to the work that gives so many of us a life as well as a living.

The capital city music scene is thriving. Over the last decade, the downtown bar scene and plentiful local venues have bred musicians now flourishing on a larger scale. Reggae rockers Joey Harkum — whose band Pasa­dena honors his home town — and Brandon Hardesty — who inspired Bumpin Uglies — went from strumming on the docks and breaking into open mikes to selling out local venues and touring coast to coast. They’ve headlined festivals like Silopanna and Bay Funk and still play weeknight solo acoustic gigs at downtown Annapolis bars.

On the corner of Ego Alley and City Dock at weekends when the weather is at its best, The Balloon Man pumps and twists latex into masterpieces to tickle kids and tease the stiffness out of adults.     On an average sunny Saturday, Charles Baker makes up to 100 balloons from Elmos to penguins, flowers to swords.     “My grandson thinks he is grandpa,” says a customer. “I am sure it’s the grey hair.” The grandson brandishes an inflated miniature sword just made for him by Baker.

If Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Claro and Ray ‘Ray Ray’ Werwie Jr. had not stepped up to help, Enzo Tannozzini would have been in long-term rehab.     Instead, through a series of happenstances, Tannozzini’s happily back home.     The World War II veteran had fallen and broken his hip. Now he could come home … if their Franklin Manor home had wheelchair access. With little hope and less money, wife Juanita Tannozzini didn’t know what to do.