The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community
Such a cute photo taken for a local Telephone Company ad campaign! Can you help us identify the man, woman, and adorable child? Photo from the Talbot Historical Society Laird Wise Collection.
Contact: Cathy Hill cvhill@atlanticbb.net to share your old photos. Comment, Like our page and join THS!
One would think that Church Hill’s David Smith would be willing to sit down with the Spy to talk about his amazing career as a Navy submarine commander during the cold war. But it was the remarkable side story to David’s life, a lifelong passion for bees, that was the subject of our Spy chat a few weeks ago.
Well before he started at the Navy Academy, David Smith had already made beekeeping a part of his life growing up in rural Indiana. With the help of a 7th-grade math teacher, he not only loved watching bee colonies grow but creating better solutions to ensure their survival. It was also the first time he experienced a bee sting and realized the pain suffered was negligible given the pleasure of watching honey being made.
The Spy sat down with David a few miles from downtown Church Hill as a special reflection point. In the last year, he decided to sell his bees as he and his wife prepare for a move to a retirement community. And while it turns out his new community has shown interest in hosting bees, it was an excellent time to hear him talk about his own bee stories.
This video is approximately five minutes in length
Ken Eaton has a pretty tough job. For the last decade or so, he has used his volunteer time to help lead a group called ABATE of Maryland – Mid-Shore. That is not perhaps the most natural name for an organization devoted to the safety and use of motorcycle enthusiasts. But the name, like recreational motorbiking itself, has a long history of meaning different things to different people.
And Ken’s volunteer job most weeks is to explain to the general public this multidimensional organization as it takes on such controversial issues as fighting against helmet laws and state rules on passing vehicles in the same lane.
In his Spy interview, Ken talks about the positive work that ABATE does locally, but doesn’t shy away from sharing his organization’s more controversial advocacy work. He also gives a surprising answer are why so many bikes, including the legendary Harley Davidsons, are so darn loud.
This video is approximately four minutes in length. For more information about ABATE Mid-Shore please go here
For Talbot County Sheriff Joe Gamble and his team of deputies, the battle against opioids can sometimes can be seen as a constant game of “whack a mole.” For every positive step forward to rid the region of this catastrophic drug epidemic, a new year brings entirely new setbacks.
In his interview with the Spy, Sheriff Gamble talks about these counterpoints of his work when he summarizes the current state of affairs with opioid addiction, and the devastating impact it has on the Eastern Shore.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about going Purple in your community go here.
The new $7.8 million Perkins Family YMCA facility is an extraordinary gift to Talbot County’s Bay Hundred in many ways.
From its unique inclusion of a senior center, indoor swimming pool, and fitness center to the strategic brilliance of building the facility steps from St. Michaels’ elementary, middle and high schools, the Y may be a new gold standard for maximizing efficiency to serve small communities.
That last part is important for other small towns on the Eastern Shore to take note. That’s because the Perkins Y thoughtful methodology will be heading shortly to places like Centreville and Denton. While in different stages of development, these two communities plan to take the best elements of the new Y as they develop their own YMCA plans.
In our Spy interview with Robbie Gill, CEO of the YMCA of the Chesapeake, long term Y leader, talks about the Perkins project, the potential impact for Queen Anne’s and Caroline Counties, and how patience is the key to success.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about the YMCA of the Chesapeake please go here.
Much is lost in translation and added in assumption”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru
There doesn’t seem to be a lack of examples in failures of translation. From world leaders misinterpreting the intentions of foes to a major theme in countless Hollywood movies, we are reminded almost every day of the dangers that come with these important missed signals.
But nothing personalizes these human events more than when that failure happens at the most simple of exchanges. The need to understand a drug prescription, open a bank account, or communicate with first responders in moments of emergency is well understood, but yet for a good number of new residents on the Eastern Shore, these moments present unique challenges.
The Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center decided to start filling in this important gap in the training of interpreters in dozens of Mid-Shore businesses two years ago. Under the coordination of Dr. Lorelly Solano, almost 1,000 professionals have participated in a program designed to create new bridges of understanding and support for those in need of bilingual services in the community.
The Spy sat down with Lorelly at the Spy Studio last week to talk about the Language and Cultural Competence Program and the impact it already has had in the region.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center and Language and Cultural Competence Program, please go here.
It was reassuring to sit down with three women graduate students at Horn Point Lab the other day, not one of them had experienced any second-guessed in their schools or among their peers about their desire to have a career in Marine Science. While decades ago, traditional science jobs were held by mostly men, it was a relief that for this new generation of scientists are long gone.
But it was still a bit disconcerting for Lexy McCarty, Anna Windle, and Hannah Morrissette to arrive at Horn Point to start their Ph.D. work only to find that only 30 percent of the facility and senior administrators at one of the University of Maryland’s premier research institutions were women.
But rather than seen this as an injustice to be fixed by policy, Lexy, Anna and Hannah realized that the best way to make a difference was to start a peer support group for women (and supportive men) to encourage women in marine science. They formed a chapter of the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) to do just that.
In their interview with the Spy a few weeks ago, the three women came to the Spy Studio to talk about their careers, the importance of mentoring and support, and SWMS activities, which will include their first symposium on the Eastern Shore.
The symposium, “Diving Deep into Scientific Communication” will be held on September 13 -14 at the Horn Point Laboratory to connect attendees with future marine science leaders, gain career advice from a panel of marine scientists, improve scientific communication skills, and educate those young minds to think ambitiously about their future in science.
For more information about the HPL SWMS chapter and future events, visit their website here or follow them on twitter @hpl_swms.
This video is approximately three minutes in length. To learn more about Saturday’s outreach event for middle and high school students, contact hplswms@umces.edu or call Carin Starr 410-221-8408.
It is pretty clear to the thousands of commuters who use Route 213 between Chestertown and Easton what Centreville’s most expensive infrastructure project has been since it was incorporated. For almost two years drivers have had to navigate around the $8 million maintenance effort on its two main streets to finally fix the decaying water and utility pipes that lay underneath them.
Centreville Town Councilman Tim McCluskey is the first to admit that this repair job has been a royal pain for not only commuters but its residents as they walk dust-covered sidewalks downtown. But after 75 years of turning a blind eye to this essential need, McCluskey and his fellow council members had no choice but bite the bullet, rather than kick the can down the Route 213 road.
Tim talked to the Spy last week about the road project (which thankfully is scheduled to be completed by the end of September), but also Centreville’s economic development after this major surgery is completed. With a population now the size of Chestertown, the town is experiencing a level of growth that could fundamentally change its character and amenities. We also talk about the growing presence of the cannabis industry within its boundaries, and its waterfront project that will make it one of the most family-friendly communities on the Mid-Shore.
This video is approximately six minutes in length.
How easy it is for American culture to forget a whole generation of women who entered the workforce in the late 1960s.
Liberated from traditional homemaker roles, sometimes after significant negotiations with their husbands, these well-educated mothers started to very tentatively knock on strangers doors to seek advice on how to start a professional career.
And not just any career, but those which lined up with their personal interests rather than simply the default fields of teaching or nursing.
Kathryn Meehan was one of those women. After raising five children, and with her husband’s support, she followed her love of horticulture to the front steps of the Smithsonian on the odd chance anyone would even talk to her, let alone consider her for a positi0n that had never existed at the institution.
Three decades later, Mrs. Meehan retired from SI after a long career as Assistant Chief of Horticulture, and moved permanently to the Meehan second home in Quaker Neck ten years ago to be closer to her now lawyer sons and finish a lifelong effort to document her historic work of public gardens.
In our Spy interview, Kathryn recalls those early years for her generation, her time at the Smithsonian, and, of course, love of gardening.
This video is approximately five minutes in length
While Baltimore has been making the front page of most newspapers lately with tales of urban woes and Trump bullying, it might be easy to forget that one of the city’s pride of joy, its world-revered symphony orchestra, has been placed on the endangered species list.
With negotiations bogging down between the city, state and philanthropic interests, the venerable Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maryland’s beloved BSO, is financially in lockdown mode. This disruption of schedules and performances is a sorry state of affairs for its thousands of devoted fans, but this is bordering on the criminal when it means that over a hundred or so modestly paid professional musicians are going out a paycheck.
It is hard to imagine the extraordinary challenges this kind of financial hardship causes some of this country’s most talented musicians. Already barely reaching middle-class wages through weaving together side gigs as teachers or freelance performances, the loss of their primary source of income is a devastating blow to these artists and their families.
But perhaps one of the hardest things to process for these musicians, who have spent a lifetime and small fortunes reaching the very top of their field’s career ladder, is to find that these iconic metropolitan institutions of culture are not sustainable.
The odds of things improving in the short term for the BSO musicians are not particularly bright, and so, in the meantime, they are hustling to keep afloat simply.
And one person helping them close their financial gaps as they await state relief money is Bill Nerenberg. A retired record producer and jazz musicians, Bill has been one of the BSO’s devoted fans and is one of the BSO’s Governing Members. And lately, he’s been using the same promotion skills that served him well in his career, to organize special concerts for the orchestra’s musicians using the name Baltimore Symphony Musicians.
In fact, he and his team members have already booked twenty concerts statewide, with one of them hosted by the Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, where he and his wife, Dotty, have been members for years.
The Spy talked to Bill before the Saturday performance, as well as pianist Lior Willinger, who joined his colleagues Chelsea Kim, Rene Shapiro and Lukaz Szyrner, in a later afternoon performance of Bach, Brahms, and more modern work.
This video is approximately two minutes in length. For more information of Temple B’nai Israel please go here. For how you or your community can help please go here.
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