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November 26, 2022

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

Spy Highlights

Election 2022 Analysis: A Chat with Talbot County Democratic Central Committee’s Patrick Firth

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After the 2020 election, the Spy began a short series with both Republican and Democrat party leaders on the Mid-Shore to hear their take on the voter results from their respective county. We continue this year and begin with Patrick Firth, the chairman of the Talbot County Democratic Central Committee.

Patrick talks about the local results of the three major statewide offices, the Harris-Mizeur, race for the 1st Congressional District, the Talbot County state’s attorney content, and his opinion of the Talbot County Council election and the impact of the Talbot Integrity Project  (TIP) on those results.

This video is approximately 16 minutes in length.

 

Profiles in Philanthropy: A Chat with Waterfowl Festival President Ken Miller

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For Waterfowl Festival president Ken Miller and his colleagues on its board of directors, their mission is simple; help celebrate the unique culture of the Chesapeake and raise money to protect it.

While it is true that the majority of the Board’s work is focused on the smooth operation of a three-day festival now in its 51st year, Waterfowl’s real business is to work with local conservation organizations, artists, artisans, hunters, and watermen to help educate the public on how rare and exceptional life is for those fortunate to live on the Eastern Shore.

Much of this effort has historically gone into land protection. Close to $6 million has been raised and donated to the cause of land protection on the Shore. And more recently, it has started a scholarship fund for young people eager to become leaders in the conservation movement.

But the real challenge for the organization happens every year in the streets and buildings of downtown Easton. Part of the labor is finding sponsorships and attracting the best waterfowl artists and artisans, but more importantly, to continue to creatively engage the thousands of families who attend with programming for all ages.

In Ken’s case, a boyhood in rural New Jersey was where his conservation passion began. Growing up in a small town in the farm country of that state, Ken started hunting as a kid, primarily ducks and muskrats, which led him to a love for duck carving during his teens. And from then on, Miller has always found a way to be part of the culture.

While his real job in life has been a succession of leading insurance companies, followed by a successful role as an entrepreneur in private equity finance, Ken Miller remained a lifelong hunter but has also engaged in land use and conservation. From chairing Morristown’s Open Space Committee to installing living shorelines at his family’s now permanent home on Broad Creek in Talbot County, Ken and his wife, Julia, have been active participants in ecological preservation.

The most recent example has been Ken’s work with the Waterfowl Festival. A Board member for years, he recently agreed to serve as president for a one-year term. The Spy sat down with him last week to talk about the Festival (which starts this weekend), the organization’s mission, and some of the challenges Waterfowl Festival faces as it enters its sixth decade.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For information and advance tickets please go here.

The Danger of Pancreatic Cancer: A Chat with Survivor Bill Shrieves

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It the world of health education related to cancer, nothing can be more powerful and more effective than the testimony of someone who has survived the odds this this horrific disease. And in the case of pancreatic cancer, it’s hard not to be moved and motivated by the experience of Bill Shrieves.

The retired businessman, who heads up the Mid-Shore Pancreatic Cancer Foundation, was diagnosed 12 years ago and faced unbelievable odds.  Back then, and even now, most victims die within just a few months after the tumor has been identified, and the survival rate after four years is 11%. In fact, pancreatic cancer is the third largest cause of death with cancer patients.

Even more sobering is that pancreatic cancer is so hard to detect. As Shrieves points out, there are no standard tests, and the symptoms of the disease remain vague. That being said, abdominal and persistent low back pain are important clues, as is discolored urine, that something isn’t right. And increasingly, medical research is indicating  that adult onset diabetes might be another troubling sign.

With all that in mind, Bill Shrieves is determined to get the word out, particularly during Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, for folks to reach out to there doctor if they are noticing these symptoms, especially if pancreatic cancer runs in their family.

The Spy sat down with Bill last week to learn more.

This video is approximately minutes in length. For more information about pancreatic cancer, volunteering or make a donation please visit the Mid-Shore Pancreatic Cancer Foundation here.

Health Notes: Dr. Roger Orsin to Retire

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Announcing the retirement and practice closure of Dr. Roger Orsini effective12/31/2022. Records are available to transfer for active patients (2018-2022).  Charts can be picked up Nov 15-Dec 15, 2022. Please call or email, allow 72 hr notice prior to pick-up. After Dec 16, records are available until January 15, 2023 by email request to rogerorsinimd@gmail.com.

Profiles in Philanthropy: TCPS Foundation’s Mariana Lesher and Dale Rauch on Closing the Gap

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Almost a half-century ago, the public institutions of higher learning in Maryland had no real need to seek out private philanthropy. Well supported by Annapolis lawmakers and the goodwill of their local community, those schools could comfortably operate without the need (or expenses) of seeking donations from individuals and family foundations.

But slowly, but quite surely, that blissful era has come to an end over time.

Faced with the growing limits to taxpayer revenue, the state’s colleges and universities began creating or improving their private fundraising programs to close the increasing gap between state support and the actual costs of quality higher education.

This fiscal reality has also been seen in the state’s primary and secondary public schools. Year after year, teachers have reached into their own pockets to buy supplies and tools they need to succeed in teaching young people.

And like their higher education institutions, Maryland public schools have started to formalize their private funding efforts as nonprofit foundations exclusively devoted to providing needed funds for their counties.

Five years ago, Talbot County took this critical step in forming the Talbot County Public Schools Education Foundation to meet that need.

The Spy visited with board members Mariana Lesher and Dale Rauch last week to learn more about this vitally important organization and its critical new role in our public schools.

This video is approximately 4 minutes in length. For more information about the Talbot County Public Schools Education Foundation, make a donation, or sign up for its Fall gala, please go here.

Mission Possible, the Talbot County Public Schools Education Foundation’s annual fundraising event, will be held on November 18, 2022 at 5:30 p.m. at the Oxford Community Center. A distinguished alumnus from each of the three Talbot County high schools will be recognized at the event. The purpose of the event is to recognize distinguished alumni, celebrate Talbot County Public Education, and raise funds, awareness, and support for the Education Foundation grants program.

The evening will include a cocktail reception catered by Chef Jordan Lloyd, a performance by the Easton High School Marching Band.

 

Capturing Frederick Douglass’s Vision: A Chat with Photographer Jeff McGuiness

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After moving to St. Michaels after a long and successful law career, Jeff McGuiness set out to catch up on many things he had missed out on during his professional life. The first was to return to his passion for photography which he abandoned after serving as an Air Force photographer to enter law school. The other was catching up on his reading, beginning with David Blight’s award-winning biography of Frederick Douglass a few years back.

Like many in America,  McGuiness was profoundly moved by Blight’s portrait of Douglass, including passages devoted to the formerly enslaved person’s life in Talbot County, some of which occurred just a stone’s throw away from his home. But it also started to occur to Jeff that what Douglass had literally seen two hundred years ago could still be seen just outside his door in the 21st Century. Be it the Miles River, the historic estate where he was enslaved, or an old-growth forest down the street, those fields of vision were still there. More importantly, those images could be captured and synchronized to Douglass’s own words, so brilliantly documented in his three autobiographies about his life on the Mid-Shore.

The intersection of photography, history, and sense of place started Jeff McGuiness on a five-year journey to connect all three into a new book, Bear Me Into Freedom, which will be released next week. The photographer came by the Spy studio last week to discuss the project.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Bear Me Into Freedom please go here.

Capturing Paris in the Twenties: A Chart with Mid-Shore Writer Jerry Sweeney

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One thing Jerry Sweeney knows all too well is how many writers have tried to capture the expatriate literary life in Paris during the 1920s. He knows that since he’s read almost every one of them over a lifetime.

Starting life after attending the University of Michigan and before a long career in publishing in Manhattan and Europe, Sweeney wanted to be a writer, and he started with a short novel based on F. Scott Fitzgerald. And thus began a fascination with the famed novelists in the early 20th century that made up so much of the Cafe Society found it Paris.

But after completing a six-part novel series entitled The Columbiad, Jerry wanted to try something new in the telling of those golden Paris years. For the first time, he wrote a play about this remarkable moment in literary history. The play, Divine Privilege, will be published in November.

The Spy, like all good spies, loves a story in Paris, and we sat down with Jerry last week about his project, those writers, and that extraordinary decade before the second world war.

This video is approximately 3 minutes in length. For more information about Jerry Sweeney and his work please go here.

The Journey Begins on a Mid-Shore Flagship Hospital

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Last night a bit of Mid-Shore healthcare history was made. At a joint session of the councils of Easton and Talbot County, Shore Regional Health CEO Ken Kozel outlined the first major step in the creation of a flagship regional hospital for the five counties of the Mid-Shore of Maryland.

The first step is called a “Letter of Intent,” which will be sent to the State of Maryland’s Healthcare Commission next month. In short, this document demonstrates that the University of Maryland Medical System is serious about building a major state of the art health facility near the Easton airport in Talbot County.

But the second step is perhaps the more important of the two. In this case, UMMS will move forward with the documentation and filing of a “Certificate of Need.” Not only does UMMS need to document the need to build an expensive 350,000 square foot hospital, but that the community input of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot County citizens also needs to be documented.

“Building a new Regional Medical Center in Easton marks the most significant milestone in fulfilling our decades-long integrated facility and clinical service delivery plan,” said Ken Kozel, President and CEO of UM Shore Regional Health. “Our growing communities expect and deserve access to a state-of-the-art center with advanced clinical care.”

Since Shore Health System’s affiliation with UMMS in 2006 and subsequent merger with Chester River Health System to form UM Shore Regional Health in 2013, UM SRH and UMMS leaders have worked steadily with community partners throughout the five-county region to reimagine and improve health care delivery across roughly 2,000 square miles of rural communities. Investments in the region have included modern inpatient and outpatient health care services to the residents of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

UM SRH has spent the last several years laying the groundwork for the advancement of the new Regional Medical Center by making investments in other key supporting projects identified in the System’s integrated facility and clinical service delivery plan. The completion of the freestanding medical facility in Cambridge, several medical pavilions and stand-alone emergency rooms in the region, urgent care centers in Denton, Easton and Kent Island, and numerous major equipment upgrades have totaled over $150M in capital investments. Plans are also moving forward in Chestertown with the construction of an Aging & Wellness Center of Excellence on its current campus.

Submission of the CON marks the first of several regulatory actions over the next year required to move forward with relocating the current hospital on Washington Street in Easton, parts of which dates back to the early 1900s.

The new Regional Medical Center campus is slated to occupy over 230 acres off Longwoods Road near the intersection of U.S. Route 50, adjacent to the Talbot County Community Center. This location is approximately 3.5 miles from the current hospital, and will provide greater visibility, easier and safer access for ambulance and helicopter transport as well as ample parking for patients, staff and visitors.

The Spy caught up with Ken and Dr. Mohan Suntha, the University of Maryland’s Health System leader Dr. Mohan Suntha by Zoom yesterday in what the Spy hopes will be the first of a series on the new hospital project over the next few years.

 

This video is approximately 7 minutes in length. For more information about Shore Regional Health please go here.

 

 

 

Election 2022 Profiles: Brooke Lierman for Comptroller of Maryland

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The Spy continues its informal series on profiling candidates running for office in 2022. Over the next eight months, we will be offering long-form interviews with those running for Maryland’s Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, MD Congressional District 1, State Delegate and Senate, as well as several local elections in Dorchester, Kent, and Talbot Counties.

As per our educational, nonpartisan mission concerning all public affairs on the Mid-Shore, we believe these in-depth conversations offer a unique alternative to the traditional three-minute sound bite or quick quote. We will be talking to each candidate about their background, qualifications, and policy priorities as well as how they differentiate themselves from others running for the same office.

We continue with Brooke Lierman, candidate (D) for Comptroller of Maryland. She currently serves in the Maryland House of Delegates for District 46.

This video is approximately 16 minutes in length. For more information about Brooke Lierman and her campaign please go here.

Mid-Shore Arts and Science: The Astrophotography of Joe Morris

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As with the case of a number of people, life got in the way of Joe Morris and his passion for astronomy. The West Virginia native and Yale Med grad made his career as an orthopedic surgeon rather than attempting to be one of the few able to work in research centers. But from his early life as a Boy Scout and 4-H member, Dr. Morris developed a love for the stars that has remained.

Noticing the remarkable dark sky (the critical component for any serious astro observation) when he settled in Royal Oak almost four decades ago, he was engrossed again in the evening constellations. That led to buying a professional telescope, building a modest observatory, and investing in software and hardware. And over time, Joe has been recording these stellar moments and transforming them into scientific documentation and photography.

Morris is stunned by what the Hubble Space Telescope, and now the Webb, is sending back to earth. Like much of the world, he is in awe of the findings that these magnificent satellites have produced. Still, even on his scale, he notes how advancements in computational photography and computer know-how have benefited amateur astrologers like himself.

Dr. Morris dropped by the Spy studio last week to talk about those images.

This video is approximately 3 minutes in length. To see more of Joe Morris’s astrophotography please go here.