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September 29, 2022

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

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Mid-Shore Entrepreneurship: The Heart in Hearthstone with Dave Tuthill

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It started with a dislocated shoulder in high school. That’s when Dave Tuthill started a lifetime of trying to fix that nagging pain. A few years later, he started going to a local gym to recover some of his motion, and the result was not positive. Even though he had gone to a fitness center religiously, it was devastating to see that all that hard work not only had not healed his shoulder but left him overweight and defeated.

That led Dave to hire a personal trainer when he and his wife started to live on the Eastern Shore. He would drive to Annapolis twice a week for sessions and doubled down on exercise and diet. Within a relatively short period, he had lost 150 pounds, his shoulder became pain-free, and he had almost completely eliminated the use of medication.

It was during that time that Dave was asked time and time again how he accomplished this remarkable feat that the idea of opening up his own fitness center in Easton became another life goal for the real estate developer.

Defying the conventional business model of most gyms, where long-term contracts are pushed on members who never really use the facilities, Dave wanted to create an environment of encouragement, support and fellowship. In fact, the name itself, Hearthstone, was meant to symbolize a culture of caring and familiarity with members.

Fast-forward to 2022, and Hearthstone, against the odds as new big chain fitness centers, have entered the market, and with its unorthodox business model, has become one of the most successful gyms in the region.

The Spy sat down with Dave Tuthill last month to find out more.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Hearthstone please go here.

Mid-Shore History: High Tech Meets the Past

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Thinking about the past summons the grand octaves of history: empires and wars, social movements and setbacks, innovation and setbacks. But what about the history right in front of us? How do we see, preserve, and understand it in the context of the broader world of historical events?

Washington College recently unveiled its Digital Scholarship in Museum Partnerships (DSMP) program to show how rural museums can use digital enhancement, voice narratives, and mobile graphic panels to convey a multi-dimensional sense of local history.

The four-year project began in 2018, paused during the pandemic,  was mentored by an interdisciplinary team of Washington College professors and scores of students.

Julie Markin, Chair, Associate Professor of Anthropology; Raven Bishop, Instructional Technologist; and Sara Clarke-DeReza, Assistant Professor of Education, worked with Betterton Heritage Museum, the African American Schoolhouse at Worton Point, Waterman’s Museum in Rock Hall, and Sumner Hall to create digital resources and design virtual reality exhibits for each partnership museum.

 “DSMP a is a project where we partner with local Kent County museums to build virtual and augmented reality and other digital content to help preserve, interpret and amplify the tangible and intangible history and cultural resources the museums represent,” Bishops says.

 For example, the DSMP team worked with Betterton Heritage Museum to create a digital library of over 4,200 images, three and a half hours of oral history interviews, and created a virtual reality tour of the museum with over 70 info buttons “to help patrons near and far engage with the museum’s collection.”

 For Washington College students, DSMP is an opportunity to participate in a primary source history research and preservation project by applying curriculum studies to creating educational resources.  

 These technology-enhanced teaching materials may now be used as outreach resources for local school systems meeting state standards for the teaching of local history.

 Imagine classroom students with virtual reality tools immersing themselves in every detail of a local museum from afar. It’s a gift to students of all ages and the community at large.

 The Spy recently attended a DSMP presentation at Washington College and talked to Julie Markin, Raven Bishop, and Sara Clarke-DeReza.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. For more about Digital Scholarship in Museum Partnerships, go here.

 

 

 

Soulmates by Laura J. Oliver

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I attended a huge public high school where you might want to keep it to yourself if you’d ever been a Girl Scout, took French as an elective, or had a county library card. 

None of us had wealth. We were not the homogenous club of a private school. To graduate at escape velocity, we needed grades and extra-curricular activities. In chorus, band, civics club and on the athletic fields, special attention could change a trajectory with a scholarship or admission to a private college.

So, although I was only a sophomore, I auditioned for South Pacific, specifically for the lead role of the perky Navy nurse, Nellie Forbush. I was both excited and terrified to be called back after the first round of auditions to read again with several other girls. By the end of the afternoon the director said it was between Joanne and me. 

Joanne was a senior which made her my superior in every way. An experienced thespian, she had presence, talent, and spontaneity. She was also an awesome competitor. By comparison, I was pretty tightly-wound with all the awkwardness of sophomore-dom. I only fit in with a narrow margin of my peers, (the safety-conscious, the selective rule abiders). And far from being confident, I was astonished every time I opened my mouth on stage and anything came out at all. That what came out was an actual melody and in the right key made me want to stop and stammer my amazement to the audience like I might have had, I don’t know, a spaceship landed stage right. 

So, Joanne sang Bali Ha’i. I sang Bali Ha’i. Joanne sang Some Enchanted Evening, I followed suit. In the darkened auditorium the director and assistant director put their heads together in consternation. Which girl was the real Nellie Forbush? Which one? Joanne and I stood center stage smiling blindly into the footlights and our futures. “Okay,” Ms. James said, suddenly inspired. “Laura, we want you to sing I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair, and this time, could you also do a little dance?

Where was that spaceship? I didn’t know how to dance. I had no moves! I had a reputation for being smart, not cool—but I wasn’t smart either. I just had the advantage of having college-educated parents in a school where that was not the norm. For instance, I didn’t have to study grammar. I only had to speak as I was spoken to at home. That was imposter-luck, not intelligence. And I had the pseudo-maturity of a child of divorce when that role was a rarity. It meant I volunteered in class, told the teacher when she had missed a buttonhole. I wasn’t being ingratiating, I just understood the overworked women who taught me because I lived with one, and students anxious to please tend to get good grades. 

Mr. Nichols cued the orchestra giving me no time to prepare. I was, however, trying out for the cheerleading squad that Friday. I’m pretty sure the onlookers seated in the auditorium that afternoon were treated to a first-of-its-kind hybrid cheer-dance. Something like, “I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair, cause we’re gonna go, we’re gonna fight, we’re gonna win this game tonight, Eagles!” There may have been leaping involved. I’m so sorry.

I did not play Nellie Forbush that year. I was in the chorus. Joanne was spectacular. I did go to my high school reunion years later. We had become policemen, social workers, accountants, and firefighters. We had become parents. We had loved and lost. I couldn’t help noticing a kind of soft glow in the room that could not be attributed to any outer source of light.

My boyfriend from senior year was there. We’d starred in the spring musical, Guys and Dolls before we had left for college. Mike had played the charismatic gambler, Sky Masterson and I’d played the uptight, self-righteous missionary, Sarah Brown. I was excellent at this. I barely needed to audition. 

That was decades ago and we’re having another reunion in November. I’m going. Mike is going, too. He’s bringing his husband. They live in NYC. On Facebook I see that Mike is still very involved in theater and his joy, his delight with the life he has made, is palpable. I may not know another soul there, but I hope Mike and his husband Rob will dance with me. Would that be weird? The three of us dancing? 

And it’s honestly got me to thinking there is something to this theory that we are born into soul families. That groups of people are born in concert because they are going to have roles in each other’s lives. I have found it easy to believe that’s true of our primary loves—the people with whom we create children, or our parents, siblings, our children themselves, maybe even our grandparents.

But I did not believe before, that the cast may include the bus driver, the boy you learned to fish with who moved away when you were seven. The family that found your dog the night he ran away. What do you think?

I’m beginning to suspect there is no distinction. That if some people were meant to be in your life, they all were. If you were destined to love some of the people in your world, maybe all of the people in your world are significant in a personal way, even those with brief and minor roles.

Which is why rediscovering them years later is a special delight—more so than making a new friend. 

Because you’re recovering your family. Your people. Your tribe. 

*****

 

Food Friday: Jumping the Gun

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We were entertaining grand delusions this past weekend. It was almost the end of summer, and the leaves were streaming down in the back yard. The light seemed to be changing angles, and there were new birds lining up at the bird baths. Surely fall must be right around the corner, so let’s start cooking for colder weather.

“Ha,” I say. “Ha, ha, ha!” It was 75 degrees this morning when Luke the wonder dog and I did our morning rounds. It’s going to 92 degrees this afternoon. Shorts are the order of the day, or naps in the cool, air conditioned shade under the drawing table if you happen to be of the canine persuasion. What were we thinking on Saturday when we started on the long and elaborate steps for making a short ribs ragu?

One of my favorite cold weather occupations is sitting at the kitchen island watching Mr. Sanders leisurely putter while preparing a spaghetti sauce. He opens many cans of fancy imported tomatoes. He rolls out perfect meatball orbs. He browns pounds of sausage links in his deliberate, messy way. He will use many pans and pots. There will be splatters of tomato sauce found in the strangest, most far-flung places. Luke is on constant patrol for any deliciousness that happens to fall off the cutting board. It is obviously why people love to go to open-kitchen restaurants: food is theatre. It explains The Food Channel.

I took up my station on top of my favorite stool on Saturday, watching the Byzantine process, as we were lulled by the calendar into thinking that fall is just around the corner. It’s going to be time to cuddle up inside, and keep each other warm, and entertained, and well-fed. In the meantime, I can watch the painstaking process of making the gremolata:

• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• Grated zest of 1 large lemon
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Watching the washing, peeling, mincing, chopping, grating become mesmerizing. My suggestion of using the food processor for this stage of food prep was met with a withering look. How dare I? His slow, dextrous, manual labor is a part of the creation; the process.

On Sunday night, once the ragu had aged in the fridge overnight, we went full tilt with salad, garlic bread, red wine, candles, and short rib ragu served on a bed of Pappardelle pasta. Then we waddled into the living room to watch 60 Minutes. Just like our parents did. We managed a little time travel while we were deep in denial about the current weather conditions. Welcome to our delusions!

Here is a handy list of the many different kinds of pasta. This should keep you busy until spring: https://www.tastingtable.com/764058/types-of-pasta-and-when-you-should-be-using-them/

Our friends at Food52 devised this version, but Mr. Sanders preferred to use the Pappardelle pasta – as he is trying to recreate a meal he had years ago at a very swishy London restaurant, of a wild boar ragu served with Pappardelle. He came pretty close this time. If only it had been raining and 50 degrees…
https://www.seriouseats.com/food52s-short-rib-ragu

This is a fussier version of Mr. Sanders’s Sunday Short Rib Ragu: https://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/short-rib-ragu-with-fresh-pappardelle.html No cinnamon sticks were to be had, sadly

This illustrates clearly the many steps required: https://www.sipandfeast.com/red-wine-braised-short-ribs/

We are not the only folks who are thinking ahead a bit prematurely. Yesterday, on the last full day of summer, Luke and I noticed that one house on our street has gone full-steam-ahead with their Halloween decorations. There are fluttering ghosts, wispy witches and a plethora of pumpkins. We are not the only folks getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Keep cool!

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett

Remembering Frederick Douglass’s Walk to Wye House and his Return by Jeff McGuiness

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Frederick Douglass Day in Talbot County is set for Saturday, September 24. It will begin with hundreds parading from Easton Middle School to the County Courthouse, a walk that will commemorate the experiences and achievements of the county’s most famous native son. It will also remind us of a walk 198 years earlier that involved just two people—six-year-old Frederick Bailey and his grandmother Betsey.

In August of 1824, Frederick Bailey, who would become Frederick Douglass, was being taken by his grandmother from the cabin that he had grown up in along Tuckahoe Creek to the Lloyd Plantation at Wye House twelve miles away. Betsey Bailey had nine daughters and at least twenty-five grandchildren, all enslaved. After their birth, many of the grandchildren grew up under her care, but with so many coming along, those reaching the age of six or seven would have to be moved out of her cabin to make way for the newcomers. Typically, they would be transferred to the home of their enslaver, Aaron Anthony. He was the chief overseer of the thirteen farms that were part of the Lloyd empire and lived on the Wye House grounds.

Frederick’s walk to Wye House was probably the first traumatic experience of a life that would be filled with traumas. Frederick rarely saw his mother, and now he was leaving the warmth of his grandmother’s care to be placed in what was, among other things, an orphanage for enslaved youth. But the experience was not just distressing for him. It must have been far more so for his grandmother who saw Frederick as the very special person he was and was fully aware of the potential path before him. Not only might she never see her grandson again, Betsey Bailey had no idea where a life of bondage and its attendant violence might eventually take him.

To observe this important event in Douglass’s life, Brie Wooden and her five-year-old son Keegan were invited to walk the Wye House grounds and imagine what Frederick and Betsey were thinking at the time. I was asked to photograph their meditation.

Looking at the resulting images, we can glimpse what may have been going in the minds of Frederick and Betsey. “The liability to be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again, haunted me,” Douglass wrote in one of his autobiographies. He remembered his “grandmamma” as “looking sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost many before.” 

Frederick recalled that when he and his grandmother reached Wye plantation that August day, “Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry, noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe.” Young Frederick must have stood there transfixed by the spectacle, gazing at the new world he was entering, wondering how his life would be changing.

As Frederick neared the end of the walk, he looked up at his grandmother. “I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell from her brow on me, though I knew not the cause.” 

Frederick Bailey would return to Wye House as Frederick Douglass in 1881 when he was 63, and this time not on foot. He was transported there by the United States Revenue Cutter Guthrie that docked at the farm’s landing. In those intervening 57 years, Frederick Douglass had become a fixture in America’s history, one of the most consequential figures of the nineteenth century. He was invited by members of the Lloyd family into “the Great House” and graciously entertained. The shadow that had fallen from his grandmother’s brow so many years earlier had been obliterated by the brilliance of his works during the intervening half century. “To say that our reception was every way gratifying is but a feeble expression of the feeling of each and all of us,” Douglass penned.

Frederick Douglass Day will be held on Saturday, September 24, 2022. The program and schedule can be downloaded here.

Jeff McGuiness was the senior partner of a public policy law firm based in Washington, DC, and founder of HR Policy Association. A fine arts major in college who served as a photographer in the Air Force during the Vietnam War Era, he is the author of the forthcoming book, Bear Me Into Freedom: The Talbot County of Frederick Douglass.

 

Spy Exit Interview: Mike Roman Reflects on 20 Years of Directing Horn Point Laboratory

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A 20-year tenure for a national institutional leader is almost unheard of these days. College presidents, museum directors, and leaders of major nonprofit organizations come and go at a far more rapid pace as the demands of fundraising, enrollment, and governance has grown proportionally. And yet, in contrast, Dr. Mike Roman has been successfully leading the Horn Point Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science for two decades.

This success story is a perfect example of how one individual, blessed with a talented team and a ceaseless mission drive, can genuinely impact the organizations they serve.

In Mike Roman’s case, his tenure, beginning in 1983 at Hort Point has been a time of dramatic change and challenge for his school and the earth’s ecosystem. In 2001, when he was permanently appointed director, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s research lab was hardly known on the Eastern Shore. Located on the rural waterfront of the Choptank River several miles from Cambridge, Horn Point may have been doing landmark science, but without a strong regional presence, all of its work and achievements were lost on the general public.

Roman made it his mission to fix that problem. Under his watch, Horn Point started reaching out to the community. Scientists began giving public lectures, a volunteer program was started, a formal fundraising program was built, school groups were invited to the campus, and the highly regarded “Chesapeake Champion” award became an annual tradition.

And most important to Mike, Horn Point began strong partnerships with Washington College, Salisbury University, municipalities, environmental groups, and the region’s agriculture community on such critical issues as protecting the Chesapeake Bay and the rising sea level on the Shore.

Last month, the Spy sat down with Dr. Roman to talk about his time at Horn Point as part of our continuing series on Eastern Shore leaders at the end of a successful tenure. In our chat, Mike notes some of the notable highlights of this tenure and also making sure Horn Point friends know that he’s not going anywhere. Once his successor is named, you’ll find the marine biologist back in the lab doing what he has loved for so long; learning about and protecting our planet.

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

 

Paying Out of Pocket by Laura J. Oliver

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This is a piece about the insecure souls most writers possess. I said “most” but I mean me. And by writers, I mean you.

When I publish a piece readers respond to? I get an inch and a half taller and shinier hair. I become present, compassionate. But if I publish a story to silence? I’m personally worthless. Changing careers.

The brain, bless its heart, has a proven negative bias. Let me tell you a story.

If I tell you something delightful about a neighbor you haven’t met and one negative thing, you’ll believe the negative thing. If you hear 9 compliments about yourself and one complaint, you’ll stew on and believe the complaint. You will pick an angry face out of a happy crowd, faster than you’ll pick a happy face out of an angry crowd.

So knowing this, I’m careful when I discuss a writer’s work but I’ve found they (and by “they” I mean “we”) are all the same.

I’ll say, “Bob, your novel is complex, intriguing. I love the voice and plot! Add just a bit more tension to the opening and we’ll start looking for an agent.” As Bob walks away, I’ll hear him murmur into his phone, “Might as well trash it. No tension.”

What is that selective negativity?

When I was a girl, the single most horrifying breach of social protocol was to be labelled conceited. This was a very girl-specific felony. Boys were never accused of such a crime.
A classmate could have flirted with your boyfriend, cheated on the math test but wait! Was she conceited?

Full of herself? Steer clear.

That need for humility was primarily fueled by fear. At ground level, no one can take me down a peg, knock me from a high horse. And anyone who has ever experienced that kind of shame will do virtually anything to avoid it.

We were on a 7th grade class trip to NYC—on a coach-type bus—not the big yellow boxes with worn-out shock absorbers we rode to school, but a silver behemoth with huge windows and hissing airbrakes.

I was so happy, so excited to be on this adventure with my classmates. We were chatting away, laughing, full of good cheer. I may have even felt pretty that day with a plaid skirt, red sweater, a highly organized purse. I know I was high on the electric intimacy of middle school friendship and telling a funny story when a chaperone in the front of the bus lost it.

She had probably been gritting her teeth for 100 miles, teetering on the edge of tolerance enduring the cacophony of this rambunctious, joyous bunch of 13-year-olds, when somewhere just over the New Jersey state line, she twisted about in her seat and roared, “Shut UP! SHUT THE HELL UP!” And then, to demonstrate that her wrath was justified, she looked over the seats, zeroed in on me, and proclaimed, “You! I can hear your big mouth all the way up here.”

I was horrified. It wasn’t just that she’d singled me out—I was only 4 rows from the front and one of the few kids making eye contact with her—it was the word “hell.” It was the phrase, “big mouth.” Her outburst was aggressively personal, and worse, just slightly base. I was as shocked by the lack of manners as by the accusation.

I had never seen one of my parents, or any adult, be rude in public. It just wasn’t done. And in that instant, I intuited a class distinction. Although it’s a judgment I would not make now, in a moment of genuine conceit, I felt socially superior to the woman shaming me and for that I am sorry.

So, I’m wondering whether you, and by you, I mean you, have any of these pocket-shames tucked away.

If you don’t empty your pockets, you’ll carry this energy your whole life. It will fuel your response to things completely unrelated. “Might as well trash it. Why’d a big mouth like me think he could write a novel?”

The surefire remedy to pain is story. So, I tell myself one. That chaperone was exhausted. She had taken a day off work without pay because not enough of the well-off, stay-at-home mothers had volunteered. By New Jersey she had a splitting headache fueled by seething resentment.

And once, though she doesn’t remember this, she was a beautiful little girl feeling exuberantly happy—high on a moment of loving camaraderie with her friends—and someone had made it a point to bring her down to size.

All she knows now is that she boarded that big silver bus with the best of intentions and in the silence of the ruined ride, she pokes her glasses back up on her face feeling justified and confused. Deeply self-conscious and not quite done.

I see her not from the eyes of an embarrassed adolescent but through the eyes of a mother who has yelled at kids, too. Totally, indelibly, regrettably lost it. And across time, I want to tell her it’s okay, I want to tender memory with mercy. She was doing the best she could. As am I. As are you.

As I recount that story, I feel taller with shinier hair. Present and compassionate.

I feel full of myself.

And finally, finally, finally, that’s a good thing to be.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

Food Friday: The Party’s Over

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There is less than a week of summer to go – though judging by the current temperatures, we might have another couple of weeks of warm weather. If you have packed up your white shoes for the season already, you can join us for a cocktail on the back porch, and wait for the leaves to start falling. Fold up those sweaters. We can chat about some of our memorable summer meals.

In June Mr. Sanders finally ordered his dream Ooni pizza oven, which is supposed to revolutionize the way we make Friday Night Pizza. I am not sure if the quality of the pizza has improved – but the speed with which he makes a pie has certainly increased. And our carbon footprint might be lessening, too. When we make pizza the old fashioned way, in the house, we heat up the pizza stone in the gas oven for half an hour at 525°F. That’s a lot of gas. The Ooni, which resides on the back porch, is also gas-fueled, heats to the eyebrow-singeing 900° F in about 10 minutes, and then the pizza cooks in a flash: about 90 seconds. Amazing. There has been a steep learning curve, and we have found that the corn meal we like to put on the pizza peel for easy sliding of the pie into the oven doesn’t work well in the Ooni. It incinerates, practically upon contact with the Ooni pizza stone. One of our favorite home cooks advised us to switch to semolina flour, and that works like a charm.

We enjoyed al fresco dinners on the back porch during June and July, and then the summer visitors, the mosquitoes, arrived for their turn in the timeshare. Ah, well.

This was the summer of Old Bay Seasoned Goldfish! That was a joyous event. Sadly we have never been able to buy more than the initial couple of bags. But it gave grocery shopping a new sense of purpose and adventure to be hunting for Old Bay deliciousness.

Sweet juicy watermelon this summer was fantastic. And so were the peaches. Oooh, and icy radishes with good butter. And then we ventured out for dinner for the first time since COVID and had a lovely appetizer with slices of local tomatoes, peaches, basil and tiny little clots of a soft bleu cheese. We recreated it at home with cherry tomatoes, local peaches, arugula and soft, fresh mozzarella. That was a taste of summer we can never have in January with hot house tomatoes, imported peaches and refrigerated mozzarella.

Mr. Sanders travelled to Boston where he had a hot dog at a ball game at Fenway, which I am assured is an almost religious experience. It was enhanced with lashings of yellow mustard. And beer. I think that beating the Yankees helped give the hot dog some extra umami. He also had a lobster roll along the way, a taste of New England. Another New England friend had lobster, clams, oysters, crabs, shrimp, mussels and every other sort of seafood she could order at every possible opportunity. Everything tastes better with butter in the summer. https://food52.com/blog/13581-how-to-clambake-at-home-without-a-recipe

We ventured out for barbecue a couple of times, which isn’t necessarily a summer food, but the smell of the hickory wood smoke makes it a delightful temptation. Throw in some cole slaw, and I am happy.

The little girl across the street had a lemonade stand one day this summer. One glass of sickly sweet Wyler’s-powdered-lemonade-mix-lemonade is about all my fillings can stand a year. The home-baked, lopsided sugar cookie was also very sweet, but less chemically so.

We made strawberry shortcake a few times, with locally-grown strawberries. But we still haven’t had any Key Lime Pie. Shocking. I am going to bake one this weekend. Even though I get the juice from a bottle from the grocery store, it still tastes of summer. As if one ever needs an excuse to have whipped cream. We’ll say goodbye to summer with style. Maybe we can find a Red Sox game on TV, and have hot dogs, too. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/nellie-and-joes-key-lime-pie Don’t even think about doing meringue, whipped cream is the way it is done in Key West.

And finally, marmalade sandwiches will never seem the same after this summer. Too sweet, too poignant. Thank you, Ma’am.

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”
― E.B. White

Saying Farewell to the Dove

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For almost three years, the Maryland Dove has been very much a part of our Mid-Shore life. Beginning in 2019, when the Spy first began coverage of this remarkable reconstruction project of one of two ships that brought the first English settlers to what is now called the state of Maryland, the Dove project at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has captivated locals and visitors alike as the 84-foot vessel came to life.

During this three-year love affair, The CBMM leadership went out of their way to remind the community that the Dove would one day actually leave St. Michaels and eventually dock at the state’s Historic St. Mary’s, which commissioned the replica and its permanent owner. But that didn’t stop a collective sense that the new Dove would always be intertwined with the Mid-Shore. Nonetheless, reality set in a few weeks ago when the Dove finally crossed the Chesapeake Bay and sailed into its new home.

The Spy was one of those that found it hard to say goodbye after several feature stories on the Dove’s historical significance and the mastery of the CBMM shipwrights. And our solution was to send Spy agent Cecile Storm on the final practice runs with Maryland Dove’s Captain Will Gates.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum please go here.  For Historic St. Mary’s please go here. 

The Mt. Vernon of the Mid-Shore: Midge Ingersoll and her Vision for Handsell

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Restored Handsell House, 2021

The road leading to historic Handsell, tucked away amid farmland in the rural outskirts of Vienna, Maryland, is long, winding, and well worth taking.

Located 15 minutes from Cambridge, one mile off of Rt. 50, the original Chicone Village (also referred to as Indiantown), can be previewed on Google Maps, TripAdvisor, Zoominfo, and TikTok. 

Since 2005, Trustee and Founder Midge Ingersoll, along with a devoted cadre of true believers making up the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance, has been on a tireless mission to put the property squarely on the area’s  historical roadmap.

Anchored by a partially restored ivy covered brick Georgian mansion remnant, whose ongoing restoration is a work in progress, the site offers in some ways less, yet so much more, than a traditional museum, a historical landmark vividly brought to life.

A Native American longhouse, work shelter, and garden, allows visitors to glimpse its original inhabitants, who were mentioned in the journals of Captain John Smith, before the Colonial era traders, settlers and prominent landowners moved in. 

At the land’s edge, a magnificent stone stands, engraved with a dedication memorializing all the Enslaved, an idea developed by Trustee and President Shirley Jackson, whose family lived and worked as sharecroppers in the area. (Recently, the group also created an Enslaved Community Database, listing some 200 individuals owned by members of the landowners, though not all lived on site.)

Ingersoll’s connection to the property, which began as a happy accident, set her on a course of nonstop discovery. The ensuing journey, requiring copious blocks of time devoted to painstaking research, patience, and perseverance, became a path of choice, one she’s been delighted to dedicate herself to.

“If you have more passion than anyone in the room, you’re in the right place,” Ingersoll noted.

She spent her formative years in the ‘old Quaker town’ of Moorestown, NJ, surrounded by historic structures, each of which could have whispered a multitude of stories. 

Earning an art degree, Ingersoll successfully channeled her talents into a successful 30-year architectural rendering career. Amassing a portfolio of thousands of homes, she became well versed in building design plan schematics. 

Putting her skills to work on behalf of numerous friends who had old homes, Ingersoll also was actively involved in Moorestown historic preservation efforts. All the while, she was laying a foundation for a flourishing future involvement along these same lines, upon putting down part-time and eventually full time Dorchester County roots.

In 1990 she and husband Jon purchased a Neck District farmhouse dating back to the mid-1700s, and slowly began researching and working to restore it. 

Handsell House in 2003 (Handsell photo)

Brickmason David Lewis, who had been assisting their efforts, one day approached Ingersoll with news that he’d seen an intriguing house for sale on Indiantown Road, asking if she’d like to take a look, and that was all it took to get her hooked.

As related on Handsell’s website, “After just a little bit of research, we knew we were onto something BIG. As the layers of the story unfolded, through research in archives, deeds, Wills, and historic family letters, a better, yet not fully complete story emerged of Native people, licensed Indian traders, English settlers, British attacks, merchant activity, and structural devastation.”

Meeting around her kitchen table, Ingersoll and five others agreed to each put in $100 to begin the process of forming the Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance, which would purchase the house and property from Lewis and his wife, with a Preservation Easement from the Maryland Historical Trust.  It became listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Though the brick house is open only at specially scheduled times, tours can always be requested and arranged. The grounds are open daily, and with Guide by Cell Audio Tours accessible by phone. (Records indicate that over 1,000 people made use of the audio tours last year.)

Recreated Chicone Long House and Garden

Handsell has also opened its grounds to special overnight camping groups, including the Naval Midshipmen Native American Club, and inner city youngsters from Baltimore. 

On Saturday, October 8th, Handsell will host one of its two annual open house events, the Nanticoke River Jamboree.(Each April a Chicone Village Day is also held.) Both events regularly draw hundreds of visitors from throughout the Eastern U.S., and feature living history interpreters from North Carolina, Virginia, and D.C. 

For the first time this summer, Handsell also offered a well received series of Saturday programs, and Ingersoll can envision additional opportunities to showcase the grounds, such as a Handsell haunted house.

For more information, visit https://www.restorehandsell.org, call 410-228-7458, or email restorehandsell@gmail.com.

Debra Messick is a retired Dorchester County Public Library associate and lifelong freelance writer. A transplanted native Philadelphian, she has enjoyed residing in Cambridge MD since 1995.