MENU

Sections

More

October 17, 2021

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

Spy Top Story

Having a Word by George Merrill

by 8 Comments

In expressing my mind, words come easily. When giving voice to my heart, they don’t.

During breakfast one morning, my wife, Jo, and I were discussing how we both understood death, specifically about the sense of loss that falls to the survivor.

I have to confess that I have never fully accepted that condition of our humanity, that we should be born to love and then we must necessarily lose that love or be lost to it.

Even as a clergyman, and a Christian, I can’t say I fully get it, understand it enough to embrace this phenomenon in my heart. I feel twinges of outrage, a pang of injustice as if God were behaving like what we as kids used to call, an ‘Indian giver.’ What He gives me I find out isn’t for keeps; in time He’ll reclaim it without even consulting me. I suspect my attitude comes from regarding life the way so many of us Americans regard our blessings: I treat life as an entitlement rather than a gift.

The way it appears now, of the two of us, I will die first. I feel guilty about it. It’s irrational; how can I be held responsible for something I have no control over. Isn’t the cruelty of our losses enough? I won’t just die, but cause others to suffer as a result. I suppose that’s better (for me, anyway) than dying and no one caring a whit. In my world view I cannot make these matters come out even. They’ll likely be resolved in the heart, not the head.I can’t quite find the words to express just how this scenario leaves me feeling. What is it like not being here, of being gone? It makes me feel hollow. Sometimes, I just weep because it’s a heart matter. Tears are the language of the heart and they don’t explain things clearly. It take time to catch on.

That’s about the only unambiguous statement I can make. Tears are the heart speaking something to me. Both Jo and I weep as we struggle to imagine anything that might take the bitter edge of this reality and soften it some. Paradoxically, just talking and weeping seems to help. It may seem counter-intuitive to talk about the things you and I might fear and dread most, but it doesn’t work that way. It causes more pain when such heart matters are driven underground and treated as a taboo. It will soon create intolerable awkwardness and unease between couples and family members. Everybody feels they must pretend.

We’re in that tenuous and tender time when we are preparing to let each other go.

My mother-in law had a saying I’d not heard before. In getting ready for a trip, she’d say “I’m feeling journey proud.” She described how she’d find herself fretting about all the details the trip involved: letting people know she was gone; when she’d be back; who’d get the mail; was the house in proper order; who’d get the package due to come while she was away; turn the heat down – those endless details that arise prior to traveling.

If I’m about to take a journey from which I’m not returning. Does that up the ante, or not? Does that change what is necessary to do, how I need to spend my limited time fussing about this and that?

The answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’ unless I want to incur the anger of spouse and children at a time when they should be celebrating my life. Should I not attend to these details, I’ll be remembered, alright, and for a long time, too: until my heirs can tell the MVA just who actually holds the title to my car, and finally straighten out the rat’s nest that my credit cards and insurance policies will create upon my death –– yes, my kin will remember me, but not as I might have wished.

As I write this, I am feeling strangely restless, fatigued. Of course, I think to myself, it’s my blood count; the numbers are down. But, no, they are holding and in fact are good. I worry and then it comes to me as clearly as the pen in my hand with which I’m writing this draft. To my shame, right now I am not saddened by the impending separation from my spouse, children and other loved ones. I am grieving my separation from me, the person I knew (mostly) and loved alternately for 87 years. He will simply be no more. I have no way to comprehend this. If I leave my family, they will continue to be. They will walk the paths we walked and although I will not be there, they will. I’m fatigued because I feel sorry for myself. It’s an odd kind of feeling since in this case, there’d be no “myself” to feel sorry for. I can imagine no analogy, no metaphor that helps me digest this thought. I come up with zip, as they say.

I admire the great essayist Montaigne. He was a wily and wise old fox who, in weighty matters, never patronized us with pious clichés or heady, philosophical excursions. About our death he said this: “…without a doubt the most noteworthy action of human life…people do not easily believe that they have reached that point . . . there is no place where deception of hope deludes us more.” In short, he is saying no one really believes he’s going to die. Why? Montaigne believes “it’s because we set too much importance on ourselves.”

It’s sobering to consider that even as my faculties go one by one, my wits fragment and my other organs and sensibilities diminish, in the face of mortality’s apparent injustice, my ego always remains righteous and ready to advocate for my life and protest against my mortality.

As much as I might sympathize with my ego, I still wouldn’t trust its judgement for a minute. My heart would handle things more wisely.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

 

 

Food Friday: Coach Lasso’s Biscuits

by 2 Comments

Last Friday night, after we had consumed copious amounts of Friday night pizza, we bid a fond farewell to Ted Lasso, our favorite sports figure. We were feeling a little sad after watching this season’s finale, and thought it would cheer us up to bake some of the biscuits Coach Lasso baked to ingratiate himself with his intimidating team owner, Rebecca. Apple TV+ has an official recipe, and then there is a fancier Milk Bar recipe, which claimed to be an improvement on the original. We then engaged in one of our favorite activities – a science fair experiment comparing recipes.

I had to explain who Ted Lasso is to the woman who cuts my hair. Between our masks and the roar of the hair dryers it was hard to convey the sweetness and the sly humor of the coaching staff of AFC Richmond, because she is a true crime TV aficionado, and had never heard of Ted Lasso. Sigh. In case you haven’t heard of Ted Lasso, it is a delightful Apple TV+ series about an American football coach who has been hired to coach an English football (soccer) team. It is less about football than it is about optimism. And kindness. It has been a genuine feel-good show through the depths of the pandemic. Go get a free trial subscription and catch up this weekend. It is goofy, poignant, and yes, there is some soccer. And biscuits.

It is difficult scientifically to prove which biscuit recipe tastes better, since the orginal is a fictional, magical biscuit that fictional, magical human Coach Lasso bakes every day. He might have a secret ingredient unknown to the corporate heads at Apple TV. Coach might have a little stash of pixie dust tucked away in a kitchen drawer with those little toy soldiers. Ted might imbue the biscuits with hope and optimism much needed on and off the pitch. And all we have is what we bring home from the grocery store, and concoct in the midst of our own messy lives.

We are rounding the corner, heading into baking season, and the holidays where little gifts of food are welcome. Go find some pink card stock, bring your butter to room temp, and prepare to mix up a batch of hope; you are on your way to the premier league. And do not, under any circumstances, buy pre-fab boxes. Make your own. These are deeply satisfying to assemble: http://www.saltharvestcreatives.com/-free_printable_ted_lasso_biscuit_box.pdf

This is the “official” streaming service-sanctioned recipe:

Ted Lasso’s Biscuits

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Preparation
Preheat oven to 300° F.
Sift flour and salt, mix into bowl and set aside.
Mix butter on high speed until fluffy (3 to 5 minutes).
Gradually add sugar slowly, continuing to mix until pale and fluffy.
Add flour all at once and mix until combined.
Butter a square pan.
Pat and roll shortbread into pan no more than 1/2-inch thick.
Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Cut into squares.
Bake until golden and make sure the middle is firm, approximate bake time 45 to 60 minutes.
Cool completely.

https://www.today.com/food/here-s-official-ted-lasso-biscuit-recipe-t230627

Now, here is a fancier version, as devised by Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame, who also believes in gussying up birthday cakes with acres of sprinkles:

Ted Lasso x Milk Bar Biscuits

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 ¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
3 tablespoon light brown sugar
3 large egg yolks
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt

Heat an oven to 315 degrees and prepare an 8-inch square baking dish with cooking spray.
In a medium bowl, mix the butter and sugars vigorously until smooth.
Stir in the egg yolks. Add the flour and salt, mix just until the dough comes together. (“The less you mix the dough, the more positive vibes your biscuits will have,” according to Tosi.)
Using damp hands, press the dough in an even layer in the pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes until a thin, golden brown layer forms on top. Let cool completely before cutting into two even columns and then six even rows. Arrange in pink boxes if you have them.
Yield: 12 Lasso-size slices

Here’s a link to Tosi’s famous birthday cake: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/momofuku-milk-bars-birthday-layer-cake

Food52 has a recipe for shortbread biscuits that is not for the faint of heart, or anyone in a hurry – they require 90 minutes of baking time. https://food52.com/blog/24156-how-to-make-shortbread-cookies-bien-cut-bakery

Ultimately, these are all well and good, tasty and dense, and are sure to brighten anyone’s day. But I prefer something a little less dense, and more crumbly. I like a classic shortbread, one that we bake when trying to recall a special trip to Scotland (without invoking the haggis experience). Granulated sugar and confectionary sugar are so different.

2 cups all-purpose flour
⅔ cup granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon fine salt
2 sticks, cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch chunks

Heat oven to 325°F. Pulse together flour, sugar and salt in a food processor. Add butter and pulse to fine crumbs.
Press dough into an even layer in an ungreased 8- or 9-inch-square baking pan, or a 9-inch pie pan. Prick dough all over with a fork. Bake until golden brown, about 35 to 40 minutes for the 9-inch square or pie pan, 45 to 50 minutes for the 8-inch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Cut into squares, bars or wedges while still warm.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018784-shortbread-10-ways

“I promise you there is something worse out there than being sad, and that’s being alone and being sad. Ain’t no one in this room alone.” —Ted Lasso

Island Life: Jay Fleming’s Celebration of Those at Peace with Adversity by Jeff McGuiness

by 7 Comments

Editor’s note. It is with profound sadness that we must note that Dwight Marshall, a central figure of Jay Fleming’s book and whose photo graces its cover, passed away as he was working on the water yesterday. The Spy has decided to publish Jeff McGuiness’ article of Jay’s work today as a tribute to Dwight, his family, and their remarkable contributions to our Chesapeake Bay heritage and culture.

Its title deceptively simple, Jay Fleming’s magnificent new book, Island Life, uses brilliant photography to address a fundamental issue of our time, dealing with overwhelming change while joyously appreciating the beauty surrounding us as we do. His photographic essay is so moving that ever since I saw the book’s proofs, I’ve had a recurring dream that is a metaphor for what our lives have become.

James “Ooker” Eskridge, waterman and mayor of Tangier Island, Virginia

I wake up in our home in St. Michaels with unsettling images of a vanished life. I am walking through the home we left in Northern Virginia that was torn down by a developer, a house in acres of woods that was part of a land of pastoral farms in verdant fields of clover that became cloverleafs, shopping centers, mega developments, and office towers, all within a thirty-year span. As I open my eyes, I wonder what the dreams are of those who live a few feet above sea level on the distant islands of Smith and Tangier in a remote part of the Chesapeake. Do they sleep with images of the heaving waters around them, the enormous skies of the lower Bay, workboats disappearing in the shimmering haze of summer, winter gales sweeping over the frail soil, the land underneath gnawed away by salt water?

Tangier Island, Virginia

These islanders and those that came before them live with that water constantly in sight, a still pond one day, a sea surging past their doorsteps the next. They trace their heritage to those who emigrated from Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset in southern England in the 1600’s after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. Their ancestors settled along the shore and on the islands of the lower Chesapeake, planting crops and drawing sustenance from the area’s bountiful waters which, unlike the privations faced in other New World settlements, made starvation impossible. Their descendants have lived on these islands for eight to ten generations, first primarily working the land, then as fortunes changed, moving onto the water. Those who have remained on the islands prefer the slower pace of life, separation from what our world has become, the intimacy with elemental forces.

A red fox taking home a striped bass.

During the War of 1812, the British Navy used Tangier as the base from which they sacked America’s new capital and burned its White House. After returning for a two week break before heading to Baltimore to continue their mayhem, the British asked Tangier’s leader, Joshua Thomas, to “exhort the soldiers” during a ceremony as the marines and sailors prepared to board the fleet. Thomas chose instead to tell the troops that they were making a big mistake, that they would “not succeed,” that Baltimoreans were different from Washingtonians, and that they should “prepare for death.” What prescient message can those distant souls on Tangier and Smith give us mainlanders struggling with life today? 

For decades, tourists from metropolitan areas have traveled by boat to this separate world to gawk at the locals and listen to their unusual dialect before smugly returning to the security of their well-ordered communities. Then the Pandemic hit. Those communities emptied as Americans roamed about searching for a different, less vulnerable place to live. For decades, Smith and Tangier have been the target of requiems and elegies from mainlanders focused on the Chesapeake’s waters slowly overtaking the islands’ shores. The writers ask, often condescendingly, don’t you people know what is going to happen to you? Now the islanders can ask, don’t you know what’s happening to you because of the consequences of your hypergrowth? Are you prepared to deal with it? The lesson of COVID is that no one is immune from unexpected change, so the question is, how to do we survive, prosper, and find happiness amid uncertainty? 

Daniel Dise paddling home after fishing his crab pots on Tangier Island.

Island Life is Jay Fleming’s answer. He burst onto the Chesapeake Bay photographic scene five years ago with his first book, Working the Water. We were immediately captivated by his boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm. Never before had we seen someone grinning ear to ear while immersed in a pound net full of fish so things could be photographed from the point of view of the captured. In a world saturated with photographs of the Chesapeake, Fleming’s vivid colors, unusual perspectives, and bold, simple designs set him apart. Soon his work was hanging in galleries, featured on magazine covers, and displayed in design houses. The book, now in its fourth printing with nearly ten thousand copies, is an achievement for someone who is his own publishing house.

Jay Fleming in his studio in Stevensville, MD. Photograph by the author.

Working the Water is a magnificently illustrated guide to everything that goes on in Chesapeake waters—fyke netting, haul seining, gill netting, crab scraping, bank trapping, pound netting, crab potting, and purse seining, for example. It is required reading for any Chesapeake boater not involved in commercial fishing. No more puzzling over what all those flags, floats, and poles are as they slide past your stern.

Oyster dredging on a rough winter day, Tangier Sound, Virginia.

Island Life goes in a different direction. It is a story of resilience in a world both beautiful and haunting. Unusual marine life in green water harvested in challenging conditions that becomes a delicacy on a dinner plate hundreds of miles away. The making of Mary Ada Marshall’s Smith Island cake, the iconic Maryland state dessert she ships from the edge of the world all over the east coast. A nesting colony of brown pelicans in tall grass hovering over their hatchlings who will soon be able to fly in formation a few feet off the water searching for menhaden. But it is Fleming’s oneness with the lives of the islanders and his depiction of their strong sense of community produced by their isolation and the challenges of their unique way of life that makes the book so distinct. 

Mary Ada Marshall shipping her Smith Island Cakes from her dining room on Smith Island. Dwight Marshall is behind her in their living room.

Over the past few years, Fleming has spent months on Smith and Tangier working on his photography and conducting workshops to the point he is no longer an outsider looking in. He is an island waterman in his own right, piloting his center console Privateer, a photographic platform custom built by Mary Ada and Dwight’s son, Kevin, as he documents who the islanders are and what they do. His is a studied observation that has created a connection, a bond, with these god-fearing souls that allows him to see life through their eyes, feel the water’s unpredictable grip, and dream the dreams they dream. Yes, the islanders live amidst fierce forces as they have for centuries, but so now do we all, and the way he shows how they see the wonder of life while living along peril’s edge can be a guide for all of us on the mainland.

A puffed-up northern pufferfish, Tangier Sound, Virginia.

Of the dozens of photographs in Island Life, the one that knocked me off my chair shows Darlene and Morris Marsh in their home in Ewell on Smith Island. Morris is seated comfortably in their living room reading the Bible next to a Christmas tree decorated with American flags. Why the flags? Because the Holiday season has not yet arrived. Darlene is in the foreground looking directly at the camera. And what is she doing? Holding a knife while picking crabs. Now, most people who pick Chesapeake crabs are appropriately attired for the collateral damage that occurs when crustaceans are dismembered. Darlene is dressed as if she is about to go out for the evening. She would look no different if she were using the knife to butter a dinner roll at a church social. 

Darlene and Morris Marsh at home on Smith Island, Virginia.

When I first saw this image, I was reminded of Grant Wood’s American Gothic, the iconic painting that hangs in the Chicago Institute of Art depicting a middle-aged couple standing in front of an Iowa farmhouse in the early years of the Depression. He holds a pitchfork while she, primly dressed, looks prepared to deal with any challenge thrown her way. American Gothic has come to be regarded as one of the finest representations of resilience, fortitude, and dignity in the face of mounting hardship on the early twentieth century prairie. If the Baltimore Museum of Art is searching for the twenty-first century Chesapeake equivalent, Jay Fleming’s image of the Marshes of Smith Island is worth consideration.  

Island Life will be released in November. It is available for purchase on Jay Fleming’s website and will soon be available in book shops, museums stores, and art galleries throughout the Chesapeake region. The Trippe Gallery in Easton, MD, will hold a book signing for Jay on Saturday, November 13, 2021, as part of Waterfowl Festival.

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 has picked up where he left off 50 years ago with Bay Photographic Works. He lives in St. Michaels, MD.

 

Mid-Shore History: Historical Society of Kent County Highlights Henry Highland Garnet and the Origins of Black Politics

by Leave a Comment

The Historical Society of Kent County launched their “Inside the Bordley” lecture series last Friday with a talk by Professor Van E. Gosse who discussed Henry Highland Garnet in light of his new book The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War

Barbara Jorgenson conducted the interview on behalf of Washington College’s Adam Goodheart who was unable to attend.

With a focus on black electoral politics before the Civil War, and the free black men—many of them escaped slaves—who influenced politics, Prof. Gosse highlighted Chestertown’s Rev. Henry Highland Garnet and the activism that led him to be a powerful leader in the black political movement of the 1840s and 50s and the first black man ever to speak in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Garnet, born into slavery near Chestertown, escaped with his family of 11 to Wilmington where they were helped by the Underground Railroad. Eventually, he would move to New York City and begin studies that would lead to his life-long mission of demanding racial equity for citizenship.

A gifted orator and firebrand activist, Garnet worked with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas but lost their support when he advocated for slaves to rebel against the owners.

Gosse, a Professor of History at Franklin & Marshall College, talked about Garnet’s introduction to the radical elements of the abolitionist movement and the founding the radical anti-slavery Liberty Party “one of the most effective third-parties in American history.”

“No compromise,” Gosse said. “Not just immediate emancipation: full citizenship. ‘Black people are American just like anybody else’ and this is the claim that Garnet in particular made very strongly.”

This featured talk was sponsored by the Sandy and Stephen Frohock History Series. The complete lecture will be available via a link on the HSKC Facebook page as well as announcements of future lectures and events.

The Historical Society’s Bordley History Center, 301 High Street will be open Thursdays and Fridays, 11 am to 2 pm, and Saturdays, 10 am to 1 pm.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about the Kent County Historical Society please go here.

At the Academy: On Close Introspection with AAM Curator Mehves Lelic

by 1 Comment

At the end of the day, a talented curator must think about what their audience actually “sees” at an exhibition. For it is not only the process of selecting objects but how that art can be observed in new ways for the casual visitor.

And that was very much on the mind of Academy Art Museum’s curator Mehves Lelic as she assembled “Close Introspection: From Picasso to Kusama” which is currently on view until November 7. With the help of private collectors and paintings found in the AAM’s ever-growing permanent collection, Mehves has pulled together some of the most proclaimed mid-20th century artists, like Helen Frankenthaler, Judy Pfaff, Pablo Picasso, Martin Puryear, and Howardena Pindell, to allow the visitor to inspect these remarkable examples of both modern and contemporary art.

In our Spy interview, Lelic puts the spotlight on the unique differences of approach and intention of the work of Jean Davis and Richard Anuszkiewicz as well other examples where the viewer must test their perceptions with this impressive grouping.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about this exhibition please go here.

It’s Been Thirty-four Years Ago Now….. by Lyn Banghart

by 9 Comments

I don’t think about it much anymore.  But this is my story and please keep in mind that it was 34 years ago and choices I made were so very personal.  Every woman is different.  Every woman has to do what is right for her.  And the times and options were very different then.

Lyn Banghart

I was 38 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was shocked by the diagnosis.  I was young, married and had two children.  But I am so grateful that I had wonderful physicians who sent me for all the right tests and did all the right things that were being done at that time.  They had just started testing whether tumors were estrogen negative or positive and mine was estrogen negative which is a more aggressive cancer.  My tumor was less than 1 cm, and I was offered a lumpectomy followed by radiation. My surgeon also talked about reconstruction. But after long talks with my husband I decided a modified radical mastectomy was what I wanted,  and I opted for no reconstruction.

My memory is a bit clouded after all these years, but I do remember some things…The morning of my surgery, we left the house at 5:30 a.m. My very dear friend and neighbor looked through her window as we drove by and smiled and waved.  When they came to take me to surgery, I remember vividly my husband’s face and kiss and his words, “I love you and will be with you.” I watched him standing there as I was wheeled away…

When I awoke from surgery, my husband was there by my side.  I’m a little fuzzy on the timing of everything, but I remember waiting to hear about the lymph nodes.  My husband was hanging all his hopes on the outcome of those nodes.  The surgeon came and informed us that they were free of cancer.  Now we could move on to the next stage.  There is only one more moment I remember in the hospital. The day I got out of bed, walked into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.  I feel like I should say something profound about losing a breast and how I was horrified and saddened by it.  But I wasn’t.  I think for me, it was all about losing as much of the cancer as I could. I wanted to be around for a lot longer in this life.  

When I got home, reality hit and coping with losing a breast involved mastectomy bras and prostheses and putting cocoa butter on the very long scar on my chest every day. But I couldn’t wear anything but a soft shirt for quite a while and it was indeed very bizarre to only have one breast.  At the time my son was 16 and my daughter was 12. I don’t remember talking to them about my breast cancer, but surely I must have.  I know my husband did. 

Then I started my six months of chemotherapy…. I will say at this point that my husband was my rock.  Through everything, he gave me more love and support than any human could have done.  We are now married 51 years.  

Chemotherapy is awful.  There is no way around that. The sickness, the lost hair, the fatigue is overwhelming.  But I knew it had a job to do, and I wanted that job done! When my chemotherapy was finished, we threw a huge party and invited all the wonderful people that helped me through the surgery and the six months of infusions and blood tests, including family, friends, doctors, nurses, everyone!  And they all came. It was a glorious evening. One I will never forget.  

A year and a half later, I decided to have the other breast removed.  There was so much they didn’t know about estrogen negative cancer at that time, and I had two female breast surgeons say they would do the same thing.   So I did it!  I have never regretted that decision for even a second  I am still here at age 72 and grateful for every day.  I can wear prostheses or go without.  I don’t mind being flat chested.  

I want to end this here and say that my husband is probably the finest human being I know.  Our love has gotten stronger over the last 51 years.  I also want to say that it is not easy having no breasts.  There are still days that I miss them.  But not for long.  Keep in mind that they know so much more now, and breast cancer is found earlier when it is curable and when breasts can be saved.  I was very lucky!  I know that all too well.  October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Please get a mammogram, do self-exams, and know that there can be a long life after breast cancer. With or without breasts.

Lyn Banghart is Vice President and Singing Member of Tidewater Singers. She is a resident of Easton.

Food Friday: Friday Night is Pizza Night

by Leave a Comment

An unshakeable rule in our house is that Friday night is pizza night. We are ready for the weekend to begin, but we are so exhausted from a week’s work that we can’t possible consider going anyplace. So we gather in the kitchen, pour some wine, turn on music, and warm up the oven while spending a couple of hours together crafting a pizza. It has been our weekly ritual for years, which was a good thing during lockdown, and continues to be our weekly aspiration as we try for the perfect pie.

I’m not sure what our perfect pizza pie is, exactly. Does it taste like the Pellicci’s pizza of my childhood? Pellicci’s is an Italian-American, red sauce restaurant in Stamford, Connecticut. It was where our family celebrated significant events and family milestones on the rare occasions we dined out. The crusty, fragrant bread was baked on site, the meatballs were oversized, the mounds of spaghetti were vertiginous, and the cheese pizzas were thin, and crisp, and scorched on the edges, with molten cheese. We were impressed that our parents knew how to fold pizza, like a paper airplane, before taking a bite. We didn’t appreciate then that they grew up eating at Sally’s Apizza in New Haven, the mothership of American pizza. They had skills. https://www.sallysapizza.com

We started making pizza at home when our children were young, and malleable. Pizza to them was not a treat or a ceremonial meal. They had cafeteria pizza for lunch in school. There were class pizza parties to celebrate honor roll announcements. Neighborhood birthday parties almost always rolled out a delivery pizza, along with a frozen grocery store sheet cake. The children were growing up on expensive, cardboard, industrial-complex-pizzas that had no soul. They actually liked the “butter-y” dipping sauce that accompanied one brand of delivery pizza. These were the grandchildren of original Sally’s Apizza aficionados, and we were ruining the bloodline.

We started slowly, making dough from a recipe in The Joy of Cooking, of all places to start, but those were the dark days before the internets, and Joy was my first resource. I still have photos of us, covered in flour, because the children were young, and kneading was an all-hands-on-deck proposition when you are trying to get children interested in their food, and how to make it. There are always math, geometry, and art lessons to be had when making pizzas. Eventually they tired of the dough-making process, and I would make it myself in the morning. They seemingly enjoyed the process of rolling out the dough, and adding the sauce and cheese, and finally, the eating. Sometimes we snuck in frozen pizza dough from the grocery store, but that wasn’t important: it was the Friday night ritual that had been firmly established.

Mr. Sanders and I can be found here almost every Friday night, rolling out the dough. Sometimes we post a video of the pizza as it emerges from the oven. Each week we enjoy our own apizza, and maybe you could, too.

Our dough, which has been evolving for 20-something years, is a variation on a Mark Bittman recipe: https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/pizza-dough For the past year we have been using a “00” flour, as suggested by my brother, the original family pizzaiolo, who still eats in New Haven pizzerias with regularity, and who bakes a mean pie. This flour has made a huge difference in the texture of the crust – it is lighter, and more flavorful, and makes an excellent crisp crust. For a while, the only place I could find it was on Amazon, but suddenly, the fancier grocery store in town is carrying it. https://www.amazon.com/King-Arthur-Flour-Specialty-American-Grown/dp/B08HZJ798S/ref=sr_1_7? For the formative years, though, we used all-purpose flour or bread flour, and made perfectly delicious pizzas. We are just showing off now.

Our take on pizza dough:
3 cups “00” flour
1 tablespoon yeast (I have been buying yeast in jars, because I am extremely cheap)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup warm water (I warm it in a teapot that has a thermometer – to about 120°F – any warmer and you will kill the yeast)

I use a fancy KitchenAid stand mixer, which would probably offend Sally’s soul, but the romance of kneading by hand wore off decades ago. I mix all the dry ingredients, then add the oil, and finally the cup of water. Sometimes I have to add a little more water, until the shaggy mess forms a dough ball. Then I run the mixer for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I take the ball of dough out and knead it on the counter, just to tidy of the ball. I put it in a mixing bowl, with a drizzle of olive oil, and cover the bowl with Saran Wrap, and pop it into the microwave for a day of rest. The microwave is a nice safe place; the dough is off of the counter, and the temperature stays constant. By around 6 o’clock, it has risen nicely, and is ready for transformation.

When we first started making pizza at home we had a standard issue electric oven. Now we have a slightly fancier gas oven. First we pop a pizza stone into the oven, and pre-heat to 525°F. Once the temperature reaches 525°, we set a timer for 30 minutes. We don’t have a coal-fired oven like Sally’s, but we can pretend. We started off using a standard cookie sheet, then graduated to a round pizza pan. Now, after all these years, we have lots of esoteric equipment: a metal pizza peel, a French rolling pin, the pizza stone, a stainless steel scraper, squeeze bottle for oil, and a gigantic pizza cutter.

Next comes the Friday Night Rite.

While the oven is heating, I grate an 8-ounce block of mozzarella cheese. Sometimes we use fresh mozzarella, but fresh tends to contain a lot of moisture, and can make a soggy pizza: use judiciously. We also employ freshly-grated Parmesan cheese with abandon.

I like pepperoni pizza best, and Mr. Sanders is a bon vivant who likes sausage, meatball, salami, proscuitto, ham, speck, kale, broccolini, peppers – you name it. Have these wild cards lined up on the counter, too. We cheat enormously with the pizza sauce. We stockpile jars of Rao’s Pizza Sauce when it is on sale. But leftover homemade spaghetti sauce is also a family fave. Use what makes you happy.

On a floured surface, divide the dough in half. We freeze one half, for emergency mid-week pan pizza, or garlic knots. Then Mr. Sanders rolls, rolls, rolls the pizza dough. (It took years to achieve a circle shape, so do not despair if you produce amoebas.) Using the rolling pin, he places it gently on the corn meal-covered pizza peel, which is essential to his art. Don’t forget the corn meal. (There is no other way to transfer an uncooked pizza to a hot pizza stone without a peel. We have been using a metal pizza peel for a couple of years which is much easier to ply than our old wooden one.)

Once the dough is on the pizza peel, Mr. Sanders squirts a couple of tablespoons of garlic-infused olive oil onto the dough, and spreads it around evenly with the back of a spoon. A gentle reader suggested the garlic-infusion because the house becomes redolent with garlic: nothing says “home-made pizza” faster than walking through a wall of garlic. (We have a plastic squirt bottle filled with olive oil and a couple of peeled garlic cloves – instant pizzeria! Thanks, Jane!)

Then Mr. Sanders spoons on some sauce, not lots, because you want the pie to stay light and crisp. You’ll develop an eye. Then he scatters the mozzarella cheese, and judiciously arranges the toppings. When it is safe for indoor dining again, stop by a pizza joint, not a fancy place, and watch how the journeymen pizza guys scatter the cheese and toppings. They are fast, spare, and economical. Less is better.

Then transfer the pizza from the peel to the blazing hot pizza stone. This takes some practice. Set the timer for 8 minutes. Pour some more wine, light the candles, and prepare for glory. Homemade pizza. Divine.

Every week we sit in judgment – it’s never the best pizza ever, but it is always getting better. And the flops are forgotten quickly, because why else is there wine? Sometimes we achieve near-Pellicci’s quality, and we are always Sally’s-level aspirational. Someday we’ll get back to New Haven to compare. Until then, we always have Friday nights at home.

“But magic is like pizza: even when it’s bad it’s pretty good.” Neil Patrick Harris

A Chat with Talbot Hospice’s New Executive Director Chris Chekouras

by Leave a Comment

Over the last few months, the Spy has been catching up in talking to newly appointed directors of some the Mid-Shore’s most important organizations. Sadly, most of these remarkable individuals accepted their positions in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and, consequently, were extremely limited in how they could reach out to the community.

One such case is Chris Chekouras, who became the executive director of Talbot Hospice in the late summer of 2021. With previous positions that included being interim president Saint Agnes Healthcare in Baltimore, president of the St. Mary’s Health System in Maine, and a ten-year career with Virtua Health in New Jersey, Chris came to Talbot Hospice with extraordinary professional experience.

In his Spy interview, Chris talks about that background and the challenges and opportunities that he will be facing in this new role. He also talks about his passionate commitment to hospice care’s vital role in the country’s health system and on the Mid-Shore.

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

Back to School: A Chat with The Country School’s Acting Head Jean Waller Brune

by Leave a Comment

When the board of trustees of The Country School was faced with the challenge of finding an interim head of school while they conducted a national search for a permanent one, it didn’t take long to see that the answer was sitting right in front of them in the form of fellow board member Jean Waller Brune.

A longtime friend and associate of former head Neil Mufson, Jean joined the Country School board after retiring from Head of School of the highly-regarded Roland Park Country School after 24 years. With a lifetime devoted to private education, including another 24 years at Gilman School, Brune was excited to continue to serve this calling at The Country School, an institution she had much admired for many years.

The product of Roland Park Country School and degrees from Middlebury College and Johns Hopkins, Jean, in her Spy interview, talks about how delighted she is to be back in a school, with a certain knowledge that being around students and teachers can keep one young. She also marvels at how much education has evolved into a more sophisticated awareness of how children learn differently. And finally, she talks about The Country School’s core values and its renewed emphasis on reading.

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

 

Timetables by George Merrill

by

I’m being invaded by an armada of 2022 calendars. They unsettle me.

Every year they show up in the mailbox around this time like crickets do in my house. I’m seeing more this year. 2022 calendars arrive in various sizes with bigger and bigger formats. My mailbox is already cluttered with those humongous postcards –– postcards on steroids –– the newer ones’ advertising goods and services which in prior years, were pitched on discreetly sized cards.

Arriving every few days, these large calendars are impossible to ignore. They make me nervous, a reminder that I probably won’t be here in 2022.

Before electronics, I would place appointment times down for the new year in a small pocket calendar. Ironically, the first entrances would be medical appointments. Then I’d jot down family birthdates, special events and various commitments to be kept. Looking back, I see how I held as an unerring certainty –– but always outside of my conscious awareness –– that there’d always be tomorrow. Theoretically, I knew, as much as youth and vitality would permit me, that all I had was the moment I was living. However, that never intruded on my timetable. It was too remote.

Mostly I dealt with plans made day to day, week to week, month to month, but always in the background was the abiding certainty that I would continue this practice in perpetuity. Shakespeare once wrote somewhat dismissively, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps on that petty pace from day to day.” I must say in my present circumstances, petty, or not, I’ll take as many as I can get.

Of the many stories about mortality I’ve heard in my career, one of the top aversions to dying is the feeling that mortality robs us of the time we need to finish what we are doing. The feeling of not being ready to go is a remarkably universal sentiment. It’s like college kids at exam time; panic as the deadline nears and hoping for an extension.

I know that feeling. I’d really like more time. However deceptive, to imagine that time is a renewable resource is comforting. But just what is it I need more time for?

A related question has haunted me as I’ve grown older and more introspective: Why am I here? Why are any of us here?

The same thought always comes to mind. Although it’s gone through several iterations, it’s something like this: I am here for someone else. I am here for others. But who is it, who are they? Will I ever know?

Pondering our lives’ purposes one morning, led Jo and me to considering angel myths since angels are said to be sent by God to help others. Popularly, we call “angels” anyone who extends us kindnesses. I’ve always had trouble thinking of God sending angels to help like Uber dispatches drivers. I can’t imagine God micromanaging like that. With an entire universe to look after, he’s delegated the task to you and me.

I was a boy when I first saw angels. They were in my parish church; one, a statue, the other a painting. The statue, wooden and life-sized, stood in front of the church by the sanctuary. Over her head she held the lectern where the Bible rested and the lessons were read during services. Her sculpted garments fell to the floor like oversized drapes. In the parish house, a classical painting of angels hung, angels on the wing. Portrayed were cherubs, elite angels. They looked fat, like overly fed babies and had wings, wildly curly hair and were buck naked, oddly so, I thought, that they’d be that underdressed in a church. These were definitely not she-angels. What were they doing, I wondered? They appeared to hover over a saint like drones. I guessed they were looking out for him.

But like any myth, angel myths point beyond their romantic legends to some fundamental truth. I suspect it’s something like this.

Our first obligation to one another is to love. This appears again and again in most all the teachings of the world’s religions. Jesus sums it up: “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”

This commandment is short and simple, but so is the formula E=mc2. “Love one another” is as difficult to live into as E=mc2 is to comprehend. We know this much: both unleash invisible forces that contain astonishing power: the one can obliterate entire landscapes, the other is able to pierce the hardest of hearts.

It makes sense to me that those who earnestly try living out the commandment would be called angels. They could be anyone. I’ll bet everyone knows at least one. I don’t believe these people are just following orders but instead, because the commandment deeply moved them, they’re committed to living it out –– not by showcasing their goodness, but almost surreptitiously, by simply loving and being kind wherever they are. They go about their business, touching the lives of others as they normally would in their capacity as friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, merchants, and citizens doing what they do. And indeed, whatever it is they happen to be doing, anywhere or at any time, it always contains measures of grace. “Helpers” was how Fred Rogers of ‘Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ once called them.

I believe this is the underlying truth of angel myths. If so, I say we dump the stereotypes –– pluck the wings, nix the wild hair, clothe them (for proprieties sake) and recognize how, in real life, their boots are not treading on top of clouds as they’ve been portrayed, but are planted firmly on the ground somewhere near us in our own neighborhoods.

Both Jo and I, in the last few months, continue to discover people we never suspected had been looking out for us.

I understand better how my fretting over calendars misses the point. Calendars are pieces of paper printed with months, days, and numbers –– abstractions, basically. There is nothing in any calendar that says there’s no time to complete my life’s task. My task, looking out for others, is like E=mc2 –– deceptively simple to read but with profound consequences. I can practice being a helper and bring grace into people’s lives wherever I can. I’ll not only feel satisfied doing what I’m supposed to but I’ll always be on schedule.

Looking at it that way, I have all the time there is.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.