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October 2, 2023

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

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Top Story Point of View David

Politics The Way It Should Be by David Reel

October 2, 2023 by David Reel Leave a Comment

Last week I experienced firsthand an increasingly rare, but extraordinarily positive event in the ever-changing political arena. The event was the 46th annual Tawes Crab & Clam Bake in Crisfield Somerset County. Sponsored by the Crisfield Chamber of Commerce, Tawes is part great food, part great networking and part great schmoozing. 

One long – standing tradition at Tawes is welcoming attendance by individuals with a wide range of political party affiliations, ideologies, public policy issue positions race, age, sexual orientation, income levels and all the unique identities that some use to divide us on a regular, often daily basis. 

Another long-standing tradition at Tawes is a commitment by every attendee to engage in respectful and civil dialogue. 

Last, but not least another long- standing tradition at Tawes is elected officials and candidates meeting face to face with voters to learn more about voter opinions and concerns.

Accordingly, Tawes attracts a substantial number of elected and appointed government officials and political candidates. 

This year, elected officials attending included: Governor Wes Moore, Lt. Governor Aruna Miller, State Comptroller Brooke Lierman, State Senator Johnny Mautz, State Senator Steve Hershey, State Senator Mary Beth Carozza, State Delegate Chris Adams, and elected and appointed officials from local governments too numerous to list here. 

This year (an off-year election year) candidate guests included: Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and Montgomery County Council Member Will Jawando, both of whom are running in a primary to be the Democratic candidate to represent Maryland in the U.S. Senate. Candidate guests this year also included Chris Bruneau who is running in a primary to be the Republican candidate to represent Maryland’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S House of Representatives. 

The entire Tawes experience stands in striking contrast to what is now the new normal in politics. This new normal is characterized by intense and often uncivil conflicts over deeply held differences of opinion on a wide range of public policy issues. That is especially the case in Washington DC on such issues as immigration, climate change, debt ceiling limits, budget deficits, government shutdowns, and impeachment inquiries.

Maryland is not immune to this new normal in politics. Battle lines are already being drawn for the upcoming 2024 General Assembly session on state funding mandates on local school districts, tax increases, and a possible new tax on vehicle miles driven despite recent boosts of the state gas tax from 42.7 cents per gallon to 47 cents per gallon and the state diesel fuel tax from 43.5 cents per gallon to 47.5 cents per gallon. 

Tawes has been and continues to serve as a great model for politics the way it should be by advancing the following principles. Welcoming and mutual respect for all with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, listen first to understand, then speak to be understood, and an unwavering commitment to the concept that we can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. 

David Reel is a public affairs/public relations consultant who serves as a trusted advisor on strategy, advocacy, and media matters who resides in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Top Story, David

Troubling a Star By Laura J. Oliver

October 1, 2023 by Laura J. Oliver 1 Comment

I chose a college where freshmen could substitute a science course for the math requirement. It seemed like the lesser challenge. 

The first day of Biology 101, a diminutive elderly woman with white hair walked into the classroom and, without a word to any of us seated in the tiered amphitheater, wrote on the blackboard:

“All things near or far, hiddenly, to each other linked are. That thou canst not touch a flower without troubling a star.” –Francis Thompson

I took a quick glance around. Was anyone else in love? Not with Biology 101. But with Dr. Katie Yaw? Clearly, our science professor possessed a poet’s soul. Later, I would learn she had omitted three words. The actual quote is, “All things by immortal power, near or far, hiddenly to each other linked are.” A poet’s soul but a scientist at heart. 

Cue the pigs. I’d been in an accelerated zoology class in high school, so the year before I had arrived on campus, we had dissected a sheep’s brain, an ox eye, and a fetal pig. Fun. So fun…

End-of-the-year relief had the remains of specimens trussed up in friends’ lockers, left on chair seats in typing with anonymous notes, and I thought that with high school graduation, I was done with dissection, but no. 

At our next class in Dunning Hall, Dr. Yaw presented each of us with our own personal pig in a plastic bag of formaldehyde. And after working on our pigs in class (tiny blue veins, little red arteries, still an incomprehensible map the second time around), we were told there was no space to store the critters in the lab, and we were to keep them in our dorm rooms. I put mine under my bed where the bag leaked, and the formaldehyde trickled across the floor to my roommate, April Kravetz’s bed. We were freshmen on our own, no parents to order us around. I don’t remember opting to scrub the floor or double bag, but I do remember making cups of Swiss Miss and watching April spray the trail with Right Guard.

This past Friday night, I found myself driving back to Washington College for a reception arranged for students and teachers in the school’s WC ALL program to mingle with others in these special interest classes. I admit I had dressed with care—wanting to feel confident and comfortable in my own skin meeting strangers. 

It was windy. A hurricane offshore. Rain coming. I had to stop for gas. Then, because I was a little late, I had to park at the far end of a huge gravel lot and tip-toe over the rocks while the wind off the Chester whipped about me so that I was pretty sure there’d been some wild redistribution of hair and clothes when I finally pulled open the door to the Environmental Center.

Approximately 50 people stood in clusters, deeply engaged in conversation. Well, I thought, feeling very much on my own, these must be my fellow students. I can’t wait to meet them!

 Where’s the bar?

I secured a glass of wine, off-loaded my purse in a nearby conference room, and found myself gazing out the huge glass wall of windows at the water, gearing up for the awkward approach to partygoers in closed circuits of conversation—the lingering in their orbit– the silent eye contact, waiting for someone to acknowledge the satellite, the exoplanet, when a man with a friendly smile came up and asked, “Excuse me, is your name Laura?” 

As it turned out, Jeff and I had gone to college together for two of our 4 years, and although we had not crossed paths then, he reads this column. “I recognized you,” he said. I was incredulous but charmed, flattered even. We talked about professors who had changed our lives, one in common, and then Jeff told me that another favorite English professor was at the reception as well.

To my delight, Jeff pointed out Dr. Gillin, whom I swear, after decades and decades (and okay, decades), had barely changed. Still remarkably handsome. His thick hair had turned a sophisticated white, but everything else was the same. I stuck out my hand and said, laughing, “Dr. Gillin! You were my professor, like, half a century ago, and it’s so nice to see you!” and without missing a beat, Professor Gillin replied, “Yes, of course, I remember you.”

The wine had kicked in, and this struck me as hilarious. Instantaneously gallant, instinctively kind, and surely not true. I decided to adopt this response myself to students I wish I remembered but don’t. We were chatting when a woman touched me on the arm and said, “Excuse me, are you Laura Oliver?” And I thought, Why yes, I am, and it’s starting to feel good to be me! Apparently, two strangers have recognized me, and my professor from sophomore year, otherwise known as the Jurassic Period, remembers me. 

This lovely woman turned out to be a current writing client of mine whom I’ve never met in person, not even on Zoom, so it was a revelation to associate her face with her name.

 

I headed home not long after this, having had a wonderful time. Why? Because some of those college years had been lonely and sad. I’d felt uncool among the cool, uptight among the hip, tightly wound and wounded when I should have been dancing, staying up all night, driving to Florida with rowdy girlfriends on spring break (and let’s face it, a little weed might have improved my attitude immensely). Instead, I wrote sonnets and villanelles.  

Pulling out of the gravel lot, I was charmed by the gift of this life, and I want you to be as well. This school has grown exponentially. The whole time I’ve been out in the world trying to nurture young lives, grow a calling, the school has been, too. And until I got to the Chester River Bridge, I could believe Dr. Gillin actually remembered me, and maybe, maybe he does. And I couldn’t stop smiling that Jeff and I both had had the world of poetry cracked open for us by the same professor—a professor who came to my wedding, I told Jeff, and a professor who encouraged me to move back here, Jeff said.  

We live in this utterly unique era—it will not come again. We know enough to recognize the expansion of the universe is accelerating; 60,000 stars a second disappear from the sky, and we will never catch them. Someday, were our species to survive the nova of our sun, perhaps on a planet in the Trappist System, we will see only our own galaxy. The background microwave radiation will have hushed, and looking up at the heavens, future astronomers will find no evidence that other worlds ever existed. They will have flown beyond our horizon. Beyond memory, beyond knowing. 

But not yet.

As the soybean fields roll by on Route 213, I feel the uniqueness of this time and I’m grateful. Born earlier and we would not have been able to track down people from our youth—to recover with the touch of a computer keyboard, the kids with whom we built forts in the woods, the MIA’s from high school conversational French, our first jobs, college—the friends who disappeared over the event horizon. We would not have the joy of reconnecting with the people who stood near us on the launch pad of our lives to find out we are still in the same orbit.

I can’t stop smiling—something never really lost has been found. All things near or far, hiddenly to each other, linked are. 

That thou canst not touch a flower without troubling a star. 

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.

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Spy Top Story, Laura, Top Story

Delmarva Review: Sweet Gum by Catherine Carter

September 30, 2023 by Delmarva Review Leave a Comment

Author’s Note: “Sweet gum” celebrates the remarkable sweet gum tree; it also praises—well, praise, which it sees as another face of rage and mourning; it sees rage as also a kind of praise, praise of what could be and isn’t.  Some literature seems to suggest that to celebrate anything is to wallow in privilege and ignore all the world’s appalling misery, that misery and evil are inherently more real than joy.  This poem doesn’t agree.

Sweet Gum

       Liquidambar styraciflua

On the sandy track, a smashed squirrel boils
up fresh maggots when stirred with a hand,
refuse of the same old haste and waste,
while the bright October wind sifts down
sweet gum leaves over gray fur and crushed
flesh, reminding the springing squirrel-
mind that black gum leaves turn red, and sweet-
gum leaves—hanging among their caltrop-
seeds—turn purply-black; but that’s naming
for you in a life where we learn late
or not at all, and at least sweet gum
smells sweet, amber-sap native of a new
world which was always the same old world:
bite the sandy stem of a fallen
star-shaped leaf and you’ll catch myrrh-resin,
breathe up incense, even as you feel
its grit grate in your teeth and must spit
and spit. The same old world’s awash
in those telling the same old story:
the one where meat sliding into maws
of ivory worms is always more
real than the life that carried it here
on five-clawed feet, death never less than
appalling, the grit always harsher
than the sassafras-tang of the sap
is bright; where joy is so bourgeois
that they’re ashamed to own the fine
of these few minutes standing on sand
beside the dead, to gnaw the gritty
stem of a leaf whose life has sunk back
into its tree. But today, strangely,
you remember that in this sudden
second, you can pause, you don’t always
have to collude while that same old
story eats all the other stories;
that this wringing place has many names;
that another face of all the rage
and grief is praise. As these maggots praise,
curling like ecstatic toes in their first
first feast, refusing to waste anything.
As this gum tree praises, releasing
deep-purple five-pointed stars into
the shining morning, alligator-
barked being whose first name is sweet. 

⧫

Catherine Carter, raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, now lives with her husband in Cullowhee, NC, near Western Carolina University, where she is a  professor in the English education program. Her most recent full-length collection is Larvae of the Nearest Stars (LSU Press, 2019). In addition to the Delmarva Review, her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Ashville Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among others. On a good day, she says she can re-queen a hive of honeybees and roll a whitewater kayak. On less good days, she collects stings, rockburn, and multiple contusions. Website: https://catherinecarterpoetry.com 

Over its 15-year history, Delmarva Review has published new literary poetry and prose by over 500 authors from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 16 foreign countries. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Both print and digital editions are available from Amazon and other major online booksellers. The print edition is also available from regional specialty bookstores. Website: https://delmarvareview.org/

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Delmarva Review, Top Story

Chesapeake Lens: : Under the Stars by Brian Haislip

September 30, 2023 by Chesapeake Lens Leave a Comment

Beauty: as above, so below on Patuxent Beach Rd. “Under the Stars” by Brian Haislip.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Chesapeake Lens, Top Story

Make the Tech Noise Stop? By Hugh Panero

September 29, 2023 by Hugh Panero 3 Comments

The Eastern Shore has a beautiful outdoor natural soundscape of birds, insects, rain, wind, and changing tides, making it a unique place to live. Unfortunately, I am also bombarded by an orchestra of unnatural tech sounds, which drive me crazy.

Technology’s unnatural soundscape includes high-pitched sirens, beeps, chirps, pings, and other annoying alarm sounds, euphemistically called “alerts and notifications.” They exist indoors and outdoors and spew from my smartphone, refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, invisible dog fence, septic tank, milk frother, microwave, home security system, and the dreaded smoke detector. 

Loud alerts have a place in our society for essential things like air raids, house fires, jailbreaks, home invasions, hospital ventilator failures, and overheating nuclear reactors. However, today, we are alerted about everything. 

The proliferation of annoying tech sounds will only get worse as our appliances and cars get smarter and given an internet protocol (IP) address, connect to your WiFi and can send and receive data; this is referred to as the Internet of Things. The interconnections via the internet of computing devices embedded into everyday appliances will dramatically increase the number of unnecessary things these appliances want to alert you about.  

It also won’t be long before formerly dumb appliances interface with your personal assistant devices like Alexa, literally providing a voice to nag you to “Shut the Refrigerator!” “Empty the Dishwasher!” and “Close the Microwave Door!” based on data from a sensor that knows all.   

The proliferation of tech alerts is due to the availability of inexpensive parts to enable it, overeager engineers who want to put it everywhere, and marketers’ desire to innovate and get consumers to engage with their products. I just don’t think I need to engage a lot with my toaster. I would trade all this so-called innovation for a washing machine that lasted 25 years with little maintenance. 

This intelligent, sensor-based technology is rapidly spreading throughout the car and home appliances. In cars, we only used to care about the change oil, low tire pressure, and check engine visual alerts on the dashboard. Today, data is pouring in and out of cars. Sensor technology tells us when we are swerving into another lane, or about to back into a truck, or close to hitting the car in front of us because we are going too fast. I admit some of these notifications prevent teenagers, dumb people, and aging drivers like me from getting killed.

This tech invasion in the car was spurred on by Tesla, which turned the car into a giant computer, and traditional car makers have been playing catch up. Their tech upgrade started in the front seat and is now quickly moving to the backseat with “Rear Seat Alerts,” or as I call them, “Idiot Alerts.” For example, door logic algorithms and motion sensors now remind idiots who forget they have an infant or dog in the backseat to remove them. By the way, if you really need this feature, you should not be allowed to drive, have kids, or own a dog. 

How does it work? When a car door is opened and closed before or after the engine starts, the vehicle computer knows to issue a rear seat reminder when the engine is turned off. The Kia and Hyundai system includes a motion detector to scan the backseat for movement; if motion is detected, it will activate the horn, making it completely idiot-proof. 

Alarm PTSD likely causes my fixation on tech alarms and alerts. In my 30s, while cruising up First Avenue in NYC in my bright red Jeep, I once turned on my windshield wipers, and the car alarm started blaring. I quickly pulled into a Harlem gas station to avoid being arrested for grand theft auto. I offered the mechanic $50 to rip out any wire that would stop the noise.

Years later, my wife and I moved to Evergreen, Colorado, where no one had a car alarm or locked their doors at night. My wife’s car had a very sensitive alarm. Leaving for work early one morning, I lightly brushed up against her car, and the alarm began screaming. When my wife entered the garage, she found me kicking her car. Not my best moment.

The smoke alarm also triggers me. My wife loves to cook, and the smoke alarm regularly goes off at home and while visiting Airbnbs, often followed by an embarrassing visit from the fire department, with loud sirens and bright flashing lights.

During a recent Airbnb stay, the smoke alarm went off and alerted the owner via text, who was on an extended family vacation in Tel Aviv. The owner contacted a neighbor, who was dispatched to check if the house was on fire. After that, we began alerting the owner directly when we set off the smoke detector. After the third time, the owner texted us that they disconnected the remote alert feature. My wife is very zen-like when this happens. Me, not so much. 

I wish techies would focus on developing an alternative to the most annoying alert – the chirping smoke detector caused when the backup battery has to be replaced. Hearing this chirp is always a significant event in our home. My dog Ella always hears it first, usually at 1 a.m. She bolts into our bed, shaking, and stands on my chest until I wake up. My wife quickly evacuates her outside as I begin my chirp hunt. I am convinced the electrician who installed my smoke detectors hated me because several units were placed dangerously high, requiring a very long ladder to reach them. I would give anything for an app with a chirping smoke detector kill switch.         

My PTSD aside, I am still determining how I will handle the increasing bombardment of tech sounds in my Easton Shore home, especially since my wife has banned me from kicking cars and appliances. It may require regular visits to One Square Inch of Silence, a noise control project in the Hoh Rainforest at Olympic National Park in Washington state, called “the quietest place in the United States.” 

Hugh Panero, a tech & media entrepreneur, was the founder & former CEO of XM Satellite Radio. He has worked with leading tech venture capital firms and was an adjunct media professor at George Washington University. He writes about Tech and Media for the Spy.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Top Story, Hugh

Food Friday: It’s Time for Apples

September 29, 2023 by Jean Sanders 1 Comment

We drove out to a large farm stand a few days ago, in search of atmosphere for the front porch. It seems that autumnal decorations are de rigueur, even if it is just barely autumn, and not even October. Halloween has arrived. Our neighbors have had corn stalks and cascades of pumpkins decorating their entry way for more than a week. Fabric ghosts flit around a fence, and skeletons sit in rockers, flanking their front door. We look positively Grinch-y with our meagre display of flamed-out summer geraniums and limp coleus. It was only good manners to add a little fall color to our porch, and gain some cred in the suburbs.

We had a pleasant drive, playing hooky for an afternoon, shooting past harvested corn stubble, and still-green expanses of soy beans. We marveled at cotton fields and gawped at tobacco farms. We sped past solar farms, past well-maintained cottages, and tiny, tidy family burial plots. Past abandoned, vine-covered rural outposts, and the folks who keep their Christmas decorations up all year long.

The farm stand we visited was a bonanza of autumn: hundreds and thousands of pots of blooming chrysanthemums, and many stacks and heaps of pumpkins. I can’t say there were acres of mums, but I have never seen such an abundance of mums in one spot before. There were tables, and racks and aisles, and miles of aisles of mums: white, yellow, pink, rust and copper colored mums. The farm was an undulating rainbow of chrysanthemums. A small child pulled an unsteady red wagon out to the parking lot with the family’s chrysanthemum choice – a single, Brobdingnagian plant that towered over the boy – more of a tree than a potted flower. We made a more modest selection: two one-gallon-sized yellow-flowered plants to go in the planters on our top step. Plus we selected one ghostly white pumpkin, hastily plucked from a hallucinatory assortment of gourds. And poof! We were seasonal and au courant.

It is going to take a little bit more than window-dressing for us to leave summer behind. Visiting a farm stand is one way to feel in the moment, and so is tasting something familiar and evocative of fall. When was the last time you sat down with a nice, crisp apple? And not a warm, lumpy, bumpy one that has rolled around inside your lunch box for a week. When did you last enjoy a shiny, fresh Maryland apple?

Here is a handy dandy list you can print and take with you to the farmers’ market or your favorite farm stand. The very names are filled with poetry, travel, and adventure: Courtland, Crispin, Empire, Fuji, Gala, Ginger Gold, Jonagold, McIntosh, Mutsu, Rome, Stayman and York. Maryland Apples:

Every food site in the universe is bursting with apple recipes right now. Even the New York Times is willing to suggest the best apple peeling device on the market, which is the old-fashioned, hand-cranked one we all grew up with. I like to try to peel an apple in just one piece with a paring knife, and very rarely am I successful. But it is just fall, and early in the season and I am a little rusty. Come Thanksgiving I will be ready for the annual apple pie challenge. In the meantime, I will hone my skills on apple dishes that are not so high stakes.

This apple tart looks awfully pretty, and will be good practice for Thanksgiving: The Easiest French Apple Tart

Garden & Gun has an even more forgiving apple recipe: Apple Fritters You can have apples and cider, all in one.

King Arthur Flour has the easiest of all, with the added bonus of deelish frosting, because if we are bent of plumbing our childhood memories, we must freely admit that frosting is the main reason to eat any sort of cake: Old-Fashioned Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Frosting

There are many smells that remind me of my childhood, and apples instantly bring me back to school days and lunch boxes and trying to eat apples when I had lost my front teeth. Fall reminds me of my misspent youth, and healthy snacks, and cool weather with falling leaves. I like to remember the Gilbreth family from Cheaper By the Dozen. Mr. Gilbreth, an efficiency expert early in the 20th century, with twelve children, was keen not to waste a single minute of any day. He ate apples in a very efficient, though, odd fashion: “When he ate an apple, he consumed skin, core and seeds, which he alleged were the most healthful and most delectable portions of the fruit. Instead of starting at the side and eating his way around the equator, Dad started at the North Pole, and ate down through the core to the South.”

The neighbors’ festive fall decor isn’t looking so out-of-place to me now that we are participating in a modest fashion. Maybe after eating a few apples I will start feeling more nostalgic. Happy October!

“Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?” “For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure. For mumblety-peg, if that’s where your heart lies.”

― Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Food Friday, Top Story

Planet Diamonds by Angela Rieck

September 28, 2023 by Angela Rieck Leave a Comment

Wedding season is in full swing. Last year, 43% of the weddings occurred between September and November. But before there are weddings, there are diamonds, lots and lots of diamonds gracing the fingers of the affianced.

In the 1920s and 1930s, marketers convinced couples to use diamonds for engagement rings, arguing that nothing is stronger than a diamond and a diamond is forever. Despite the availability of other gemstones and even flawlessly crafted artificial diamonds, the trend for natural diamonds as engagement rings remains strong.

Diamonds have been valued and traded since 2500 BCE when they were discovered in river sediment in India. In the Middle Ages only the richest could afford diamonds. By the 19th century, more extensive diamond deposits were discovered in South Africa. Originally, diamonds were mined only in Africa, particularly Botswana, Angola, South Africa, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Today Russia and Canada are the largest suppliers, producing a combined total of 41 million carats annually. Australia, Brazil and Guyana also produce smaller quantities of gem-quality diamonds.

Despite the high price placed on diamonds, they are relatively common compared to other gemstones. They are even less rare than precious metals, such as gold. Diamonds keep their value because the market is tightly controlled by the DeBeers company, a behemoth in the diamond trade. DeBeers used to control 85% of all diamonds, now it is closer to 40%; but nevertheless, they still set the prices. The large cutters and distributers have only two options when purchasing diamonds: take it or leave it. There are no markdowns or discounts. The DeBeers company carefully monitors the prices of diamonds at the retail level. Any retailer who undercuts the price of diamonds will no longer have access to them. Pretty good way to control a monopoly.

Not all diamonds are the same. Some aren’t suitable for use in jewelry and find their way into industrial applications. The beautiful diamond rings that sparkle from brides’ fingers are the not the diamonds that are mined…the brides’ diamonds have been cut to perfection to sparkle and reflect light brilliantly.

Today, synthetic diamonds, which cost 60-70% less, are virtually indistinguishable from natural diamonds, except that they are flawless. Another advantage of these synthetic diamonds is that do not have issues with being used to fund civil wars. Those diamonds are called “conflict diamonds,” because of the cruel and callous conditions of miners and their use to fund devastating civil wars.

Diamonds were formed by intense pressure on carbon molecules. Carbon exists as graphite on the Earth’s surface. At a depth of 93 miles, where the pressure and temperatures are extremely high, the graphite becomes compressed into diamonds. They reach the surface, where they can be mined, via volcanic pipes called Kimberlite Pipes. These “pipes” are actually rock that contain diamonds that have been brought to the surface by volcanic eruptions. Not just any volcanic eruption, diamonds reached the surface from eruptions that occurred when the continents broke up and the tectonic plates were rearranged.

Diamonds are also common throughout the universe.

Scientists believe that aging stars can collapse on themselves, creating giant diamond crystals. In the constellation Centaurus, it was believed that a white dwarf had crystallized into a diamond about 2,500 miles in diameter. (However, newer models are not so sure.) Imagine an entire star that is a diamond.

Diamonds are plentiful even within our own solar system.

Many scientists believe that diamonds rain on Uranus and Neptune, our two ice giants. Diamonds might rain from the ice giants’ mantles (the first layer of the planet) and into their rocky cores. The mantels of ice planets are liquid, filled with water, ammonia, methane, and…diamonds.

Diamond formation within the mantle would explain why the ice giant planets’ magnetic fields are so different from Earth’s. Our magnetic field, which comes from our core, surrounds our planet, but the magnetic fields around Uranus and Neptune are not symmetrical, nor do they extend from each pole. Scientists hypothesize that the magnetic fields of these ice giants originate in a layer of conducting material in the mantle, formed as a by-product of making diamonds.

Diamond rain might occur in the atmosphere of these planets as well.

Recently, Saturn and Jupiter have been added to the list of planets that potentially have diamond rain in their atmospheres. (Other gems such as sapphire, rubies and emeralds are also likely on Saturn and Jupiter.) Based on temperature and pressure predictions of the planets’ interiors, scientists conclude that gigantic diamond crystals hail over a huge region of Saturn. Saturn’s atmosphere has intense lightening that turns the methane in its atmosphere into soot. As the soot falls, the pressure on these carbon particles turn them into large chunks of diamonds. However, by the time they reach the planet’s surface, however, they may no longer be solid.

I guess diamonds aren’t forever on other planets. For now, it is less expensive to get our diamonds from our own planet.

But maybe diamonds are a good metaphor for marriage. They are created under adverse conditions of extreme pressure, and with careful care and tooling, they become spectacular.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Top Story, Angela

A New Political Philosophy in America: Selfism by Al Sikes

September 28, 2023 by Al Sikes 3 Comments

We should all step back and understand what is going on in our most important expression of self-governance. A democracy gives us the right to select our most important leader. The leader who will have directly or indirectly effect or influence every instrument of government and who has the power to subordinate the institutions that protect us.

Courts decide who wins or loses disputes. Our legislature (Congress) can act by majority rule unless the President vetoes their actions. The President, as well, has broad executive authority and enjoys what President Theodore Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit”. 

These powers need to be used cautiously. And, more often than not, my preference has been to act at the State level—distributed power. These principles, at least in normal times, brand me as a conservative. But now a movement called populism has overtaken the conservative party. But I would call it by a different name: Selfism.

In the last 30 days Donald J Trump has displayed Selfism in ways that leave no doubt. He has called Courts corrupt. He urged the Republicans to shut down the government if they don’t get everything they want. He has called prosecutors lunatics and President Biden the worst President in history. In short, disagreements with him result from corruption (the courts), treason (General Milley) or severe mental illness (lunatic prosecutors). 

The Wall Street Journal on the matter of General Milley noted: “Here was part of Mr. Trump’s send-off for Mr. Milley, who’s finishing his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: “This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

The message is clear—if I don’t like the outcome then the institutions of government are corrupt. Not just wrong, treasonous.

Selfism is a radical version of sanctimony. We have all experienced it. It is that worst of all dinner conversations when somebody must always be right. Morally superior as the definition goes. It is I, I, I. 

I can’t think of a more toxic combination: power and Selfism. Laughingly Trump calls Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, DeSanctimonious. 

Presumptively we all have some measure of sanctimony. I suspect there are very few who don’t think one or more of their opinions are morally superior. Paradoxically, those who insist that all principles are relative are the most sanctimonious. 

One feature of The Spy is that the reader can tell the writer to “take a hike” or worse. I have been asked why I don’t respond to criticism. I welcome criticism. Afterall, I have been given the privilege of expressing my view first.

In a much, much larger context we rely on our court processes to settle disputes and know there are several layers of appeal from the initial decision. Yet, Donald Trump has reserved some of his harshest criticisms for the Courts and its procedures.

And let’s not forget that for over four years he was the appointing authority for the federal court judges. While perfect balance in the judiciary is elusive, alternating political authority is about as close as we humans can get. And when a candidate who wants that power is the candidate of the Selfism Party, we should look elsewhere. 

Now before laying down the pen, I would offer that Selfism’s convergence with Populism is when a candidate exploits populist views to achieve his ultimate ambition. Getting elected must be a first step.

Donald Trump betrayed his true intoxication when he said: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” This was a revealing moment when he essentially said he could depart from civility and conservative thought without losing voters.

The final test for the Republican Party will occur after Trump is no longer its head. Will Populists with much less electoral weight than Trump, like Senators JD Vance and Josh Hawley, prevail over Governors and Senators whose views and actions are more representative of, say, Former President Ronald Reagan? I, of course, hope the test will come sooner.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

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Filed Under: Top Story, Al

Why Senator Menendez’s Indictment Should Worry Us All by J.E. Dean

September 27, 2023 by J.E. Dean 8 Comments

I am thinking positive thoughts about Maryland’s two Senators. Not only do they do an excellent job representing everyone in Maryland, but they do not take bribes. To compliment legislators for honesty might seem strange, but the recent charges brought against Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), remind us how easy it is for politicians to succumb to the temptations of power. Menendez is accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, and a luxury car in exchange for using his influence in Washington to aid individuals and the government of Egypt.

The 39-page indictment includes photographs of the fruits of Menendez’s alleged corruption. The pictures are nauseating. Menendez, until last week, was the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In that post, he was privy to sensitive government information and had the power to block the sale of military arms to foreign governments. He also was well known within the State Department and other government agencies. 

While legislators cannot order federal agencies to take or withhold actions benefiting an individual or foreign government, any communication from them bears weight. Most legislators understand this and, as a policy, tell any constituent asking for help that “crosses the line” that such intervention is beyond their authority. But nobody polices the communications of senators and representatives. Unless someone blows the whistle, improper actions might not be caught.

Senator Menendez counted on not getting caught. That is curious because less than a year before engaging in the alleged corruption detailed in the indictment, he dodged conviction on another bribery charge after the jury was deadlocked. One would have thought that experience would have taught Menendez that “you can’t get away with it.”  Apparently, Menendez did not see his actions, and the size of the bribes he allegedly accepted, as sufficiently blatant to attract attention.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and many others have called on Menendez to resign. The Senator denies the charges and says he is not going anywhere. Even more disturbing is his statement made after calls for his resignation: “It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere.”

Assuming the facts alleged in the indictment are accurate, Menendez will be leaving the Senate and going to jail. Assuming he is guilty, that will be justice, but that is not the end of the story. More important than holding a legislator accountable for corruption is the damage it does to the public’s confidence in democracy and our representative form of government.

The news of Menendez’s indictment comes as the “real story” in Washington is how a small group of reckless, radical right-wing Republicans have hijacked the weak-in-the-spine Speaker of the House of Representatives in an attempt to shut down the federal government. The unspoken truth in Washington is that the House of Representatives is broken, perhaps permanently. Opinion writers are telling us, “Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is running the House of representatives.” If you don’t know who Gaetz is, take something for your stomach and Google him.  

We are also watching another U.S. Senator blocking confirmations of top military appointments in an effort to fight the military’s abortion policies. That Senator is ex-football coach Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). He is undermining the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to confirm appointments and risking the national security of the United States. 

The actions of the radical right in the House of Representatives and Tuberville in the Senate coupled with the disgusting corruption allegations involving Menendez, his wife, and several others, paint a sordid picture.

I wonder how much more dysfunction Congress can stand before the public concludes it is time to throw the towel in on the Constitution. That is why the Menendez allegation is so worrying. In Congress these days, there are good people and bad people, but unfortunately the number of bad people is growing.

Maryland has had its share of corrupt politicians and right-wing ideologues. Remember Spiro Agnew, the only vice president to resign from office? And, unfortunately, I worry that the Eastern Shore’s own Andy Harris will be among those Republicans who will do nothing to stop the shutdown of the U.S. government.

Washington needs a good scrubbing. Until that happens, be worried, but also do something about it. Demand honesty and integrity from elected officials. And demand that they do their jobs and not play games that jeopardize national security or domestic tranquility. 

J.E. Dean is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant writing on politics, government, and other subjects. 

 

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Filed Under: Top Story, J.E. Dean

Out and About (Sort of): Age of Rudeness by Howard Freedlander

September 26, 2023 by Howard Freedlander 6 Comments

Washington College students rudely disrupt a talk by a conservative scholar.

Stanford University Law School students rudely interrupt a conservative federal judge.

University of Pennsylvania students, disappointed by the school’s fossil fuels investments, rudely interrupt a Homecoming football game by storming the field at halftime and delaying the game for an hour. They hoped to gain attention (as they did) and alumni affirmation (which they didn’t).

Is free speech, as selectively applied by students displeased with a speaker’s political allegiance, fair speech? I think not.

Encouraged to be critical thinkers, students instead are favoring mob rule. Their treatment of people who think differently than they is abysmal. Their listening skills are defective. They believe that disagreement nullifies polite behavior. Their immaturity is astounding.

We are experiencing an epidemic of student activism similar to the protests that characterized the 1960s. Then, the Vietnam War and Civil Rights demonstrations ignited actions by young adults to occupy university administration offices and join marches in Washington and New York. The spark continued to inflame the first half of the 1970s. 

Families steeped in the Great Depression and World War II became splintered. Privileged youth felt empowered to disclaim a war corruptly executed; unfortunately, they unfairly disparaged soldiers who had nothing to do with conceiving the Southeast Asian conflict. They justifiably condemned racism; they bravely suffered physical harm.

Nearly 65 years later, college campuses again are becoming battlegrounds for academic dissatisfaction. Those whose political philosophy is decidedly right-wing face uncalled-for disparagement from their liberal peers. Behavior has morphed into self-righteous indignation—and abject failure to listen.

Rudeness is the norm. It is unconscionable, destructive of civil discourse. Young undergrads don’t care. What matters is abject opposition. Free speech is weaponized.

Should undergrads accuse me of exercising judgment based on my advanced age, I would oppose that interpretation. Free speech is a Constitutional right, preferably devoid of heckling. It bears an unspoken responsibility to listen and treat the speaker with respect.

Or students can find something else to do with their time. That’s their right.

I must digress ever so slightly by referring again to Penn, my alma mater. The subject is fraught. The Palestine Literature Festival convened this past weekend, much to the angry despair of Jewish students and angrier dismay of alumni. Several speakers were known anti-Semites, including Roger Waters, a British singer who claims he is not an anti-Jewish, but someone who is critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

In a world dominated by nuance, American Jews too criticize the Netanyahu government for its oppression of Palestinians living on the West Bank. However, they do not voice anti-Semitic comments, only disappointment at the diminution of democracy in Israel.

Highly attuned to anti-Semitic comments and actions, Jews consider criticism of Zionism and Israeli policies toward Palestinians as code for anti-semitism. They may be right.

I am saddened by the university’s lack of judgment and its unwillingness to change course. And while I support the festival’s literary intent and free speech—if not a devious tactic to voice bigotry—I have spent painful time trying to divine the intrinsic value of free versus hateful discourse. If the latter leads to dangerous conditions imposed on Jewish students, then my tolerance weakens.

Anti-Semitic remarks sting me, as if fired by a stun gun. Still, a rude reaction is not my style. Agitated behavior accomplishes little but  continuation of toxic dialogue. 

University students, wherever they roam academic villages, achieve little but immature self-satisfaction when they exercise their free speech to thwart the expression of viewpoints antithetical to theirs.

Rudeness is avoidable. It also is inexcusable. Guest speakers who are not espousing viewpoints that can incite harm deserve tolerant hospitality.

Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. After 44 years in Easton, Howard and his wife, Liz, moved in November 2020 to Annapolis, where they live with Toby, a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who has no regal bearing, just a mellow, enticing disposition.

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Top Story, Howard

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