Nancy Hesser

Power-packed and pared down, flash fiction and its kin – pocket, postcard, and palm-sized stories – can provide a refreshing option for today’s readers. This three-session course offers an international sampling of vivid “short shorts,” each under three pages, whose authors have swapped length for strength to build suspense, paint memorable portraits, and evoke powerful emotions. Discussion topics will include “Flash Back: How We Came Up Short,” and “Flash Freeze.” Readings will be provided via email.

Nancy Hesser, Ph.D., has taught literature in the US, DR Congo, and Mali. When she is not hanging out with her husband and canine companions in Dorchester County’s salt marshes, she may be found teaching short story courses for various lifelong learning programs, focusing on such themes as American regionalism, the Roaring 20’s, Caribbean voices, bar room stories, and flash fiction. Choose between Live ZOOM Class Sessions or Recorded, Thursdays, February 11, 18, 25 from 1:30-2:30 pm $30. To register for the course go to our website at https://chesapeakeforum.org/ or visit us on Facebook.

Bev Williams

Hemingway wrote often about hunting and fishing, war settings, bullfights and boxing, and domestic situations. Readers seem to either love his stories or to hate them. In this course, we will explore the import and highly dramatized tension created by his predominantly objective point of view, frequently in dialogue without any comment by the narrator. We will discuss Hemingway’s fiction and how his life affected his writing.  The aim of this course is to introduce some main themes that run throughout Hemingway’s fiction. We will focus on two stories for the first part of each session. Then we will gloss over the other stories for the session, linking them thematically and stylistically to the first two. I will then open the class to comments and questions.  You will receive excerpts from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway in a PDF and the number of pages for each. Most stories are very brief.

Bev has taught English for high school and middle school with a focus on composition, grammar, literature, vocabulary, as well as strategies for study and retention. Bev has also been a guest lecturer at Episcopal High School, Alexandria, VA, and he holds a BA, and MA in English from the University of Virginia. Choose between Live ZOOM Class Sessions or Recorded, Wednesdays, Feb 10, 17, 24 from 4:00 -5:30 pm $30. Enrollment in the Live ZOOM Option is Limited. To register for the course, or for more information go to our website at https://chesapeakeforum.org/ or visit us on Facebook.

Wayne Bell

Got waterfowl? Want to see some loons and gannets? How about a warbler or two and maybe even an elusive rail? We will observe these groups of birds and more, each serving as a prelude to a day-long field trip to locations where the target species are most likely to be seen. Get a handle on the variety of our region’s bird life during the winter and early spring migration. The classes will be virtual, but the field trips will be live with your classmates under appropriate social distancing requirements. February 8^th – Wondrous Waterfowl (will be at Cambridge Waterfront, Blackwater NWR for ducks and geese); March 8^th – Coastal Treasures (will be at Ocean City MD for gannets, sea ducks, loons, and gulls); April 19^th – Burst of Spring (will be at Pocomoke Swamp and Elliott’s Island Road for early warblers, vireos, and flycatchers plus rails and wetland specialties). Enrollment in the Live ZOOM Course w/Field Trips is limited to 12.  Due to COVID limitations, Field Trips are offered only to those taking the Live ZOOM Class.  Sites and times of Field Trips may change.

Dr. Bell is Senior Associate and former Director of the Washington College Center for Environment and Society. A native of Silver Spring, MD, he graduated from the University of Miami, Florida, and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Retired since 2006, Dr. Bell continues his passion for birds and teaching through the Maryland Ornithological Society and its Youth Program (YMOS).  Choose between Live ZOOM Class Sessions or Recorded, Thursdays, February 4, March 4, April 15 from| 2:30-4:00 pm. Field Trips: Mondays, February 8, March 8, April 19 from 8:00 am-3:00 pm $30. To register for the course, or for more information about Chesapeake Forum Winter/Spring 2021 classes go to our website at https://chesapeakeforum.org/ or visit us on Facebook.

Kate Livie explores the diverse story of the Bay’s staple seafood, blue crabs. Crabs reveal the complex, deeply nuanced connection between the Bay’s environment and the Chesapeake people and how that relationship has transformed due to industry, adaptation, pollution and climate change. She also explores the foodways and history of the beautiful swimmer— a story of diversity, from enslaved cooks who created our Chesapeake cuisine flavored by the tastes of the diaspora, to modern-day packing houses powered by H2B migrant pickers from Mexico.

Kate Livie is a professional Chesapeake educator, writer and historian. An Eastern Shore native, Kate is passionate about the Chesapeake Bay’s culture and landscape. She has written extensively about regional travel, history, environment and foodways for publications from Wooden Boat to Baltimore Magazine to Edible Delmarva. Her 2015 book, Chesapeake Oysters: The Bay’s Foundation and Future, won the Maryland Historical Society’s Marion Brewington Prize for Maritime History. Formerly the director of education and associate curator at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, she is currently a part of the humanities faculty at the Center for Environment and Society at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, where she teaches courses about the Bay’s environment, arts, economy, traditions and culture. Kate lives with her husband in her hometown of Chestertown, Maryland, on Morgan Creek.

Choose between Live ZOOM Class Session or Recorded. Wednesday, February 3 from 1:00 to 2:30 pm $10. To register for the course, or for more information about Chesapeake Forum Winter/Spring 2021 classes go to our website at https://chesapeakeforum.org/ or visit us on Facebook.

This presentation will use a sonar-mapped oyster reef from the dock of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge, MD to illustrate, geologically, what the Bay looked like in this vicinity of the Choptank River from 20,000 years ago (when the sea level was 300 feet lower) until now.  You will see the Choptank as an energetic, flowing, meandering river; the subsequent incursion of saltwater into the Chesapeake Bay; and sea level reaching its present level from 6,000 years ago. The presentation will show the burying of that reef by sediments washing off the fields of the Wilhelmina Colony up by the Dover Bridge in the late 1800’s.  Finally, the program will also suggest that there was more going on to cause the demise of oysters than over exploitation.

Dr. Levin has over 40 years of experience mapping globally dispersed seafloors with a myriad of technologies. He directs the Watershed Innovation Lab at Washington College where he creates affordable water quality observation systems. Doug lives on the Choptank River in Preston, Maryland where he enjoys kayaking, fishing, woodworking, and a good glass of scotch. Choose between Live ZOOM Class Session or Recorded, Wednesday, February 3 from 10:00 to 11:30 am $10.  To register for the course, or for more information about Chesapeake Forum Winter/Spring 2021 classes go to our website at https://chesapeakeforum.org/ or visit us on Facebook.