The Talbot County visible from public highways and roads includes vast acreage of fertile farm fields and woods punctuated with numerous villages, towns and crossroads communities.

According to the 2021 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, the county’s 269 square miles includes a land area of 171,000 acres.  Of those, 109,000 acres are farmland.

By boat though, Talbot County looks to be a different place altogether. That different place – reflected in real estate prices – contributes significantly to Talbot County’s wealth and the perspective driving much of the county’s governance.

Joye Nagel, former Talbot County finance director, articulated that distinction in her introductory letter to the 2021 report:

“The County’s 600 miles of shoreline and many historic sites make it a significant tourist destination, drawing visitors from all over the region. Additionally, its abundant waterfront provides many desirable home sites. Development is purposely controlled to protect the County’s beauty and the fragile environment of its shoreline and waters. More intense development is limited to the incorporated municipalities where water and wastewater treatment services are available.”

My quest to determine exactly how many waterfront properties there are in Talbot led, courtesy of current Talbot Finance Director Martha Sparks, to the notes section at the end of the 2021 report.  Though the number of waterfront properties wasn’t included, many other statistics were.

The report notes that the estimated market value of all Talbot County real estate, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, totaled just over $8.63 billion.

As is the nature of the rising and falling economy that affects real estate values, the report notes that in 2012, that number stood at $9.7 billion.

Queen Anne’s County, just north of Talbot, reported its 2021 estimated value of real estate at just under $8.6 billion. There, the shoreline clocks in at 414 miles.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shoreline definition includes the mileage along “offshore islands, sounds, bays, rivers, and creeks to the head of tidewater or to a point where tidal waters narrow to a width of 100 feet.”

NOAA estimates the total shoreline of the US at 95,471 miles.

Most know that California, geographically, is a whole lot larger than Maryland, yet that state’s total shoreline of 3,427 miles is only a couple hundred more than Maryland’s 3,190 miles.

Dorchester County to the south of Talbot, with all of its meandering rivers and bays and creeks and extensive marsh systems, give it 1,700 miles of shoreline, according to NOAA.

Shoreline and coastline are two different things as California and Maryland bear out.  California’s ocean coast stretches 840 miles from north to south while Maryland has just 31 miles of ocean coast.

But back to Talbot’s numbers.

Driven largely by the value of waterfront property, Talbot’s property taxes brought $45.7 million to county coffers in the 2021 fiscal year.  That’s the county’s single largest source of revenues and 41.2 percent of total tax revenues which in 2021 amounted to $120,424,546. That’s against $101,715,752 in expenses.

The report places RDC Inn at Perry Cabin LLC as the holder of the most valuable single piece of real estate in Talbot, valued by the county for tax purposes at $25,497,233.

Talbot’s income tax rate of 2.4 percent is also a significant contributor to county revenues, just under $32 million for the 2021 year.  That’s on the basis of $1.37 billion of taxable income earned by the county’s 14,917 tax filers.  The county’s total population for that year is listed as 37,673.

A chart in the report shows how that tax burden is distributed. Just about 30 percent of income taxes – $9,369,106 – are paid by the 332 filers who reported incomes for that year of $500,000 and up. The highest number of filers, 4,307, reported annual incomes between $25,000.and $49,900. Their taxes totaled $2,451,626, or about 7.7 percent of Talbot’s total income tax revenues.

That’s called a progressive tax system, where people pay progressively more taxes the more they earn. Sales taxes are a regressive tax where the tax collected is a higher percentage of a person’s income the less they earn.

The other brackets in the Talbot income tax chart show 679 filers earning between $250,000 and $499,000 per year; 2,990 filers between $100,000 and $249,000; 3,860 filers between $50,000 and $99,900; and 2,681 filers between $5,000 and $24,900. There were 678 filers in the under $5,000 per year bracket.

Getting back to the total number of waterfront properties in Talbot, I’m still working on that one.  Tougher to pin down. Stay tuned.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Watching the development and revitalization of Baltimore’s inner harbor over the past 50 years has been something to behold.

Talbot County native and visionary James Rouse sparked much of the transformation with his Harborplace complex in the heart of the city many decades ago. He understood the allure of public waterfront spaces where people could gather, enjoy being outside, take long walks, and watch the dynamic interaction between the humming maritime activity of the harbor and the culture of the multi-faceted city surrounding it.

Pursued with the assistance of many of Baltimore’s leaders, Rouse’s vision continues to unfold today with the promise of creating an even more powerful nucleus around which the city can rebuild and thrive. The mixed-use high-rises of the Inner Harbor East area just a few blocks from the original Harborplace buildings have brought a new vibrancy and round-the-clock economy to what was once a monolithic industrial complex. Tens of thousands of residents in the apartments and condominiums overlooking the streets and harbor mean more and more business for restaurants, grocery stores and other retail establishments at sidewalk level. The miles-long public promenade linking so much of the waterfront’s businesses, residences, offices and parks add to the attractiveness.

The magic and positive contagion of Rouse’s big, waterfront thinking continues to spread, although the future of the city’s nearby central business district remains another question mark for the city.

The latest cranes accenting the inner harbor skyline belong to the massive Harbor Point project on one of the city’s most prominent pieces of waterfront property.

Baltimore Chrome Works, a previous occupant, was once reputed to be the world’s largest industrial processor of chromium ore, mined in Maryland. Situated on 27 acres and surrounded on three sides by water, the noisy and smokey facility and its associated wharves employed thousands, produced chromium chemicals for a wide variety of industrial and military uses, and, unfortunately, polluted the waters of the city’s harbor.

Following hundreds of millions spent to clear, clean, and cap the site to prevent further pollution of the harbor’s Patapsco River, the leveled property is well on its way to becoming what its developers call a sustainable urban hub.

Across from the Domino sugar facility, Harbor Point is well on its way to becoming a mixed-use home to three-million square feet of offices, retail space, residences and hotel rooms.

The 21-story Exelon building, completed in 2016 with LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) certification, towers over the site. It came on the heels of the eight-story Thames Street Wharf offices building, completed in 2010 as the first Harbor Point structure.

The partnership of Armada Hoffler, construction contractors, and Beatty Development, assisted by City of Baltimore economic development funding, are continuing at an aggressive pace. The 1405 Point building, with 289 residences and 18,000 square feet of retail space, opened in 2018 followed by the 12-story Wills Wharf complex of hotel and office space and its accompanying park.

The third, final and grandest phase of Harbor Point is now under construction.  The global headquarters of financial firm T. Rowe Price will occupy two, seven-story buildings with 550,000 square feet of new office space.  The final phase also includes more than 500 residential units and 60,000 square feet of new retail space. Completion is slated for 2024.

Louis Haddad, president and CEO of Virginia Beach-based Armada Hoffler, calls Harbor Point “a shining example of the kind of long-term, transformative neighborhood developments our company pursues. It is emerging as a safe, high-quality destination for Baltimore residents, professionals and visitors to spend time in. Harbor Point is helping the city retain quality businesses as a newer, vibrant alternative to the central business district. The vision of our partnership with Beatty Development Group is to create a cohesive, well-rounded neighborhood the city and its residents can be proud of.”

With hundreds of years of history, and counting, Baltimore is more proof that nothing is as constant as change.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Why does a pile of boulders in a farmer’s front yard in Caroline County, on the road between Denton and Easton, bring an inquiring smile to my face?

Here’s one explanation, involving ice ages, glaciers, millions of years and geologic history.

When you’re heating rods of iron in a coal-fired forge, then hammering them on an anvil into useful and decorative shapes, you can’t be in a hurry.  I’m pretty sure that’s why my friend the blacksmith has often said that the key to happiness is slow.

If that’s the case, then geologists must be among the happiest of people.  Geological time, after all, is real slow, and that’s the world in which they delve.

One geological source, for example, tells us that the Appalachian mountains millions of years ago butted right up against the mid-Atlantic coast.  That made for a rocky shoreline as exists today in New England and northward.  But their studies show that the Appalachians, in tectonic fashion, have been migrating westward annually at about the same pace as the growth of our fingernails.

That kind of slow breeds a happiness that can’t help but morph into contentment.

If you, like millions of others, are content to sit on one of the Delmarva Peninsula’s miles and miles of sandy beaches, watching the waves pushing sand back and forth between sea and dunes, you can thank the Appalachians.  Their slow migration made way for development of the fertile coastal plain, in general, and the Delmarva Peninsula specifically.

Over millions of years, and one ice age after another, eroding mountains sent sand seaward down rivers and streams until the gravitational flow eased.  Sand settled out and piled up as it met the incessant power of the ocean.  Together, sand and sediment rolling out of the great and ancient Susquehanna and Delaware rivers eventually formed this long spit of land that we now call the Delmarva Peninsula, and its beaches, between the flooded Chesapeake and Delaware bay estuaries.

Flat and fertile, the peninsula has proven commodious for human habitation since the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. ‘The land of pleasant living,’ as Delmarva is often called.

But boulders, like those along the road in Caroline County, were not part of the general equation that formed Delmarva. Farmers here don’t typically work around rocks and boulders in their fields. So what gives?

University of Delaware geologist Kelvin Ramsey provided the answer to that mystery a few decades back when I was reporting on the finding of a boulder about the size of a Volkswagen beetle.  A farmer disking a field in late spring, outside Milton and near Delaware Bay, struck the boulder and gave me a call.

Such boulders, Ramsey said, amount to geological debris left behind by receding glaciers melting away at the end of the last ice age.  Encapsulated in ice as glaciers formed, boulders moved forward with the ice.

Or, he said, they could have been tangled in tree roots and were rushed over the peninsula when melting glaciers spawned powerful floods in the big rivers. When those floods subsided, the trees, and boulders they pushed along, eventually fell out. The trees rotted away. The boulders endured.

“They’re probably quartz or sandstone,” said Ramsey of the Caroline County boulders. “In the hilly country of Pennsylvania and New York you’ll find boulders, like those, at the tops of ridges.  Durable and hard, they last.  Transported by ice or flooding rivers, they would hold up.”

Receding glaciers and associated flooding also probably explain the gravel in the sand pit where the boulders were discovered.

Bruce Miller owns the farm where the boulders now live, not far from the sand pit.  He has used them over the years for an informal fence along the road and to border his wife’s rose garden. He’s grown fond of them. Geological happiness abides.

When he makes a planned move to Delaware, the boulders will go with him.  “They’re a connection to my dad.  He brought them to me.”

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Those feisty blue crabs that snap their claws and defiantly spit streams of water when we reach for them with tongs turn out to be a whole lot more instinctively smart than many of us realize. That’s why managing them as a highly sought-after coastal resource can be tricky, complicated and – most of all – filled with uncertainty.

A dredge survey this year of thousands of sites throughout the Chesapeake where blue crabs hibernate through the winter found the lowest number of crabs since the annual survey began 30 years ago. That has led to lower than usual harvests through the first half of the 2022 season.

Resource managers in Maryland and Virginia responded by shortening the 2022 season by a couple of weeks, placing bushel limits on the commercial harvest of male crabs where there had been no limits before, reducing the bushel limits on commercial harvesting of female crabs for the months of July through October, and reducing the bushel limits for recreational crabbers.

But they and the scientists who guide them in their work are still scratching their heads. Why did the Chesapeake’s overall crab population decline significantly this year? Asked if there were any predominant reasons being bandied about, Gregg Bortz in the communications office for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources said this: “No consensus as of yet. There may be more discussion on that among the scientists and managers later in the year. The immediate focus has been on management adjustments that can be made this season.”

Watermen are now reporting increasing numbers of smaller and larger crabs in their pots and on their trotlines as July races toward August. That bodes well for stronger late-season crabbing, after a couple more sheds and the consequent increase in size.

But, is there any way of predicting how many baby crabs will be born during 2022 and eventually become part of next winter’s dredge survey? Female crabs in the Chesapeake, in total, produce hundreds of millions of eggs each year. How many of those eggs will hatch and survive over the course of the 18 months or so that it takes for them to go through several life stages to reach juvenile crab size and eventual market size?

That’s where the tricky, complicated and uncertain parts come in.

Dr. Charles Epifanio of University of Delaware’s School of Marine Science and Policy in Lewes, along with several students and academic colleagues, has been studying blue crabs for several decades. In 2019, the Journal of Shellfish Research published a review paper by Epifanio that provided an overview of more than 100 years of science related to the early life history of the blue crab.

The review cited hundreds of papers written on the subject.

Research leading to the published studies – scientists building a body of knowledge through questioning, collaboration and sharing of results – revealed an amazing picture. Epifanio’s review shows how crabs travel hundreds of miles back and forth between ocean and bay. They have to do that to find the right conditions for the successful completion of their various life stages from fertilized egg to the mature crabs so prized for their delicate and flavorful meat.

That journey takes them from the fresher, middle and upper reaches of estuaries like the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, all the way out to the much higher salinity of surface waters along the Atlantic’s inner continental shelf. It’s in those higher salinity waters that the newly hatched larvae begin to grow and shed and grow and shed before riding tides and wind currents back into the estuaries.

Eating, drinking, swimming and growing, and responding to physical and chemical cues in all those activities, evolving crabs know where to position themselves in the water column to get where they want to go. For instance, constantly swimming upwards in the ocean water column keeps tiny crab larvae near the surface where wind currents carry them back into their ultimate estuaries where they can mature into adult crabs. They’re attracted to the surface waters by sensing the fresher, less salty and lighter water that floats to the surface as well as other cues like light and turbulence..

At the other end of their journey, mature female crabs – using more of the same cues that brought them this far – catch flood tides to make their way up to mating grounds in the middle and upper reaches of the bays. There, they gather all the sperm they can from a male crab during a once-in-a-lifetime, ten-hour mating session.

After carefully packaging the sperm to be used for fertilizing up to three or four broods of millions of eggs, and a sensitive-but-firm hit-the-road Jack discussion with their mate, the females catch ebbing tides to carry them back to the saltier water of the lower bays. In their tidal journeys, crabs sink to the bottom when the flow isn’t in the right direction. Currents are weaker there.

It’s in those saltier waters that the females use the stored sperm to fertilize their eggs before the next phase of their seaward migration takes them and their hatching eggs to the inner shelf waters where the larvae begin their development to start the whole process over again.

In the conclusion to his review, Epifanio wrote: “Perhaps the most important contribution of the past few decades has been the discovery that larval development in blue crabs occurs mainly in surface waters of the inner continental shelf – not in the estuary – and that larval transport on the shelf is is controlled by interactions between buoyant discharge from the estuary and wind patterns over the coastal ocean.”

Buoyant discharge relates to the fact that the freshwater of rainfall flowing out of estuaries like the Chesapeake is lighter than the saltwater of the ocean and tends to float near the surface.

Studying the wind currents and rainfall patterns in any given year that can influence the movement and numbers of developing larvae back into the estuary from the inner continental shelf might give a sense of how many crabs may eventually be on their way.

“The model is pretty good at predicting the magnitude of tiny, tiny juvenile crabs that might make it into the estuary,” said Epifanio in an interview this week. “Funding agencies are willing to give money to people like me because of the possibility of predicting the catch. But to get from the variations in the numbers of the tiny, tiny crabs to the variations in the catch of adults is not straightforward. We’ve tried that kind of predicting. It didn’t work that well. These studies explain a lot of how larvae make their way into the juvenile habitat where they can grow. And they show us how chemical cues in the water guide them into the sea grass and oyster reef bottoms where they find protection.”

But a lot can happen to them as they move up the bays, said Epifanio. Predators and availability of proper habitat from year to year make it hard to explain the great variations in the numbers that actually make it to the point of being counted in the winter dredge surveys.

For now at least, despite the great advances since the late 1800s in science’s insight into the mysteries of the complicated blue crab, Epifanio strikes a pragmatic tone:

“I wouldn’t bet heavy money on predicting catch based on wind and rainfall.”

But he agreed the gap between the magnitude of developing larvae that make their way into the bays’ nursery areas, and the adult crab population, offers rich ground for future scientific inquiry and potentially better models for predicting potential catch.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

“Although the sense of equality is made the basis of many social and political ideals, the real conditions of rich cooperative life are fulfilled only when the bare idea of equality is replaced by the realization of the unity of all life.” – Meher Baba, Discourses

On a heavily shaded lot, barely visible amidst dark-leafed old hardwood trees, the Sophie Kerr House with its unpretentious wooden white sign is little more than an afterthought to passersby in Denton.

No historical marker of more permanence tells those with at least a casual interest anything about Kerr.

Nothing is said of her early years growing up in Caroline County’s seat of government, or what may have spawned her later success as a writer and editor in one of the world’s fiercest cauldrons for testing literary aspirants. Did the stark contrast between her sleepy riverside birthplace and the electric dynamism of New York City where Kerr landed strike an undeniable creative spark? A spark more akin to a lightning bolt than the lightning bugs she grew up with in the dusks of muggy summer nights?

Nothing is said about her prolific fictional writings in the 1930s and 1940s centered largely around female characters.

And nothing is said about her significant financial bequest to Chestertown’s Washington College that has nurtured and cultivated a vibrant literary scene for the small liberal arts school.

In addition to bringing distinctive literary programs and notable figures to Washington College, annual proceeds from the Kerr bequest fund one of the nation’s richest literary awards.

Through the many decades since the award was established in 1968, its proceeds have helped many dedicated editors and writers hone their literary craft.

A press release about the 2022 award explains the Sophie Kerr Award: “In accordance with the terms of her will, half of the annual income from her bequest to the College is awarded each year to the graduating senior demonstrating the best potential for future achievement in a literary endeavor. Valued at more than $68,000 in 2022, it remains the nation’s largest undergraduate writing prize, more than the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award combined.”

The 2022 award was presented in May to Teddy Friedline of Greenville, South Carolina.

It’s tough to say what Kerr may have been leaning toward when she mentioned “potential for future achievement in a literary endeavor” as the guiding criteria for the judges making the award. That discussion certainly wouldn’t fit on an historical marker.

But, did Kerr conclude, in her silent musings on her dying wishes, that the importance of literary achievement lies within its ability to bring people together through communication? Communication made effective through engaging use of language resonating with compelling relationships and ideas shared between people?

Was she a kindred spirit of Russian philosopher and novelist Leo Tolstoy who wrote something to the effect that art succeeds as art to the extent to which it enhances the sense of brotherhood, sisterhood, theyhood and yohood between people? Communication that ultimately brings us more together through its enlightening discipline?

If so, Kerr was way ahead of her time in realizing the importance of effective communication through literature for an increasingly divided world.

In an acceptance speech for this year’s award, Friedline briefly tapped into those deep roots and quoted poet Frank O’Hara: “I am the least difficult of men.  All I want is boundless love.”

Friedline gave thanks to professors, family members, finalists for the award and others who figured in the literary journey that culminated in the moment.

“In the introduction to my portfolio I wrote about community,” said Friedline, “and how my most favorite thing about literary life on campus and literature in general is community. Appreciating community makes us better as writers and even more so makes us better as people.”

Sophie Kerr, through her extensive writing and editing of many prominent publications, did more than her part in synchronizing the minds and hearts of hundreds of thousands of people – at least temporarily – through their simple but profound act of reading her work.

In that sense she helped create community. No doubt she would concur with Friedline’s sentiments.

Samples of Friedline’s Writing

The introduction to the website reads: “my name is Teddy Friedline (they/them/theirs). i’m a queer writer, artist, editor, & the like. Here you can find some of my work, my social media, and my contact info. if you’re reading this, i’m probably thinking about cicadas.”

Here are two samples chosen from Teddy’s website.  Game Show was published in streetcake magazine. Badlung Press’s ‘Depression Cookbook – Sad Minds for Sad People’ published Friedline’s Recipe pieces.

Game Show

Hello, welcome to the game show. This game show is easy, and you can win fabulous prizes. In order to win, all you have to do is choose between two boys. The boys are the same. The boys are different because one of them is a boy and one of them is a painting of a boy. All you have to do is look in this mirror and tell our studio audience what you see. All you have to do is forget the boys I mentioned before. All you have to do is number your narrow teeth and scrape the paint off your fingernails before picking the nails themselves into sharp crescents that fall into your lap. All you have to do is answer these trivia questions. All you have to do is put on this padding and make these shapes with your body. All you have to do is be lucky. All you have to do is get lucky. Congratulations, you’ve won. You get to choose between two prizes. The first is a boy who’s solid and blue under the skin, no organs, whom you can love and who will maybe love you back. The second is a boy who is looking in a mirror at himself, never at you even if you share the mirror with him. The first boy is sitting on the front steps crying and the second boy is sitting in the attic smoking a joint. Both boys come state-of-the-art with wet mouths and long smooth chests that beat with warmth. Here, behind door number 2, here are both boys at once. They are the same boy. Look how they make an ouroboros, dick into mouth and dick into mouth, identical empty moans. In order to choose you have to be able to tell the boys apart. Congratulations, you’ve won. You get to choose between these two prizes. Ooh, I’m sorry, you haven’t won. You can’t tell the difference between something and itself. No one can do that. I’m sorry, that’s not correct. You’ve done so well. Thank you for playing.

A Recipe For Admiration

Ingredients:

• 1 David Bowie corpse • 1 record player

Directions:

1. Get a friend to help you lift the corpse of David Bowie.

2. Put the corpse on the record player. Make sure the spindle skewers him just above the belly button.

3. Put the needle on his nipple and turn the player on.

4. Watch his limbs rot and fall off as he spins around.

5. Scream “Suffragette City” and kneel by the record player to collect every single fallen hair.

A Recipe For Sorrow

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread • 1 mother

Directions:

1. Make toast.

2. Think of your mother.

3. Cry.

A Recipe For the Feeling of Sunshine on the Skin

Ingredients:

• 1 backyard or local park • 1 book of matches

• 1 bookshelf

• 1 clear day

Directions:

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

Preheat your oven to 350°F, 177°C, or gas mark 4.

Prepare your bookcase by looking at it. Stare at the bookcase. Notice it. Realize it is there. Decide that the bookcase is too beautiful to continue.

Pull all of your books and tchotchkes off the bookshelf and leave them in disorganized piles around your kitchen.

Drag your empty bookshelf to your backyard or local park.

Destroy the bookshelf. Pull out its shelves and break them; punch holes through the backing; cut the entire structure in half.

Collect the remains of the bookshelf and put them in a pile.

Set the bookshelf on fire and watch it grow into a fantastic blaze.

Sit before the burning bookcase and absorb its heat.

Examples of Friedline’s writing and voice are available at teddyfriedline.carrd.co/.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

“A constitution is a set of fundamental principles of government.  In America, those principles, consented to by the people, provide a rule of law for both the government and the people. The rule of law substitutes for the whim of a dictator, the divine right of a monarch, the word from an oracle or seer, the calculations of an astrologer, or the revelation of a priest or prophet.” – Charles Rees, University of Baltimore School of Law, ‘Remarkable Evolution: The Early Constitutional History of Maryland’

With conservatives flexing their majority muscles on the Supreme Court as witnessed by the historic Roe vs. Wade 6-3 reversal, it’s clear that more and more power will be shifting – at least for the foreseeable future – from the federal government to state governments.

Such shifts have long been part of US history: the tug of war between federal power and states’ rights.  Those chronic struggles are as predictable and nearly as seismic and cataclysmic as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis spawned by the planetary urges of Earth’s shifting tectonic plates.

As a result, we can expect democracy to become much more up close, visceral and personal. In Maryland, we will have to pay closer attention to the state constitution whose origins date back to 1776.

Eastern Shoreman Matthew Tilghman, a prominent planter and alternating resident of Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties, played a prominent role in those origins. Tilghman, by that time, had already been part of Maryland’s governing assembly for more than 20 years. The fact that he was Speaker of the state’s House of Representatives in 1774 when revolutionary rumblings were growing louder shows the faith placed in him by other Marylanders.

A strong proponent of independence from Great Britain, he headed Maryland’s delegation to the nation’s first Continental Congress and supported and voted for the Declaration of Independence. It’s said that he would have been one of Maryland’s signers had he not hightailed it back to his home state to preside over the drafting of Maryland’s first constitution.

On Aug. 14, 1776, barely six weeks after the July 4 signing of this nation’s Declaration of Independence, Tilghman’s Maryland colleagues elected him to chair the committee charged with preparing a “declaration and charter of rights and a form of government” for Maryland.

The opening paragraphs of the constitution demonstrate that he and his compatriots in Maryland and elsewhere believed passionately in a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” as articulated years later by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address.

The preamble to that document and its first four articles state:

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

“We, the People of the State of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty, and taking into our serious consideration the best means of establishing a good Constitution in this State for the sure foundation and more permanent security thereof, declare:

“Article 1. That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole; and they have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their Form of Government in such manner as they may deem expedient.

“Art. 2. The Constitution of the United States, and the Laws made, or which shall be made, in pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, are, and shall be the Supreme Law of the State; and the Judges of this State, and all the People of this State, are, and shall be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or Law of this State to the contrary notwithstanding.

“Art. 3. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution thereof, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people thereof.

“Art. 4. That the People of this State have the sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof, as a free, sovereign and independent State.”

So, if the nation’s constitution doesn’t allow or prohibit something, Maryland’s constitution says it’s up to the state’s people to decide an issue.

In the case of the Roe vs. Wade reversal, here’s what the US Supreme Court majority ruled: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

Maryland anticipated this eventuality in 1991 when its legislators passed laws protecting access to abortion. That instance also demonstrates the limited referendum power given to the state’s residents in its constitution.

The constitution allows the state’s residents to challenge bills passed by lawmakers and enacted by the governor.  Residents can launch an effort to gather a prescribed number of citizen signatures to a petition which would place the challenge question on the ballot during the next US House of Representatives election, which comes in every even year.

That’s exactly what opponents to Maryland’s 1991 abortion protection legislation did in 1992. They gathered enough signatures to have the question placed on the 1992 statewide ballot in their effort to reverse the legislation.  The state’s voters, however, upheld the legislation by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin.

In March of this year, Maryland’s General Assembly – again anticipating the Roe vs. Wade reversal – passed legislation to further protect and increase access to legal abortion.  Through the same referendum provision in the state’s constitution, that legislation could also be challenged and placed on the 2022 statewide ballot.

Maryland’s constitution, however, does not allow the state’s citizens to initiate their own proposed amendments to the law outside of the normal legislative process.  Such “initiated constitutional amendments” are allowed in 18 of the nation’s other states – mostly western and most notably California – but not in Maryland.

If that were the case here, abortion opponents could – for example – petition for a referendum vote on a total abortion ban such as is being discussed for the national level by former Vice President Mike Pence.

What Maryland’s constitution does prescribe, however, is what is called an automatic ballot referral.  That means that every 20 years, a provision is automatically placed on the statewide ballot asking voters whether they want a constitutional convention held to consider revisions or amendments to the state’s constitution.

If at least 55 percent of the total number of voters in that year’s statewide election call for a constitutional convention, then that process could begin which would allow citizens to petition for specific revisions or amendments which would then go to referendum for approval or rejection. The last automatic ballot referral came and went in 2010 with not enough citizen votes to trigger a convention.

The next is scheduled for the 2030 ballot.

It’s all a mouthful and probably more than what Matthew Tilghman envisioned back in 1776.  But he and his colleagues, and those who revised the original constitution in the years after, were wise enough to provide mechanisms for the people to govern, as they intended.

Given the tenor of the times, we can reasonably expect to see those mechanisms used a lot more in the years ahead.

Stay tuned.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

The 2021-2022 oyster harvest on public grounds was one of the best in years.

Some younger watermen say it was the best oyster year of their lives.

Crabs, however, are another story.  Pretty much the opposite.

“This so far is the worst crabbing season I’ve ever had in my life,” said a commercial trotliner.  “It’s all I can do to catch one or two bushels.”

To make matters worse, inflation appears to be putting a dent in demand. While the season started out with watermen earning $200 per bushel and more for their crabs, that number has dropped now to the $150 per bushel range.

That translates into anywhere from $250 to $300 per bushel for consumers at the retail and restaurant level.  With gas hovering around the $5 per gallon mark and prices for everything else on the rise due to all kinds of inflationary pressures, people aren’t running as quickly to buy their crabs for summertime feasts. Typically in supply and demand scenarios, shrinking supplies lead to rising prices. But this year, with supply chain issues dogging the marketplace, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the tenacious coronavirus and all of its variants continuously injecting new doses of uncertainty around the world, there’s nothing typical about supply and demand behavior.

Scientists monitoring the overall Chesapeake Bay crab population predicted an off year in 2022 based on the results of extensive sampling in the winter dredge survey. That survey projected the lowest number of crabs in the Chesapeake system since the winter dredge survey started in 1990.

One buyer said even if the harvest were stronger, he would still have a hard time moving the crabs throughout the mid-Atlantic region. “People are having to make choices and crabs aren’t always their first choice when the cost of essentials is going up.”

“It’s a good thing the watermen had a good oyster season,” said another industry observer. “Now, with the cost of bait and fuel, and fewer crabs, many are having a hard time making ends meet.”

It costs between $160 and $200 in fuel and bait to leave the dock in the darkest hours of morning.  Two bushels of crabs – if watermen get those – barely cover costs.  That doesn’t take into consideration the eight to ten hours of labor to catch the crabs.

Adding to the sour recipe is the large numbers of blue channel catfish and skates in the Chesapeake system, creatures that enjoy eating crabs as much as people do.  “There might be lots of small crabs out there, but there’s also lots of other animals feeding on them and taking their share.”

While nature and economic forces are taking their toll, state shellfish managers are considering how to manage the blue crab resource in the face of this year’s record-setting low population. At a recent meeting of Maryland’s Blue Crab Industry Advisory Council, resource managers proposed everything from limiting the harvest of males and females, especially, for the rest of the season by reducing the daily take of bushels permitted.  Also being considered is closing the harvest season in October or November or shortening the number of days each week when harvesting is allowed.

Whatever management tools the state decides to implement have to be announced prior to July 1. That’s the traditional date for announcing any revised harvesting regulations, after resource managers have had a chance to evaluate the results of the annual winter dredge survey.

Many watermen may be looking forward to the start of the 2022-2023 oyster season Oct. 1 with greater anticipation than usual.  The good news on that front is that Maryland’s oyster managers have proposed no changes to the regulations that were in place for last year’s strong season.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Rain falling on the eastern slopes of the Appalachians in the Shenandoah region eventually make their way into the Chesapeake. But whether there’s more than just a philosophical and linguistic connection between the pennywinkers that feed trout in the rain-fed rocky rivers falling out of Virginia’s Appalachians, and the periwinkles that feed diamondback terrapins in the Chesapeake’s marshes, is a matter better left for real scientists.

Pennywinkers first came to my attention a few decades back during a hiking trip into St. Mary’s Wilderness near Waynesboro, Virginia. We crossed paths with fishermen working the downward flowing waters of St. Mary’s River, not much wider than a strong leap and barely more than ankle deep.

One of the trio of anglers, already tired of fishing, sat on a riverside log among our group. Soon the swapping of stories and conversation competed with the babbling of the river.

At one point he stopped between stories and made a comment in his slow mountain accent that has stuck:

“Fishing’s fun,” he said, “but I’d rather talk – wouldn’t you?”

We laughed and he didn’t wait for any other response before he launched into a short dissertation on the supremacy of pennywinkers as trout bait.

We knelt beside him and watched closely as he stuck his hand in the silty mud at the edge of the river. He picked up a few clumps of small sticks, only a few inches in length and not much more than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter.

I tell you this in such detail because if you ever find yourself in a survival situation in the mountains and have to catch a trout, finding a pennywinker to bait a small hook will be absolutely essential, though not necessarily legal. When you’re fighting for survival, any port in a storm.  Otherwise the St. Mary’s River is artificial lures-only for trout fishing.

Our fishing/talking friend sorted out two of the little sticks joined together lengthwise by what appeared to be a third short stick between them.

Eureka.

That short stick between the two others was the unpretentious home of a pennywinker, though I’m pretty sure that’s not the creature’s Latin name. He pulled the sticks apart, carefully opened the third joining stick and there was a wriggling little wormy-like thing that fit conveniently and irresistibly on a small, trout hook.

He picked up his rod, deftly hooked the pennywinker, eyeballed the river for a likely pool – while keeping up the conversation of course – dropped the lightly weighted rig into the water and within a minute or two a seven-inch or so brown trout proved his point.

He bid us adieu, leaving us with our newfound knowledge, picking his way carefully along the slippery, rocky path beside the river, quickening his pace to rejoin his compatriots who had long before disappeared further upstream seeking more productive and quieter fishing.

Fast forward to last week during a tour of the $1.5 billion Poplar Island restoration project. This is where we switch gears from pennywinkers to perrywinkles.

The US Army Corps of Engineers project at Poplar Island, in Chesapeake Bay just west and north of Tilghman Island, aims to benefit the region’s economy and environment. It re-uses silt and sediment dredged out of the approach channels traveled by ships heading for and leaving the port of Baltimore. Recreating the once-inhabited island, nearly 2,000 acres in the mid- to late-1800s but abandoned and radically eroded to a little more than five acres by the 1970s, provides a resting place for the dredged spoils. That keeps the approach channels open for shipping.

At the same time, the project is also recreating a valuable remote Chesapeake wildlife habitat and preserve.

Since the first dredged spoils were placed in 2001, the new, armor stone-perimetered island has regrown to 1,715 acres of upland and marsh habitat, home to hundreds and hundreds of plant and animal creatures. At least 250 species of birds have been documented on the new Poplar as a resting and nesting place, including song birds, wading shore birds, waterfowl and birds of prey.

Its marshes, upland areas and brackish waterways have also become home to thousands of diamondback terrapins, Maryland’s once-endangered state reptile. How do diamondback terrapins fit into the Army Corps’ beneficial environmental use scheme?

It turns out the diamondbacks are molluskavores, meaning they eat shellfish.  Their strong jaws and beaks make short work of the hard shells that protect the succulent creatures inside including clams, mussels, oysters and periwinkles.

Periwinkles are pretty little brownish-shelled snails.  Unlike pennywinkers that attach themselves to sticks in mountain streams, periwinkles climb up and down the stalks of spartina and other marsh grasses in salt and brackish waters.

According to Poplar Island naturalist Willem Roosenburg, a national authority on diamondback terrapins, periwinkles can compromise the health of spartina and the marshes which its roots help bind and provide excellent nursery areas for all kinds of creatures including crabs and fish.

Diamondback terrapins do their part to protect the marshes by plucking the savory snails off the grasses by the millions.

Kristina Motley works as Senior Environmental Specialist for Maryland Environmental Services which, among other duties, is contracted by Maryland to provide tours of the Poplar Island project.  On a tour last Friday, she said scientists tag about 2,000 diamondback terrapins on Poplar each year to track their comings and goings and the overall health of the population.  She said a rough estimate figures there are about 7,000 terrapins living and nesting on the island.

Motley is a wealth of knowledge about Poplar and its cultural, economic and environmental history.  She shares that knowledge during three-hour public tours that leave from Tilghman Island. For information about public tours visit marylandports.com/greenport, poplarislandrestoration.com, or email poplartours@menv.com.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Photography by Dennis Forney

I sat on a dock one evening this week listening to the Orioles taking a trouncing from the Mariners of Seattle. Across the Chesapeake, on the Severn, my grandson, Ford, was asking his Alexa machine about the score of the game. He picked up a hint of glee when Alexa announced the Mariners were up by seven runs.

“We all know Alexa is rooting for the Mariners,” he said.

Amazon, Alexa’s parent company, is headquartered in Seattle.

Despite the game, the evening proved pleasant. The Birds returned the trouncing the following night.  The appearance of the team’s prominence at the bottom of the American League East deceives. It’s a dynamic team with plenty of power, a strong bullpen, and glimmers of promise in its starting rotation.

Yes, along with Alexa, I’m a hopeless homer.  “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” But this isn’t a column about baseball; it’s really about boats.

The sun finally gave up its heat-lamp intensity that evening as it settled into the west.  It left in its place a warm orange glow.

Painterly it was. The color cast a certain serenity over PT Hambleton’s crab and oyster operation. The fleet of watermen’s boats shoehorned in and around the docks and landing, quieting along with the evening following a busy day.

The high bows, low freeboard and graceful sheer of the vessels sloping from stem to stern reflect the mostly genteel waters of the Chesapeake where their owners ply their trade.

On the other hand, the watermen’s vessels on Delaware Bay tend to be boxier. Their higher freeboards and less prominent sheer keep out the more cantankerous chop and seas of the rougher, rawer and shoal-ridden Delaware.  With its three and four knots of current in full flood and ebb tides, the Delaware’s northwest and southeast orientation mean its flowing waters often collide with northerly and easterly winds.  The result is as constant as it is predictable.

That said, the East Coast’s two most prominent estuaries, nestling the Delmarva Peninsula between them, contribute inestimably to the nation’s history, culture, seafood supply and maritime architecture.

Maryland and Virginia released, last week, results from their annual winter dredge crab survey conducted in early 2022. That extensive survey includes sampling from more than 1,500 sites throughout Chesapeake waters to determine total numbers and types of crabs.

The glimmer of good news in the report shows a 17.5 percent increase in the number of juvenile crabs in the system – up to 101 million in 2022 from the 86 million estimated in 2021. Those are crabs that could grow to legal harvest size throughout the summer and into the fall.

That glimmer however is overshadowed by two other significant findings. The most significant is the 63 percent decline in the estimated female crabs in the system.  The 2021 survey showed 158 million female crabs in the system compared to 97 million in the 2022 survey. Female crab totals are the numbers watched most closely by harvest managers in the two states. They have determined that the system needs at least 72.5 million females to maintain a sustainable fishery.

While this year’s count is still well above that red-flag threshold, it is still far below the 196 million target for female crabs that managers would like to see as indicative of a thriving population.

The second significant disturbing finding, which will probably most impact the price of crabs in the market this year, is the total number of crabs estimated to be in the Çhesapeake system compared to last.  The 2022 survey found an estimated 227 million total crabs compared to 282 million in the 2021 survey. That’s a 20 percent decline and the lowest total number of crabs found in the system since the winter dredge survey began in 1990.

Although the Maryland crabbing season runs from April 1 each year through December when the crabs hibernate for the winter, the management season runs from July 1 through June 30 of the following year.  Managers for the states don’t institute new regs for the current year until they’ve seen winter dredge survey results.

Based on the drastic decline in female crab numbers this year, it wouldn’t be surprising to see changes in permitted harvests of female crabs starting July 1.

All that said, it has to be remembered that environmental conditions impact crab populations far more than regulations. Females make their way to the salty waters at the mouth of the Chesapeake after mating to lay their millions of eggs.  Some reports indicate that a single female can release hundreds of millions of eggs in up to three broods in the course of a single year.

After those eggs are released they get swept, as emerging larvae, as far out into the ocean as the continental shelf.  How many of them make their way back into the Chesapeake system as they begin to grow depends heavily on factors like varying wind direction and currents.

The population of maturing crabs counted in the winter dredge survey can swing by hundreds of millions over the course of just a few years.  For example, the 2019 survey found an estimated 608 million crabs in the Chesapeake system.  Just two years later, in 2021, that number fell off to 282 million crabs.  In 1993 the survey found an estimated 400 million crabs compared to over 800 million in the 1994 survey. By their very nature, crab populations continually ride a roller coaster.

So, how many crabs of the total get harvested in a single season? A quick calculation using estimated numbers from one season gives a rough idea.

Federal fisheries managers estimate that crabbers in the Chesapeake system – counting Maryland and Virginia – harvested 41.6 million pounds of crabs in 2021.  At an average of 40 pounds to the bushel, that computes to about 1,040,000 bushels.

If an average bushel contains about 75 crabs – more for smalls, less for large – that computes to about 78 million crabs harvested.  That represents about a third or a quarter of the total number of crabs in the system that year.

Lower overall numbers will likely mean even higher prices for crabs by the bushel, by the dozen, by the pound of meat or in crab cakes.  That doesn’t take into account inflation and the skyrocketing cost of fuel being paid by watermen to fish their pots and run their trotlines.

This year, the imperial in crab imperial will have likely never rung so true.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.