The little town of Quarrelsville lies on the outskirts of Malberg. The speed limit posted on Main Street is 25 mph, but most drivers passing through are too impatient to comply. Several children have been knocked off their bikes and injured. Thankfully, none have been killed.

The town council is equally divided, as they are on most issues, on what to do. Camp Blue, noting that speed signs are ignored, wants to put in three-inch-high, yellow-painted speed bumps.

Camp Orange disagrees. Three-inch speed bumps would exceed the town’s budget. Two-and-a-half-inch speed bumps would be acceptable, but only if they’re orange. 

“Okay,” said Camp Blue, “we’ll agree to your proposal. Will you now vote for it?”

“No,” said Camp Orange, “we still don’t like it.” 

“Why?”

“Because you’ll take credit for the idea.” 

I guess you can see the parallel to the vote just tallied in the US Senate. All fifty Democrat Senators voted for the Inflation Reduction Act; all fifty Republican Senators voted against it.

What? 

In part one of Gulliver’s Travels, shipwrecked Gulliver finds himself in the land of the little people of Lilliput. A civil war is about to begin over disagreement on the proper end of the egg to break. Obviously satire, Swift is trying to show the stupidity of the extent to which a silly, nit-picking argument can lead.

Our present situation is not so trivial. Our Congress is staunchly divided on a bill that would lower healthcare costs for all Americans and mitigate global warming that threatens all life on Earth. And one side is hung up on who gets credit for the progress!

Has there ever been an argument more inane? Objectors are saying “We don’t like your plan that saves our grandchildren because it makes you look too good. (Note: here I am assuming that the nay-sayers are actually educated enough to be aware that there is a problem). 

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

For those who may doubt we have a problem, I would be happy to elucidate. Though I myself am not a climate scientist, one of my best friends, now semi-retired, was head of NOAA’s global greenhouse gas monitoring system for many years. I could provide a not-too-technical translation of his summary of the global warming problem if you email me at khufubob@gmail.com.

This is not time to worry about the scorecard.

Bob Moores retired from Black & Decker/DeWalt in 1999 after 36 years. He was the Director of Cordless Product Development at the time. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University.

The last Republican state comptroller in Maryland was one Phillips Lee Goldsborough, who served from 1898 to 1900, when William McKinley was president of the United States. So the odds definitely favor Brooke Lierman (D), the Baltimore City delegate, in the general election for comptroller this fall.

Not only does Lierman have history and party registration on her side, but she’s an indefatigable campaigner brimming with ideas for the office, who is poised to make history as the first woman elected independently to a statewide position in Maryland government. That fact alone gets a lot of people excited.

Lierman’s Republican opponent, Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, is the most solid and qualified GOP nominee in several generations. In addition to his eight years as executive, he has served in the General Assembly and local government. He’s a sheep farmer and also had a long career working for BG&E. He’s well known and well liked in Maryland political circles.

But all that could be blotted out by the turn the state Republican Party has taken this election, nominating seemingly unelectable candidates for governor and attorney general. That puts the squeeze on Glassman, who must figure out how to distance himself from Del. Dan Cox, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, and former Anne Arundel County councilmember Michael Anthony Peroutka, the GOP candidate for attorney general, without completely alienating base Republican voters.

You can imagine a scenario where day after day, Glassman will be asked to answer for the extreme positions and conspiracy theories espoused by his running mates. It cannot be a happy circumstance for one of the few bipartisan happy warriors left in Maryland politics.

But could this in fact be an unanticipated opportunity for Glassman, one that no one really imagined just a couple of weeks ago?

Consider an alternative reality in which former State Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, the choice of the Gov. Larry Hogan wing of the GOP, won the Republican nomination for governor. All the attention, money, and political energy would be behind Schulz, who would surely be a tougher general election opponent for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wes Moore than Cox will prove to be.

Under that scenario, Glassman, like all Republican nominees for comptroller decade after decade, would be subject to the vagaries of the state’s typical partisan performance. The comptroller’s race would be overshadowed by the gubernatorial election, and Glassman’s arguments for himself would undoubtedly be ignored. He might benefit from the resources devoted to Schulz’s campaign and the notion that she had a decent shot of winning, but would very much be the second or third banana in the overall Republican conversation.

Now, however, Glassman is a man on his own, and that has its advantages and disadvantages. Yes, he may have undesirable ballot mates in the eyes of many political professionals, but he also has an opportunity to chart his own course. Perhaps some of the GOP establishment enthusiasm that would have been attached to Schulz’s campaign can now be focused his way.

Glassman can credibly argue that he’s the last sane Republican standing — and the only Republican standing in the way of Democratic hegemony in Annapolis. He can pledge to be a nonpartisan fiscal steward of Maryland’s treasury, and hint that Lierman’s agenda is too woke and too costly — and that she’ll try to use the job as a stepping stone to higher office. Some editorial boards will no doubt be responsive to this argument.

Glassman will need some Democratic validators, and there are probably a few of them out there, mostly older white men. He will have Hogan and some of Hogan’s top advisers on his side, and that can’t hurt. But he’ll need the media to pay attention, which will be a challenge with all the Republican crazy to keep tabs on.

You wouldn’t want to bet against Lierman in the general election. But you might want to pay attention to Glassman and how he operates in the spotlight. Sounding a warning against Lierman is still the longest of long shots, but it’s the only play he has.

Maryland Matters founding editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill. For 6 1/2 years Kurtz wrote a weekly column on state politics for Center Maryland and has written for several other Maryland publications as well.

Prior to the onslaught of the COVID-19 Pandemic, rural areas of the United States were seeing modest economic growth, while most populations stayed at 2010 levels. The national total of rural residents was some 46 million or about 14% of the US total., These statistics rather sharply contrast with the urban data, which showed considerably higher increases in both categories. 

In terms of poverty rates, there was a similar result. Rural poverty rates declined from a high of 18.4% (2013) to 16.1% (2018), still higher than urban rates at the time, on average about 12.6%.  

And then Covid struck in the winter of 2019 – 2020, leading eventually to over 1 million American deaths and a national economic crisis that only began to abate in spring 2022. In July 2022 the economic concern is inflation. The spread of Covid infections and deaths over the past 2 plus years has also differed at different times in rural and urban regions  

Initially, the cities were harder hit, while the non-metro regions reflected a more predictable 14%  of national cases and 11% of the deaths. These figures eventually rose to 21% and 27% respectively in 2021.  

The general explanations offered for the later, persistent spikes in rural areas, include: (1) more residents with underlying health conditions, (2) fewer people with health insurance, (3) longer distances to hospitals and (4) substantially fewer vaccinated/boosted people.  Other  contributing factors creating “super spreader” situations in both city and farm country, has been crowded work and home environments and too many mask-less people at indoor holiday and other events. 

Yes, the Pandemic severely affected lives in Kent, Somerset, Dorchester and Talbot Counties, but it only exacerbated conditions existing in the four. It is those conditions that over years can and do  lead to shrinking demographics. The following chart provides background data on each county, offering  facts to review and tentative answers to be offered.  

The following provides four important national and Maryland data points from the 2020 Census  to provide a partial basis for comparison with the counties.  

One common measure of a community’s health and well being is its “viability”, that is will it continue to work as a functioning place for people to live. The answer is “it depends” because age, health, job opportunities, available training and education, affordable housing and quality of life all affect residents’ opinions.   

All four counties are losing residents and those remaining are, to a significant extent, senior citizens. These are not, per se, encouraging viability factors. Economic development in all four is something of an issue, but particularly for Dorchester, Somerset and Kent, as is evident by their lagging median incomes. 

These three have also lost businesses, i.e., employers, that have not been replaced, nor have many new ventures opened. Affecting the latter, may be the level of skill sets and experience offered by  local work forces. 

The relatively high poverty rates and median ages translate into heavier demand for county, city and town public services. In 2022, the costs of providing them are rising, particularly for public school systems. Shrinking numbers of taxpayers, clearly impact public revenue streams.   

It is clear, these counties need to understand the dimensions of the work required to reverse current adverse demographic trends and to satisfy the shifting needs of their populations in the decades ahead. I have no doubt their leaders comprehend the work that lies ahead and will meet the viability tests.

Tom Timberman is an Army vet, lawyer, former senior Foreign Service officer, adjunct professor at GWU, and economic development team leader or foreign government advisor in war zones. He is the author of four books, lectures locally and at US and European universities. He and his wife are 24 year residents of Kent County.

I’m trying to understand why guns are so ingrained in American culture, why gun possession is one of our defining characteristics. Is it residual from our frontier-taming history? Does it reflect our passion for individual liberty? Is gun-collecting a hobby or investment? Or is it darker drives bordering on paranoia or the need for macho expression? Carry a big stick. Don’t tread on me!

Why do citizens need military-style assault rifles? It can’t be for target shooting because rapid-fire guns with high-capacity magazines are not at all necessary to test one’s accuracy. Nor can it be for hunting because those types of guns only indicate that the hunter is not very skilled.

I was once a gun collector. I owned several pistols, a couple of shotguns, three assault rifles, and a World War 2-era German machine gun (deactivated so it could not fire). As an engineer, army veteran, and student of military history, there was a sort of beauty, an artistry of mechanical design function that I admired. I rationalized that I had acceptable reasons for owning weapons of war. I am still a gun owner today. I own one pistol. Do I need it? Not really. Do I want it? Yes, for the same reason I gave above.

Now, most of us agree that we have a gun violence problem in America. Gun murders in the streets of our large cities have become so common that they are hardly newsworthy. Business as usual. When our kids are mass-murdered our hackles raised a little more – but only for a short while. Our outrage quickly subsides, only to reappear the next time. It’s a reoccurring nightmare that we seem powerless to end.

I will illustrate our situation by analogy.

There is a large boat which has sprung a leak in its hull and is sinking. The people on the boat are divided on what to do. One group says “We have to bail out the water”. Another group says “Good idea, but while we’re bailing out the water, we should be working to plug the leak.” Another group says “We should call the Coast Guard.” A fourth group says “Why not do all of these?” Which is the most sensible group?

Gun people adamantly insist that the gun is off limits; the problem is with the shooter. He should be our sole focus. They demand that there be no legislation on gun control, none, zero, nada, no way. Let there be more guns. Arm teachers. Hire retired soldiers and police for school security. Gun-makers, their stock-holders, and Fox news-junkies couldn’t be more pleased.

But isn’t the problem complex enough that it requires a (forgive the simile) shotgun approach? If we really agree that we have a serious problem, why not attack it with everything we’ve got?

Restrictions or banning the purchase of weapons optimally-designed for killing the most people in the shortest time, and background checks on all gun purchasers should be part of the fix equation. That seems clear to me. The other part, the mentality of the shooter, is another. But how do we predict when someone who has been acting normally, up to a point, is suddenly going to freak out? Are danger signs always telegraphed? And even when they are, history shows that we have not done a good job of reading them and reacting. Besides, how can we arrest or order someone to accept psychiatric help before they commit a crime? I am not skilled enough to suggest answers to the shooter part, but somebody wiser should be.

Should we excoriate lawmakers for not helping with this problem, for putting job security over conscience? Remember one thing: Their jobs depend on our votes. If gun violence was considered a priority problem in this country, the representatives we elect would be forced to accede to our demands to fix it. Apparently, it is not a priority problem for lawmakers. Maybe the problem is us!

Bob Moores retired from Black & Decker/DeWalt in 1999 after 36 years. He was the Director of Cordless Product Development at the time. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University

Bellevue, Maryland is one of the nation’s few remaining historically African American maritime communities in Talbot County, Maryland. The history of Bellevue is at risk for accelerated erasure. Within the past 20 years, Bellevue lost landmark public buildings and the retirement of its independent Zip Code. A barely visible roadside marker is the only indication that Bellevue was once a historically African American community.

But the biggest threat to date is the recent acquisition of a tract of land along the Tred Avon River by Paquin Design Build (Grasonville, MD) with the intent to build 14, $1.5 million dollar homes along the shoreline.

The Builder chose to name this development, situated in the heart of Bellevue “North of Oxford”. Bellevue constituents were unaware of these actions until advertisements appeared in media outlets.

A community meeting was held at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church on April 26 where constituents presented their concerns to Mr. Paquin. Leading concerns were the development’s name, disregard for and erasure of Bellevue’s black culture and history, environmental concerns, and the economic impact on elderly residents. Most egregiously, and an affront to Bellevue, the developer chose to name the proposed community “North of Oxford with”, the intent to establish an independent homeowners association, turn a private community road into a driveway for three of the new homes, and to place physical barriers to set it apart from Bellevue.

Mr. Paquin did not concede much, if anything, but indicated that he might consider changing the name, planting saplings to replace the 100+-year-old trees he intends to cut down, paving a private road for access by his construction equipment, and renaming the streets in favor of former Bellevue residents.

However, the property is still marketed as North of Oxford on Zillow, and the street address for a few of the homes is listed as Orchard Terrace, though the residents who currently live on Orchard Terrace have not consented to turn a street that allows all residents of Bellevue to easily access the waterfront into a private driveway.

Multiple Organizations & Community Members are Fighting for Bellevue

All of this is happening amidst major projects to preserve Bellevue’s rich history.

The Bellevue Passage Museum + Water’s Edge Museum

The creation of the Bellevue Passage Museum from a rescued historical property in Bellevue is underway. Work for the museum is in progress, funded by the African American Heritage Preservation Program, cash, and in-kind donations. In collaboration with Barbara Paca, Ph.D., and Philip Logan, founders of the Water’s Edge Museum in Oxford, MD, the two museums will create an immersive educational experience in African American History on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for students of all ages.

Washington College

The Black Life in Bellevue Field School July 5-29, 2022 is a partnership with Bellevue Village and Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society. Led by Michael J. Chiarappa, Ph.D., and Janet Sheridan, the Field School is supported by the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture through funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The field school attracted domestic and international undergraduate and graduate students.

Residents & Neighbors of Bellevue Maryland

Bellevue residents share a strong sense of community and regard it as a peaceful, beautiful, historic village. A grassroots movement has started to take action to preserve the character and culture of Bellevue. The goal is for accountability from the developer(s) to the goals and vision of the Bellevue Master Plan, and that “improvements preserve the village’s character that will attract a new generation of devoted residents”.
Currently, many residents of Bellevue and surrounding neighborhoods have banded together to fight this erasure of history and this new threat to the Eastern Shore’s delicate watershed environment. A task force with subcommittees has been formed to take action.

The Disappearing Roots of Bellevue’s Legacy

Bellevue, Maryland is one of the nation’s few remaining historically African American maritime communities. This village of approximately one square mile or four city blocks is rich in history.

Once a self-sufficient African American Community with a school (a Rosenwald School), place of worship (St. Luke’s United Methodist Church), general store, post office, four restaurants, Knights of Pythias Lodge, recreation center, gas station, and doctor’s office. The major employers were the Valiant Packing House and Cannery, and the renowned African American-owned Turner Seafood Company.

With the exception of the William H. Valliant Packing House and Cannery, and the General Store, all businesses were owned by African Americans. This small community was home to a baseball league, Boy Scout troop, and produced an above-average percentage of black college graduates that went on to serve the community and our country in the military, as primary and secondary educators, health care workers, clergy, and business owners.

Dr. Dennis M. De Shields is founder of Bellevue Passage Museum and fourth-generation Bellevue resident

The citizens of Maryland’s Eastern Shore have a right to be outraged by the saga that’s unfolding with the Lakeside development in Trappe. Talbot County has the responsibility to plan for the adequate treatment of wastewater from this massive, 2,500 unit residential and commercial project, and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) must decide whether to approve it. Neither of those things are happening.

In 2016, the Talbot County Council redesignated areas for growth around Trappe in its comprehensive plan. But it expected that high-performing “Enhanced Nutrient Removal” (ENR) treatment technology would be installed to treat wastewater from any new development in the town. “Such upgrades will be necessary to support projected growth in Trappe,” the plan reads. This type of wastewater treatment removes the highest amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, in turn providing the greatest protection to local waters and the Chesapeake Bay.

The county followed through by amending its water and sewer plan to program ENR at Trappe’s existing wastewater system, noting the facility “is approaching 20-years of service and is in need of upgrades to continue to serve the community.” Representatives of the Lakeside developer have repeatedly said that ENR treatment in Trappe is the ultimate goal.

But when Talbot County council members Laura Price and Pete Lesher introduced multiple resolutions that would formally plan for the very upgrades that are called for, the remaining council majority voted them down. This is in conflict with the county’s own planning commission, which found the resolutions consistent with the county comprehensive plan to the extent they specify that no new homes should be connected to the Trappe wastewater treatment facility unless it meets ENR standards.

Now the Maryland Department of the Environment, which is reviewing a wastewater permit for Lakeside, is left wondering what to do. “Based on the conflicting actions taken by the Talbot County Council and the Talbot County Planning Commission, MDE is unable to determine the actual positions of the county,” the agency wrote in February.

This is more than a passing statement. MDE has a statutory obligation to base its wastewater permitting decisions on the adequacy of amendments like the ones Talbot County made in its water and sewer plan to serve Lakeside.

And so it’s ironic that while a council majority voted against the ENR requirement to expedite the project, there almost certainly will be more delay. MDE cannot issue a wastewater permit for Lakeside if the agency is unable to determine that the county’s plans are adequate.

Because of this, our own scientific review, and overwhelming public concern, denying the wastewater permit for Lakeside is exactly what MDE should do.

Alan Girard is the Eastern Shore Director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation

George Merrill was a human treasure. Many reader’s words expressed this in the Comment section of The Spy following his essays this last year and were certainly evident at his memorial service. 

I would like to add my own memory of him when he was employed as the Chaplain for Talbot Hospice in the late 1990’s. It was a great match for his interest in loss, aging and dying and Hospice’s mission which includes the spiritual meaning of life as it begins to come to a close.

George’s segment of Volunteer Training was, as you can imagine, a participatory, deep dive into self-examination and shared experiences. As in his writing this last year, George was very open about his own personal experiences. Most people had never delved so openly or intimately into how they interpreted the meaning of their own lives and what loss would look like for them. He was truly interested in the experiences and thoughts of others. You knew that George was as much a listener and learner as he was teacher and guide. It deepened the compassion and understanding of the journey of Hospice patients and families for the prospective volunteers. 

Like these volunteers, many, many members of the community were privileged to also make the deep dive into self examination of the meaning of their own lives and attitudes toward loss and dying on Sundays when reading George’s reflections.   

George is no longer with us but he has written indelibly on our hearts. And fortunately, Hospice, which many of you know is important to me, is always here as the people who continue to discuss, share and comfort the fear of loss of oneself and the loss of a person we love.

Liz Freedlander was the first executive director of Talbot Hospice.