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April 20, 2021

The Chestertown Spy

An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland

Spy Highlights Spy Top Story

At the Academy: Miró and Printmaking in New York

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Leave it to the Academy Art Museum to kick off the Mid-Shore’s post-pandemic art world with a bang. In this case, the AAM has pulled together two galleries of printmaking work of Joan Miró when he was working with influential British printmaker Stanley William Hayter in 1947.

This collaboration would be a seminal moment as Miró and Hayter pushed the boundaries the boundaries of screenprinting to the ‘absolute limit” during their time in New York, in what one art critic called “a loving dialogue.”

The Spy sat down yesterday with Mehves Lelic, the curator at the Academy Art Museum, to set this stage for this remarkable exhibition and on this remarkable collaboration.

Miró in New York, 1947 Miró, Hayter and Atelier 17
April 16, 2021 – July 8, 2021

This video is approximately two minutes in length. For more information about Miró in New York, 1947 please go here.

The Avalon and Its Great (Safe) Reopening with Al Bond

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Slowly, and needless to say, very carefully, the Avalon Foundation is back in action. To the delight of devoted music fans on the Mid-Shore, the beloved venue for music has scheduled a full calendar of bands and performers to take the stage of the Stolt Outdoor Pavillion this April in yet another sign that a post-COVID world might be just around the corner.

The Spy spoke with Al Bond, Avalon’s CEO, yesterday to talk about these recent developments and the equally good news that the Foundation has entered into a partnership with the Monty Alexander Jazz Festival to host the popular early fall event.

Al also speaks of how the Avalon Foundation has completed its volunteer role in helping run the COVID-19 hotline and his conviction that the Mid-Shore will be returning to its indoor performance stages on Dover Street sooner than people think.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Avalon Foundation please go here.

Ask Irma: After the COVID Storm at Londonderry

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Over the last year, the Spy has taken a particularly acute interest in how the region’s retirement communities have coped over the previous twelve months since COVID-19 hit the Eastern Shore last March. Catering to exclusively older residents who shared common meals and countless other activities throughout the day, these residential villages appeared to be prime candidates for high concentrations of COVID cases.

But as Irma Toce, Chief Executive Officer of Londonderry on The Tred Avon in Easton, reports in our latest installment of “Ask Irma,” the total opposite has been the case. With Londonderry’s quick shutdown of communal spaces and events, and now with 99% of the community vaccinated, the once active neighborhood is slowly but surely coming back to life.

In our chat, Irma talks about returning to “normal” for residents and staff alike, the power of hope, and re-learning how things were done in the pre-pandemic era.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about Londonderry of the Avon please go here.

Choptank Health Leading on the Mid-Shore with School-based Health Care

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Many of a certain age might recall the limited health services that were available in schools back in the day and that all other health-related issues were in the hands of family physicians or local health centers outside the classroom environment.

But like the health field in general, there have been significant changes in how healthcare is provided nowadays to kids. In fact, there is a new partnership that has developed between the school nurse model and in-school health centers that would not be that dissimilar to what you might find in neighborhood urgent care clinics.

A leader on the mid- shore providing this change is Choptank Health with school programs in all five counties. From Kent to Dorchester, Choptank is working with every school district to provide a range of health services to students right at their school or in their communities, which for many kids might be the only way they receive medical or dental care in any given year.

The Spy sat down with Sara Rich, CEO of Choptank Health, and her colleague, Chrissy Bartz, who runs its community-based programs, last week on how essential healthcare is now more successfully reaching some of our community’s most needy children and their well-being.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Choptank Health please go here.

Baltimore Magazine: The Mid-Shore the Subject of Racial Reckoning Article

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One of our many spies in the community was kind enough to share with Spy HQ a superb long-form article in the Baltimore Magazine on the Eastern Shore’s challenges with Black history and race relations from Kent County to Dorchester.

Beautifully written by the Mid-Shore’s own Lydia Woolever, accompanied by brilliant photography by Greg Kahn, it will make compelling reading for our Spy readers.

Read the full story here

Mid-Shore Arts: Chesapeake Music Begins New Rising Stars Program

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While several arts organizations have needed to delay or even cancel programs as the country will soon enter its second year of the pandemic, Chesapeake Music surprised us the other day by announcing that they would start a new program.

While this new venture will be virtual rather than live performances, Chesapeake’s board and director, Don Buxton, were eager to find a platform for the rising stars of the classical music world to introduce them to their Eastern Shore’s large and devoted fans, which has been the foundation of the organization’s remarkable success over thirty years.

In our interview with Buxton, the Spy learned more about this new initiative and the great assembly of talent set to perform on February 13. Violinist Randall Goosby will take center stage, who is now considered to be on the same level of exceptional talent as the now-famous Joshua Bell possessed when he broke out as one of America’s favorite musical artists. He will be followed by exceptionally gifted performers as Zhu Want and Anna Petrova on piano and the stunning violist Molly Carr.

The February 13 concert will be streamed live, the full program will be available for one week for “view of demand” patrons.

This video is approximately four minutes in length. For more information aboutFor more information, please see www.chesapeakemusic.org.

Mid-Shore Pro Bono: COVID Impact on Evictions and Legal Support

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While the Spy and other media outlets have tried hard to keep our communities as an update to date on the pandemic over the last year through the lens of physical and mental health, there remain countless other impacts of COVID that receive far less attention but can be just as devastating for our region.

The coronavirus has not only thrown thousands into unemployment, but in many cases, this has cascaded down to losing homes, apartment evictions, custody agreements, and employment-related issues. COVID has also impacted those who have lost family members to the disease who left no will or pre-arranged documentation of their estates.

In our interview with Meredith Lathbury Girard, Mid-Shore Pro Bono’s managing attorney, we learn how the Mid-Shore’s largest legal services organization is coping with a client base that has tripled since March, as well the agency’s efforts to educate the region on end-of-life planning.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about Mid-Shore Pro Bono please go here.

Mid-Shore Commerce: The Cambridge Waterfront’s Recent History of a Community Asset

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According to Frank Narr, the former executive director of Sailwind Park, Inc., and someone who has been directly involved in a twenty-five-year effort to transform Cambridge’s waterfront into a world-class community asset, the fate of the long-delayed transformation changed dramatically in 2018.

That was the year when UM Shore Regional Health, the largest landowner on the waterfront, made the somewhat radical decision to move out of its historic base at Dorchester General Hospital and move its health services along Route 50. According to Narr, that future transition was a game-changer for the project and Cambridge since it will allow site control of the 35 acres without the constraints of planning around an active hospital, including  the need for FAA-approved flight paths for medical helicopters.

For Narr and dozens of other stakeholders, that decision opened up a world of possibilities that were impossible to imagine when the project was first envisioned twenty-five years ago. And for Frank, the former Arthur Andersen senior executive who had moved to Cambridge in the early 1990s with his wife, a local physician, it could not have come a day too soon.

While these stakeholders, named the Committee of 100, had experienced remarkable success during this time with the successful launch of the skipjack Nathan, the Choptank Lighthouse, and eventually the major investment of a Hyatt Resort Hotel, the holy grail then, as it is now, was huge opportunity to use smart development of the underdeveloped and sometimes blighted along the town’s historic waterfront.

In the first of a two-part series to help prepare the greater Cambridge community for a year of intense conversations about the use of the land and its impact on the city, the Spy asks Frank to provide an overview of the unique twists and turns related to the waterfront project.
This video is approximately minutes in length. The Spy’s partner, WHCP Community Radio, will hosting a community Conversation about the Waterfront Project this Wednesday (February 10th) on air at at 101.5 FM, on Facebook here or YouTube here.

Spy Flashback: Congressman Andy Harris on Peaceful Transition of Power

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It is sometimes surprising, even to its editors, that the Spy over the last ten years has a robust news archive, particularly on our YouTube channel, on what 1st District Congressman Andy Harris has said over the years on several subjects.

In today’s case, we thought we would share the Spy’s Dave Wheelan’s question in late September to Representative Harris regarding President Trump’s willingness to accept the 2020 presidential election results.

Given the recent events in Washington today, we thought it relevant with our readers tonight.

This video is approximately one minute in length.