Spy Top Story

At the Academy: Andy Warhol’s Accidental Icons with Mehves Lelic

September 30, 2020 by Dave Wheelan Leave a Comment

Long before iPhone and “point and shoot” cameras, artist Andy Warhol was one of the very few who recognized the power of using Polaroid cameras in informal settings to capture American celebrity and culture images from the 1960s until his death in 1987.

Taking along a Polaroid “Big Shot” model which weighed over two pounds, with a lens that extended almost nine inches, Warhol recorded the full range of New York City life. From portraits of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Jane Fonda, the hip nightlife of the Big Apple, or surreal still lifes of Perdue chicken, the artist built a visual diary of a particular time in America.

Now with some of the best examples of Warhol’s work brought together by the Academy Art Museum in Easton from the permanent collection of Salisbury University Art Galleries, AAM’s curator Mehves Lelic talks to the Spy earlier this week about Warhol’s technique and lasting contribution to American photography in preparation of the exhibition, “Andy Warhol’s Accidental Icons,” which opens in late October this year.

This video is approximately three. minutes in length. For more information about Accidental Icons: Warhol’s Photography please go here.

Andy Warhol’s Accidental Icons
Academy Art Museum
October 23, 2020 – January 17, 2021

What’s Next: A Conversation with Chestertown Council Member David Foster

September 28, 2020 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

It has been three weeks since the town council approved two resolutions to address the history and current manifestation of systemic racism in Chestertown and two anti-racist street murals later, council members are beginning to focus on next steps.

The 16-month plan offered by Mayor Cerino and a resolution by Council Member Tolliver offer a comprehensive, long-term framework to address education, legislation, and unification.

Here, Council Member (Ward 1) David Foster talks about his initial feeling about the “Black Lives Matter and We Can’t Breathe #ChestertownUnitesAgisnt Racism” murals on High Street and College Avenue, and how the symbolic paintings began to take on a different meaning for him.

But one of Foster’s primary concerns for real change in an effort to fight systemic racism must happen on the policy level. In his view, the long-disputed tax differential between the town and county should continue to be addressed.

Kent is only one of three counties in Maryland who do not receive a tax set-off, rebate or differential, from towns that provide services for law enforcement, highway maintenance and other town services that save the county from those expenditures.

Since a tax differential does not exist between the county and town, Foster looks at the issue through the lens of economic inequality and feels that county rebates to the town would ease the need to draw funding solely from the town’s rising property taxes. To stem rising property taxes, a differential would ease the burden for all.

This video is approximately nine minutes in length and a part of a conversation that will be aired later in October.

Snapshots of Daily Life: Fungi by George Merrill

September 27, 2020 by George R. Merrill Leave a Comment

Transformations occur daily. I see some from the corner of my eye.

Since I have an unruly attention span, like a child or a dog’s, my thoughts are easily diverted by whatever catches my eye at the moment. Some peripheral object I catch from the corner of my eye will suddenly command my attention and arouse my curiosity. Immediately my mind begins working backwards from the fragment itself and starts wondering about the source from which it came.

And so recently, from the corner of my eye, I saw fungi formed next to our porch stairs. They grew on the stump of a fallen birch tree. They made a lovely formation. My reaction was quite contrary to the feeling I’ve generally held about molds and fungi, namely, that they’re yukky.

I wanted to photograph the formation ––black and white, of course–– but it was situated in such a way as to make camera access very difficult. I nevertheless attempted it. It turned out to be a production to get positioned for getting a good image –– while my arthritic back protested –– but finally I did. I thought the formation of the fungus, enthralling. A picture of it accompanies this essay.

A fungus, among other things, is a visible witness to the ecological phenomena of organic decomposition. I like to think about it as yet another manifestation of transformation that is as fundamental a process to our spirituality as it is of organic life. Transformation is the way of the world.

Transformation is also at the heart of hope. Hope is about sitting quietly with an intimation that we are becoming but just what, we’re not really sure. Generally, our hope is that whatever may happen, when we get there, all will be well. Just what we are becoming is never clear except for some happy souls who are sure of what’s going to happen next. To them I can only say how Buddhists would offer the thought that they are indulging illusions, fragments of imagination that are best not taken seriously.

We live, today, in a black and white world; psychologists and philosophers call it ‘dualistic.’ Politics is one example; its soundbites are framed to have us believe things are either this way or that. I think this is grossly misleading. Things vary far too much in life to assume that we can nail anything down for sure. Being uncertain, however is an anxious feeling. Having opinions is reassuring and can offer us comfort by assuring ourselves that we know what in fact is unknowable. I’ve noticed that those who suffer this uncertainty acutely, are the most strident in the expression of their opinions.

One reason we can never know what’s next is the way time works. Time transforms everything big and small. Time has ways of exalting the humble and humbling the exalted or to say it differently, messing up the best plans we ever made or redeeming out grossest snafus we’ve committed. In that regard I’m fond of the old story of Joe Jacobs, a humble man and a professional fight manager. One night in 1932, Jacobs, upon hearing that his man lost the decision, seized the mic and shouted. “We was robbed.’ I would have imagined his grammatical error would have consigned his declaration to oblivion. Instead it earned him literary immortality. You never know just how things will play out over time.

The downed birch tree where I saw this lovely fungus is another instance of the unexpected transformations that can surprise and may offer significant comfort. The birch tree was a beauty. It grew close to the house and for over fifty years offered shade for the porch. Birches like this are more common to northern climes so I was often amazed and especially pleased that it fared so well here in the mid-Atlantic.

The time came when the tree began ailing. Leaves turned brown, limb by limb. Was it dying? We consulted an arborist the way patients anxiously turn to doctors with their complaints, fearing the worst but hoping for the best. There was nothing he could do. Saddened, we postponed the inevitable until we finally had it cut down. When it was gone I felt as if I had lost a limb. Only the stump remained, like a grave marker, inches above the ground and close to the house, as I’ve seen in some family cemeteries around old farm houses in rural areas here on the Shore.

It was two years later when I noticed the fungus for the first time.

Seeing beauty in the formation of the fungus softened the harder edges of my mourning in ways I would never have suspected. I don’t know if I shall ever completely get over the fact that the tree is gone from my life but I have found some pleasure in the beauty of the transformational process that had been effected on the root stump. A new life of a very different kind had appeared in this transformation. It appeared wholly unexpected and I saw it first from the corner of my eye.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

The Library Guy: Celeste-Marie Bernier on Frederick Douglass’s Family

September 26, 2020 by Bill Peak Leave a Comment

In honor of Frederick Douglass Day, Bill Peak’s guest today is Professor Celeste-Marie Bernier, Professor of United States and Atlantic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and a world-renowned Frederick Douglass scholar. Bill speaks with her about her latest book, If I Survive, and the remarkable Walter O. Evans archive of Frederick Douglass Family correspondence and art it chronicles, including letters home from Lewis Henry Douglass, who fought with the illustrious 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner.

This video is approximately thirty-four minutes in length. Photo credits; National Park Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington D.C. For more information about the Talbot County Free Library please go here.

Food Friday: Sleight of Hand

September 25, 2020 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

Originally I thought I would write a timely piece about tacos to cleverly coincide with National Taco Day, which is October 4. I am a week early, which should give you plenty of time to experiment and try every variation and permutation before the big day actually arrives. It is funny how the calendar keeps playing tricks on me this year. 2020 has been a weird one, to say the least.

Spring was lovely – it didn’t feel like a burden to stay safely at home and watch the daffodils emerge from corners of the garden. The tulips bloomed late and then disappeared in a week. The daffodils hung on for weeks. There were buckets of warm spring rain, which suited the hydrangeas. And the burgeoning mosquitoes. Summer was long and hot. The minute fall arrived (this past Tuesday at 9:30 AM, EDT) it cooled down and I reached for a sweater, which I have since tossed onto the back of a kitchen chair because it has gotten summer-warm again. Just because the calendar says it’s fall doesn’t guarantee that the weather will cooperate.

I used to love running out to the grocery store whenever the whim or the obscure recipes demanded it. Those were the days. Carefree. Mask-free. The wind blowing through my artfully coiffed locks. That was back when I could get haircuts. (I was taller and blonder and thinner in that Katmandu state of mind, too.) Covid-19 has required that we plan ahead, shop less frequently, stay home more, mask up and be mindful of others.

I like to think that I am a frugal New Englander; that I remember to “Use it up, wear it out, made it do, do without.” Somehow I always picture that phrase as coming to me from repeatedly reading Little Women. Surely Beth embroidered it as a lovely cross-stitched sampler that hung over her piano. Or Laura Ingalls Wilder muttered under her breath as she grimly churned butter in a sod-house in Minnesota. But no, it turns out that it was a phrase used in World War II, encouraging us to cheerfully make do with rationing. I guess I need to re-read Little Women.
https://www.eisenhowerfoundation.net/ikeducation/lesson-plans/use-it-wear-it-out-make-it-do-or-do-without#

We have been watching lots of videos, as have you. We fell into Netflix’s Chef’s Table recently. After watching an hour of grim pandemic news it is a relief to see images of people with passions and skills, living happy, pre-pandemic lives, puttering around their well-appointed kitchens making wonderfully bizarre foods. https://philly.eater.com/2019/4/15/18282518/south-philly-barbacoa-cristina-martinez-mexican-restaurant-philadelphia

I used to think narrowly about tacos. I have been amazed to find that tacos are not just browned ground beef, flavored by Old El Paso seasoning mix, served in fried, hard corn tortilla shells, topped with orange cheese. Now I know that tacos will save us during the pandemic, because they make ordinary leftovers exotic. Tacos are magic. I give to you some taco legerdemain:Nights when I have trouble sleeping, instead of worrying about the state of the world, over which I have no control, I try to think about what grooviness I can serve for dinner without going to the grocery store. What is lurking in the fridge or is tucked away in the pantry that can stretch the time until I need to mask up and tear through the grocery store.

Leftovers are our friends, and leftovers as tacos are friends with beer and chips. Tacos are better than casseroles. Consequently I have learned to keep a stash of corn tortillas in the fridge, which are the basis for tacos. (Sometimes I have flour tortillas, too. In a pinch we can make quesadillas, which make an easy, cheesy side dish.)

Most all of the time we have these items, too. Although I have to ask the Family Nose to test the sour cream container for viability:

Meat – leftover roast beef, steak, chicken, salmon, pork, lamb
Refried beans – try to get the vegetarian kind to avoid lard
Rice – we always make too much, so there is always a stash in the freezer
Corn or flour shell tortillas
Toppings
Shredded lettuce or cabbage
Chopped tomato
Chopped Vidalia onion, green onion, red onion
Radishes (some may lurk in the way back)
Cilantro (it is amazing how much fresh cilantro will add to a store-bought salsa)
Guacamole (I never have avocados, but you might)
Salsa
Salsa verde
Sour cream (from a couple of weeks ago, usually)
Shredded cheese – we mix mozzarella with cheddar
Jalapeños – we always have a jar of pickled jalapeños, but fresh pack a better kick, and will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks
Lime juice for a refreshing citrus jolt – bottled will do in a pinch
Olives
Hot sauce
Corn

I used to fry the tortillas to death, thinking that the packaged hard shells we found in the grocery store were authentic. Such foolishness! Now I either lightly fry the shells in a skillet or griddle and warm both sides of each tortilla until they are warm and soft. Or, to keep the stove top from getting splattered, I drape the shells over the wire oven racks in a 350°F oven for about 5-7 minutes. Some recipes say spray with oil, but really, spray? Aren’t we trying to save the planet? I say leave the shells in the oven until you have found the degree of crispiness you enjoy the most. Low cal, and ozone friendly

Good luck with your National Taco Day celebration. You can never rehearse too much, or too often. Just remember to keep some tortillas (and beer) in the fridge, and some extra chips in the pantry. Make yourself happy puttering in the kitchen.

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
-Calvin Trillin

Salt Fat Acid Heat guru Samin Nosrat’s brilliant take: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/29/slow-roasted-pork-taco-recipe-salted-caramel-cookies-samin-nosrat

Here is a vegetarian take on tacos, too: https://shaneandsimple.com/crunchy-baked-taco-shells/

Fish: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/grilling-tilapia-fish-tacos.html

https://everydaydishes.com/simple-food-recipes/leftover-roast-beef-street-tacos/

https://www.howsweeteats.com/2017/06/lets-set-taco-bar-fathers-day/

Chesapeake Arts: Artist Marcy Ramsey is Back at It

September 23, 2020 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

Marcy Ramsey’s annual show is up at MassoniArt through October and, due to the pandemic, by appointment only.

While that may sound constrictive, for those of you who know Ramsey’s work, the “by appointment only” requirement will offer visitors time to enjoy the show without distraction. So far it has worked out well and, who knows, it could be the way of galleries going forward.

For fifteen years the Chestertown artist has been entranced by the limitless play of color and light along the rivers of the Eastern Shore and the woodlands nearby. Her trademark meditations on flotsam and jetsam, reeds, floating leaves, and light reflected off of water are widely collected.

These familiar themes are revisited in much of Ramsey’s new work, but the interpretations are fresh and her color palette continues to evolve into luminous canvasses of the natural world around us.

And she is exploring some new themes, but we won’t tell you about them—you have to go see for yourself!

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about MassoniArt is at 203 High Street, Chestertown, Maryland. For an appointment, call 410-778- 7330. Masks are required. To find out more, visit their website here.

What’s Next: A Conversation with Chestertown Activist John Queen

September 21, 2020 by James Dissette 1 Comment

For our “What’s Next” series, the Spy caught up with Bayside HOYAS President and BlackUnion of Kent County Chairman John Queen to discuss the September 8 Town Council meeting’s approval of Ward 3 Council Member Ellsworth Tolliver’s Resolution and the Mayor Chris Cerino’s 16 month plan to address racial inequality in Chestertown.

Queen, who has long championed the empowerment of at-risk Black youths in Kent County, doesn’t mince words when it comes to evaluating how inequality issues are being addressed. He points out that real success will be found in the Black community and leadership itself rather than goals promoted solely by the white establishment.

“Keep in mind right now this racial injustice is because no one goes into the Black community…how many times has anyone gone into the Black community to find out more about disenfranchised voters?” he says.

But, Cerino’s 16-month plan exemplifies a mutual engagement with the Black community, Queen feels, and the fact that Mayor reached out to Black leadership during the initiative’s planning sets the right tone to moving forward.

Queen does not feel that Council Member Tolliver’s resolution met the same level of Black engagement during its formation.

Both Bayside HOYAs and the BlackUnion of Kent County are community action initiatives providing action-oriented answers to “ensure that all Blacks are valued and thrive economically and culturally by creating policies, programs, and projects.”

Bayside Hoyas (Helping Our Youth Achieve Success) was founded in 2013 by Queen, his brother Pierre and childhood friend Paul Tue III to provide options for Black county youths and to fill the void experienced by impoverished Kent youth lack of activities and positive role models. Co-founder Paul Tue has since moved to co-found the Social Action Committee for Racial Justice.

The Black Union of Kent County’s mission is “designed to take an in-depth look into five major issues that plague the Black Community; police genocide, miseducation, gentrification, access to wealth and mass incarceration,” and Queen feels that the 16-month plan will begin to address these fundamental issues.

In 2021, Queen expects to launch “The Smallest County,” a tourism company specializing in arts and culture, food and entertainment, african American tours, and educational tours.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. For more information about the Bayside HOYAS go here. For BlackUnion of Kent County please go to their Facebook page here.

Snapshots of Daily Life: Artifacts by George Merrill

September 20, 2020 by George R. Merrill Leave a Comment

Recently, a northwest wind combined with a tidal low, emptied water from our cove. Herons and gulls lit on the mudflat to feed. They lingered there while the water was out. As the water rose, the birds retreated. They’ll return when the flats are exposed.

We, too, are always searching. It’s a sign of life.

The Thames River snakes through London, England. Tides range anywhere from fifteen to twenty feet. Low tide exposes the riverbanks. There, mudlarks (people, not birds) scour and dig along its banks, ‘forebanks,’ in search of artifacts of London’s past dating from pre-Roman times. Mudlark and writer Lara Maiklem, seeks to nourish her spirit by feeding her imagination. She writes of mudlarking in her book, Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames. “Mudlarking is a quest in two parts,” she says; “the hunt for the object and the journey to identify what it is and learn more about it.” Her imagination is fed by the ways that her fragmentary discoveries might open windows into the lives and habits of those who once lived in London. Her story is haunting. She caught my imagination in two ways: in describing her own imagination and the way she satisfied its hungers. Imagination is the locus of the spirit. It has appetites as the body does. We recognize its hungers when we feel curiosity. When curiosity is laced with wonder, we know our spirits are ravenous.

Her portrait of her school days was similar to my own. She, too, was a dreamer. She lived a kind of alternative world in her classrooms. She writes, “… my school reports… they were in all honesty, dreadful… one overriding theme throughout: my ability to dream my way through class… inclined to be rather dreamy… must be willing to concentrate fully… would benefit with more interaction in class… does not seem to realize that she must concentrate at all times.” Hers was my story, too.

Her teachers were gentle. Mine played hardball. In an irritated tone, my mother would hear how “George is always daydreaming in class… never pays attention… will not apply himself… he doesn’t stay on task… I don’t know where his mind goes.”

As Maiklem described her own school days, I felt my past legitimized by this kindred soul. She also enthralled me with her descriptions of mudlarking, the curiosity driving her messy and tedious tasks of eking out clay pipes, glass, pottery shards, Roman coins, and pins from the mud. She was really after the story they might tell.

Maiklem is a self-confessed dreamer. Dreamers romanticize. I would offer that certain romanticizing is more than just wrapping a gauzy film around the stern realities of life. It’s more a hunger to understand, while living in the now, how it was for those living in the then. Like compassion, romanticism is a way of knowing, attended by a feeling of belonging to the lives of others and participating in their reality. Romantics and mystics try unraveling stray threads by which the entire human family is knit together. Maiklem describes her search as “grounding.”

When I was young, my father and I would search for Indian arrowheads. He had a large collection. Some seemed new, others battered with time. He said they belonged to the Lenni Lenape tribe who lived in the Mid-Atlantic, roamed the coast and hunted here on the hill where we stood. What were they liking? Did they see the same landscape I did, I wondered? How marvelous it was to stand where they once stood, at a time long before I was.

My kin rarely talked about family history. I regret that. I’ve had so many questions. I knew only that my mother’s family were in the marine trades around New York Harbor and the Hudson River from at least a turn of the 19th century, and that my paternal grandfather was an “oyster dealer.” As I’ve aged, my imagination has hungered to know more. I began my own mudlarking. I didn’t scour the shores of the island on which I grew up. Instead, I perused the contents of an old file box dated ‘1946.’

The box contained only a few artifacts of my family history. The contents were a hodgepodge of legal documents, cards, correspondences, a few yellowed photographs, birth, death, and marriage certificates. Like Maiklem’s findings along the Thames, I Identified some objects, but not their story. I found a yellowed photograph of a Victorian sitting room. It felt strangely familiar. Why was it saved at all? Was there a story for me? Would the corridors of my memory reveal anything?

The room was small, cluttered with bric-a-brac and there were pictures on every surface. Tapestries hung on two walls; doilies were placed on chair backs, and a table stood in the middle of the room. A tablecloth covered the table, and sitting on the floor at each end of the table were cuspidors. All I recognized for certain was the chair –– a platform rocking chair, the Morris Chair that I had in my room as a boy.

Tiny fragments of life experiences, like the ancient shards Maiklem unearthed from the Thames, endure over time in the corridors of memory. The photograph revealed a room, but not one I recognized. Time had altered its looks, but the fundamentals remained intact. Would my imagination reveal the whole from the part? Eventually it did. I felt a thrill of discovery.

The photograph was the sitting room of my grandparents’ old Victorian house along the Kill Van Kull. I’d been in that room with my relatives for some fifteen years on Thanksgiving Days during my youth. Then, in the late forties and fifties, all the Victoriana, appearing in the photograph cluttering the room, had since gone. Like all ancient artifacts, time altered it.

I thought I saw the presence of what was absent in the photograph, the presence of my father. I remember him there in that room for the last Thanksgiving of his life. He died two days later.

Food Friday: Saying Goodbye to Summer

September 18, 2020 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

I love the simplicity of summer cooking, mostly because my summertime philosophy is to send as much of the cooking outside to Mr. Friday and his grill as I possibly can, without seeming churlish. Or manipulative. Or lazy. He is better suited to repel the advances of mosquitos, and Luke the wonder dog lives in hope of a game of The B Word. I am naturally inclined to stay in the kitchen, monitoring the wine levels, while washing berries or whipping cream. Or checking Instagram.

The end of September is that odd time of the year when some mornings it is cool enough for a light jacket, which we will regret wearing along about eleven, when the temperature rises. The angle of light is changing, the sun is going down earlier, a handful of leaves is falling, and we are about ready for a change. Summer is a grand season, but I am looking forward to sweater weather.

And while we wait for the weather to catch up with the calendar, let’s move out to the back porch for a glass of wine. It’s almost dinnertime. There are more cardinals squawking in the hedge. I can hear geese some afternoons, and I watch the squirrels’ hunting parties rustling around while they are checking on this year’s pecan harvest. Luke is grateful for the extra distractions.

I anticipate the delights of the upcoming change of season, but I am also kvetching about the things I didn’t accomplish this summer: books I didn’t read, the croquet we never played, the back porch we didn’t paint, the European trip that was cancelled because of COVID, the domestic travel we couldn’t manage because of COVID; just lots of time at home, frozen in anxiety-ridden pandemic angst. Something has got to give!

Cooler weather means I will return to the kitchen and will rummage about for the big stew pots, the loaf pans, the Crock Pot and the recipes that will stick-to-our-ribs and our COVID bellies. Stews, chilies, spaghetti sauces, meatloaves, lasagnes, breads, brownies and pot pies. Spices swirling in the air. Baking. Planning Thanksgiving. I’m dreaming of a change from this stinking hot long, long summer. And then there are sugar plums that arrive in December! And having to figure out what to do for the Christmas card this year!

We do not ease our way back inside from the summer spent cooking outside on the grill. It is an abrupt change. Labor Day has come and gone, slamming the screen door behind it. I hear there might be some football. And while we wait for a vaccine I might as well get back into the kitchen – the summer holiday is over.

It’s going to rain this weekend with remnants of Hurricane Sally tooling around out there and if you can’t get outside to the grill – never fear. This is a good transitional side dish: oven roasted broccolini with lemons and Parmesan. Mr. Friday has been experimenting with broccolini on the grill this summer, and now it is coming inside. https://heronearth.com/roasted-broccolini-and-lemon-with-crispy-parmesan

If you don’t mind shopping for slivered almonds, you can try this version: https://daniliciousdishes.com/roasted-broccolini-w-garlic-parmesan-and-charred-lemon/

I’m going to ask Mr. Friday to help me with the cast iron skillet prep for hamburgers. There is one more week of September left, and I plan on relishing one last burger.

“Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away
Our hearts were ringing
In the key that our souls were singing
As we danced in the night
Remember how the stars stole the night away…”
-Earth, Wind & Fire

https://genius.com/Earth-wind-and-fire-september-lyrics

Sojourn through History: Highland Beach and Frederick Douglass’ Summer Home

September 16, 2020 by Jennifer Martella 1 Comment

This past weekend while many families were heading to the Maryland and Delaware beaches for summer fun, I headed in the opposite direction to Highland Beach on the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis. My purpose was to visit this town that has a very special place in Maryland’s history. Before my move to The Eastern Shore in 2004, my required reading began with “Chesapeake” by James Michener and a biography of Frederick Douglass. “Cedar Hill” was Frederick Douglass’ home in the Anacostia neighborhood of DC and “Twin Oaks” would have been Douglass’ summer home in Highland Beach, Maryland, had he not died before its completion. I recently learned the restoration of “Twin Oaks” began in the mid 1980’s and was the residence of Annapolis architect Chip Bohl and his wife Barbara. Walking through this charming small beach town with houses stepping up the hills above the Town Park and beach along the Chesapeake Bay was a delightful architectural and historical tour for me.

From my online research, I learned that the history of Highland Beach began twenty-nine years after the Emancipation Proclamation during the time of the Post Reconstruction Jim Crow Laws. Major Charles Douglass, who was a Civil War Veteran and the youngest son of Frederick Douglass, lived with his wife Laura in Washington, DC. During a trip to Maryland’s Western Shore in 1892, they were refused service, solely because of their race, at the Bay Ridge, a grand Victorian style summer resort that was a popular destination for vacationers from DC and Baltimore. Charles Douglass began to dream of a summer haven free from the bigotry of the Jim Crow laws.

Across the Bay Ridge Resort on Black Walnut Creek was a property owned by a local black family. In 1893, after several months of negotiations and with some financial assistance from his father, Charles Douglass became the owner of a large parcel of the former Brashears estate in 1893 and became a developer. He created lots for family members and friends to build summer residences. A year later, Charles Douglass built Highland Beach’s first cottage for his family. He also reserved the prime corner lot for his father’s house, across from the shoreline park, beach and the Bay. Construction began and the house was christened “Twin Oaks”. The key design element was the second floor balcony, strategically placed with a direct view across the Bay. Frederick Douglass could stand there and savor his freedom as he gazed at the mouth of the Eastern Bay leading to the Wye River where he was born a slave.

The allure of 500 feet of a gently curved beach on the Chesapeake Bay and the proximity of Annapolis and DC to the Town soon became a gathering place for many of the well-known African Americans of that time and later years. As I gazed at the front elevation of “Twin Oaks”, I imagined the wrap-around porch would have been a popular gathering place for residents and guests who were the ”firsts” in their fields. If there had been a guest book at Twin Oaks, names listed would have included Judge Robert Terrell (one of the first municipal court judges in DC ) and his wife Dr. Mary Church Terrell (one of the first African American women to earn a college degree who later became nationally known for her activism for women’s suffrage and civil rights); Booker T. Washington (advisor to US presidents, author, educator and orator); Paul Lawrence Dunbar (novelist, playwright and poet; W E.B. Du Bois (author, civil rights activist, historian and sociologist); E. Franklin Frazier (author and sociologist); Paul Robeson (stage and film actor, concert artist and political activist); Langston Hughes (novelist, playwright, poet and social activist); Robert Weaver (first African American to be appointed to a cabinet position as the US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) and Alex Haley, whose groundbreaking book and TV series “Roots” started a nationwide interest in genealogy.

Through the years, “Twin Oaks” passed through several generations of the Douglass family until one day it caught the eye of Annapolis architect Chip Bohl and his wife Barbara, who were involved with the preservation of Anne Arundel County’s historic structures. Chip was intrigued with “Twin Oaks” association with Frederick Douglass and on summer drives he and Barbara would pass by the house and soon began to notice its slow exterior decline. They inquired about the house in the hope of helping to promote its preservation. One of Douglass’ descendants still owned the house and sold it to the Bohls. They acquired the house in the mid 1980’s and began its restoration per the National Park Service Standards of Rehabilitation to its 165 appearance including the original exterior color scheme.

To protect the historic structure, they raised the house’s main floor four feet above FEMA’s designated floor level. The exterior wood siding was carefully removed to examine and repair the wall cavity and add insulation before the siding was restored to its original coursed positions. The couple were greatly relieved to discover on their first walk-in that the interior of the house required little alteration. The wood floors were in good shape and much of the 1895 glass was still intact. Since the house had been built as a summer home, the interior wall and ceiling finishes were triple bead pine boards instead of the plaster prevalent at that time which would not have withstood years of temperature differential in unheated spaces. The bonus was that since its original construction in 1894, the pine boards had acquired a beautiful patina that required very little upkeep. Installing HVAC, updating electrical and plumbing were the final touches to make the summer house the Bohls’ year round residence.

The Bohls unselfishly understood they were temporary stewards of “Twin Oaks” and the house belonged to the people of Maryland and to the Nation. To preserve and secure the future of “Twin Oaks”, the Bohls enlisted the help of Donna Ware who at that time was the Chief Preservation Officer for Anne Arundel County. She was instrumental in listing the house on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1991. The Bohls subsequently sold the house to the State of Maryland in 1995 and it was deeded to the Town of Highland Beach. The property is now the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center. The Bohls’ wise decision to raise the house’s foundation during their restoration saved the Museum collection from the aftermath of the storm surges of Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Highland Beach is believed to be the first African American summer resort in the United States. When Highland Beach was incorporated in 1922, it became the first African American municipality in Maryland. Today it is home to both full time and summer residents who zealously continue not to permit any commercial establishments within the Town limits. Many of the houses are still owned and occupied by descendants of the original homeowners. On the day I visited, I enjoyed strolling along the street by Town Beach with its park and pier for residents and their guests only and enjoying the salty air and the Bay breezes. As an architect, I admired the mix of newer houses and the original houses with markers proudly celebrating its first residents in this most intriguing Town so proud of its history. I look forward to visiting Highland Beach again when the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center is once again open.

“Twin Oaks”, The Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center, Inc., is located at 3200 Wayman Avenue, Highland Beach, MD. The Museum is open by appointment only but is temporarily closed due to Covid. The Museum hopes to reopen to visitors in the spring of 2021. For further information about the Town of Highland beach and the Museum, visit the Town website at www.highlandbeachmd.org.

Restoration of “Twin Oaks” by Chip Bohl of Bohl Architects, , www.bohlarchitects.com, 410-263-2200, Chip@bohlarchitects.com. Photography by the author and Chip Bohl.

Jennifer Martella has pursued her dual careers in architecture and real estate since she moved to the Eastern Shore in 2004. Her award winning work has ranged from revitalization projects to a collaboration with the Maya Lin Studio for the Children’s Defense Fund’s corporate retreat in her home state of Tennessee.

Sections

More