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June 20, 2025

Chestertown Spy

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Does the Constitution Still Serve Us?: A Talk With Prof. Rich De Prospo

June 19, 2025 by James Dissette 1 Comment

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In a moment when democratic institutions are under renewed scrutiny, Rich De Prospo offers an intense critique of America’s foundational narratives in his latest book, Exceptionally Backward: Economic, Racial, Gender, and Generational Inequality in a Neo-Colonial U.S.

De Prospo is Director of American Studies; Ernest A. Howard Professor of English and American Studies at Washington College. During his tenure there, he has written more than six books often challenging the standard academic “take” on the roots and ascension of American literary history, and now offers an interpretation of the founding documents as what WVU Professor of Literature Timothy. Sweet calls “an anticipatory reaction against Europe’s emergent humanist modernity

De Prospo says the project began in the early days of COVID lockdowns, during a chance sidewalk conversation in Pennsylvania. There, a colleague mentioned an obscure Soviet-era book titled Marx and Engels on the United States, a compilation of 19th-century commentary on American inequality. Intrigued, De Prospo returned to Marx’s observations and found unsettling continuity between the past and present.

What followed was a sustained inquiry into the ideological framework of the U.S. Constitution, which De Prospo argues was never meant to promote equality or popular sovereignty. Instead, it was meticulously designed to entrench elite control.

“The so-called Revolution of 1776 had no intention whatsoever of altering inequality,” he asserts. “What the Constitution protected wasn’t liberty—it was elite rule.”

Throughout the book, and in his interview with The Spy, De Prospo confronts a number of cherished civic beliefs. He draws on the writings of Jefferson and Hamilton, the Federalist Papers, and recent scholarship by legal experts like Erwin Chemerinsky and political scientists like Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. His conclusion: systemic inequality in the United States is not a deviation from its founding ideals—but rather their logical outcome.

This interview explores the persistence of Founding Father mythologies across political lines, the illusion of American “moderation,” and the cultural tug-of-war over who gets to define democracy. As De Prospo puts it, “This is not merely about originalism. It’s about whether a document built to preserve elite power can survive the demands of a democratic society.”

This video is approximately fourteen minutes in length. Exceptionally Backward: Economic, Racial, Gender, and Generational Inequality in a Neo-Colonial US can be be found on Amazon.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Archives

Finding Home By Laura J. Oliver

June 15, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver 2 Comments

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One summer afternoon, before I’d entered first grade, I climbed a rickety metal stool near the kitchen sink and discovered a lemon meringue pie resting on the Formica counter. With my mother tapping away on her typewriter in another part of the house, I touched a tentative finger to one wavy peak. It gave way like sea foam— soft and without substance —a sweetness that dissolved on my tongue.

In my effort to disguise my crime, more and more meringue disappeared until the puffy white cloud had disappeared, and the lemon filling shone like a yellow sun. To evade punishment, I blamed the cat, whom I feared —a Siamese ankle-biter who would not let me love her.

My father’s response required creativity, and my mother allowed it. I’d lied, and exposure of my character was deemed a just consequence. He explained it like this: for the entire month of June, he’d report to everyone what I’d done. As I stood beside him, gripped by one hand, Mrs. Uebersax next door, our mailman, and the clerk at the local package goods store all had to hear what kind of person I was. A little fibber, it turns out, who will eat the meringue off your pie.

As intended, it was humiliating but in an intriguing kind of way. Those who listened looked down at me politely at first, then their expressions became inexplicably compassionate and a little worried. I didn’t know then that my days with my father were numbered. That within five years, he would have another family, and we would rarely see each other.

Fast forward 30 years, and I am a young mother, receiving the news my dad has had both a heart attack and a stroke at the wheel of his car near Pocomoke. He is assessed in the emergency room, treated, and transferred to Intensive Care in a Baltimore hospital. I have not seen him many times in my adult life, but I know I should visit.

I have no sense of direction, and this handicap adds to the stress. Possessing no inner compass, no guidance system, I’m often lost; my instinct for which way to turn is invariably exquisitely wrong. So, finding my way into the city is a stressful ordeal, and on my way to Intensive Care, I turn down the wrong hall. It’s like driving around a bend on a dark road and coming upon the scene of an accident. From a curtained alcove, someone is wailing like an animal in pain. The source of the noise is not the person who is injured or sick but the loved one in attendance. There are footsteps, as if that person is pacing. I am transfixed.

Most of the anguish is pure sound, but as I listen, arrested, words form. I hear a mournful “Nooooooo” and then a chillingly adult voice wailing, “I want my mommy back.” I am horrified to be inadvertently present at such a personal moment, and yet, it is hard to move away. No one knows how someone else suffers, what raw grief sounds like. When that kind of pain comes for me, will mine sound the same?

I hurry back down the hall praying that the grief-stricken relative will be comforted. I imagine my prayer rising like heat from hot asphalt, with hundreds of others, every day, up through the ceiling, then through the roof of this hospital, and I hope that somehow compassion serves a purpose. I would describe what I’m doing as evoking an energy, and I’d use the term “universe.” All my adult life, I’ve tried to replace God the Good Father with something more likely.

In the sitting area near my dad’s unit, I wait until I can see him. Fifteen minutes every hour is the rule. I leaf through a magazine, not really reading the stories until a photograph abruptly catches my eye. A small boat is pictured on a black-and-white river, a river indistinguishable from the one of my youth. With my next breath, I’m not in ICU, hoping not to be fatherless. I’m a child in the presence of the father I want only to please.

He sits beside me in the stern of a drifting rowboat, a brown-haired, blue-eyed man in his thirties. It is dusk, and we have been exploring secret creeks and hidden coves. Honeysuckle and seaweed scent the air. As the dying light coalesces around the red-embered sun, he restarts the engine and turns us towards home. The stern plows deep as the boat accelerates, then planes and levels off, the cove ringed by shore lights that candle the horizon. They flicker and flame– house lights and porch lamps. They could be fallen stars carried like flotsam to shore.

I can’t hear my father speak unless I turn my head sideways. The rush of air whips his words into the night. I’m unprepared, therefore, when he puts my hand on the tiller, scooting over on the seat to let me steer. Stunned to be guiding the boat by myself, I see the entrance to our cove and, in the distance, our pier. I keep the bow aimed precisely, my whole being locked on our landmark as if we might fly off the edge of the world should I fail.

He nods at the channel markers, where their lights rock in the current. “Keep green to starboard heading out, but red on your right going in.” I squeeze my eyes shut to memorize these instructions, then overcorrect the tiller and the boat swings wide. I look up at him, panicked, but he corrects our course with a smile. “Remember this,” he calmly instructs the girl he is leaving, the one who still struggles to find her way.

He leans down so I’ll hear him.

“‘Green to starboard’ will take you anywhere you want to go on the river. ‘Red, right, returning’ will always be all you need to get home.”

Happy Father’s Day.

 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Laura

Food Friday: Chicken on a Stick

June 13, 2025 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

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Anthony Bourdain said: “Everyone should know how to roast a chicken. It’s a life skill that should be taught to small children at school.” Roasted chicken is just the beginning.

I love chicken. It’s not fancy. It does not need to be complex. It is steady and reliable. It is a blank canvas, ready to take on your vision. It is ready to nurture your fragile soul. It is adaptable, versatile and eager to please. We are rather fond of roasted chicken, grilled chicken, chicken Schnitzel, fried chicken, stir-fried chicken and barbecued chicken. Not to mention chicken Marsala, chicken piccata, chicken kabobs, chicken salad, chicken tacos, chicken and waffles, and chicken pot pie.

Growing up my favorite birthday dinner was baked chicken and rice, which was reliably crisp, juicy and delicious. I knew the dangers of the summertime grilled chicken legs, that my father always nearly incinerated on the back yard hibachi grill, that were blackened and juicy and scalding hot, but I happily gnawed away at them anyway, gingerly, with newly seared fingertips. On family summer vacations I would eat all the Howard Johnson’s crunchy fried chicken I could get. In college I was a reliably cheap date, because I would always order the chicken.

During the summer months, which are rapidly approaching, I like to delegate as much of the cooking as I can, as you well know, to the back yard grill and Mr. Sanders. I contribute cold drinks, basting brushes and unsolicited advice. The least I can do is help with thoughtful meal suggestions and some of the prep work. Naturally chicken tends to be the first protein that springs to mind. And what can be more fun than food on a stick?

It’s the perfect time for kabobs! Kabobs have something for everybody. Vegetables! Meat! Dangerous pointy sticks! Charred summer food is just the best. You can thread chicken and veggies on a skewer, or you could try beef or pork. Or even tofu: Tofu Kabobs Chicken Kabobs It is al fresco dining at its zenith; redolent with flavor, and hints of danger.

Preparing kabobs is a grand way to empty out some of the crisper drawer, and reduce your sad collection of tired peppers, onions, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, and even Brussels sprouts. There might even be cruciferous vegetables aficionados among us who will insist on including clumps of broccolini. Be that way. Don’t take my word for it, but you can trust our clever friends at Food52: Veggie kabobs

You can prepare delightful all-vegetable kabobs for your vegetarians, and cook them side-by-side with the meat-laced skewers for the omnivores in your life. In one fell swoop you can simplify meal prep. Sometimes, with the young and opinionated, you will have to be careful about what kabob items are touching. There are plenty of variations, and you can please your pickiest eater: Grilled Kabobs

It is a week until the summer solstice. We are dancing between afternoon thunderstorms this week – next week we will be ready for summer celebrations. Bring on the sunscreen, the Off!, the frosty beer, and chicken on a stick. Yumsters.

“There was shish-kabob for lunch, huge, savory hunks of spitted meat sizzling like the devil over charcoal after marinating seventy-two hours in a secret mixture Milo had stolen from a crooked trader in the Levant, served with Iranian rice and asparagus tips Parmesan, followed by cherries jubilee for dessert and then steaming cups of fresh coffee with Benedictine and brandy.”
― Joseph Heller

 


Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Food Friday

Modern Knights and Maids Keep Alive Jousting on the Shore

June 10, 2025 by P. Ryan Anthony Leave a Comment

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At the Tuckahoe Equestrian Center in Queen Anne on May 24, the Eastern Shore Jousting Association held the Mid Atlantic Joust Tournament. People came with campers and RVs to settle on folding chairs and watch some enthusiastic horse riders tilt at small rings with their handmade, steel-tipped lances. The participants were named Knight of the Little Woods or Maid of Rabbit Hill Road or something else equally colorful.

When the announcer called out, “Ride, Dear Maid (or Sir Knight), ride,” the competitor galloped down the 80-yard dirt track beneath three arches, from each of which was suspended a metal harness ring wrapped with white cord. The rider had eight seconds to charge through the arches and try to spear the metal rings that varied in size from 1/4″ to 1-3/4″ in diameter, depending on the skill level of the knight or maid.

One of the announcers for the event was Karen Callahan, the secretary of the ESJA. She had started riding in horse shows as a child.

“A lot of my family members would joust,” she explained, “so I started going to the different tournaments held on the Shore to watch them and support the state sport. I would participate in different skits put on by the members at the tournaments back in the late 80s, early 90s. In 2015, I started jousting in the Leadline Class here locally and on the state level.”

Callahan is involved with an activity that has a storied tradition. Jousting is, in fact, the oldest equestrian sport in the world. Its creation is usually credited to a Frenchman named Geoffori de Pruelli. It spread from France to Germany and then England between the 10th and 12th centuries. During the Middle Ages it was used in waging war, but with the invention of gunpowder the art of jousting a man from his horse became an outmoded battle strategy.

The tournament field became a place of sport, and the knights turned their lances to the more sophisticated task of spearing small metal rings, making jousting a civilized game of skill and sportsmanship. When Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, founded the colony of Maryland on the shores of St. Mary’s County in 1634, he introduced jousting there, and tournaments became a favored pastime of the settlers. This sport has survived wars and flourished in times of peace.

Over the past 100 years jousting has evolved from private contests to public competitions aiding civic and church organizations and raising funds for Civil War monuments. Rather than just being popular among the “landed gentry,” the sport is now enjoyed by suburbanites, city dwellers, and rural landowners.

In 1950 some dedicated jousting enthusiasts founded The Maryland Jousting Tournament Association, which was instrumental in establishing riding rules adopted throughout Maryland. The organization has members in every corner of the state as well as neighboring states and the District of Columbia.

During the February 1962 session of the Maryland General Assembly, the Honorable Henry J. Fowler, a St. Mary’s County member of the House of Delegates, introduced House Bill No. 80, which would recognize jousting as the Official State Sport. It was passed through both chambers of the Maryland Legislature, and on April 6, 1962, Governor J. Millard Tawes signed the bill into law to become effective on June 1 of that year.

On December 11, 1969, a group of local jousters met at the Queen Anne Fire House for the purpose of organizing the Eastern Shore Jousting Association; officers were elected and a membership fee of $1.00 was established. At a February 2, 1970, meeting, the purposes of the organization were defined and a standard set of riding rules were adopted. It represented riders from Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot Counties.

The first ESJA Championship Tournament was held on September 27, 1970, at Herman Callahan’s field off Route 404 in Queen Anne. The first banquet was held at the Talbot Agricultural Center on November 14. ESJA holds nine tournaments from May to September, and they also participate in local parades. The banquet is held at the close of every jousting season.

Members of the ESJA, approximately 28 families, proudly promote jousting on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as well as in Delaware and Virginia. They show a genuine interest in the Associations well-being and that of jousting itself. Karen Callahan is among them, helping with fundraising and promotion.

“Jousting is a fading sport as not many people participate anymore,” she said, “so I try and promote it as much as possible to educate people.”

Indeed, the audience at Queen Anne on May 24 was not large, and the atmosphere was at times sadly quiet. There wasn’t the pageantry of old, and the riders’ outfits were not elaborate or stylish. Rather than horns announcing the triumph of a knight or maid, country music blared over scratchy speakers when someone lanced the rings. But it was obvious that the skilled participants loved what they were doing, and a good time was had by all. It’s a tradition worth maintaining.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider

Twenty Characters, Three Lines By Laura J. Oliver

June 8, 2025 by Laura Oliver Leave a Comment

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I seldom donate money to anything but dire causes—children in need of food, animals in need of kindness, elections that need winning, my wardrobe —that kind of thing —but I got sucked in last week because my college played the urgency card.

“It’s your last chance, expiring at midnight tonight, to contribute to the college by buying a commemorative brick.” The brick was to be included in the renovation of the historic sidewalk in front of a dorm I had often visited on the grounds of the first college chartered in the sovereign United States of America (1782), — the only college to which George Washington gave permission to use his name and also contributed 50 guineas.

Each donor was to fill out a form indicating what they would like engraved on their brick. If GW could fork over 50 guineas, surely I could part with 150 George Washingtons, (although each of his guineas contained 22 karats of gold and mine were on VISA). But who wouldn’t want a piece of that action? And for a good cause? The conundrum being, what to have engraved? Three lines, a 20-character limit per line, including punctuation and spaces, to lie beneath the footsteps of students walking into their futures as I once had.

This shouldn’t have been hard, but it was ridiculous. My name seemed like a no-brainer, but my last name changed five days after graduation. Use both? Middle initial? Of maiden name or middle name? A wish for future generations? A quote from someone wise? A joke only one person would get?

What would you say? Three lines, 20 characters.

You leave home all possibility and unformed desire—searching for a stand-alone identity. I had arrived on campus at 18 with a crippling romanticism I still haven’t offloaded and the notion I might one day be a writer.

As I sat in my living room counting spaces and characters I remembered being told at a dinner party of a mysterious brick with a message on it embedded in an Annapolis sidewalk. I had walked these streets for years, looking down frequently to avoid breaking my neck on sidewalks uprooted by massive trees or those which age alone had hefted toward heaven. But I had never spotted a brick with letters on the surface. Who would have put it there and for what purpose, I wondered. I began looking down with a mission other than staying upright. I was on a treasure hunt across time–the treasure being a satisfied curiosity. Or perhaps to be the recipient of anonymous goodwill. Which is what I try to be every day.

After weeks of searching, one afternoon when I wasn’t looking at all, (lesson here but I won’t point to it), I looked down and there it was. A brick embedded in the sidewalk at a slight angle with two words engraved on it. No spoiler alerts– I’ll let you find it. Pro tip. It’s within sight of a very old church.

When the Main Street power lines in my town were buried in 1995 all the old bricks had to be taken up and were given away. I took one to use as a doorstop just because, well George Washington may have walked on it. Or Thomas Jefferson. Then I discovered that collecting bricks as pieces of history is a thing — there is a Facebook group called “Crazy about Bricks.”

I won’t be joining, but I do wonder if objects can hold onto energy. The way psychics ask to hold something once owned by the person being inquired about. How about all those clay handprints the kids made we have squirreled away. Were their hands ever that small? Is their energy still there? You know it is, or you would have tossed them out by now. How about that pocketknife you inherited? The ring? Can my brick hold all the hope for the future I brought to school from my past if it’s made in the present?

Have you figured out yet what you would carve into yours? Your name? Your dream? How it turned out?

Because now it is life that is playing the urgency card. From the far end of that pathway, how would you succinctly identify yourself, your calling, what you made of the gifts you were given, your precious time on the planet, circling the sun, a third of the way out on the arm of a spiral galaxy. What of yourself are you leaving behind?

The clock was ticking, and I had to pick something—anything– from the far end of the journey that had begun on that sidewalk. For all the dreams in my life that haven’t worked out, I decided to acknowledge the one that has.

Laura J. Pritchett
(Laura J. Oliver)

Writer. As planned.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Local Life

Food Friday: Summer’s Here!

June 6, 2025 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

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Happy June! Summer has kicked off already in our neighborhood. Last weekend Eleanor, who is ten-and-a-half and lives across the street from us, opened her famous lemonade stand. We like to support youthful endeavors, so we gamely trotted over in the morning for our annual Solo cups of Wyler’s lemonade and Eleanor’s hand-crafted beaded friendship bracelets. The summer games have begun!

What will your summer drink be? We are entering the glorious time of the year when the sun sets late, the fireflies abound, and the sun is warm, but not yet baking us into gooey sweaty messes. It’s time for sitting on the back porch, talking about summer, and admiring Eleanor’s handiwork.

Summer means vacations, trips to the beach, sand in the car, trashy romance novels, blockbuster Tom Cruise movies, and cool drinks. With snacks. I suppose we can and do enjoy those things all year round, but the summer of my imagination is always viewed through those IG-perfect rosy glasses – in crisp white linen, with lightly freckled noses, always mosquito-free, with a side of lobster rolls and crispy fries. Yumsters.

Last year orange wines were popular among the younger cocktail set. And the perpetual favorite rosé wines proliferate. Everyone who is anyone has their own rosés now. For example: Château Miraval (Brad Pitt), and Invivo x SJP (Sarah Jessica Parker) have their monikers on some very pretty bottles of rosé. Celeb Rosés

A few summers ago Mr. Sanders found a tasty, inexpensive green wine at the grocery store, a Vinho Verde. It young and fresh, and so light because it has a very low alcohol content. Heavens. I didn’t care for it much, because I am true blue and loyal to my cheap, full-bodied and buzzy Chardonnay (if you know someone at the Kendall Jackson Vineyards, please let them know that I would be an excellent shill) and I found it too light. I am very comfortable in my rut. But you should poke around the wine shelves and see for yourself.

This summer I am going to make the effort to experiment with a variety of drinks. I might not appreciate all the trade war dramas playing out in Washington, but I have seen other news which can affect us, too: Maryland and Delaware have elected to opt for the same official state cocktail – the Orange Crush. And have you heard the news flash that Popeye’s has released their summer drink for 2025 – Pickle Lemonade? Whoa. Pay attention, Eleanor: Pickle lemonade is the new Wyler’s.

The official state cocktail of Maryland is the Orange Crush, as declared by Governor Moore. It’s a combination of vodka, triple sec, orange juice, and lemon-lime soda. I imagine it has a whopper of an alcohol content. Maryland wins the Orange Crush competition – of course. Maryland invented it for heaven’s sake. In Ocean City. Maryland vs. Delaware:

I always find that orange juice is a little too sweet, but then again, I might not be a good judge because I loved Tang as a child. Remember Tang? It probably had more chemicals and artificial sweeteners than all the Halloween candy I ever consumed as a tot. For the sake of professionalism, I will have to try an Orange Crush, or two.

More in the interest of science I will also be trying the Pickle Lemonade, spiked and un-spiked. Luckily we still consider pickles to be green leafy vegetables in this household, so we always have a jar or two of Vlasics in the fridge. If Maryland has an official cocktail, maybe I need one, too.

I like a slice or two of pickle on my fried chicken sandwiches, so mixing some pickle juice into a glass of lemonade might not taste as peculiar as it sounds. And it sounds a little more exotic and appetizing than chugging a glass of Gatorade to refresh and re-hydrate. Stock up on pickles. Stock up on orange juice — summer is almost here.

“Summer’s here, I’m for that
I got my rubber sandals, got my straw hat
I got my cold beer, I’m just glad that I’m here…”
— James Taylor

Here is a free article from the New York Times: Pickle Lemonade


Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 1 Homepage Slider, Food Friday

The We Are One Alliance; A Talk with Heather Mizeur

June 3, 2025 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

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This is a long form interview with Heather Mizeur

Is it possible in a polarized society for two people at opposite ends of the political spectrum to breach the chasm and recognize each other’s humanness?

That’s the question Heather Mizeur has been asking for a decade. For the former Maryland legislator, Democratic congressional candidate, and longtime civic leader, a question she is approaching again with her newly relaunched nonprofit: The We Are One Alliance.

The multi-faceted We Are One Alliance was born from Mizeur’s belief that the way we engage in politics must change if we are to heal as a nation—and as individuals.

The journey began in 2017 with the founding of Soul Force Politics, a nonprofit created in the aftermath of the 2016 election. At a time when political polarization was reaching new extremes, Mizeur sought to build a space for compassion, dialogue, and common ground. “I wanted to show people ways that we can bridge the divides and come together in a common-sense way to solve problems in our communities,” she says.

During her 2022 run for Congress in Maryland’s First District, Mizeur temporarily paused her nonprofit work—but carried its philosophy into every aspect of her campaign. Her motto, “We Are One,” became a call to remember our shared humanity, even in the face of fierce ideological differences.

“We’re humans, often with similar dreams and shared struggles,” she reflects. “Politics has turned into what divides us when our democracy calls us to come forward and work together in ways that allow civil discourse again.”

With the guidance of her board of directors, she expanded the organization under a new name—the We Are One Alliance—to reflect a broader mission encompassing a family of initiatives, each rooted in healing, community, and soulful resistance.

One of the flagship programs is Operation Thriving Acres, a therapeutic horticulture and farm therapy project hosted on Mizeur’s farm outside of Chestertown. Inspired by conversations with veterans during her campaign Mizeur developed a nature-based retreat program that is now drawing interest from across the state.

“When they nurtured something that was living, it helped lower their trauma,” she says. “They were giving their attention to something life-giving instead of life-taking. Politics divides us, but the land heals us.”

Through partnerships with the Maryland chapters of Disabled American Veterans and VFW chaplains, the program has already begun hosting small retreats and gatherings.

Another program, Inward Expeditions, offers immersive group retreats to destinations like Costa Rica, where participants engage in deep reflection, self-care, and leadership training. “Some of this work is done best in community,” she explains, “but there’s also a need for solo journeys of the soul.”

The Sacred Dreams Project extends the Alliance’s reach internationally, through a partnership with Zimbabwean educator and humanitarian Dr. Tererai Trent. Together, they are building water wells, gardens, and sustainable infrastructure for rural schools.

Another cornerstone of the Alliance is the revival of Soul Force Politics as a learning platform. Through online courses, monthly community challenges, and writings published on her Substack (“The Honorable Heather Mizeur”), Mizeur is helping others cultivate inner resilience, clarity, and grounded presence.

Mizeur reimagines the idea of resistance. “Resistance, energetically, doesn’t work,” she says. “When you push against something, it pushes back.” Instead, she offers a path of soulful defiance—one that allows kindness to meet cruelty, calm to meet chaos, and joy to meet despair.

“Our power resides in the pause between stimulus and response,” she explains. “And that’s the army I’m looking to build—people who are ready to respond in non-reactive but fiercely loving ways.”

The We Are One Alliance is, in Mizeur’s words, “a living ecosystem” of hope, restoration, and vision, connecting land, politics, humanity, and the soul.

“At its core,” she says, “our mission is to restore faith in the heart of humanity, one connection at a time.”

The We Are One Alliance has launched weareonealliance.org, a comprehensive portal showcasing its diverse programs, including Soul Force Politics, Inward Expeditions, Operation Thriving Acres, Sacred Dreams Project, and personalized coaching and mentoring. At the heart of the initiative is the “Community” page—an ad-free, algorithm-free, and troll-free private social platform designed to foster meaningful, heart-centered engagement. Beginning in June, the Alliance will introduce “Soulful Challenges” and launch “Soul Force Sundays,” a weekly live video gathering for reflection and support amid challenging times. Supporters can also follow the Alliance’s ongoing work on Substack under T(he Honorable Heather Mizeur). All contributions are tax-deductible, supporting the mission of the We Are One Alliance, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

This video is approximately fifteen minutes in length.

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Shelter by Laura J. Oliver

June 1, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver 4 Comments

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Editor’s note: Join us for Spy Night with Laura Oliver, who will be reading her work in the Stoltz Listening Room at the historic Avalon Theater in Easton this Wednesday evening, June 4. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

I’m in a standoff with a house finch looking for affordable housing. The blossoms from three hanging baskets on the porch drape in pink and purple profusion but yesterday the impatiens began bobbing around as if someone short was lost in a cornfield. Suddenly, a finch popped out and flew to a powerline. A second later, she was back with a beak full of grass. She landed on the plant hanger, studied me a minute, then darted into the flowers as if down a submarine hatch.

Nooo, I implored her through the living room window. Do NOT build there! (These things seldom end well.)

When she emerged and flew off again, I went outside and climbed up on the porch railing to see into the basket. I plucked out a little stash of grass and tried to wave her off as she returned to watch me from the lilac. She’d brought her husband with her. Actually, they’re not married. They’re just living together until the kids are grown, and like many males in the animal kingdom, he was the flashier dresser.

I took the basket down and put it under a porch chair. Surely, they’d give up and find better real estate. But as soon as I rehung the impatiens, I saw telltale movement beneath the pink blossoms—like cats under a blanket. I climbed up on the railing a few hours later, and the birds erupted from the basket. Peering in, I saw they had already crafted a beautiful nest—it was perfectly round—an astonishing geometry, like the precise roundness of a carpenter bee hole—like the roundness of the moon—of all the planets and stars we have ever discovered. And now I don’t have the heart to dismantle it. It looks like the homesteaders are home.

I became a first-time homeowner by naivety. Mr. Oliver, a Navy Lieutenant, was stationed on the USS Pharris out of Norfolk. There was no way we were going to live in Virginia for more than a year or two, but we didn’t want to live in a concrete box of an apartment. We’d rent a house! But when we walked into the rental office, the agent on duty, who was only on duty because she had no clients, looked up and saw Mr. and Mrs. Dopey Stupid standing there. “Rent?” she asked, “I have a swell idea! Why don’t you buy?”

We looked at each other. “Use our one-time VA loan credit to buy a house we’ll only own for a year? Okay!! Thanks, Pam!”

A few weeks later, the ship deployed to the Med, and we owned a two-bedroom, one-story house in which I would live alone for a year. At the end of that deployment, we would offload the house for exactly what we had paid for it after replacing the entire heating system.

Our next house was back in Maryland — an effort to amass equity this time. A brown stucco with mustard yellow trim and an infestation of elder beetles— it was love at first sight—which is never about looks but always about chemistry.

(You can come back to this later.)

It had a corner fireplace, the huge wavy-glass windows of an early Victorian, a stained-glass foyer window, and an attic in which we found a steamship ticket to the Emma Giles.

As much as we loved that house, with one baby in tow and another on the way, three years later, we went house shopping for a bigger one. Mr. Oliver’s mother, a real estate agent who had never sold a house, saw us coming. “Hey,” she said, “There’s a three-acre lot in our neighborhood for sale, and the adjoining property owner is moving. Cool idea! He’s built an airplane hangar for his Cessna 152 his buyers don’t want. Why don’t you buy the lot and have his airplane hangar moved onto it? You can turn it into a house!” She was making this suggestion to someone whose parents had made a house from a barn. She knew her audience.

“What a swell idea!” exclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Dopey Stupid. “Let’s buy an airplane hangar!”

Which is what the house finch’s home seems to be. An airplane hangar. There have been touch-and-go landings, wave-offs, and flybys. They buzz the tower, and at least one crow has landed like a B52 bomber. I ran him off. I’m on neighborhood watch now.

Mother to any, mother to all. Parent to any, parent to all– if the world would just allow it. I’m protecting some brazen birds when I want to adopt teenagers who got passed over until adorable aged out to adolescence or take in fostered siblings so they will not be separated or orphaned children in Ukraine. I want to feed Gaza. Now. Yesterday. But I’m on bird duty. Like you, I hold that discrepancy, that disparity in stunned bafflement. What do I do with this inadequacy? This helplessness?

The longing to shelter must live in all of us. Which means the sadness of our inability to do so   does as well.

My mother once wrote, “The sky keeps teaching the ocean to be blue.” As if love is a tutorial and humans are the students who don’t advance. And it is all so vast that our efforts to help, to heal, feel insignificant. The ocean is not even blue. It’s only scattering light, and the sky becomes the blackness of space.

You want to do more, to give big, so give small. Offer whatever you can from wherever you are.

Give new meaning to shelter in place.

For tickets, go here.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

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Food Friday: Blueberry Harvest

May 30, 2025 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

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Suddenly they are everywhere — blueberries. June is about to be busting out all over, summer is almost here, and if you listen carefully you’ll hear the blueberries ripening. Little globules of vitamin-rich blue goodness! ’Tis the season to revel in local blueberries!

Local blueberries are ripe for the picking, as they say. We don’t have to worry about those tariffs, for the moment. Instead of waiting for imports from Mexico, Peru or Chile we can wander into a You-Pick-It blueberry farm, and spend some time in nature, plucking our own sweet breakfast jewels. Deelish.

Mr. Sanders starts each day in a healthy manner – unlike me – who still yearns for those good old days of cold pizza for breakfast. No, Mr. Sanders always sets a good example, and manfully tosses a handful of glistening blueberry goodness on top of his bowl of leaves and twigs every morning. Sometimes he just rinses them off in a wire strainer, and drops them into a bowl for easy munching. Or he mixes them with other berries and some yogurt. Sometimes he ladles a handful on top of a bowl of overnight oats and has a healthy, crunchy breakfast. Luke the omnivore wonder dog does not care for blueberries, strangely enough, so he won’t be staring up at you with a deep-throated yearning for the blueberries in your breakfast bowl. Not that you won’t feel his silent reproach for your dubious food choices. Now would be a good moment for you to fetch him a yummy dog treat. Dogs and Blueberries

I like my blueberries as a special component: in piping hot, just baked blueberry muffins, with melting Irish butter, and the Sunday papers. Or in blueberry pancakes, with warm blueberry bursts in each mouthful. Nigel Slater has a divine recipe for blueberry French toast:

Or, with a little planning, you can bake a breakfast cake. How perfect is cake for breakfast? A blueberry breakfast cake is the best way to start a day

Surely the ultimate blueberry moment is the first bite of blueberry pie. You might prefer your pie open-faced, lattice work, crumble, or with a second crust. It’s going to be a long summer, so try every permutation. Our friends at Food52 have done lots of research, and lots of baking. I rely on them to guide me through these treacherous blueberry pie waters: Food52 Blueberry Ideas

Father’s Day is in a couple of weeks (June 15th this year). You can start your celebration with warm, butter-dripping blueberry muffins at breakfast! Later on, how about a colorful salad? For a delightfully cool lunch salad, try pairing blueberries with cucumbers and some feta cheese. Blueberry Cucumber Salad

Later on we will be having cocktails, too, of course. John Derian is as stylish and clever as folks come, and this is his recipe for a Blueberry Smash. Deelightful!

Visit the farmers’ market of your choice to get lots of local blueberries and other produce:

Chestertown Farmers’ Market


St. Michaels FreshFarm Market


Centreville Farmers’ Market


Easton Farmers Market


Lockbriar Farm
10051 Worton Road, Chestertown, MD 21620

Redman Farms
8689 Bakers Lane, Chestertown, MD 21620

“Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.”
—Stephen Fry


Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

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Thread by Thread: Anne Lindberg and Piper Shepard at the Academy

May 28, 2025 by Val Cavalheri Leave a Comment

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It started in 1986 in a tight-knit fiber cohort at Cranbrook Academy of Art. That’s where Anne Lindberg and Piper Shepard first met—two young artists drawn to textile, space, and the possibilities of working with their hands. Nearly forty years later, they’re showing side-by-side at the Academy Art Museum (AAM) in Easton. Their solo exhibitions, seen and unseen by Lindberg and Fields, Voids, and Translations: Works on Paper and Textiles by Shepard, occupy separate spaces but feel in conversation—with each other, with the building, and with those stopping by to look.

“When I came to the museum last fall,” said Lindberg, “I was encouraged to make the project in a fairly narrow, two-story space at the north end of the museum. And so it became quickly apparent to me that if I built something in that space, you would see part of it on the first floor, and you would need to go to the second floor to see the rest of it. So quite literally, it’s seen and unseen.”

“seen” 2025 graphite, Flashe, acrylic and colored pencil on mat board 60 x 70 inches by Anne Lindberg

Her installation consists of thousands of fine chromatic threads stretched from wall to wall, forming a diaphanous field of color. From a distance, it looks like light or film. “Lots of questions come about,” she said. “Is this light? Is this paint? What is it? And eventually, you do discover what it is and what it might mean to you.”

The same rhythm lives in Lindberg’s graphite drawings. “There are thousands of lines tightly stacked together,” she said. “My arm is moving from one side of the board to the other. So it’s almost as if each of those lines is a breath. They often take me more than one breath, but they’re an expression. And then I lift the pencil, return to the start point again, and carry on with another one.” She describes it as rhythmic, paced, and slow. “We’re also aware when we breathe—of a big breath or a short breath. So the metaphor of the breath makes a lot of sense to me.”

Like Shepard, Lindberg is interested in how a viewer first encounters the work with their body. “The drawings and thread installations greet you through your gut first, your physiology. And then maybe later you start asking analytical questions—what am I looking at?”

That physical, sensory entry point is something both artists lean into, even if their methods differ.  For Shepard, it begins with familiar material. “There’s something so accessible about textile,” Shepard said. “We all know it so well—we wear it every day. So that ubiquity, that accessibility, allows me to connect with the audience.”

Shepherd’s panels—some as tall as a doorway—are hand-cut with surgical precision. “It’s a subtractive process,” she said. “Yet at the same time, I’m making a work that becomes present through what’s taken away.” Cutouts become lace, and lace becomes architecture. “I’m working with the kind of in-between space of light and shadow, of presence and absence, of the haptic and the optic.”

Once the form is complete, she adds a layer of graphite. “I start with drawing in order to create the imagery or the pattern that I’m making,” she said. “Then, by layering it with graphite, it’s the suspended drawing in space you’re experiencing.”

“Thicket”, 2023, 13’ x 10’, handout muslin, gesso, graphite, aluminum armature by Piper Shepard

Although both artists were trained in fiber, they have since moved beyond their traditions. “We’re making work with textile materials or in textile ways,” said Lindberg, “but not in traditional ways.” She sees this exhibit as part of a larger shift: “The place of textiles in contemporary art has changed, certainly in the time that we’ve made work. We’ve watched that change, and that’s been rewarding and exciting.”

Their shared history makes the exhibit feel like more than just a pairing. “We’ve been in conversation since graduate school,” Shepard said. “Even if we weren’t in the same place, we’ve always been talking. There’s just a long-standing dialogue between our work.”

Besides the dialogue, they’ve also collaborated formally in the past—at the Kansas City Art Institute, where they both taught in the ’90s, and later on exhibitions that combined Shepard’s textile printing with Lindberg’s printmaking. One early piece involved a sculptural base and three large textiles. “The middle one we worked on together,” said Lindberg. “Piper made one, I made one, and the third we made together.” In another collaboration, they used cameras to photograph landscapes, then each transformed the imagery into large-scale environmental work—Shepard through silk screen printing and Lindberg through carved wood.

Even now, they still approach space the same way. “How do we want people to experience the work?” Shepard said. “How do they move through it? How does the architecture shape their experience?” That kind of thinking, she added, “has been a part of our conversation since 1986.”

It’s also a part of their lineage. Their mentor at Cranbrook, Gerhardt Knodel, urged them to think about textiles on a larger scale. “He understood that textiles can have an impact at scale,” Lindberg said. “They don’t have to be intimate. They can be architectural.” She referenced historical examples like the “wild man tapestries” that stretched across castle walls. “He showed us those and said, ‘You can work this way.’”

That respect for size and for the women in the field who shaped it continues to ground both artists. “We had really strong women role models,” said Shepard. “Olga de Amaral, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Joyce Scott, Anni Albers—people who believed in textile as a serious form. I’m forever grateful.”

For Shepard, Anni Albers remains a constant touchstone. “She was the first textile artist to have a solo show at MoMA,” she said. “She wrote an essay in 1957—The Pliable Plane—and it’s still one of the most important texts for anyone thinking about textile and architecture,” Lindberg added that even the campus of Cranbrook was steeped in that legacy. “It was designed by Eliel Saarinen,” she said. “And his wife, Loja, was a weaver. Her work is everywhere—on the walls, under the windows, in the chapel. We were encouraged to sit under it, touch it, and be around it. It was part of our education.”

Their exhibitions in Easton may be solo shows, but the friendship is threaded through both. “We don’t see each other as often these days,” said Lindberg, who lives in the Hudson Valley. Shepard is based in Baltimore. But their work remains in conversation—on the walls, in the air, and across the space between.

————

Lindberg: seen and unseen runs through Fall 2026
Shepard: Fields, Voids, and Translations runs through October 12, 2025
Academy Art Museum

Both exhibitions are located at the Academy Art Museum, 106 South Street, Easton, Maryland. For more information, visit academyartmuseum.org.

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