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Chesapeake Histories: A talk with Sultana Education Foundation VP Chris Cerino

April 23, 2025 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

In a innovative collaboration aimed at deepening students’ understanding of the Chesapeake region’s rich but often underrepresented history, the Sultana Education Foundation has launched a compelling educational program focused on the African American experience in the region.

The presentation, piloted during Black History Month for local fifth-grade students, pairs digital storytelling with a real-world exploration of historic Chestertown. The results are dramatic: room-sized images slide smoothly across a painted map of the Bay region on the Sultana building floor during a narration of the image’s historical relevance.

“This is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Vice President of Sultana Education Foundation Chris Cerino. “The story of African Americans in the Chesapeake is deeply intertwined with the story of the region itself—some of the nation’s most influential abolitionists and civil rights leaders came from the Eastern Shore, including Kent County.”

The presentation was created in partnership with the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience with assistance from Deputy Director of the Starr Center Jaelon Moaney, Chesapeake Heartland’s Project Director Darius Johnson, and community historian Airleee Johnson along with contributions from Starr Center Director and historian Adam Goodheart.

“We didn’t just want to tell history—we wanted to tell it right,” Cerino said. “That meant inviting African American community members to help shape and share the narrative.”

Anchored in Sultana’s interactive digital map of the Chesapeake Bay, the slides connect key historical moments to specific geographic locations. From the arrival of enslaved Africans to the era of Jim Crow, and ultimately to the election of Barack Obama, the program aims to acknowledge historical pain, celebrate resilience, and recognize the ongoing journey toward equality.

“The impact of crafting this dynamic experience becomes clearer, and compounds, each time I bear witness to pivotal sparks of discovery in local students and educators alike. Retracing my childhood footsteps, as well as those of the change agents who came before, through innovative tools that usher collective, nuanced strides forward is both grounding and cathartic,” writes Jaelon Moaney, whose family

In a recent exhibit, students were shown landmarks like Jane’s Church, Bethel Church, the Garfield Center (a formerly segregated space), and Sumner Hall—once a meeting place for free African Americans. After the digital component, students toured the streets of Chestertown, learning that many local buildings hold extraordinary stories.

“This isn’t just about the past,” said Cerino. “It’s about seeing how the legacy of struggle and strength shapes where we live today.”

The program also highlights lesser-known but significant elements of African American history in the region—such as the legacy of Black watermen who worked the Bay. “The waterways offered rare opportunities for Black entrepreneurship,” said the presenter. “These were men who owned boats, hired crews, and ran their own businesses at a time when such autonomy was rare for African Americans.”

In addition to this new presentation, Sultana continues to offer a digital map and lecture series on Native American history in the region—another vital narrative often overshadowed in conventional histories.

The Foundation hopes to expand the audience beyond local classrooms. Plans are underway to present the program during community events like Downrigging Weekend and Legacy Day, with groups like Sumner Hall identified as ideal partners for future showings.

“We want the full, honest story of this region told,” said the presenter. “Not just for students, but for everyone.”

The Spy recently spoke with Chris Cerino about the ongoing presentation.

For more about Sultana Education Foundation, go here.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length.

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

In the beginning was the word By Laura J. Oliver

April 20, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver Leave a Comment

Here’s what old people do. They talk about their aches and pains and what they had to eat at their most recent meal.

Grilled cheese, and my hip hurts. Ha ha.

I know you’re reviewing your last conversation with furrowed brow, so I’m trying to make you feel better.

To make myself feel better, I’m engaged in an experiment. I have a pain that only manifests when I lie down on my left side, but it’s really interfering with my lack of sleep. That’s another joke. Read it again.

An MRI has identified what could be the cause, but according to the pain management specialist, the source of my pain could be this, could be that. A spinal injection has helped a bit, but to avoid doing another, the doctor has suggested a month of acupuncture three times a week.

Acupuncture is not covered by my insurance, so I have been agonizing about what to do because the intense, accelerated schedule of appointments will, by necessity, be expensive, but I discover there is a practice called “community acupuncture,” which is very affordable because it is done en masse. Picture a South Korean wedding where 5,000 engaged couples gather in a stadium. Like that.

I walk in the first day and see 10 mesh lounge chairs of sorts, lined up five to a side in a moderately-sized, dimly-lit room. Almost every recliner has a person lying on it with needles in various places, I assume, but can’t verify because I don’t look as I make my way down the center aisle to an empty chair. One of the things I will come to learn is that privacy does not require the usual physical barriers. There are ephemeral, spiritual boundaries that make it feel as if every person is in a room of their own.

White sound from a fan and faint music masks any conversation between the acupuncturist and patient so you are barely aware when one person’s session is complete, their needles removed, and they silently slip from the room.

I roll up my pants to my knees, I’m barefoot in a sleeveless top, and I offer up my extremities to my practitioner. How can you do this? I whisper, curious. How can you minister to what hurts when you only have access to 40 percent of my body? And not the part that hurts? She just smiles and says, Because I’ve been doing this 18 years.

Okay.

I am quick to enter other people’s realities when they seem better than my own.

And success speaks for itself. No matter what time of day or what day of the week I go, the room is nearly full. People love coming here. And they skew young although I see middle-aged people as well, and as many men as women.

Not that I’m looking.

She puts the needles in my hands and feet and the top of my head and leaves me there to cook. Within a few minutes, I feel my body reject several of the needles. I swear I’m not moving—they just fly out and hit the floor. Is that a good thing, I wonder?

I gently place Air Pods in my ears to listen to music. But the music makes me weep and think of things to tell you that I can’t write down and won’t remember, then I can’t wipe away my tears because my hands are full of needles.

So. This is awkward

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a playlist prepared, and the selection I picked on Spotify changes genres and is suddenly too loud and not continuous. Now I feel like I’m trapped at a rock concert too close to the stage.

I take a cautious glance at the wall clock and inadvertently see that all the bodies around me look like we are in suspended animation for a journey to Mars. I’m waking up first.

That makes me remember the YouTube video of the Rhodesian Ridgeback in the kennel who figured out how to nose open the latch of his cage, then raced down the run setting all his delighted fellow inmates free.

The next time I come, I vow to just lie there and let go of my thoughts like my friend Ned does six hours a day, trying not to have to incarnate again. He is in a big hurry to be done with Earthly existence in a spiritual way. But every thought that might flit past my consciousness like a cloud (the analogy meditators all use), I chase, knock down and rope like a calf in a steer-roping contest. Gotcha! Then I spring up, get back on my pony, and mentally look around for the next thought to lasso coming out of the shoot.

Got one! I am failing acupuncture. I’m doomed to get another spinal injection…

But our brains are phenomenal expectation machines. False flattery affects us even when we know it is untrue. (Looking good, you!) And when part of an object or word is missing, our brains fill it in. And when given a placebo we believe is medicine, we get well. But even better, when given a placebo and TOLD it’s a placebo, we still get well!

The implications are so huge I get lost in them. So, I lie there wanting to heal my hip and my heart and in love with my acupuncture points. Yes, there is Mound of Ruins and Tears Container, but there is also Spirit Gate, Shining Sea, and Grasping the Wind.

I try a mantra. “I’m healing,” I tell myself and any spiritual beings that might want to make me not a liar. “I am healed,” I try—going for broke.

“Not just my hip, but everything in my life.” That’s possible, right? That healing is like love? Nonselective, boundaryless? Did you know there is an acupuncture point called Soul Door?

You can’t change your feelings until you change the words in your head. Say them now, because if you say them, in some small part of your brain, you’ll believe them.

I am healing, I am healing,

I am healed.

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.

Food Friday: Easter eggs

April 18, 2025 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

Food Friday is on the road this weekend, so you Gentle Readers will have to put up with a re-run of my favorite Easter lemon cheesecake. Mr. Sanders and I are heading to a family Easter gathering in Florida, and Luke the wonder dog is off for a much deserved vacay of his own with his dog pals at the spa. Please indulge me and enjoy our making our favorite Easter dessert. Play nicely at your Easter egg hunts, and let the little ones find the eggs. You can sip on a Bloody Mary or two.

At Easter I like to haul out my dear friend’s lemon cheesecake recipe, and reminisce, ruefully, about the year I decorated one using nasturtiums plucked fresh from the nascent garden, which unfortunately sheltered a couple of frisky spiders. Easter was late that year and tensions were already high at the table, because a guest had taken it upon herself to bring her version of dessert – a 1950s (or perhaps it was a British World War II lesson in ersatz ingredients recipe) involving saltines, sugar-free lime Jell-O, and a tub of Lite Cool Whip. The children were divided on which was more terrifying: ingesting spiders, or many petro chemicals?

I am also loath to remember the year we hosted an Easter egg hunt, and it was so hot that the chocolate bunnies melted, the many children squabbled, and the adults couldn’t drink enough Bloody Marys. The celery and asparagus were limp, the ham was hot, and the sugar in all those Peeps brought out the criminal potential in even the most decorous of little girls. There was no Miss Manners solution to that pickle.

Since our children did not like hard-boiled eggs, I am happy to say that we were never a family that hid real eggs for them to discover. Because then we would have been the family whose dog discovered real nuclear waste hidden behind a bookcase or deep down in the sofa a few weeks later. We mostly stuck to jelly beans and the odd Sacajawea gold dollar in our plastic Easter eggs. It was a truly a treat when I stepped on a pink plastic egg shell in the front garden one year when I was hanging Christmas lights on the bushes. There weren’t any jelly beans left, thank goodness, but there was a nice sugar-crusty gold dollar nestled inside it. Good things come to those who wait.

We won’t be hiding any eggs (real or man-made) this year. Instead we will have a nice decorous finger food brunch, with ham biscuits, asparagus, celery, carrots, tiny pea pods, Prosecco (of course) and a couple of slices of lemon cheesecake, sans the spiders, sans the lime Jell-O and Cool Whip. And we will feel sadly bereft because there will be no jelly beans, no melting chocolate and no childish fisticuffs.

Chris’s Cheesecake Deluxe
Serves 12

Crust:
1 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:
2 1/2 pounds cream cheese
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400°F
Crust: combine flour, sugar and lemon rind. Cut in butter until crumbly. Add yolk and vanilla. Mix. Pat 1/3 of the dough over the bottom of a 9″ spring form pan, with the sides removed. Bake for 6 minutes or until golden. Cool. Butter the sides of the pan and attach to the bottom.

Pat remaining dough around the sides to 2″ high.  Increase the oven temp to 475°F. Beat the cream cheese until it is fluffy. Add vanilla and lemon rind. Combine the sugar, flour and salt. Gradually blend into the cream cheese. Beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time, and then the cream. Beat well. Pour into the pan. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Reduce oven heat to 200° F. Bake for 1 1/2 hours or until set. Turn off the heat. Allow the cake to remain in the oven with the door ajar for 30 minutes. Cool the cake on a rack, and then pop into the fridge to chill. This is the best Easter dessert ever. This recipe makes a HUGE cheesecake! You will be eating it for a week. At least.

Perfect Bloody Marys

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

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.

Town Tree Committee announces goals and new ordinance By Lisa J. Gotto

April 15, 2025 by Spy Staff 2 Comments

Paul Saywell

Whether your roots go back generations or you’re a newer resident, one thing you probably appreciate about life in Chestertown is its green scape. Natural beauty surely surrounds us, but we would be shortsighted if we did not recognize that our scenic greenery wasn’t grown in a day and requires a certain amount of sustained stewardship for it to endure and thrive.

With that in mind the Chestertown Tree Committee, which was originally established in 1981, is currently plugging away at an ambitious goal sheet of projects initiated in 2024 and set to run through 2026. The projects are indicative of the organization’s commitment to further enhance a 21^st century mindset in its methodology and program management.

Paul Saywell of Chestertown, who chairs the five-member committee, relays that the key roles the committee plays in the community include acting in an advisory role to the town in terms of decisions and project funding related to trees, providing an annual list of the committee’s goals, accomplishments and budget, developing local educational programs and providing advice to the town’s Planning Commission regarding tree and landscape planning.

Linden tree

To that end, a strategic initiative regarding residential tree maintenance has recently been enacted, Saywell says, and getting the word out to property owners is currently their mission critical.

The ordinance provides guidelines going forward for residents as to new directives regarding pruning and associated tree maintenance issues whether performed by the property owner or by a state-licensed tree expert.

According to Saywell, “Property owners may plant, prune, or remove trees under 12 inches in diameter, measured at breast height, without securing a permit from the town.”

However, any tree above 12 inches in diameter, according to the new directives, will require the property owner to submit an application with fee, prior to starting the job. A fine will be imposed if a required permit is not obtained.

The permit fee, says Saywell, is $25 and the application allows for multiple trees to be addressed with one permit. The expectation, he adds, is that new trees will be planted to maintain, if not increase our tree canopy, which is on the Committee’s list of goals. (Our current tree canopy is 35% based on a survey by Washington College’s Geospatial Innovation Program, or GIP. The goal is to get that number to 40% by the year 2030.)

The Committee states that the new directives are consistent with other types of work where a permit from the Town is required. The updated ordinance and application process can be found on the Town’s website and can be filled out online at https://www.chestertown.gov/tree-committee.”

In instances where permit work is necessary, the homeowner is required by State law to contract with a Maryland licensed tree expert to perform that work.

This course of action, explains Saywell, protects tree workers, homeowners, neighbors, the Town, and the trees from improper pruning practices and danger. For example, if electrical or other wires are present, the licensing credentials of professionals required by law are heightened.

The enactment of this revised ordinance speaks to the goals, mission, and values of the Committee, which include ensuring relevant ordinances are brought up to date, protecting trees and educating the public in terms of stewardship, working in tandem with the Town of Chestertown and the comprehensive plans of its Main Street Chestertown initiative.

Poor tree pruning

It also speaks to the Committee’s recent accomplishments, says Saywell, which include the partnership with Washington College to create the GIP which inventories the town’s public tree base.

“An exciting project that will benefit all residents and the Town’s administration, is the compilation of a computerized inventory of all Town-owned trees,” explains Saywell. “In cooperation with Washington College’s Geospatial Innovations Program, the Tree Committee is collecting data on every Town-owned tree for use in a systematic, proactive scheduling and maintenance tool.”

The effort will create an interactive dashboard accessible to both the committee and the community, with the aim of making better and more informed decisions about tree care and planting.

More interactive endeavors on part of the Committee include the creation of a robust social media account on Facebook, where it can continue its respective advocacy, keep residents informed, share feedback and best practices, and respond to visitor inquiries.

Additional accomplishments of the Committee in 2024 include initiating a community educational outreach program, designing a process for the review of applications and compliance enforcement, cooperating with Shore Rivers to plant 60 new trees in town, advising the Town Planning Commission regarding new tree and landscape plans for Starbucks, the new EMT Center, the proposed Indoor Tennis Center at Washington College, and the proposed housing development at Chester Arms.

American Elm

The Committee looks at April’s Earth Month designation as a continued opportunity for outreach. Part of what helps qualify the Town’s Tree City USA status is recognizing the nation’s annual Arbor Day holiday. According to and administered by the Arbor Day Foundation, this status, “Recognizes communities that demonstrate a commitment to effective urban forestry management through meeting four core standards: a tree board or department, a tree care ordinance, a community forestry program with an annual budget of at least $2 per capita, and an Arbor Day observance.”

This year, Saywell says, Arbor Day celebrations will be held in Fountain Park on April 26^th and Committee members will be on hand to engage and answer questions. This year’s festivities will include the dissemination of free educational materials and gifts, including a variety of live potted trees. A tree-climbing demonstration by Billy Sullivan, an arborist from Bartlett Tree Company, will be held between 10 and 11 a.m.

As we look forward to the remainder of 2025 and next year, Saywell says, the process of ordinance enforcement and continued resident education on that process will be the Committee’s greatest challenge because residents have not typically had to follow a procedure for tree maintenance in the past.

“The other thing that is going to be a big challenge is paying for the catch-up,” Saywell explains. “Most of all the trees in the town have not been regularly maintained for years. The budget for that was based per capita, so roughly $11,000 for all of the trees in the town limits. We have requested $25,000 in the next budget year as a starting point to clean things up, with priority spending going toward safety and high visibility areas.

Saywell encourages residents with questions to connect with the Committee via Facebook or attend one of their meetings held the first Friday of every month at 3:30 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of Chestertown Town Hall at 118 N. Cross Street.

Lisa Gotto is a recent resident to Chestertown, who is immensely enjoying learning more about the area, its people, and what makes living here so special. She hopes to continue doing that through her work with the Spy and her role as owner of Tea Leaves Media, LLC, a communications and content generation company. Since acquiring her B.A. In Communications & Journalism from Shippensburg University of PA, Lisa has been writing and editing for decades for numerous media outlets including The Morning Call and Lehigh Valley Style in Easton, Pennsylvania, and What’s Up? Media in Annapolis.

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

Magnified By Laura J. Oliver

April 13, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver Leave a Comment

Every morning, when I get ready for my day, I sit at my dressing table, known as a vanity by the judgy, and check out my face in a mirror that lights up and magnifies by a power of 15.

“Why do you do that?” my mother asked when she was alive. And “Stop doing that!” my former dermatologist groaned. “No one expects perfection!”

I smiled at him sadly. He was, of course, a man.

“You’ll never see anything better than you saw the day before!” Mom predicted, but it’s not that I think I’ll discover I’ve gotten younger-looking overnight; it’s that I am searching for the newest sign of deterioration. Stemming the tide requires grand-scale scrutiny. And if you have fair skin and blue eyes, it also requires pretty vigilant screenings by a dermatologist as you pay in spades for those days before sunscreen when you grooved to tunes on your beach towel in the Outer Banks.

But a magnifying mirror would not have saved me this Monday when I visited my new dermatologist after a weekend hiking through the woods of the Blue Ridge. I was chatting with the doctor as she updated my records when I felt something itchy about two inches above my hairline on the back of my neck. Without thinking, I slipped an exploratory hand up to touch the place and discovered a small bump.

Dr. Aguh was still studying the computer screen while I sat there, semi-horrified to realize that the itchy bump was a tick I must have picked up over the weekend. Now, I would have to dislodge the critter and offer it up like a creepy present. “I’m meticulously clean! I wash every day! And, oh yeah, here’s a bug I just found in my hair.”

So when Dr. Aguh beamed her bright smile on me at last, I was perched on the edge of my hardback chair in my gray jeans and white sweater, pinching my new friend with his tiny flailing legs between my thumb and index finger.

“I can’t believe this,” I confessed, “but I just found this tick …

“(I know! Gross!)

“And he was attached… (I know! Grosser!)

“Right here.” I pointed at the back of my neck with my other hand.

She didn’t look.

“A tick?” Dr. Aguh stepped backward involuntarily.

“Put it in here,” she suggested, handing me a specimen cup at arm’s length.

“I was outside all weekend,” I called after her as she abruptly exited the room. I peered in the cup at my new friend, left to ponder our effects on each other’s lives.

I walked over to the window, put my captive on the sill, and immediately googled “ticks that cause Lyme disease” on my cellphone. A nasty lineup of the usual suspects appeared. I began comparing mugshots. “Number One. Dog tick, step forward.” By the time the doctor returned, I was fairly certain this was not a Lyme disease perp but a harmless imposter. Still, we weren’t sure, so I was told that if I wanted an antibiotic after further research at home, I could call.

In my office, I taped the defendant to a piece of white paper, took his photograph, and then enlarged it. Which brings me back to things we size up and how this is not a good thing most of the time. Very little benefit comes from looking at something way larger than it appears to the naked eye. Or that is normally hidden. You think your dog is cute? Ever pulled back those lips and had a look at those teeth? Who’s cute now? How about your horse? So beautiful, so noble, but pull up those lips and call in the clowns.

Likewise, the person speaking on Zoom! You can change your zoom settings to automatically enlarge the speaker, you know. Please don’t do this in my workshops. I like to think you are seeing me as I’m seeing you—very small, with little detail, from a galaxy far, far away.

What else suffers from magnification?

Anxiety enlarges my impatience, makes me snap at the dog, say bad words to inanimate objects. I sound mean, but I’m really worried; about injured children in warzones I long to hold to my heart, about rising tides and temperatures. About my vanishing savings. And fear magnifies my inclination to criticize. I sound judgmental, but I’m scared. For my children, their children. For humanity. You.

But we can also magnify the moon, the Milky Way, and the light from distant stars. And magnification makes things appear closer, like age, but they are not really closer. In fact, they are not even right-side up!

All cameras, telescopes, and even the corneas of your eyes bend incoming light to produce an image that is upside down. It is your brain that receives those signals, decodes and interprets them, then constructs an image of the world right side up.

Sometimes it feels as if I’m seeing the world upside down from very far away, and my brain has not yet righted it, but it could.

The primal brain is ego-centric. There is only self. So, giving love feels like receiving love; extending compassion, feels as if we have been enfolded in loving arms. Praying for another feels like blessings raining down. A conversion accomplished by the brain but experienced in the heart.

When mom wanted me to feel the consequences of a questionable decision, say accelerating through a yellow traffic light, she’d ask, “What if everybody did that?” Well, what if?

What if everybody did that?

Gave away, relentlessly, what we want to receive. Justice. Empathy. Mercy.

When that is the light by which we see, it will right the world.

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

Food Friday: Spring Quiches

April 11, 2025 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

It is quite definitely spring. Our trees are leafing out, the dogwood is starting to flower, and tulips are bouncing in the cool April breeze. Everything is looking green and tender – although I was worried about frost overnight because I have planted four stout young tomato plants in the raised garden bed.Our summer tomato sandwiches depend on spring weather. Luke the wonder dog has a spring in his creaky step these mornings – the bushes along our walking route smell extra delicious this spring. Everything is fresh and new, ripe for discovery. We rescued a tiny green turtle the other day, doing a good deed as we got in our daily steps.

Mr. Sanders has been doing yeoman’s work out back – weeding the pachysandra bed, trimming the hedges, fertilizing the lawn – any excuse to be outside in the fresh air. I wander through and pluck violets before he reaches them. I have been replanting the window boxes with hot pink geraniums, vivid clusters of cobalt lobelia and white clouds of sweet alyssum. I’ve stuffed draperies of hot pink petunias in the planters on the front porch. And sadly, I have picked the last of this season’s daffodils.

We sat down around seven last night for dinner, just as the moon was rising and the sun was setting. The last of the daffodils were stuffed in a jam jar on the table. We didn’t need candles, but still we lighted them, because it is spring, and we could gaze out at the newly weeded pachysandra bed, which was bathed in golden light. I hope someone was enjoying a beauteous sunset, even though we could only see streaks of pink over the neighbor’s roof. The robins strutted across the back lawn, grubbing happily.

And what about the food? Who wants to stand over a stove when the garden beckons? It’s time to bring some springtime to our dinners (also very handy for leftovers for breakfast and lunch). Bring on the quiches.

This is seasonal, and oh, so lovely: Sweet Pea and Ham Quiche

You can trust Martha: Martha’s Quiche

Quiche Lorraine, or however you choose to fill yours…

Preheat oven to 375°F
Ingredients for 1 quiche – serves 4
1 baked pie shell (store-bought is fine and dandy)
1 cup half and half
3 eggs
6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
One onion, chopped
1 cup grated Gruyère or Swiss cheese, more if you like your quiche stretchy and cheesy
Salt and pepper
1 pinch fresh, ground nutmeg

Brown the chopped onion in a little of the bacon fat that you have reserved. Or butter or olive oil, remember to be loose and enjoy the baking event! Add the onion and the bacon to the pie shell. Scatter the grated cheese with abandon and artistry. Beat the eggs, cream, salt and pepper and the nutmeg until your arm is tired. Pour the mixture into the pie shell. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the top looks pleasingly golden brown. (I like to bake quiches on a baking sheet, because I have a tendency to spill.)
When you re-heat the quiches, bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes.

Other ingredients to consider adding to the mix: fresh thyme, ham, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, goat cheese, leeks, sausage, salmon, shrimp or good Maryland crab! Also consider this dish as a breakfast possibility.

Quiche has been much maligned for the wimp factor and for impugning American manhood. Pshaw. Quiche is quick, easy, delicious and is a four seasons kind of food. Quiche is as welcome as the New Year’s Day hangover breakfast pick-me-up, as it is at a warm summer evening’s supper, with a salad, and a little cheap white wine. It will go in someone’s lunchbox, and is a reassuring friend to find sitting in the fridge at 3:00 in the morning, when you are driven from bed with tariff anxieties. Quiche.

Quiche Lorraine has long been a WASPy luncheon speciality, mostly because those WASPs are looking for something delicious and easy to prepare. Who doesn’t love bacon, cheese, and cream? I do apologize, vegans, but that heady combo is a religion unto itself. There are vegan alternatives…
Vegan Quiche

The quiche recipe I followed called for a mere 4 pieces of bacon. I am sorry, but that is not enough bacon. I used 8, crunchy, aromatic slices, which I had baked on a cookie sheet at 425° F for 10 minutes. I also used half and half, and not full-on heavy cream, just because I’d like to make it to 2026 without a major cardiac incident befalling any of us. I also used cubes of cheese from a block of grocery store brand Swiss. The way prices are soaring, Gruyére and Jarlsberg have become a just too expensive. Tariffs. And, because no one will ever notice, I used a store-bought pie shell. I know my limitations, and I just can’t bake an attractive pie crust. They always look like the bad pots I threw during my pitiful college year in ceramics; sad, lopsided, mangled pieces. Here is a gift recipe from the New York Times:

Here is a good compendium of quiches, which will encourage you to explore the inner recesses of your fridge, and use up the trace amounts of spinach, broccoli, taco meat, asparagus, feta cheese and bits of potato lurking there: Leftovers for Quiche And key to the quiche’s attraction is its ability to be reheated. Please, do not use the microwave! Reheating Quiche

Go outside and roll on the grass, like Luke the wonder dog. Spring has sprung, the grass is riz.

“The first day of spring is one thing and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”
― Henry Van Dyke

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

Health For All Seasons with Beth Anne Dorman

April 8, 2025 by James Dissette 1 Comment

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“For a long time, we were the best-kept secret in Kent County,” says Beth Anne Dorman, Executive Director of for All Seasons. Though they’ve been present in Kent County for 15 years and in local schools for over 17 years, the organization recently launched a visible shift: expanded services, increased public access and “bringing mental health to Main Street” to their new office at 315 High Street.

One of the most transformative changes has been the creation of the Open Access program. “People used to call for services and be told there was a waitlist. That’s just how it was,” Dorman says. “We decided to change that.” Working with national consultants, For All Seasons overhauled its service model. Now, anyone can walk into the office—or join via telehealth—five days a week for immediate mental health support, with psychiatry follow-ups available within two weeks. Open Access is for everyone: children, adults, seniors, and is available in over 500 languages via an interpreting app. Services are provided regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.

“We’ve looked at all five counties that we serve, and we have decided to bring offices to the main streets of all of our locations, so that when people are driving into town, when the community is spending time in these amazing places that we live, people are seeing that mental health matters, that services are available, that victims don’t have to be ashamed, they don’t have to hide that services are available. The beauty of the Open Access program is that it serves children, adolescents, adults and seniors. We serve everyone from a pregnant mom who wants to figure out how to show up to be the kind of parent that she wants to be to a 95 year old gentleman as our oldest client,” Dorman says.

For All Seasons is also the region’s only certified rape crisis center, operating 24/7 in English and Spanish. They provide advocacy at hospitals, schools, and law enforcement agencies, not just during crisis moments but for ongoing care. “You don’t have to be in a current emergency,” Dorman notes. “We serve people dealing with past trauma, no matter how long ago it happened.”

The organization’s work is grounded in four pillars: therapy, psychiatry, rape crisis support, and community education. As a learning center, For All Seasons provides mental health and trauma-informed training for schools, civic groups, businesses, and municipalities. “We just held a Dare to Lead training based on Brené Brown’s work,” says Dorman. “We’re helping leaders show up for their teams, because the mental health of employees matters too.”

Dorman emphasizes that rural communities experience trauma and mental health differently. “It’s not our job to tell communities what they need, but to ask how we can support them.” In Kent County, that means close collaboration with school administrators, local nonprofits like the United Way, and public agencies to ensure children and families get the care they need.

COVID revealed that mental health isn’t just about diagnoses, but about symptoms—grief, loneliness, uncertainty—that affect everyone. “We’re all carrying things,” Dorman says. “It’s okay to not be okay. What matters is that no one has to go through it alone.”

For All Seasons invites everyone to be part of the solution: check in on a friend, reach out when you’re struggling, and remember that connection—just a call or a card—can make all the difference.

For immediate help or support, For All Seasons provides 24/7 crisis hotlines in English and Spanish, as well as walk-in and telehealth services without waitlists.

24-Hour Crisis Hotline:
English Hotline Tel: 410-820-5600
Español Hotline Tel: 410-829-6143
English or Español Text: 410-829-6143

The Spy recently talked with Beth Anne Dorman about the For All Seasons services available in Kent County.

For more about For All Seasons, go here.

315 High St Suite 207, Chestertown, MD 21620

410-822-1018

This video is approximately nine minutes in length.

For All Season Grand Opening at 315 High Street

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Not in Kansas Anymore: Inside the Healing Vision of Lotus Oncology and Hematology

April 7, 2025 by Val Cavalheri Leave a Comment

Dr. Roopa Gupta

Just as with Dorothy when she reached the Land of Oz and said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore,”—that’s the feeling you get opening the door of Lotus Oncology and Hematology. This is not your typical doctor’s office. And that’s precisely what Dr. Roopa Gupta wants it to be.

Forget the sterile white walls, humming fluorescents, and anxiety-inducing, plastic-seated waiting rooms. In their place: a soft gurgle from a water fountain, sunlight pouring across floor-to-ceiling floral panels, plush sofas you sink into, and earthy colors that settle the nervous system. It’s a space that lets your shoulders drop the moment you walk in.

“I wanted to create a healing environment,” Dr. Gupta says, “not just a medical one. We offer the best, most current care, but in a space that reflects dignity, beauty, and transformation.”

The name “Lotus” wasn’t a branding choice—it was personal. “The lotus blooms beautifully from murky waters,” she says. “It stands for rebirth, resilience, and rising above hard things. That’s the journey cancer patients are on. I wanted them to remember they’re not the diagnosis—they’re the flower.”

Dr. Gupta’s path to this moment started with internal medicine and then moved into oncology, though it wasn’t a straight shot. “I wasn’t sure at first,” she said. “I’m deeply sensitive—an empath—and wondered if this work would be too much to carry.” However, the more time she spent with patients, the more the work felt like home. “Every year into this field confirmed it—this is what I was meant to do.”

Lotus opened with a clear mission: treat the person, not just the illness. That starts with time—sometimes hours—for a first appointment. “It’s not just about the cancer,” she says. “It’s about what the person is carrying—what they’re afraid of, what their life looks like, what they need.”

She also brings in integrative therapies backed by research: Acupuncture, yoga, reiki, nutrition support, massage therapy, and reflexology. “Wellness Wednesdays” offers breathwork, sound therapy, and art therapy, with plans to add music, mental health support, and even pet therapy. “We’re working with people in the community to bring this all together,” Dr. Gupta says. “It’s not extra. It’s essential.”

But the heart of Lotus isn’t the services. It’s the people who fill the space with presence.

Brianna Timm, one of the nurses on staff, says the difference is immediate. “Even if someone is terrified when they walk in here, they start to feel like—okay, maybe I can do this.”

Timm would know, having worked in different kinds of healthcare settings. She said this one felt different. “They’re not just going through the motions or waiting for it to be over. They’re present. And because we’re sincere with them, they believe us when we say we’re in it with them. This becomes a healing environment. It’s not a second home, exactly—but it’s a place they feel safe.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” she adds. “The first time, someone might notice one small good thing. Next visit, they see more. And before long, this space, these people—we’re part of their journey.”

That idea—of being part of something shared—is woven into everything Lotus does. “We want patients to feel heard, seen, touched. We listen. We validate their questions. And then we move forward, together,” Dr. Gupta says.

It’s a group effort. Nurse Lindsey Corkran says, “I’m honored to be part of such a loving and supportive team. Everyone here works with genuine care and diligence to ensure each patient receives the best possible treatment. I see amazing things happen every day—for a place that handles such serious and sometimes heavy issues, there’s an incredible amount of laughter, warmth, and life here. I think it’s wonderful for our community to have Lotus as an option for their healthcare.”

Moments of joy—like a husband reclining in a surprise lounge chair during his wife’s infusion or a patient ringing the treatment bell after realizing the whole team, including Dr. Gupta, came out to witness it—are small, but they matter.

“That was one of my first weeks here,” Timm says of the bell-ringing. “He was hesitant at first. But when he saw Dr. Gupta walk out to see him do it, he smiled, stepped up, and rang it three times. Big, clear rings. He knew that moment mattered to all of us.” These gestures aren’t just nice. They build trust, especially in a region where healthcare access can be complex and confusing.

That kind of trust is earned—through honest conversations, familiar faces, and, sometimes, a phone call answered by the doctor herself. “We don’t have layers and layers of separation here,” Dr. Gupta says. “We’re accessible. We’re human.”

And humanity, she says, is the whole point. “We’ve desensitized ourselves in so many ways,” she says. “Everyone’s on a screen. Everyone’s scheduled. We’ve forgotten how to just connect. I wanted this to feel like that old village doctor’s office, where someone could walk in and say, ‘Can you take a look at this?’ without being told to book an appointment for two weeks from now.”

Nature plays a role, too. The office looks out on a pond with ducks and birds. Dr. Gupta’s daughter brings duck food. “It sounds small,” Timm says, “but even seeing the natural light makes a difference. At my last job, there were no windows. None. Here, a squirrel runs by, or a bird lands outside, and you catch yourself smiling.”

Dr. Gupta remembers how the office space they originally planned on fell through—and how devastated she was. “But now? This is where we were supposed to be,” she says. “The sun comes right through those east-facing windows. Sometimes, I sit in the waiting room at the end of the day with a cup of coffee and just breathe it in.”

She remembered walking out to the waiting room, where a patient’s wife was reading quietly in that very room, sunlight pooling around her. “I thought, this is what I wanted. That you feel at home and carry that hope with you.”

Dr. Gupta, too, has hopes. “The science is amazing right now. Treatments have gotten so much better—especially for breast, colon, and lung cancers. But now we need to get that medicine to those who need it. Insurance and access are still big hurdles.” She wants more advocacy and better policy. “Science has done its part. It’s time for the system to catch up.”

In the meantime, she and her team do what they can, one patient at a time. “This work doesn’t drain me,” she says. “It fuels me.”

At home in Oxford, she recharges by walking, meditating, cooking, and reading in what she calls “the most beautiful park in the world.” Her daughter, nine years old, recently started leaving sticky notes in the office that read “Dr. Gupta, Jr.” A subtle nudge, perhaps.

“This isn’t just my dream,” Dr. Gupta says. “It’s Brianna’s. It’s Lindsey’s. It’s all of ours. And it’s still unfolding.”

Lotus Oncology and Hematology is located at 401 Purdy St., Suite 102, Easton, Maryland. 410-505-8948

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And then there were three (For Sharon and Andrea) By Laura J. Oliver

April 6, 2025 by Laura J. Oliver 6 Comments

I’m at my sister’s horse farm basking in a late-March, Blue Ridge mountain twilight, enjoying a glass of wine around the firepit with my two older sisters. Golden Mica-dog is on sentry duty gazing out over the fields and lake like the good boy he is—keeping watch for bears, beavers, and falling stars. He will never be known for his intelligence, fairly or unfairly, because he is such a good-looking blond.

We are comparing memories—and it’s gratifying when they are the same; how Mom drove like there was a wasp in her blouse, the blue Ford with the hole in the floor. You could see Eagle Hill Road streaming like a river beneath your feet, speeding to the bus stop or home from the A & P. Sometimes we recall the same event but entirely differently– the emotional lens of our visions unique to each.

Because there are three of us, often two memories will coincide with gleeful validation but not convince the outlier who hangs on to what she alone knows is true. The car was black! It wasn’t a Ford! That kind of thing. That role changes with each memory.

As with your siblings, we learn things from each other that we never knew about our own histories. My eldest sister remembers saving our middle sister from a group of boy-bullies who had surrounded her on a piece of playground equipment, dead-reckoning her bike to disperse the danger, but she is the only one who remembers the event. And I remember, but don’t share, a similar memory where Tommy McVeydo-The-Rotten-Tomato (kids are callous, what can I say?) had backed my very pretty 14-year-old sister up against the pasture fence in what I now recognize was a moment of highly charged flirtation. As a 9-year-old, I saw a threat, a call to glory, and threw myself between them, thwarting a budding romance.

I had not yet learned to read the room.

And these exchanges are as grounding as the land we gaze over. Siblings. The only people in your life who know your whole story, who know where you came from, what you overcame, and whether you turned out alright. Though it is good to remember that if life were a court of law, nothing is less reliable than eyewitness testimony.

Carpenter bees are bombing us, and the red and yellow pepper hors d’oeuvres. We look up the species to be sure they’re not bumblebees, then whack them. They sport shiny, hairless abdomens and are further identified by their flight patterns–diving and zigzagging. Vanishing like UFOs. Like drones.

Like memories.

Barnstead, the renovated barn we grew up in– was full of wasps, and we start sharing bee memories. The invisible but ominous buzzing against the screens in our bedrooms upon returning from school, waking to wasps crawling up our pillowcases or tangled in our tennis shoe laces when getting dressed in the morning, late for the bus.

My middle sister’s memory is that I helped her kill wasps in her room—that she was afraid, and I was not. This is interesting because it could not be further from the truth. Things that sting terrified me as well—but I’m guessing her memory is accurate—that I did come into her room with bee-slayer bravado because what I know about myself is this: when I’m terrified of something, and you are too, your need flips a switch, and fear becomes fierceness. How does that work? That we can take on for another, what we cannot face alone. While cowering in my own room in a bee face-off, in her room, it was, “He’s on the curtain. Get ready to run.”

I can read the room now.

We vow to come back to the farm for the full moon in June –to watch it rise like blessings over the lake.

The next day, we decide to take a tour of the hilly 80 acres of forests and fields, and since I’ve got some aches from running with the dog the day before, we use the ATV known as Jethro (picture a golf cart with upgraded horsepower). We park it at the bottom of the steepest hill, so we won’t have to hike back up to the house later. My sister drives like there’s a wasp in her blouse, as if she’s on her way to a fire, or as if …she is our mother’s daughter.

My oldest sister calls shotgun, and I’m on the open side—no door and a slippery seat we three barely fit on, but she links her arm in mine to hold me in, to keep me safe.

I brace with my outside leg and clutch a roof strut, and we are laughing now as we accelerate down the hill because if this is how we’re going to die, it’s very funny and kind of okay.

Your siblings are the longest relationship you will have in this life. Interestingly, it is an involuntary arrangement. At first, anyway. But later, if you are fortunate, you will gather by choice when you can.

Our own families are grown. Our parents are gone

We start over from where we began.

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Food Friday: Radishes

April 4, 2025 by Jean Sanders 1 Comment

Early spring brings us delicious young vegetables: peas, asparagus, garlic, and radishes. Radishes are the pink darlings of early spring. Cherry red, fuchsia, magenta, hot pink, carmine, crimson, scarlet, carnelian, vermilion, coral, cardinal, cerise – I could go through my art supply catalogues picking out the names of vivid reds and pinks all day long – radishes are deeply satisfying to look at, and to gobble up. And they grow fast – plant seeds 30 days after the last frost and you, too, can enjoy pink spicy goodness.

I remember sitting on the back porch on summer evenings when I was a girl, watching my father transform four uniform pink hamburger patties into charbroiled hockey pucks on the tiny black hibachi. We would snack on the raw, red-skinned radishes that my mother doled out to us in small Pyrex bowls, filled with bone-chilling ice water. How could anything so cold have such a spicy kick?

How can we resist the lure of fresh radishes? Especially when we get fancy, and doll them up with butter and a hint of Maldon salt? The butter truly tones down the peppery, hot flavor of radish and turns it into an indulgent treat. Dorie Greenspan says, “It’s a little trick the French play to bring foods into balance, and it works.”

For the data driven – radishes are high in fiber, riboflavin, and potassium. They are low in calories, and have lots of Vitamin C. They are a natural diuretic, and have detoxing abilities. Radish facts 
I prefer to dwell on the spicy flavor and the crunch.

Have you tried sliced radishes on buttered bread? They will jazz up your next tea party the way cucumber sandwiches never have. Although, if you were French, you would have been eating radishes on buttered slices of brown bread for breakfast for years. Mais oui! Radishes on Brown Bread

And if you’d rather not be picking up disks of radishes escaping from your sandwiches, try this easy peasy radish butter. Yumsters! Radish Butter

Consider the cocktail, and how easy it is to add some sliced radishes to your favorite Bloody Mary recipe. I’m not sure that I would go to all the trouble that this recipe stirs up – I would have to make a separate trip out to buy sherry, after all. Easter Cocktails Radishes will add a kick to the bloodies you might need to add to your Easter brunch menu – making all those jelly beans palatable. (Don’t forget – Easter is April 20th – it’s almost time to start hiding those Easter eggs.

For your next book club meeting, here is a cocktail with literary aspirations: Radish Gin Cocktail I haven’t been able to find the Cocchi Americano at our liquor store, though. So I have left it out, and no one seems the wiser. Nor has it been noted by my well-read blue stockings that I also used Bombay instead of the requisite Dorothy Parker gin. (For the crowd that is used to extremely cheap white wine, this is an eye-opener, just like Uncle Willy’s in The Philadelphia Story. It packs a punch.)

Here’s one for Mr. Sanders to perfect: grilled steak with grilled radishes. Grilled Steak  It makes me sad, though, to cook a radish. There are some vegetables that are meant to be eaten gloriously simple and raw – like fresh peas, carrots, green beans and celery. Luke the wonder dog agrees.

I think I will just mosey out to the kitchen now and cut the tops off some fresh, rosy red radishes. Then I’ll slice off the root ends, pretend that I can carve the little globes into beauteous scarlet rosettes, and plop them into a small bowl of ice water. Then I will sprinkle some crunchy Maldon salt flakes over the clumsy rose petal shapes I have created, and eat one of my favorite root vegetables.

“Plant a radish.
Get a radish.
Never any doubt.
That’s why I love vegetables;
You know what you’re about!”
—Tom Jones

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