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January 19, 2021

The Chestertown Spy

An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland

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Spy Chats Spy Highlights Spy Top Story

Exit Interview: David LaMotte on a Lifetime Career at LaMotte Chemical

December 2, 2020 by Dave Wheelan 4 Comments

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The Spy “Exit Interview” series is part journalism and part oral history. Over the last eleven years, the Chestertown Spy has interviewed dozen of local leaders at the moment of their retirement to reflect on their work and some of the challenges they have faced in their professional careers and the nonprofit organizations they have helped as trustees.

David H. LaMotte is our subject for this installment. We asked David to reflect on his lifetime career at LaMotte Chemical and how this modest family business started by his grandfather, had relocated from Baltimore in 1956. Under his guidance as president, he grew into a mature, growing company with over 200 employees.

A few months ago, a significant end of an era in Chestertown commerce went mostly unnoticed for most of the community. After a lifetime working at LaMotte Chemical, David LaMotte discreetly stepped down as president of the Kent County-based chemical testing company, which he had led after Arthur H. Thomas Company purchased the business, in 1986.

In his Spy interview, David reflects on how this family enterprise grew, decided to sell the company, and the excitement of leading a team to expand their products and services on an international scale, all from their modest headquarters at the corner of Washington Street and Morgnec Road.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. 

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

Cats on High Street

November 30, 2020 by James Dissette 4 Comments

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I’m convinced cats live in a parallel universe and for brief moments slip into our lives to eat, plot and sleep. It must be exhausting on the other side. For seven million years they have been perfecting their “I’m a cat and you’re not” sensibility.

Kidding aside, I recently visited Chestertown’s Cat Colloquium on the second floor of the newly renovated 18th-century landmark Stam’s Luncheonette to talk with CEO Laura Johnstone Wilson about their mission.

Cat Colloquium was founded by cat-lover and entrepreneur Wendy Culp and conceived as an educational forum with a “commitment to revitalizing downtown Chestertown by establishing a dynamic and inviting community space for both human and felines alike.”

Through partnerships with others, Cat Colloquium also acts as a fundraising source to support organizations that care for animals, children, and the community,

Meant as a community open space and educational hub for meetings and school visits, the floor was architecturally designed to be a haven for cats. A 20-ft rope encased tree, with limbs reaching the skylights, sits like an art installation in the play area. Cat tunnels, platform areas, nooks, and pillows abound and there’s even a narrow staircase down to Stam’s front window.

And yes, there are cats!

A dozen felines encamped at Cat Colloquium are special—they are all rescues and many of them have suffered from various injuries and medical conditions. Robinson, for example, is blind, but lives and thrives to annoy the group with his antics. Peake (Chesapeake) was bread without ear cartilage—now an outlawed procedure—and Buster lost his tail after being hit by a car. Each cat receives special medical care from Dr. Renee Rucinsky from Mid-Atlantic Cat Hospital.

Cat Colloquium is open to the public. If you are a cat lover, it’s some kind of paradise.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length.  To learn more about Cat Colloquium please go here. 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

Exit Interview: Glenn Wilson on Banking and Giving Back

November 24, 2020 by Dave Wheelan 4 Comments

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The Spy “Exit Interview” series is part journalism and part oral history. Over the last eleven years, the Spy has interviewed dozen local leaders at the moment of their retirement to reflect on their work and some of the challenges they have faced in their professional careers and the nonprofit organizations they have helped as trustees.

In this installment, the Spy talks to Glenn Wilson, president of Chesapeake Bank and Trust in Chestertown. After almost forty years in banking, which included leadership positions at Maryland National Bank, AmeriServ Financial Inc. in Pennsylvania, and the past five years with Chesapeake, Wilson and his wife, Diana, will be heading down to Florida to be closer to their two sons.

Wilson is the first to note that he leaves Chesapeake amid significant challenges. While he is pleased that his bank has come out of the COVID-19 induced 2020 recession in good shape and on the course of a full recovery, he still feels the pain of the coronavirus crisis as Chestertown’s merchants and restaurateurs continue to pick up the pieces of a damaged local economy.

Glenn also talks candidly about the challenges of nonprofit organizations that he served in leadership roles. Starting with the United Way of Kent County and the needs assessment, he helped determine the area’s most pressing issues and the Sultana Education Foundation, which remains severely impacted by the pandemic shutdown. And on a brighter note, his conviction that UM Shore Regional Health, where he also served on their board, and the State of Maryland will find a way to keep Chestertown’s hospital open and thriving for many years to come.

This video is approximately minutes eleven in length. 

 

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

Confessions of a Voting Process Witness with Justinian Dispenza

November 18, 2020 by James Dissette 3 Comments

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No, ballots are not delivered in burlap bags by stagecoach.

With allegations of national voter fraud running rampant throughout the news, the Spy wanted to find out what takes place at a ballot canvassing office.

As luck would have at, Spy friend and videographer Justinian Dispenza at Andover Media was on the scene.

Dispenza was the official videographer contracted to record and live-stream the ballot counting process for the 2020 Talbot County Elections.

“When they ran the live stream, the Committee posted a call-in number. If people had a question about any part of the process, they could call and immediately get an answer,” Dispenza said.

Dispenza witnessed and recorded every minute of the procedures, and he’s here to say that the process he saw was ironclad from start to finish each day with tiers of checks and balances and including sophisticated security for the vote-reading machines before and after each day’s counting.

“There are people who watched the entire day, not a lot of people because it’s really boring, but that’s’ the process— a Democrat and a Republican bridging a gap and saying the most important thing is that we participate in a representative democracy to make sure this election is fair.”

Here, Dispenza describes in detail the scrutiny each ballot undergoes when received at the Elections canvassing office.

This video is approximately nine minutes in length. For information about Andover Media please go here.

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Top Story

Salute: Luisa Turns 20 Years Old

November 9, 2020 by James Dissette 5 Comments

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Cousins and co-owners Mimmo Fevola and Vinny Asante say it’s all about teamwork as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of Luisa’s Cucina Italiana on November 13.

The milestone is burnished by the fact that the restaurant has survived through some of the darkest months of the pandemic closures thanks to the community’s ongoing patronage.

Operating at about 75% now with masks and social distancing required, Luisa’s retained its loyal following by quickly starting a vigorous curbside service.

“Lines stretched around the building as word got out. It was hard but the challenge was fun,” Mimmo said.

Vinny is quick to point out that despite the mask-free interview, masks are required for employees and guests, along with social distancing.

Here, Mimmo and Vinnie talk about starting the restaurant 20 years ago and how things have changed up to and including the pandemic. Most of the employee team has been retained during the scheduling challenges and the two are cautiously optimistic about finding a new normal for life after Covid.

The Spy congratulates Luisa’s for their 20 years of being one of the Eastern Shore’s stellar eateries catering to those with a love for Italian cuisine. It’s a true ristorante.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Luisa’s Cucina Italiana, please go here.

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Top Story

The Fight for Racial Justice on the Shore: Pastor Cesar Gonzalez

November 9, 2020 by Dave Wheelan 1 Comment

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One only needs to look at Chestertown or Talbot County these days to see a whole new generation of young leaders as the Black Lives Matter movement and the Talbot Boys monument controversy have emerged on the Eastern Shore. After decades when the elders of these communities struggled mightily on their own to fight for racial justice without the help of millennials and generation X, many of whom having had to leave the region for school or jobs, the Delmarva has seen the dramatic rise of men and women in their thirties and forties taking up the cause of anti-racism from Kent County to Dorchester.

One of those new bright lights is pastor Cesar Gonzalez in Cambridge. Born in Panama and raised in Miami, Cesar initially took a traditional route with his career in the first ten years and after college with a successful career in publishing and journalism. It was only after he and his wife moved to Washington, D.C. that he began to question his priorities, which eventually led his family to Dorchester County and his desire to return to his spiritual roots with The Seventh-day Adventist Church. He now serves as pastor of the Cambridge Church.

Since his arrival, Cesar has not only reinvigorated his church and its mission he also emerged as a community leader in helping bridge a lingering divide in a city still healing from its history of racial strife. in working with whcp community radio, he has sponsored “the conversation” program with ministers of all political persuasions talking about race and justice, he wrote and directed a documentary called “You Don’t Know Nothin’ about Groove City,” and recently covered the repainting of the vandalized Black Lives Mural and public apology of the young man responsible to the attack. 

The Spy caught up with Cesar at WHCP’s studio on Race Street a few weeks ago to talk about his own journey and that of his new commonunty of Cambridge as continues to fight for racial justice in the 21st Century.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. For more information about the Cambridge Church go here and for WHCP please go here.

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Top Story

Bill Peak Spends Some Time with Author Alice McDermott

November 4, 2020 by Bill Peak 1 Comment

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Bill Peak, the Mid-Shore’s “library guy,” has just completed an interview for the Spy with Alice McDermott, who has been called “the Virginia Woolf of American letters.”  Peak’s interview was performed as part of a partnership between the Talbot County Free Library and The Spy to introduce area readers to the poets and writers behind some of our country’s best literature.  

Alice McDermott’s eighth and most recent novel, The Ninth Hour, made it to the Best Books of 2017 lists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine, among others.  Her seventh novel, Someone, was long-listed for the National Book Award.  Three of her previous novels, After This, At Weddings and Wakes, and That Night were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.  Charming Billy won the National Book Award.  That Night was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.  

McDermott’s stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpers, Commonweal, and elsewhere.  She has received the Whiting Writers Award, the Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for American Literature.  In 2013, she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.  McDermott retired last year from Johns Hopkins, where, for the past 23 years, she served as the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities.

This video is approximately sixty minutes in length. You can also listen to this as a podcast at the following:

 

For more information about

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

Chesapeake Arts: The Poetry of Rodney Carroll’s Work

November 2, 2020 by Val Cavalheri Leave a Comment

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There is poetry in Rodney Carroll’s descriptions of things he’s passionate about. But you won’t find his words in a book. Instead, you can experience them in his 30-60 feet tall three-dimensional sculptures that are erected in front of buildings, universities, and museums. His works, some of which take a year or more to complete, have mostly consisted of soaring interpretations of abstract concepts. But even those take on life when his explanation for what inspires him takes us on a trip from the conceptual to the romantic:

Birth of the American Flag

“I’m interested in the spatial relationship of elements and the negative space between them,” he says. “That gives me a notion of the wind coming through on the coast in a hurricane, forming the waves and shaping the sand dunes. And that also translates to the relationship two people may have, and the sense of how close they stand together and the energy between them and how that energy flows.”

You might have come across Carroll’s work around the country. There’s Couple in Arms in Norfolk, VA, Tango in Cary, North Carolina, or Meridian in Cleveland Heights, OH. Closer to home are the Three Muses and Apollo in Bethesda, Firebird in Baltimore, or Birth of the American Flag on Massachusetts Ave in DC. They’re large, expressive, poetic. You can’t help but be in awe of the vision behind them.

Space Betweenus

The manufacture of these massive steel structures is also impressive. Carroll explains that he doesn’t use a computer to create the sketches for his design. Instead, he works three-dimensionally, sculpting smaller models of his concept. Working with his own crew or a metal fabricating shop, he is inextricably involved in the whole process of cutting, welding, bolting, and erecting the pieces.

Not surprising given his talent, three years ago, Carroll was invited to create a sculpture for the lobby of The Hotel at the University of Maryland in College Park. Also, predictably was when he turned to the Chesapeake Bay as a muse for his design. Even though UMD’s mascot is the terrapin, Carroll knew there was a more powerful statement to be made. “Look at the salt marsh islands,” he said, “especially in Dorchester County around Blackwater that are the most fragile. These land elements and ecosystems are going on and going under because of climate change and sea-level rise. So, these salt marsh islands are, in a sense, temporary because in 30 years, they’ll be flooded and gone.”

Blackwater

So that’s what he made for The Hotel, a tribute to these tenuous marshlands. Called Blackwater, the three-dimensional 18×40 foot 2-panel curved wall sculpture is made of steel and copper. CODAworx, the art and design website, describes the piece as “brushed ripples in the stainless steel (which) represents the reflection of the light on the water while the copper-nickel salt marsh islands are shown as they rise and sink into the Chesapeake Bay.”

Meridian

But Carroll explains the poetry behind the steel: “With the marshes, there are no two groupings that are the same. The way the water cuts through them with the tide running in and out… It’s all kind of magical how little mud bank with some grass stays there with the wind, the waves, and the tides and hurricanes, and all the fish, turtles, and birds lay their eggs there and grow. It’s a wonderful sense of the beginning of nature.”

After the installation of the panels, The Hotel expanded its design theme to encompass the idea of ecology and the Chesapeake Bay. The project also changed Carroll, who, besides residing and having a studio in Baltimore, bought a home close to the marshes that have become his inspiration.

“That’s pretty much why I came over into the Cambridge area,” says Carroll, “because Cambridge came down to the Dorchester and Dorchester has Blackwater, and they have all the salt marsh islands, more so than probably any other place on the Chesapeake Bay.” It didn’t hurt that he also found CK Lord, a local metal fabricating company that was able to work on his pieces after the fabricator that did his work for 30 years, closed their business.

But it’s the marshes that keep him coming back.

“I walk around,” says Carroll, “I boat around. I get the skiff, or I drive around looking at places. It’s almost to the point where I come down here, and I think I could just quit making my big sculptures. I could just spend my whole life making sculptures about salt marsh islands, instead.”

Although he probably won’t ever stop making the large-scale sculptures that are his trademark (he’s currently working on one for a town outside of Chicago), he’s now creating a series of smaller wall pieces based on the salt marsh islands. He’s also considering finding a place to display them. Not just for himself as an artist, but in the hope that it will be an inspiration to others.

“I feel that’s so important to draw attention to this ecology and this disappearing thing that we’re not going to see it anymore. I’m not a scientist or photographer documenting these, but drawing attention to the importance of them is a worthwhile endeavor. I feel good about the effort, and it makes me feel very good about my work too.”

For see more of Rodney Carroll’s work, check out his website here.

Val Cavalheri is a recent transplant to the Eastern Shore, having lived in Northern Virginia for the past 20 years. She’s been a writer, editor and professional photographer for various publications, including the Washington Post.

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

The Spirituals Initiative with Kentavius Jones

October 28, 2020 by Dave Wheelan Leave a Comment

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When people on the Mid-Shore think of Kentavius Jones, the image of the former lacrosse star at Washington College turned professional musician is presumably the one that comes to mind. For more than twenty years, Kentavius has not only archived regional prominence with his live performances at almost every venue on the Eastern Shore, he’s been a passionate local advocate for art and music, including his support of the integration of the two forms as a trustee of the Academy Art Museum and countless other coalitions in the region.

But when the Spy heard that the singer-composer’s newest project was the celebration of historic spirituals music on the Eastern Shore, it was a delightful shock.

Noting with humor that classic spirituals can be found in his DNA, impacting both directly and indirectly his own music, Kentavius joined friends La Fleur Paysour, Richard Potter, John Wesley Wright, James Redman, and Barbara Paca in forming the Maryland Spirituals Initiative to celebrate this unique legacy and perform that music in some of the Shore’s most historic places and buildings in African-American history.

The Spy talked to Kentavius Jones at the Spy studio last week to learn more.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about the Maryland Spirituals Initiative please go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Top Story, Top Story

Melissa McGlynn: Savory Pot Pies, a Vaccine for Our Times

October 19, 2020 by James Dissette 3 Comments

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One bright silver lining to the utter mayhem of the pandemic is the necessary drive to innovate. Business closures alone have swept jobs into a river of uncertainty. School closures and remote learning have upended family life. Social distancing has muted social life.

Some are lucky to continue their work remotely while others are forced to scan the horizon for work that may be far afield of their talents. Innovators take the leap of faith and strike out on their own.

One fantastic example of this has been Melissa McGlynn’s Cottage Pies’ sudden appearance and immediate success, a savory vaccine for our time.

For three consecutive Saturdays, McGlynn and her husband, Walt Steffens have hauled a week’s work of their made-from-scratch frozen pot pies from the kitchen at Betterton American Legion to Saturday Market. It takes a week of baking to stock up enough pies for the market, and those are gone within minutes.

McGlynn is no novice when it comes to specialty baking. Cordon Bleu trained and five years of creating popular baked goodies at local bakeries and restaurants from Evergrain Bakery, JR’s, and Louisa’s Restaurant, she has cultivated a community following. But when COVID hit, work came to a halt.

“I was at Louisa’s in March and knew when Italy closed because of the pandemic we would be next in line. The day Memo closed the restaurant closed, I had pastries in the oven.”

The next couple of months were tough.

“I sat around in depression and realized the pandemic wasn’t going away anytime soon, but I couldn’t just sit around,” she says.

McGlynn and Steffens began to kick around a few ideas. “I wanted to head out on my own but wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes.”

Recalling that Swanson pot pies were always a winner at dinner as a kid, McGlynn began to consider creating a medley of pot pies. It seemed the perfect fit. Then things began to fall into place.

Meeting the rigid Health Department requirements for licensing, McGlynn searched for a kitchen and found her new home at Betterton American Legion.

“The licensing took months, and I couldn’t have done it without Erica at the Health Department who took time out of her emergency level schedule dealing with the pandemic. In the meantime, I tested a few recipes in my kitchen, starting with chicken pot pies, the universal comfort food.”

These days she offers a full menu including Chicken Pie, Beef Vegetable Pie, “BOM” Pie (Beef, Onion, Mushroom, Jarlsberg cheese), Shepherd’s Pie, Vegetable Pie, Vegetable Shepherd’s Pie, Aussie Pie, and a seasonal fruit pie. Last week it was Apple, Walnut, and Salted Caramel Apple. And yes, everything is from scratch, from the pie dough to the caramel.

Struck with sudden success, McGlynn looks to the future. At this point, she does not take orders. It’s a first-come, first-served offering that works well as she refines the process and logistics of having 200 pot pies ready by Saturday.

“We’re excited by the challenge,” McGlynn says. “I’m at capacity now and working on expanding the business at a healthy pace,” she adds.

Indeed, the town is ready. If you want one of McGlynn’s Cottage Pies, you have to get to Saturday Market early. Very early. Everyone knows comfort is one pot pie away.

This video is approximately two minutes in length. For more information please go here on FaceBook. 

Filed Under: Spy Chats, Spy Top Story

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