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Delmarva Review: Elm Trees by Michael Carrino

November 5, 2022 by Delmarva Review

Author’s Note: “Elm Trees” started as my memory of watching the daily removal of the last trees destroyed by Dutch Elm Disease. Period photos of Clinton County, New York show the damage to the landscape caused by the disease. Soon even long-time residents would have only a vague memory of elms. As I wrote each draft during the height of the pandemic, the trees took on a haunting sense of fear and helplessness.

Elm Trees

One September I lingered in a town
with no intention
to stay. Twilight clung
to any warm breeze. On narrow streets
there were regal old houses in need of repair.

Elm trees lined the narrow
sidewalks, their heavy limbs bare,
each trunk’s decaying girth
marked with a slash of white paint, one
crooked, careless X
warning of Dutch elm disease.

I waited for a job; the elms
waited for nothing
but to be cut down. Every day
there was a shrill of chain saws.
At times that shrill
must have been no more
than a faint unease, a faint
whisper of failure, of falling, of absence.

⧫

Michael Carrino is a retired lecturer in the English department at SUNY (State University of New York), Plattsburgh. He was co-founder and poetry editor of the Saranac Review, and he has had seven books of poetry published, most recently “Until I’ve Forgotten” and “Until I’m Stunned,” as well as individual poems in literary journals. He holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.

Delmarva Review publishes compelling new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage outstanding new writing, the literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, now in its 15th year. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from the Talbot Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org.

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Baseball Needs a Revolution by Al Sikes

November 5, 2022 by Al Sikes

Riveting, yes riveting. A baseball game during which I enjoyed watching the crowd as the camera captured those fortunate enough to be sitting just behind home plate. They were all watching each pitch and reacting. Some joined others in clapping to urge the pitcher on. Each pitch was suspenseful because the ultimate bragging rights were on the line.

I watch some St Louis Cardinal games during the regular season while fast forwarding through commercials. It was the team of my youth. Mostly the fans sitting behind home plate are talking, looking at their phones, eating and the like. Some are paying attention, but to suggest they are riveted would be fantasy.

It is said that given an amped up popular culture baseball is on the wrong side of the curve and baseball executives know how a good curveball makes even good hitters look foolish. When you have bought whatever team for a billion dollars or more being on the wrong side of the curve, well that warrants some batting practice and perhaps a change in your stance.

So, baseball executives are talking about a pitch clock to speed up the game. Good idea. And some kind of limit on defensive shifts. But let me get to my thought and not drag you through the details.

I love the NCAA basketball “one and done” tournament. Every game is win or go home. Suspense is the ambient emotion. And, at least theoretically, each play in a football game can be a game changer.

Baseball on the other hand is a game of intricacies and devoted fans talk about arm angles and why electronic pitch box computers and screens should be further used as robotic umpires. Warning: some of the umpires are more colorful than most of the players, but I digress.

Those with the power to make changes face a sport with a storied history, immortalized with team and player statistics. Be careful around the immortal. I am sure there are, in these meetings, purists who worry about going too far. There should be.

From my vantage point I would concentrate on one word, suspense. What changes are going to make each pitch more suspenseful not just more hurried by a pitch clock?

My modest (although somewhat radical) suggestion is that the season be divided into say four 40 game tournaments with the fourth one, the end of the season playoffs, capped off with the World Series.

The teams with the best records in the three tournaments would be rewarded with preferred positioning and more home games in the ultimate one. In short, there would be real advantages to winning from the first to the last game. Every game should be more interesting than what you might find on your smartphone.

Regardless, I look forward to “play ball” next April.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.

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Chesapeake Lens: Pilot Boats in the Fog by Nick Cusmano

November 5, 2022 by Chesapeake Lens

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal links two great east coast estuaries. Pilot boats are the key to safe transit between them. “Pilot Boats in the Fog” by Nick Cusmano.

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Looking at the Masters: Thomas Cole

November 3, 2022 by Beverly Hall Smith

Thomas Cole (1801-1848) is best known as founder of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Members of the group included Frederick Edwin Church, Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and John Kensett, who painted the wildness and beauty of the untouched American landscape. Cole also wanted to create a “higher style of landscape” with a moral message. His second series The Voyage of Life (1839) (National Gallery, Washington, DC.) included four paintings that traced the life of a man through birth, youth, middle age and old age. His first series The Course of Empire was painted between 1835 and 1836. Cole wanted to save America’s beautiful and wild natural landscape from encroaching industrialization. The Erie canal was completed, and the railroad was expanding during that time.

The Course of Empire (1835-36) included five paintings. Cole convinced his patron Luman Reed (1785-1836) to commission the project. A successful merchant from Coxsackie, New York, Reed moved to New York and opened an art gallery. The series was to be displayed on the third floor of Reed’s mansion at 13 Greenwich Street, New York City. The inspiration for The Course of Empire was Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818), Canto IV:

There is the moral of all human tales;

‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.

First freedom and then Glory—when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarianism at last.

And History, with all her volumes vast,

Hath but one page…

Cole placed a newspaper ad for the series that included Byron’s poem.

Cole and Reed were not alone in their fears that America would follow the unfortunate course of empire.

“The Savage State” (1834)

Cole had conceived of The Course of Empire in 1833, and he painted the series while he lived in the Catskill Mountains. “The Savage State” or “The Commencement of the Empire” (1834) (39.5”x 63.5”) begins the series. It depicts clouds that are clearing at the dawn of a new day, and a vast landscape including nearby stream, wild trees, a distant bay, and a tall mountain. The same landscape appears in all five paintings, but viewed from different locations on the river. The mountain peak with a boulder at its top is the constant in all the paintings. The paintings also proceed through the course of a day.

At the left of the painting, a man clothed in animal skin and with bow in hand runs after a fleeing deer he shot with an arrow. The deer crosses the stream in the lower center of the landscape. In the middle of the composition, a group of people with a dog chase a fleeing deer. At the right, canoes are paddled up a river, and above a village of tipis can be seen. Smoke rises from a campfire, and natives dance around it.

Although the images are unclear to viewers of this painting, Cole described this scene in detail: “In this picture, we have the first rudiments of society. Men are banded together for mutual aid in the chase, etc. The useful arts have commenced in the construction of canoes, huts, and weapons. Two of the fine arts, music and poetry, have their germs, as we may suppose, in the singing which usually accompanies the dance of savages. The empire is asserted, although to a limited degree, over sea, land, and the animal kingdom. The season represented is Spring.” Cole added extensive descriptions to each of the paintings in the series.

“The Arcadian or Pastoral State” (1834)

“The Arcadian or Pastoral State” (1834) (39.5”x 63.5”) has moved down the river and a second mountain peak can be seen at the center of the work. A Doric style Greek temple is placed below the two mountains, and smoke rises from a sacrificial fire. The land has been cultivated. In the middle left of the composition, a man drives an ox, and a field is being plowed. A shepherd tends his sheep in the center of scene. To the far right, a group of women dance while a flautist plays for them. In the right foreground, a woman in white stands on a small bridge and holds a distaff (spindle). In front of her, a young boy draws a picture. At the left, an elderly man wearing a toga uses a stick to draw a geometric design in the dirt.

Cole spent time in Europe studying art and history. He commented upon this scene reminiscent of Archaic Greece: “The unracked and rude has been tamed and softened…It is evident that the useful arts, the fine arts, and the sciences, have made considerable progress.”

“The Consummation of Empire” (1836)

“The Consummation of Empire” (1826) is larger than the other four paintings (51”x 76”). Inspired by the Roman Empire at its height, the scene takes place where the river flows into the bay beyond. The simple bridge has become a massive marble structure with a triumphal arch at the end. A procession crosses the bridge. The victor in red rides on a vehicle drawn by elephants. A large group of soldiers and captives march in the procession. The triumphal arch is richly draped with gold cloth, and gold medallions adorn the top. Two gold military statues hold up a victor’s laurel wreath.

An unusually shaped tall black fountain spurts water. Next to the fountain, at the right, a well-dressed woman and her entourage watch the proceedings. Above them, a statue of Minerva (Roman goddess of war and wisdom) stands upon a tall structure. She wears her traditional toga and helmet, holds a spear, and in her right hand is a small statue of Athena Nike (Winged Victory). The bay is filled with ships of war and merchant vessels. The entrance to the river is guarded by two phari (lighthouses). Cole explained this painting: “In this scene is depicted the summit of human glory. The architecture, the ornamental embellishments, etc., show that wealth, power, knowledge, and taste have worked together, and accomplished the highest need of human achievement and empire. As the triumphal fete would indicate, man has conquered man—nations have been subjugated.”

“Destruction or Desolation” (1836)

“Destruction or Desolation” (1836) (39.5”x 63.5”) is set in the late afternoon. Storm clouds swirl as the city falls to an invading enemy. The buildings crumble and fires rage. Half the parade bridge has collapsed, and the make-shift wooden bridge collapses under the weight of those trying to escape the invading soldiers. Warships battle in the river, one sinking and another set on fire. Citizens pour out of the buildings to escape the fires, only to be slaughtered. A gigantic marble statue of a charging warrior commands the right side of the composition. Although he still holds his bronze shield, his head lies on the ground below. Cole has given the figure the pose of the Hellenistic Greek statue, the “Borghese Warrior.” The painting references the fall of Rome to the Vandals in 455 CE.

Cole describes the view of the drama taking place in the right corner of the painting: “In the fore-ground are several dead and dying; some bodies have fallen in the basin of a fountain, tinging the waters with their blood. A female is seen sitting in mute despair over the dead body of her son, and a young woman is escaping from the ruffian grasp of a soldier, by leaping over the battlement; another soldier drags a woman by the hair down the steps that form part of the pedestal of a mutilated colossal statue, whose shattered head lies on the pavement below. A barbarous and destroying enemy conquers and sacks the city. Description of this picture is perhaps needless; carnage and destruction are its elements.”

“Desolation” (1836)

Cole returns the viewer to the same landscape seen in the first painting of the series. Day is dying, and the moon rises in the same location on the horizon where the sun rose. Scattered ruins of columns, colonnades, bridges, and temples still appear above trees and ivy that reclaim the land. A tall column that once supported the bridge now is the home of a heron and her nest. No human life is shown. The mountain with the boulder at the top, visible in all of the paintings, remains.

Cole concludes his description of this painting: “But, though man and his works have perished, the steep promontory, with its insulated rock, still rears against the sky unmoved, unchanged. Violence and time have crumbled the works of man, and art is again resolving into elemental nature. The gorgeous pageant has passed—the roar of battle has ceased—the multitude has sunk in the dust—the empire is extinct.”

The original agreement with Cole’s patron Luman Reed was to display the works in the Reed home. Unfortunately, Reed died in 1836. The series was acquired by the New York Historical Society in 1858, and hangs there today.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

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That’s Rude by Angela Rieck

November 3, 2022 by Angela Rieck

Rude.

I was in a line to purchase produce at the market the other day. Ahead of me was a tourist couple (who didn’t purchase anything) questioning the salesclerk about the Eastern Shore. They were unconcerned about the line that was swelling behind them.

To address the long line of customers, the salesclerk began servicing the customers while continuing to talk to the couple. The couple was clearly annoyed and glared at each customer. In their definition of rude, they had been interrupted.

On the other hand, the customers viewed the couple as rude because they continued to probe for more information despite the line of customers.

And the salesclerk was trying to negotiate the differences in “rudeness.”

I reflected on what rudeness really is.

Some rudeness is direct and intentional. For example, the cruel comments that you see on the Internet, or direct disrespect by refusing to recognize anyone’s needs but one’s own.

But often, rudeness is inadvertent and just based on perspective. Many of our definitions of rude come down to our needs not being met due to someone else’s behavior. Often it involves time. The couple holding up the line were wasting our time. The customers were wasting that couple’s time. People who drive too slowly, people who hold up a line, when you think about it, a lot of it is just time.

We often attribute rudeness to those who prevent us from getting what we want. For example, the person ahead of you buying all of the tomatoes, someone who cuts in front of a line, someone in a line talking on their cellphone or other multitasking so that the clerk must wait.

Rudeness is often community-defined. For example, having lived Northeast and now in the more Southern Eastern Shore, I find there are large differences between these communities. In the Northeast, time is precious. In the South, relationship or connection is more important. I used to say that 20 people ahead of me in line in NYC takes the same amount of time as one person ahead of me in the South. In the northeast, it is transactional, so the quicker the better. In more rural areas, it is connection, so time has less value.

Communities also exist within families and cultural groups; and rudeness is defined by the norms of the community. Since America has multi-cultural roots, it is easy to be inadvertently rude. A simple example is attending churches and synagogues, in some being late is acceptable, in others it is rude.

Families have their own codes as well. In large and boisterous families, interrupting is the way to get your point across. In smaller, more discrete families, it is rude.

Rude really gets crazy when dealing with international cultures. It takes research to avoid inadvertent rudeness. For example, table manners. In some countries, leaving food on the plate is rude; in other countries it is rude not to.

I remember dining at a Korean friend’s house, and as I quickly began devouring the incredibly delicious food, I glanced over at her. Too late, I realized that she was eating her meal slowly and carefully, maintaining the relative portions and the appearance of the food on the plate, my messy plate was both embarrassing (and inadvertently rude).

In Chile, all food except bread must be eaten with silverware. In Norway, even sandwiches are eaten with a knife and fork. Parts of India and the Middle East use their right hands to eat food. In some parts of China and Japan, slurping is considered a compliment.

Punctuality rules are also unique to each country and community. How to make life hard for a hostess in America? Arrive early to a dinner party.

But my favorite custom came from a colleague who emigrated from Iran. You explained that in her community, it is polite to invite the hostess (or person you are talking to) to your home for dinner the next weekend. But she explained that the invitation isn’t sincere, it is simply a gesture to show how much you enjoyed their company. So, I asked her how do you know if an invitation is genuine? She said you can just tell.

I continued, “What would happen if someone appeared at that person’s house for dinner (thinking that it was a sincere invitation)?“

“Oh, that would be rude,” she explained.

Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.

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A Powerful Ode in Photos to Douglass’s Talbot Childhood

November 2, 2022 by Neil King, Jr.

In all, Frederick Douglass devoted a total of 41 chapters in his three autobiographies to his childhood and adolescence in Talbot County, in many ways the most pivotal years of his life. Those books helped catapult him to international fame, which in turn made Douglass one of the most recognized and photographed of Americans in the 19th century.

And yet, even today, Douglass’s Talbot County years remain cloaked in mystery and obscurity. Except for a few road markers, a statue in Easton’s Courthouse Square, and a highway that bears his name, little remains to help Americans remember—much less understand—the landscape that left such an indelible mark on one of the greatest of early Americans. It’s as if the county’s soggy soil has gobbled up the memory of those vanished years.

Jeff McGuiness—photographer, writer, St. Michaels resident—has devoted five years of his life to filling that void. In all seasons and all kinds of weather, McGuiness roamed the rivers and fields, the houses and eroding shoreline with one mission in mind: To match selections from Douglass’s own writings with scenes that brought them to life. He sought to capture through his camera lens the watery recesses and farmland where Douglass spent 11 of his first 20 years, starting with his birth in 1818.

The result is a lush, 250-page, large-format book, Bear Me Into Freedom: The Talbot County of Frederick Douglass. The book is an evocative, beautiful, and essential addition to the history and literature of Maryland and the Eastern Shore. Published by the St. Michaels Museum, it is also a testament to the bubbling cultural ferment of the county itself.

Anyone who has spent significant time between the Tuckahoe River and Tilghman Island should know that the region is dotted with the places that formed Douglass as a child and young man. Born enslaved and fatherless along the banks of the Tuckahoe. Sent at age six with his grandmother to the gleaming Wye House plantation on the Wye River. Dispatched to the home of Thomas Auld in St. Michaels after years in Baltimore. Marched off at 15, as a disciplinary action, to a small farm near Whitman, where he had his famous fight with a sadistic enslaver, Edward Covey, near the shores of the Chesapeake. Seized at the age of 18 at the Freeland farm north of St. Michaels over an aborted escape plot and frog marched to the Easton jail.

Of all those events—the tragedies, the heartbreaks, the triumphs—there are precious few remnants or markers. Our country is far from equal in doling out its “Washington Slept Here” signs.

At a time when Talbot County and much of the nation has been embroiled in battles over our past and what monuments to erect and which to tear down, McGuiness celebrates and honors what matters most: The land itself, where momentous things happened, so many now forgotten and washed away.

We fight over symbols and abstractions—that granite statue, now moved to another state, carved with the names of the Talbot Boys, or the accompanying signs people stuck in their yards demanding we “Preserve Talbot History.” But neither the statue nor the signs were in active service of remembering or unearthing our true past. We neglect or let fall into oblivion the places where our weightiest events occurred

McGuiness sets out to right this imbalance and to nudge our eyes back to the land itself. His is not a monument-building or sign-erecting exercise. Instead, McGuiness captures fragments of Douglass’s own past much as Douglass would have experienced them then, in all their haunting brevity.

Douglass’s Talbot County roots have been more than ably accounted for in words. Douglass in his three autobiographies devoted extraordinary attention to his childhood and to his tormented love for Talbot County. In addition, Dickson Preston provided a vivid account in his Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years, while David Blight provided still more detail in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

McGuiness’s premise in assembling and writing his book is simple, as he points out in his preface: “Frederick Douglass cannot be fully understood without a visual representation that accompanies the written.” One suspects Douglass would agree, as the great orator and essayist was himself a fervent proponent of the “mighty power” of photography.

McGuiness acknowledges the delicacy of what he set out to do. The book, he notes, is not intended as “archeological or historical documentation nor is it an attempt at a photographic depiction of the unimaginable horror of enslavement.” Instead, the aim “is to place the events Douglass describes so searingly into a visual context, so that the reader can appreciate the physical environment that gave rise to his literature and oratory, which remain vibrant parts of America’s discussion of race.”

On page after page, McGuiness’s images capture the sadness, the longing and even the joy of Douglass’s own words. All were taken after 2018, and yet they feel like magical windows into the first half of the 19th century. His six-image rendering of the young boy’s pilgrimage to Wye House in 1824 perfectly accompanies the awe and ache of Douglass’s own words.

In a few cases, the faithfulness of the photos to Douglass’s own time comes thanks to the wizardry of our own. The gorgeous shots of Wye House, for instance, are all the purer for the meticulous plucking out of all overhead wires or modern amendments. Similarly, McGuiness features an extraordinary aerial shot of Tilghman Island rid of all contemporary clutter and jutting piers. On many a page, you wish the book was several times larger so you could disappear into the vast horizons.

Bear Me Into Freedom is primarily a photo book, but it also contains just enough historical context to guide the reader through each chapter of Douglass’s young life. Its ample citation of sources at the end also gives the book a scholarly heft. This is a volume made with great care.

Fittingly, the book’s title speaks directly to the omnipresence and potency of the Chesapeake Bay itself. During the dark year he spent on the Covey farm at 15, Douglass would often stand along the shore and look longingly at “the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean.” He saw his best route to freedom being a watery one. “I will take to the water,” he wrote later in his first autobiography. “This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom.”

McGuiness has stepped forward at just the right moment with a cultural gift to both the county and the country. Bear Me Into Freedom brings an immediacy and urgency to Douglass’s early life, and with all the dignity you should expect of such an endeavor. Ours is a raucous, ugly, and disjointed era, increasingly unmoored from taste and truth. McGuiness’s book is the opposite of all that: quiet, meticulous, gorgeous, and respectful to a fault.

Neil King Jr. is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor who spent much of the past three years in and around Claiborne. His book about his long walk to New York City, American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, will be out in March. He and McGuiness worked together on a piece published in The Talbot Spy in early 2021 examining a forgotten field where Douglass spent a pivotal year of his life in 1834.

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An Easy Choice for the First District Congressional Seat by J.E. Dean

November 2, 2022 by J.E. Dean

A sign in front of the old fire station on Oxford Road reads, “It’s Simple. Vote Democrat.” When I first saw it, I thought of Thomas Jefferson, who stressed the importance of an educated citizenry. Although the exact wording is in dispute, he said something like, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” The Oxford Road sign contradicted that.

I don’t like what I call “congenital Democrats” or their GOP counterparts—people who vote “their party” regardless of the candidate and don’t bother to learn anything about the opposing candidate. The term “congenital” is not meant as a compliment. Yet, in 2022, I find myself telling people. “Vote Democrat. It’s Simple.”

As is dramatically obvious, the Republican party has imploded into a toxic cloud of racism, greed, personality cults, uncivil attacks, homo-and transphobia, and treason. Except for the name, the party of even 10 years ago no longer exists. Referring to it as “The Party of Lincoln” solicits laughs. You get the idea.

As the mid-term elections approach, there is an important race here on the Eastern Shore. Andy Harris is running against Democrat Heather Mizeur. Conventional wisdom, especially considering recent national polls suggesting a “red wave,” says she will lose. Unfortunately, these polls have caused some First District voters to think, “Why vote for her when she will lose anyway?”

Other voters, including some independents and conservatives aware of Harris’ attendance at an infamous December meeting at the White House where the January 6 insurrection was planned, tell me they won’t vote for Mizeur because “she’s too liberal.” (Two points here—first, Harris refuses to tell us what he was doing at the December meeting because he says the January 6 Committee will accuse him of treason. Second, Harris doesn’t think January 6 was an insurrection.)

Is Mizeur too liberal? I didn’t think so, but I was curious how she would fare in a head-to-head confrontation with Andy Harris. Watching the video of the recent League of Woman Voters candidate forum posted in The Spy provided an opportunity. You can watch the full 90-minute exchange here. The Spy is also posting excerpts of the forum. A video of the opening statements is here.

Mizeur did not seem too liberal to me. She is right, in my view, on many issues, including abortion, education, healthcare, the environment, and the economy. She embraces a larger role of government in supporting our well-being than Harris, but I did not see any similarities to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). I saw a woman genuinely interested in learning about the challenges facing the Eastern Shore and willing to do the work to address them.

I also watched Harris. He was smug and blamed inflation, the economy, crime, the Fentanyl epidemic, federally controlled education, declining test scores and a lot of other issues on Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (who Andy wants “to fire). I did not hear anything positive from him. He wants to stay in Washington to protect our rights, especially freedom of religion, which he felt was attacked when efforts were made to prohibit in-person services during the pandemic, and, of course, the Second Amendment.

How do you weigh the pros and cons of the two candidates? Harris was slick and enthusiastic, especially when defending himself for carrying a gun in the U.S. Capitol and clarifying that Governor Hogan did not call him crazy, but only said his insistence that churches not be closed during the early, most-deadly months of the pandemic was crazy.

Mizeur was “soft” in my view in laying out her policy positions. She was better when attacking Harris, but she could have been stronger in laying out positive reasons why she deserved my vote.

Then I remembered the Oxford Road sign and its message: The Republican party is so rotten that you should not vote for any Republican. If Talbot County had an elected dog catcher, I would vote for the Democrat. The party is an engine of hate and division. Its continued vitality is a threat to American democracy, especially when more than 200 candidates nationally continue to deny that Biden won the presidency in 2020.

So, you can argue whether Trump caused the Republican party to go to hell or whether Trump took advantage of a Republican trend of nationalist populism, but you cannot argue that the party is not rotten. It is. The only way to end the divisiveness that is plaguing America is for the party to go away.

That is why the vote for the First District Congressional seat is a simple one, even if you are not wildly enthusiastic about Heather Mizeur. She is not a Republican. It’s that simple. I’m with Heather.

J.E. Dean is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant writing on politics, government, the environment, and other subjects.

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Out and About (Sort of): Regrettable, But Hopeful by Howard Freedlander

November 1, 2022 by Howard Freedlander

I won’t pretend to question the demolition of the mold-infested Chestertown National Guard Armory. I also will not pretend to hide my sadness at the impending loss of this historic structure.

However, the unanimous decision by the Historic District Commission of Chestertown, endorsed unanimously by the Chestertown Town Council, is the right one. Long-ignored environmental degradation negated the possibility of preservation. The cost of ridding the historic building of dangerous mold would have been excessive, if at all successful.

This iconic armory, built in 1931 during the Great Depression, once housed a unit that fought on D-Day, June 6,1944 on the code-named Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. This successful amphibious invasion led to the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany. Unit members exemplified citizen-soldiers from throughout Maryland who served in the famed 29th Infantry Division (Blue and Gray). The 29th, mostly comprising units belonging to the Maryland and Virginia National Guard, became celebrated for its hard-earned victories, not only on what had been a beautifully serene Normandy beach, but throughout violent combat in France and Germany.

As a Maryland National Guard officer, I spent time in the white-painted Chestertown Armory. I worked with Lt. Gen. (MD) James F. Fretterd, the adjutant general, to acquire state money to renovate the building. We had hoped that the construction would prolong the life of this waterfront structure. We understood and valued the close ties between the community and the armory and determined to strengthen them.

As I have learned, the future of the four-acre waterfront property could be very bright for Chestertown through the potential construction by a world-renown hotel operator of a hotel and conference center, used principally by Washington College. In researching this possibility, involving area investors, I also learned that the history of the armory and the 29th Division will be incorporated into the hotel/conference center in as-yet an undefined manner. To say I was pleased to hear that a notable military lineage will be memorialized in a tasteful way, would be an understatement.

If I put aside my Maryland National Guard allegiance, if only briefly, I believe, as do others obviously, that a hospitality structure on the Chester River would be a plus for Chestertown and environs and college as a community center. It would be akin to the appealing Tidewater Inn in Easton, long known as a popular gathering venue for Talbot County residents as well as visitors.

Preservation is always preferable. It retains the past while building a future. When the new is a necessity, as is true with the Chestertown Armory on Quaker Neck Road, the past need not be lost and disregarded. Inclusion of historic artifacts related to the domestic as well as foreign combat missions of units based in the armory, named in 1999 for John H. Newnam, a Chestertown resident who landed on Omaha Beach, would be wholly appropriate.

The decision to demolish the Chestertown National Guard Armory can be a positive outcome. The community and college would benefit. A proud military history would have a visible place. Visitors enjoying the ambience of a well-designed hotel conference center might pause to ponder the significance of a property grounded in the lovely town of Chestertown, while tied to outside national security events.

Columnist Howard Freedlander retired in 2011 as Deputy State Treasurer of the State of Maryland. Previously, he was the executive officer of the Maryland National Guard. He also served as community editor for Chesapeake Publishing, lastly at the Queen Anne’s Record-Observer. After 44 years in Easton, Howard and his wife, Liz, moved in November 2020 to Annapolis, where they live with Toby, a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who has no regal bearing, just a mellow, enticing disposition.

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All Saints by Jamie Kirkpatrick

November 1, 2022 by Jamie Kirkpatrick

I went to elementary school at St. Edmund’s Academy in Pittsburgh. It was a small place, at the time newly founded, with a nursery school, kindergarten, and grades one through eight. I spent eleven years there, longer and likely more formative than any other school I ever attended. Today, St. Edmund’s is coeducational, but back then, it was an all boys school with Episcopalian roots, complete with a weekly chapel service every Thursday led by a semi-retired parish priest, but undoubtedly presided over by the school’s Headmaster (whom everyone simply called “Sir”) who doubled as the organist and choir director. Singing was strongly encouraged and Glee Club was the summit of all school-related activities, more important even than sports, believe it or not.

Our school’s patron saint, Edmund, or more properly, Edmund the Martyr, was King of East Anglia on the English coast from 855 until his death on November 20, 869. I have no idea how or why he came to be so revered in Pittsburgh that a school was named in his honor, but we all knew Edmund’s story. As a young boy, he was befriended by a pack of wolves, raised by them to be a goodly king which, apparently, he was until he met his end either in battle against the Great Heathen Army or for refusing to renounce God when the battle was lost. In either account, he was felled by Viking arrows which we all assumed was the only proper way for a saint to die, better even than crucifixion.

I’m thinking about all this because today, Tuesday, is All Saints Day in the Christian tradition, and while we may not all be Christian, we all can honor good deeds by good people, the known and unknown. Moreover, the fact that All Saints Day, also known as All Hallows Day, follows on the heels of All Hallows Eve—the costumed candy fest we all know as Halloween—says something profoundly important about our contemporary culture: maybe that these days, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the new saints of the chocolate aisle and that martyrdom has finally fallen out of fashion. About time!

All Saints Day is a solemn day in the Christian Church, a time for remembering all the souls who have gone before us, the famous and the obscure. It underscores the Christian belief that there remains a spiritual bond between those of us who now reside in heaven and those of us still here on earth. I realize that’s a matter of personal predilection, but I like to think that there is still a vibrant connection between the living and the dead, that the past can still inform the future, and that hope abides.

The Episcopal hymnal is full of good songs for lusty singing, but none, I think, more so than “I Sing A Song of the Saints of God.” It was a young choirboy’s dream, full of references to saints who met their ends in various gruesome ways—one was even “slain by a fierce wild beast.” That the subtext of the hymn—that we can all be saints by performing small acts of kindness every day—was likely lost on us; it was much more impressive to be martyred by marauding Vikings than to encounter someone in a tea shop, which, according to the hymn, was another possible path to sainthood. Tea shops fail to impress young boys.

But that was then; I’m not a young boy anymore. Now, I hear that hymn differently because it ends with this refrain: “For the saints of God are just folk like me/And I mean to be one, too.” I like that. Maybe I don’t need to be a martyr after all.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.net.

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

A Now Retired Visionary Art Museum Director, Rebecca Hoffberger sees a Future of Fresh, Intuitive Thinking

October 30, 2022 by Dennis Forney

The best way to sample the depth of knowledge and spiritual height of Rebecca Hoffberger is to walk the hallways, climb the soaring spiral stairs, and immerse yourself in the exhibit areas of Baltimore’s quirky, unique, inspiring and nationally acclaimed American Visionary Art Museum. There you will find creative vision and revelations in countless works by mostly unknown, self-taught artists.

Rebecca Hoffberger is founder and, after 27 years at the helm, former director of American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Hoffberger and her late husband LeRoy Hoffberger championed such artistry, along with their many believers, contributors, and dedicated staff, from the day they opened the museum and education center in 1995. Straight out of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, the American Visionary Arts Museum is ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’

Should you think this all sounds just a little too lofty, don’t forget to spend time in the museum’s restrooms where all kinds of humor – including the perennial favorite bathroom variety – festoons the walls. ‘Hooker Named Lay Person of the Year,’ reads one of the many framed headlines in one of the restrooms.

Bladders relieved and minds refreshed, visitors find themselves drying their hands a long time as they read the walls before laughing their way back to more of the engaging exhibits.

Hoffberger believes firmly in a quotation by Oscar Wilde: “If you are going to tell people the truth, make them laugh, or else they’ll kill you.” Truth has always been central to Hoffberger’s mantra: focusing on the power of new and fresh thinking from the intuition and imagination of people.

“I’m an addict of fresh thought,” she said in a recent interview. That addiction has been on display for 27 years in the form of the museum’s permanent exhibits, and 41 different themed exhibits she has envisioned and curated through all those years. The unique works of the cavalcade of self-taught artists she has gathered for each exhibit have always been the primary medium carrying the various themes.

The title of Hoffberger’s last and most recent themed exhibit – The Art of Healing, Compassion, and the Lack Thereof – provides a sense of the truths explored by her exhibits through the decades.

But let’s move on, because that is exactly what Rebecca Hoffberger is doing. Words, also, can no more adequately describe the American Visionary Art Museum experience than holding a grain of sand can describe a beach. Just go. Its red brick buildings at the intersection of Key Highway and Covington – now Rebecca Hoffberger Way thanks to Baltimore City Council – are an exhibit unto themselves. The complex is tucked between the foot of historic Federal Hill and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

But don’t expect to find Hoffberger in those hallways where she has spent the greatest majority of her waking hours since 1995. In April this year she announced her pending retirement and has since turned over the museum’s reins to new president and director Jenenne Whitfield.

It is said that bold is genius. There is nothing subtle about the main entrance to the American Visionary Art Museum, at the foot of Federal Hill in Baltimore.

Hoffberger, however, has no plans to cut her ties to the museum or to her native city. “After 27 years of rolling strikes, my only failure has been not yet raising the modest – I think – $27 million needed for a sustaining endowment. We’re debt free, but the endowment is needed to really secure our future. I’m working on that. I’m hardwired to try and I know how to succeed. That’s why we’re one of the few museums in the region with increasing annual attendance.”

The museum’s approximate $3.2 million annual budget confirms this enlightened enterprise is no small notion.

Although transitioning, no moss is growing beneath Hoffberger’s feet. As she begins her seventh decade, she wants to finish a play she is writing about the interconnected lives of Mark Twain and inventor Nikola Tesla. “I want the play to reveal how we’ve come to where we are now.”

She also envisions a West Coast version of the visionary art museum including the world’s largest straw-bale building.

But they will have to wait until Hoffberger finishes what she says may be her last love song for Baltimore.

Government funding, to the tune of $150 million, is on its way for major work at the Baltimore Convention Center. Another $67.5 million for major projects is headed to the Inner Harbor area. “It’s only a five-minute walk from the convention center to the Inner Harbor,” she said. “A safe and beautiful walking path has to be part of that vision. I’m in the process of getting that together right now. It grieves me that so much money is being spent on things that don’t last. I want to use the same intuitive thought and imagination on display in the museum to inject fresh thought and inspiration into Baltimore. I understand what it takes to make things successful.”

Hoffberger points to Tivoli Gardens in Denmark and the city of Medellin in Colombia, South America, as two success stories that can help Baltimore leave behind its poster child image of a city gone wrong.

“Tivoli Gardens are Denmark’s number one tourist attraction. They’re fun, beautiful, family friendly, elegant, whimsical and safe, and they have endured for 130 years.

“Medellin was once the murder capital of Colombia, she says. “Because of the efforts of three enlightened mayors in a row, Medellin has turned around with extensive park and transportation systems and high tech education that benefit all of the people. It is now one of the most studied and peaceful cities there is. I’ve gone to Medellin and met with the principals there to learn how they have accomplished what they have.”

She also points to the closer Columbia, just 25 minutes away from downtown Baltimore, brought to life several decades ago by social visionary and architect James Rouse. Rouse was also the architect of the Inner Harbor’s Harborplace transformation.

“A recent survey found Columbia to be the safest city and the second happiest city in America,” said Hoffberger. “Look at its beautiful Centennial Park. Rouse said: ‘Cities were meant to be gardens in which to grow beautiful people.’ He also said that cities that aren’t great places for everyone can’t be great cities.

‘I have a vision for what it would take to transform Baltimore. It’s fleshed out, just as detailed as the vision I had for the visionary art museum when I started working on it in 1984. I’m presently working with a major public relations firm to make this vision palpable so we can bring Baltimore back in a permanent way.”

The firm, said Hoffberger, is not charging her or the city for the work nor is she charging the city for her plans.

This whirling dervish, feeding on the kind of extra-dimensional intuition and imagination she has experienced and has cultivated in the visionary art museum, fully expects to see her plans realized. She’s hopeful too that her family history of longevity will give her all the time she needs.

“My father lived to 101,” she said. “Ramrod straight and in perfect health until he died. And that despite a heartbeat that sounded like Gene Krupa on acid!”

Hoffberger well remembers the comment from Sister Charlotte Kerr, an acupuncturist well-versed in ancient Chinese wisdom, when she heard about Rebecca’s father’s remarkable heart. The comment resonated within Hoffberger’s innate optimism and wellspring of purposeful energy that drives her continuing quest for truth and fresh, intuitive thought.

“She told me that a heart that dances is stronger than a heart that marches.”

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972. He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.

Rebecca Hoffberger is founder and, after 27 years at the helm, former director of American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.

Bladders relieved and minds refreshed, visitors find themselves drying their hands a long time as they read the walls before laughing their way back to more of the engaging exhibits.