Tugs perform essential work along our waterways from towing barges with fuel or other vital materials and salvage work to assisting larger ships in docking. Here, a pair of tugs maneuvers the passenger liner United States into a slip at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company piers for a refit in the spring of 1954. Photograph by A. Aubrey Bodine. Copyright © Jennifer B. Bodine.

A new major exhibit entitled “Push and Pull: Life on Chesapeake Tugboats,” opens April 21 at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) in St. Michaels, MD. The exhibit explores the world of Chesapeake tugboats and the men and women who work on them. Food, fuel, and all the stuff of modern life––almost nothing moves on the Chesapeake Bay without tugboats.

The men and women who work on tugs docking ships and moving barges do difficult, sometimes dangerous work—with unique rules and rhythms. Explore their world through stories, images, and objects of the Bay’s tugboats, along with the words of the people whose lives are shaped around them.

The exhibit runs through 2014 and is open during regular museum hours. This special exhibit is free for CBMM members or with museum admission. For more information, call 410-745-2916 or visit www.cbmm.org.

 Cambridge, Md. (January 24, 2012) – The Chesapeake Bay and its rivers are the lifeblood of the Eastern Shore, defining the region like no other water body in the world. While many easily recognize the natural beauty Bay country offers, the Horn Point Laboratory is launching a new community program designed to make the science of the Chesapeake Bay as accessible as its beauty.

From March 1 through April 15, Horn Point Laboratory researchers will again offer free, weekly talks about the science behind Chesapeake Bay. The forty-five-minute talks will not only shed light into the mysteries of the Bay, but also highlight the Horn Point programs working to improve the health of the Bay and its aquatic life.  Questions and participation by the audience will be encouraged.

“Bay 101 – Science of the Chesapeake for Non-Scientists” will be held Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. in the Aquaculture and Restoration Ecology Laboratory (AREL) Lecture Hall at the Horn Point Laboratory, located at 2020 Horns Point Road, Cambridge, MD.  To register, contact HPL Volunteer Coordinator, Linda Starling at 410-221-8381 or starling@umces.edu. 

Sessions include:

 March 1:     
“Engineering with Nature: Protecting Shorelines from Erosion in a More Natural Way” with Evamaria Koch

March 8:     “Chesapeake Bay Wetlands and Water Quality – Natural and Created Marshes” with Jeff Cornwell

March 15:    “Connections between Stormy Weather and Muddy Waters: Lessons from Tropical Storms Irene and Lee" with Cindy Palinkas

March 22:     “Historical Perceptions Affect Restoration Goals”
with Vic Kennedy

March 29:     “Connecting Rivers to the Ocean: River Plumes from the Chesapeake to the Amazon” with Victoria Coles     

April 5:             “Jellyfish in the Chesapeake Bay” with Margaret Sexton

April 15:            “New Data on the Bay’s Response to Reduced Nutrients” with Michael Kemp

The Horn Point Laboratory is part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the University System of Maryland’s environmental research institution. UMCES researchers are helping improve our scientific understanding of Maryland, the region and the world through five research centers across Maryland.

EASTON – Eleven members of the Working Artists Forum will show at Easton’s Promise Art Gallery in February.

From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, Easton’s Promise will open an exhibit of 22 paintings by Jane Bollman, Charlotte Fleischman, Mildred Fluharty, Perry Foster, June C. Hock, Martha Holthausen, Patti L. Hopkins, Diane K. Laukenmann, Georgette Towes, Karen Wood and Barbara Zuehlke.

The Working Artists Forum started meeting in Easton, Maryland in 1979. The group became an affiliate of the Academy of the Arts in 1981, and an independent not-for-profit corporation 10 years later. WAF’s members are painters working in one or more medium. Professional expertise is fostered through programs, group critiques, demonstrations, workshops, and member exhibitions. Pro bono work for the community is encouraged.

Being a working artist is one thing; becoming a Working Artist is quite another.  Painters must apply and be voted in to become members.  There are currently 86 members.

WAF sponsors Local Color, a juried and judged exhibit under the auspices of the Easton – Plein Air Competition and Arts Festival, at the Tidewater Inn.  Local Color is open to artists living on the Delmarva Peninsula who work in oil, acrylic, watercolor or pastel.  Also in support of Plein Air-Easton!, the Forum has sponsored the Children’s Quick Draw event.

On Feb. 3, Easton’s Promise will also open a new exhibit of photographs by David Stevens of Easton.

David is currently in the midst of his third artistic career.  His first began in stained glass in 1971 in California, where he worked first for Augustine Glass Works in Los Angeles, then out of his own studio in Venice.  He moved to Easton in 1980, where he continued working in stained glass and began creating wood-and-stained-glass sculptures.  For a decade beginning in 1985, he worked exclusively in wood, creating three-dimensional sculptures, flat wall hanging sculptures and furniture.

Since 1999, photography has been his medium. His subjects have included skipjacks, schooners and tall ships, as well as landscapes on the East Coast, the Chesapeake Bay area, the Southwest and California. Foreign travel to Scotland, Ireland, India and Nepal provided opportunities for entirely new subjects in 2008.

Stevens has exhibited at art festivals from Virginia Beach to Connecticut, and had gallery shows on the Eastern Shore and in Delaware, Washington and Annapolis.  In addition, he has organized the Eastern Shore Arts Festival in St. Michaels for seven years.

 
           Galleristas Carla and Pete Howell invite friends and strangers alike to stop by 107 Goldsborough St. to meet the artists, schmooze and enjoy light refreshments during February’s First Friday Gallery Walk.  For more information, call 410-820-9159 or visit www.eastonspromiseartgallery.com.

The Home Instead Senior Care® office serving seniors in Queen Anne’s, Talbot, Dorchester and Caroline Counties, has announced the Salute to Senior ServiceSM program to honor senior volunteers for the tireless contributions they make to their local communities.

The program will include a search for the most outstanding senior volunteer in each state and culminate with the selection of a national Salute to Senior Service winner during Older Americans Month in May.

Nominees must be 65 years of age or older and volunteer at least 15 hours a month. Nominations will be accepted at www.SalutetoSeniorService.com through March 15, 2012. Nomination forms also can be requested at ckoehler@homeinsteadinc.com.

State Senior HeroSM winners will receive plaques, and their stories will be posted on the SalutetoSeniorService.com website. In addition, $5,000 will be donated to the national winner’s nonprofit charity of choice.

According to research conducted by the Home Instead Senior Care® network, 52 percent of seniors volunteer their time through unpaid community service. Nearly 20 percent (one in five) of seniors surveyed started volunteering when they reached the traditional age of retirement – 65 or older. Furthermore, 20 percent of seniors who volunteer say that their community service is the most important thing they do.

“Helping others defines life for many local retired seniors,” said Claude Lewis, owner of the Home Instead Senior Care office in Easton serving Queen Anne’s, Talbot, Dorchester and Caroline Counties. “And what a difference we have observed in seniors’ health, attitude and outlook among those who choose to stay active as they age.”

Dr. Erwin Tan, director of the Senior Corps, a national organization that links more than 400,000 Americans 55 and older to service opportunities, agrees. “The one thing that I hear constantly from the seniors in our programs is that volunteering gives them a purpose in life – they say that it’s the reason they get up in the morning.

“In addition, it’s a great way for them to learn new things – whether a skill or just something about an issue in which they have an interest,” Tan said. “Volunteering is just a great way to expand their horizons and feel like they’re still a valuable part of their community.”

For more information about the Salute to Senior Service program or Home Instead Senior Care, please call 410-822-1230.

In recognition of President’s Day on February 20, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (CBMM) in St. Michaels, MD is offering free admission to its 18-acre waterfront campus and 12 exhibit buildings.

The museum features an authentic working boat yard, a floating fleet of historic vessels, the 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse, and many hands-on exhibits that share the stories of the Chesapeake Bay and the people who have shaped their lives around it.

The museum is open 10am to 4pm seven days a week, with admission regularly at $13 adults, $10 seniors, $6 kids 6-17 and free admission for kids five and under. For more information, visit the museum in St. Michaels, online at www.cbmm.org, or call 410-745-2916.

Susan duPont paints a bowl at The Claybakers for the
2011 Talbot County Empty Bowls Community Dinner.

The Clay Bakers in Easton is supporting the Empty Bowls fundraiser by sponsoring a special bowl decorating event through February 17. For a donation (amount based on the type of bowl you choose), Clay Bakers’ customers can choose from a selection of bowls, which they paint in their own style. All bowls will be donated for the Empty Bowls dinner, which will be held on Sunday, February 26 from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Easton. Proceeds from the meal will be donated to Talbot County food pantries

The Clay Bakers is located at 1 S. Washington Street in Easton. For more information, call 410- 770-9091.

The Chester River Chorale in concert.

The Chester River Chorale presents L’Chaim! To Life!, a concert celebrating American music with Jewish roots. The 85-voice Chorale will offer three performances, an evening concert on Saturday, March 31 at 8 p.m., followed by two performances on Sunday, April 1, at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. at the Garfield Center for the Arts at the Prince Theatre. Tickets are $15, free for children under twelve.

Borrowing its title from the song in “Fiddler on the Roof,” sung here with special Mid-Shore lyrics, this concert heralds spring in a celebration of life and features the Alexandria Kleztet, an authentic klesmet band. The recipient of fifteen Washington Area Music Awards (Wammies), the Alexandria Kleztet is known throughout the Mid-Atlantic region for its exciting and innovative arrangements of traditional Eastern European Jewish music and original compositions drawing on jazz, classical, world beat, rock and other musical genres.

With appearances by Chestertown’s own Cantor Gary Schiff, soloists from the CRC, and the Chester Chamber Singers, the program traces the development of American music by Jewish composers from 19th century sacred music through the early 20th century show tunes of the Yiddish theaters of Second Avenue (known as the “Yiddish Broadway”) and on to well-loved hits from Broadway itself. Highlights include Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” and a collection of George Gershwin’s songs.

The CRC is directed by Douglas D. Cox, former Assistant Director of the Soldiers’ Chorus of the United States Army Band. CRC The CRC’s Accompanist is Sammy Marshall, who continues to work with the Field Band. He served with Cox for 12 years as accompanist for the Soldiers’ Chorus.

CRC members are amateur singers from the Mid-Shore region who rehearse Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. at Heron Point of Chestertown. No audition is required. The CRC presents three major concerts each year, usually to standing-room-only audiences.

The Chester River Chorale is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization funded in part by the Kent County Arts Council and by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive. The CRC’s Mission is to provide opportunity and inspiration for amateur singers to strive for artistic excellence. CRC performances entertain diverse audiences and enrich the cultural life of the community. For more information visit www.chesterriverchorale.org or call 410–810–1438.

Come to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s Van Lennep Auditorium at 10am on Tuesday, January 24 to hear Gilbert Byron Society’s Jacques Baker talk about Gilbert Byron and his work. The talk is free and open to the public, with pre-registration needed.

Byron, born in Chestertown, Maryland on July 12, 1903, lived nearly all of his 88 years on the Delmarva Peninsula where he taught school, wrote verse, articles, short stories and novels, mostly about the Chesapeake Bay area. 

The late writer also shares the same birth date with Henry David Thoreau of Walden Pond. In all likelihood, this coincidence influenced not only Byron’s writing, but his lifestyle as well. Whereas Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days in his house by Walden Pond, Byron lived alone for nearly 45 years in the cabin he built on Old House Cove.

No one else is considered to have written more words about the Chesapeake, and over a longer period of time, than Byron, who has come to be known as the Chesapeake Thoreau as well as the Voice of the Chesapeake. 

To register or for more information, email Helen Van Fleet at hvanfleet@cbmm.org or call 410-745-2916.

Environmental Concern Announces its
40th Anniversary on
World Wetlands Day

Locally Based Non-Profit Continues Living Shoreline Work and Kicks Off Milestone Anniversary Year on an International Day to Promote Public Awareness of Wetlands

 Environmental Concern starts its celebration to honor its 40th anniversary year on February 2, 2012, a date that coincides with World Wetlands Day.

Environmental Concern is a non-profit headquartered in St. Michaels, Maryland. With ties up to the international level, the organization’s main work focuses on wetlands around the Chesapeake Bay. Dr. Edgar Garbisch who was a chemistry science teacher at the University of Minnesota started the non-profit in 1972. He turned his attention to wetlands during a time in the U.S. when Americans began to put the environment at the forefront. In 1972 he returned to the place of his youth, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and founded Environmental Concern. Unlike water and air, two subjects that the public understood and valued as important, wetlands suffered from a legacy of false perceptions. Swamps, bogs and marshes were seen as undesirable components of the landscape good only for conversion to usable land. This perception manifested itself in the widespread destruction of millions upon millions of acres of wetlands.

Dr. Garbisch and his team worked over the years to both perfect the restoration of damaged wetlands while at the same time educating his peers in the scientific community and the public at-large as to the importance these critical habitat areas of the environment played in the larger ecosystem. He pioneered a successful restoration method in which he mimicked nature. This method required a steady supply of native marsh grasses to support all restoration projects and as no commercial nurseries grew these plants, Dr. Garbisch created a nursery at Environmental Concern where the seeds he collected in local marshes would be brought back and propagated so required plants would result. His propagation techniques are now used throughout the world as a best-practice. Today, Environmental Concern’s native plant nursery, the first of its kind in the nation, grows over 120 different species of native plants. These plants are used in projects as large as the restoration of Elliot Island on Fishing Bay in Dorchester County on the Chesapeake Bay (over 400,000 plants), to projects as small as a homeowner’s backyard rain garden or a wildflower meadow.

Over the years Environmental Concern grew in size, scope and staff with the mission to promote public understanding and stewardship of wetlands with the goal of improving water quality and enhancing nature’s habitat. This is accomplished through wetland restoration outreach and education, native species horticulture, and the restoration, construction and enhancement of wetlands.

Dr. Garbisch retired in 2002 and Suzanne Pittenger-Slear became the organization’s second-ever president. In addition to creating a leading knowledge-based campus for wetland restoration, education and establishing the first-ever native plant nursery in the nation; Environmental Concern was also the first organization to offer teachers wetland training workshops nationwide and published a number of books that became widely adopted by state and federal agencies. Further, the non-profit was awarded a project on Poplar Island, the largest wetland planting project of its kind ever awarded by the Baltimore District Army Corp of Engineers. The project crew planted about 550,000 wetland plants in less than two months. 

Suzanne Pittenger-Slear, Environmental Concern’s president remarks, “The impact Environmental Concern has made on the scientific community and the public at-large has been tremendous. We are proud that our wetland services has directly improved the overall water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and it tributaries. We have been able to share best-practices in wetland restoration and enhancement with our scientific peers as well as the community-at-large up to the international level.” Further, she comments, “We are excited to enter into our 40th year on the significant date of February 2nd, which is World Wetlands Day. On February 2 in 1971, the Convention on Wetlands Intergovernmental Treaty was adopted. Each year wetland learning centers, government agencies, non-government agencies and concerned citizens take advantage of this opportunity to reach out to the wider community – raising public awareness of the benefits of wetlands, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.”

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands outlines that the over 160 member countries must commit to designating Wetlands of International Importance and to implementing the “three pillars” of the Convention: to designate Wetlands of International Importance; to work towards the wise use of wetlands through land-use, appropriate policies and public education; and to cooperate internationally concerning transboundary wetlands. Pittenger-Slear is the immediate past president of the U.S. National Ramsar Committee and currently serves as the national Communication, Education and Public Awareness (CEPA) Focal Point, a volunteer position that is responsible for public outreach in the U.S. for the wetlands of international importance.

Environmental Concern encourages the public to celebrate World Wetlands Day by visiting the Environmental Concern campus in St. Michaels on February 2nd to learn more about the importance of these microsystems in person; learning more about the work of Environmental Concern and wetlands online at www.wetland.org; visit “World Wetlands Day” under the “Activities” page at Ramsar.org to download educational materials and children’ activities; or taking the time to plan and clean up a local wetland of litter, debris and other potential contaminants.

About Environmental Concern

Environmental Concern is a public non-profit established in 1972 that exists to promote public understanding and stewardship of wetlands with the goal of improving water quality and enhancing nature’s habitat. The organization accomplishes its mission through wetland outreach and education, native species horticulture, and the restoration, construction and enhancement of wetlands. For the last 40 years, Environmental Concern has been known as the leading expert in the field of wetlands restoration, horticulture and education. Further, the public non-profit established the first native plant nursery in the nation. Environmental Concern’s campus is located at the head of San Domingo Creek in St. Michaels, Maryland, which is located on the Chesapeake Bay on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. To learn more, please visit www.wetland.org or call Suzanne Pittenger-Slear, president at 410.745.9620.

Mid-Shore Community Mediation Center’s Basic Mediation Training participants.  Standing, from left:  Trainees Donna Harrison, Craig Sewell, Alex Willis, George Borowsky, Tamra Gardiner, Sue Ann Kruger, Riley Walter and Sara Blades; assistant trainer Tracy Ford. Middle row:  Trainees Jennifer Williams, Kason Washington, Karen Shook, Ray Grossman and Jennifer Fisher; trainer Errika Bridgeford and
trainee
Ragan Jones. Front: Trainee Anitra Dear.

Mid Shore Community Mediation Center (MSCMC) has fourteen new mediators eager to help the organization peacefully resolve conflicts in the Caroline, Dorchester and Talbot County communities it serves. The adult and teen volunteers recently completed an intensive 45-hour basic mediation training program, conducted by professional trainers from Community Mediation Maryland.

“This was an exceptional class for talent, enthusiasm, teamwork and community spirit,” said Peter Taillie, the Mediation Center’s Executive Director. He emphasized that the goal is to maintain the engagement of these new volunteers on an ongoing basis. Initially, that will take the form of an apprenticeship, where the recruits will observe experienced mediators in action.

That additional training before being responsible for their own mediations is welcome to many of the trainees. Ray Grossman admits to needing more practice. Human Resources Director for Shore Health System, living in Cambridge, Grossman was accustomed to mediating situations among employees. However, he found the community mediation model used by MSCMC not quite the same.

While he said he had often made recommendations or imposed compromises when employees with disagreements came to him in his work, the Mediation Center’s volunteers are taught to remain neutral and allow the parties themselves to come up with a solution acceptable to all. “You can’t recommend anything,” Grossman explained, “and that will be hard for me.”

Retired restaurant owner and current CASA volunteer, Sara Blades, from Greensboro, feels more prepared to mediate, but also appreciates the opportunity to observe for a time. “We were given enough knowledge and tools that I feel like I could mediate now, but I want to have more confidence in myself first,” she said, commending the thoroughness of the intense training program.

The basic training takes place over three weekends, and Grossman warned that it is “grueling,” and may be especially draining for those with full-time weekday jobs. It takes a commitment that Taillie is quick to applaud in the volunteers. In comparing it to her CASA training, Blades appreciated that extending the training over several weeks allows trainees to digest the material presented before coming back for the next weekend’s sessions.

Mediators are trained through role play to listen to the individual parties to the conflict and then reflect the concerns they have heard back to them. This promotes understanding of the issues involved and appreciation that everyone is being heard.

Karen Shook of St. Michaels was a producer and reporter in Washington, DC, before moving to the Eastern Shore with her husband, Langley, President of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. “I thought I was a good listener, but this is different from listening as an interviewer or journalist,” she said. She expects the volunteer work to be a good fit for her and an opportunity for personal growth.

A common reaction among the graduates was admiration for the trainers, primarily Community Mediation Maryland’s Errika Bridgeford. “She is a phenomenal trainer,” said Easton’s Tamra Gardiner, Residential Director at the Chesapeake Center. “I don’t know how she kept up the energy. It made it so much easier than it otherwise would have been.”

With the Mediation Center offering a wide variety of no-cost mediation services to the community, and demand for those services growing each year, the new mediators will be able to offer their skills in situations ranging from neighbor disputes to large group facilitations.

Some look forward to working with specific types of mediation, like Gardiner who, having experienced mediation in her own divorce, hopes to help others work out less adversarial endings to marriages. Blades says that children are her passion and would like to facilitate Individual Education Programs for special needs students and their families.  Grossman and Shook are happy to observe for a while and see where they best fit.

Several of the new mediators are teenagers. While trained in all the same skills as the adult volunteers, teen mediators are especially important in teen/teen and parent/teen mediations, where the presence of a peer mediator ensures the younger parties feel they are being heard.

Gardiner described herself as humbled by the different backgrounds and generosity of those participating in the training. “None of them were taking the class to hang out a shingle and get rich by being a mediator,” she said. Noting that some wanted to be better at their jobs or to aid their work with other nonprofits, like many of the others, she simply is excited about being able to help someone and give back to the community. “I feel like I am in a really special group of people,” she added.

For more information on mediation, to make a contribution, or to volunteer as a mediator, call Mid Shore Community Mediation Center at 410-820-5553 or visit www.midshoremediation.org.