2010 was supposed to be the year we cleaned up the Bay. Its nutrient- and sediment-reduction and dissolved-oxygen and underwater grass-improvement goals: all deadlines we missed. But as 2010 ends, many people are still working for a cleaner Chesapeake. Here’s a year-end review of what two local grant-winning projects are doing to change the way we do things on dry land — because everything we put on land ends up in the Bay.
In the middle of the shopping rush on the last Saturday before Christmas, one Nordstrom customer stopped browsing and started singing. Another 100 voices joined in, singing a seemingly impromptu but suspiciously professional “Hallalujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. The reason for the effortless harmony: The Annapolis Chorale was adding an enticing fourth performance to the usual three nights of singing the Messiah. That’s right, Nordstrom Annapolis was Flash Mobbed.
Veterans and their families are invited to go fishing with Maryland Department of Natural Resources on 35 fall fishing charters now thru Dec. 15, when rockfish season closes. “We are very pleased to give something back to our veterans, who so courageously serve on our behalf — in this case, a day of fishing on our beautiful Chesapeake Bay,” said Gov. Martin O’Malley of the new Recreational Outreach Project for Veterans.
April, when we pay our taxes, may be the cruelest month. But winter is the most expensive season. At least it was in 2009-10, when what we saved in autumnal hurricanes was lost in the avalanche of winter snow. In Maryland alone, last year’s record-setting snow cost American taxpayers $54,699,527.85 — yes, the fed counts down to pennies. That’s how much cash the Federal Emergency Management Agency has shoveled into Maryland to help dig out from under last winter’s budget-busting snow.
This election is like few others we’ve seen. With so many voters fed up with the course of governing — and with so many candidates struggling to tap into this palpable anger — 2010 brings a new strain of the old throw-out-the-bums electoral fever. There’s demagoguery out there, too, in this season of discontent. So it’s hard to know who’s telling it straight and who’s trying to exploit our body politic at a vulnerable moment.
In wind power, the money is in the marketing. We learned as much long ago from the experiment of William Wrigley Jr., the millionaire whose success you’ve no doubt chewed on more than once. The maker of Juicy Fruit and Doublemint gum, among other chewables, kept a weather eye on opportunity. How he put chewing gum in vending machines at about the turn of the 20th century is a milestone of entrepreneurial capitalism.
Something alien is growing in Calvert County. The aliens have sprouted up in the front yards of homes along quiet, winding Bowie Shop Road. Still more are appearing on Route 4. They are big, very big, towering over the landscape. Eventually there will be 23 of them. These aliens are behemoth power poles, erected by Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative in the name of progress. The new metal poles bear little resemblance to the old wooden poles they are replacing, and they don’t exist anywhere else in Calvert County.