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March 4, 2026

Centreville Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville

3 Top Story Archives

Beachfront Property by Jamie Kirkpatrick

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Two of our eight grandchildren—ages eleven and nine—came to visit last week. Three days together in our small house and nary a tear or a cross word. The weather couldn’t have been better; the sweltering heat was yet to come, but there was plenty of warm sunshine, good for swimming in a friend’s pool or putting on the practice green or riding bikes. The ice cream store around the corner did a brisk business thanks to us, as did one of our favorite local purveyors of steamed crabs and shrimp.

But the highlight of our time together was the day we drove out to the little beach on the Bay we call Coast Guard Beach and spent several delightful hours doing nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. We had a paddle board and a raft, beach chairs and an umbrella, books, sandwiches, drinks, and snacks. The tide was out and the shallow water was perfect for the kids. They played and we watched, that is until we decided it was time for us to join in the fun, too. Never too old to play in the water…

At some point, Gavin (our eleven year old) decided to build his own beach house. He gathered large pieces of driftwood and ingeniously stacked them together in the form of a teepee and covered the structure with a beach towel at the water’s edge. He called it his beachfront property. He spent considerable time in his beach house, surveying his watery domain.

When it was finally time to go, we packed up all our beach paraphernalia and headed back into town. (It’s only a thirty minute ride but it seems a world away.) We showered, spread out the the crabs and shrimp on the dining room table, and set to work, whacking and sawing away. Well, they did anyway. Much to my Maryland family’s chagrin, I’m not much for crabs, but I’m plenty happy peeling shrimp, sipping a cold beer while listening to the endless chatter of whatever crowd is gathered around the table.

After dinner, we decided that since it was our last night together, we would go get one last round of ice cream. The store is really just around the corner, but flip-flops are necessary for in-town journeys. And that’s when we discovered Annie’s (our nine year old) flip-flops were miss missing. We looked everywhere for them…no luck. By process of elimination, we decided that they must have been left behind on our little beach. So with about 45 minutes of daylight remaining, we all piled back in the car and headed back to our private little Bay-side paradise. We arrived a few minutes before sunset. The tide had come in, but Annie’s flip-flops were right where she left them and the little house that Gavin built was still standing, albeit now with a watery floor. Happy to have found the flip-flops and the house still upright, we savored the last, gentle remains of the day before heading back into town and the ice cream store.

I only knew one of my grandparents: my father’s mother. She was already quite old when I was born, but we would occasionally go to visit her in the same house where she had raised my father and his six older siblings. (Like me, he was the baby of his family.) I have fond memories of sitting on the floor in front of Grammy while she rubbed my neck with her strong hands. When she died—I think I was about ten—I remember seeing my father cry as he stood beside her coffin. I don’t think I ever saw him cry again.

And now I wonder what Gavin and Annie (and Jake and Boden and Blake and Reese and Andrew and Daniel) will remember about us. Maybe the beachfront property and the found flip-flops. That would alright with me.

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.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.

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

Adkin Arboretum Myster Monday: Guess the Pic!

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Happy Mystery Monday!  Can you guess what is pictured the photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is a yellow-rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata, pictured below:
Affectionately known locally as “butterbutt”, the yellow-rumped warbler is the most widespread and common warbler in North America
This colorful warbler is tiny and hyperactive. It’s so good at hiding behind leaves, most people never see them at all.
The female yellow-rumped warbler makes a cupped nest of twigs, pine needles, grasses, and rootlets. She may also include horse and deer hair, moss and lichens. She lines the nest with fine hair and feathers, sometimes woven into the nest in such a way that they curl up and over the eggs. The nest takes about ten days to build and is often perched on the horizontal branches of conifers, anywhere from 4-50 feet off the ground.
This bird is primarily insect-eating, but is able to live on berries during the winter months. In spring, they can be seen snatching insects out of midair.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

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

Southern Comfort by Laura Oliver

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This is a story about the second time I learned Maryland is a northern state. The first time was the abrupt ending of a summer romance by a boy from Chapel Hill. There were cultural differences between us he couldn’t ignore, and I just didn’t have the accent, y’all.

The second occasion occurred when I moved from Maryland to Virginia. A week after graduating from college I married a Navy LTJG stationed on a ship homeported in Norfolk. We packed up a U-Haul, said goodbye to our families, and drove south. A month later, he was deployed to the Mediterranean for the better part of a year, and I was left to search for my first real job, learn how to live alone, handle the finances and car repair alone (although I still didn’t own one), and basically adult myself, by myself.

We had bought a house out of sheer stupidity for only one reason: because we could. We had gone to a real estate agency to find a rental, and Pam, the savvy agent, took one look at us and said cheerfully, “Hello babies, why don’t you buy?”  (She knew a VA Loan when she saw one walk in the door. She didn’t say “babies” but thought it.)

We turned to each other, stunned. “Why don’t we buy?” we said, incredulous that we hadn’t thought of this good idea.

The million reasons why this was not a good idea were left unspoken by all the smart people whom we did not consult. Like our parents. Why would we? We were married, we were adults!

So, we bought this sweet little two-bedroom rancher in a lovely old Norfolk neighborhood brimming with pink crepe myrtles. The sellers were an elderly couple preparing for their next move –which they said was across town but was more likely across the veil. It didn’t occur to us to have the house inspected. These people had a Jesus wall plaque hanging in the living room, and the lady (tiny and immaculate) had a pin with prayer hands on her blouse! With pearl fingernails! What could go wrong?

The night before the ship was to deploy, the night before I’d be standing on a pier with a Navy band playing and a bunch of other sad wives, I leaned over the bathtub where I knelt on the floor, and put my hand right through the bathroom wall tiles (pink plastic on heretofore undisclosed wet wallboard) to the exterior of the house.

And six days after the ship deployed, the old man from whom we’d bought the house appeared on our wide front porch to inform me that he’d forgotten to take all the heating oil out of the fuel tank—he claimed it was his, he just forgot it. He’d be back for it. He stood there in shiny brown wingtips and a striped tie. This didn’t sound right to me, but I said what I say in the face of most dubious requests and suspicious claims.

“Okay.”

And when the entire furnace blew up a few months later, it became a moot point. I borrowed the money from my grandmother to have a new one installed that didn’t require his oil but did require sawing a large hole through the hardwood floor for a grate.

I looked for work but was stymied again and again by 1) being a Navy wife destined to leave the job the minute BUPERs sent new orders and 2) because I had zero marketable skills. And although I didn’t fully appreciate it yet, I was also a northerner in a southern state.

I finally secured a job as a receptionist in a real estate agency. I smiled at customers in the carpeted entrance which featured a huge painting depicting golden place settings on a white, linen-covered table disappearing into infinity– the owner’s idea of heaven.

One day he came into the office   and plopped down on my desk. This was disconcerting as I was AT my desk at the time. Now I was looking at his hip where it covered my calendar. This was super creepy and had the precise effect it was supposed to have. I’d been subordinated. Subjugated. He was a very large man with a head of thick white hair and a Virginian accent wearing a navy-blue suit.

He squinted down at me and drawled, “Where are you from?” This could have been speculative or conversational, but I knew it wasn’t. I gripped my pencil and responded with hopeful cheerfulness, “Maryland!” And he said, “I can tell. Because here we say sir and ma’am when responding to people. Understand?”

At which point I was clearly supposed to respond, “Yes sir,” only something happened to my throat. It just closed up. I think I started to turn blue with the effort to get the word out, but my embarrassment, shame, and, okay, stubbornness were so profound that the word “sir” was like a chicken bone I couldn’t cough up. My midwestern parents had insisted on unfailing politeness and respect to all people at all times, but they had not required the addition of “sir” or “ma’am.”  Now, I felt deficient, poorly raised in some way, yet vaguely and inexplicably superior in another.

For the duration of my time there, I managed to respond to every question with a long-winded narrative that deflected the need to say yes or no—or to tack on a “sir” or a “ma’am.”

But here’s the best thing about that first year away from home in this strange new role where I was married but not a wife, half of a couple but all alone, an adult but still such a child, in a town that marked me temporary.

Every single day, I awoke to a vase of freshly picked camellias waiting on the back porch step. A small vase of creamy white blossoms. No note. Just a bouquet, an anonymous gift from a kind heart to a lonely one.

This went on for that entire first summer I was alone, and I never once saw who was leaving them. Maybe someone who knew how foreign everything felt. Someone who knew that the tiniest of gestures often has the greatest impact.

I read recently that whatever you can’t live without, that’s who you are. I can’t live without connection. To myself, to something greater than myself, to you. I still have the vase in which the last of the flowers were left — it is white hobnail milk glass with a fluted rim, and it sits on the fireplace mantle.

Every time I look at it, I remember that someone found a way to say, see? You thought you were lost.

When, in reality, we are all forever found.

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

The Real Debate We Need by Heather R. Mizeur

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It matters that the leader of the Free World has the faculties and mental acuity to perform the functions of such a demanding job. While it’s important never to rush to any conclusions based on one flubbed televised performance, it is healthy for us to have a discerning moment after President Biden’s recent debate stumbles raised questions about his fitness for office. But what feels most lost to me in this national dialogue is an opportunity for us to elevate a conversation about how our culture routinely dismisses the wisdom of our elders and pushes them to society’s margins once certain signs of aging appear.

We all know that the moment we are born, we begin our journey towards death. The life we build between these two events shapes just a brief snapshot in time. But fear of aging, becoming irrelevant, missing our chance to make a difference in the world, experiencing body limitations, navigating discomfort, or facing the ultimate unknown of what it means to no longer live this life is often met with desperate attempts to avoid acceptance of this certainty.

The desperation is subtle, perhaps even subconscious. But it is a dominant force in our culture. And as a result, we are often missing out on the incredible fullness of life we could experience by inviting our seniors to be in the center of our civic life, sharing their wisdom and teachings, and helping to guide our own journeys to becoming an elder. Is it any wonder that we fear aging when the cultural response is to assume we are no longer capable of expressing our fullness of being when our bodies grow older? What if the opposite is true, and we are missing the benefit from years of experience and insights when someone enters their golden season?

We have an opportunity in this moment – regardless of political ideology – to hit the pause button and take a closer look at how we instinctively respond to signs of aging around us and spend some time uncovering whether we jump to conclusions about what that means.

Is losing a train of thought, stuttering words, having a forgetful moment, or needing help securely walking down a set of stairs a sign of anything other than an invitation for patience? How would our world feel differently if we embraced rather than rejected that?

There was other behavior we saw on display at that debate that should raise additional important questions. How much value as a society do we place on honesty, kindness, and being a good human? Why is there not a collective outrage about rampant lying, criminal behavior, and outright plans to overthrow democracy and replace it with a dictatorship? These should not be partisan issues.

This election is really a referendum on us, the people. For two hundred and forty-eight years now, we have been living in a delicious experiment of self-governance where the government’s powers are derived from the consent of the governed. Democracy requires our active engagement and participation to work.

So it’s good to ask questions. I’m just a fan of asking ones that go deeper than the surface. It’s hard to take a good look at ourselves. However, in doing so, the true freedom we seek is there. We are not going to find our way out of this mess without a willingness to stretch our understanding of self and others.

I stand ready to offer my own wisdom –  which grows each year as I age into this beautifully flawed body – about how we can reject the division and come together again as neighbors dedicated to finding common ground, solving big problems, and sharing big dreams again. We cannot have freedom, equality, and justice without infusing our humanity into the cause.

Heather R. Mizeur is the founder of a non-profit organization, the #WeAreOne Alliance, dedicated to disrupting the division and finding connections to foster honorable civic engagement. She was the Democratic Nominee for Maryland’s First Congressional District in 2022 and she owns and operates Apotheosis Farm in Kent County with her spouse, Deborah. She can be reached at [email protected]

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

July

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If June is the threshold of summer, July is its screened porch. It might be sweltering out in the backyard, but on the porch, a slowly rotating ceiling fan keeps the heat at bay while we sip our iced tea or lemonade and watch the fireflies put on their evening show.

We have another batch of grandkids with us for a few days; July is prime time for grandkids. The pool is open, the beach out by the Bay beckons, the daylight lingers, and all the ice cream stores in town are open late. Later today, we’ll be decorating the house with flags and bunting in anticipation of the Fourth, and we’ve already made plans for watching the parade of boats in the afternoon and the fireworks in the evening. There will be hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad, and, just like at the ball park, “ain’t the beer cold!?!”

July is the musical movement that precedes summer’s crescendo. In July, there is still time to enjoy summer before the downbeat “Back to School” coda begins. By the time August rolls around, that annual din drowns out even the cicadas, but, for now, there’s still time to loll in the hammock and watch those big fluffy cumulus clouds drifting by. Maybe tonight there will be another big booming thunderstorm to water the yard and keep the hydrangea blooming blue and full.

Summer is simple. Clothing is minimal. Author James Dent sums summer up this way: “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawnmower is broken.” John Mayer, the new lead singer in the Friends of the Dead show, puts a bit more succinctly: “A little bit of summer is what the whole year is all about.”  Jerry Garcia, bless his teddybear soul, couldn’t have said it any better.

Now, lest you think that I’m too sentimental or too Pollyannaish about summer, I will admit that every once in a while there’s one of those dog days that make me wish for the arrival of autumn and cooler weather. But then, I also know that on some blustery November day, I’ll pine for the laziness of summer. So I do my best to stay in the estival moment and appreciate the simple gifts of the season. Give me a good book and a big beach umbrella and I’m good to go, at least until I fall asleep in my chair

The summer sun gets up early and goes to bed late. My wife rues all that early morning light that comes streaming into the bedroom, but not me. I like to savor it like an extra helping of peas and carrots (my code for peace and quiet). I lie there next to her, listening to her gentle breathing, and whisper a little prayer of gratitude for all the gifts I’ve been given. Then my list of summer chores rears its ugly little head, so I rise and go downstairs for my single cup of morning Joe on the porch while waiting for the town to wake up and get on about its business.

Summer is but one season the year; it knows its place in the grand scheme of things. So did John Steinbeck when he went traveling with his poodle Charley In Search of America: “What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?” So savor summer’s sweetness while you can. You’ll miss it when it’s over!

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.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Guess the Pic!

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Can you guess what is pictured in photo below?
The answer to last week’s mystery is downy rattlesnake plantain, Goodyera pubescens, pictured below:
Downy rattlesnake plantain is not a true plantain, but an evergreen herbaceous perennial in the orchid family. It is a native of dry to mesic woodlands.
The white leaf-markings resemble the skin of some rattlesnakes, and the flower stalks are covered with fine, downy hairs. This plant is pollinated by bees. The sticky pollen of the flower is carried by the bee wherever it happens to attach to the bee – face, eyes, legs, body, etc.
The roots of the downy rattlesnake plantain have a mycorrhizal relationship with fungi that assists in the plant getting moisture and nutrients in a process typical of orchids.
The plant provides products of its photosynthesis to feed the fungus. It spreads by rhizomatous off-sets. A new rosette of leaves may not bloom for several years.
The symbiotic fungi are sensitive to soil compaction, fertilizer, and fungicides. The loss of associated fungi during transplantation inhibits the ability to transplant wild orchids, such as downy rattlesnake plantain, successfully.
Despite being listed as endangered in Florida and exploitably vulnerable in New York, downy rattlesnake plantain is one of the most common orchid species native to the eastern United States.
It was named the 2016 wildflower of the year.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

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

The Curtain Has Come Down by Al Sikes

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Time: 3:35 PM on Thursday afternoon. On the East Coast the Donald Trump versus Joe Biden debate begins on CNN in five hours and twenty-five minutes. I will watch — it seems a civic duty. I await it with no enthusiasm. In the meantime my wife and I are going to see the Broadway show Hell’s Kitchen.

The debate is the result of the Democrat and Republican Parties having chosen, almost, Trump and Biden as their nominees. There is still time for a reversal; it, of course, will not happen.

Or, maybe this will be a debate of sublime recognition. Maybe, for example, Biden will take into account his dismal poll numbers and in a clear and commanding voice make his case for four more years. Maybe, rather then giving money away, as he has been doing for the last year, he will talk about a plan he is going to send to the Congress spelling out how he intends to bring the budget to balance before he leaves office.

Or, perhaps Donald Trump will do the same. He will need to explain why cutting taxes will accomplish that plan while, of course, leaving entitlements untouched. Perhaps his degree from Wharton will produce that kind of wizardry. And while at it, Trump might explain how his Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un relationships will bring the Ukraine war to an end. And just maybe he won’t whine.

Okay, I understand that none of the above is likely, just wishful thinking.

•••

 Now, we are back in our hotel room. Hell’s Kitchen was superb. Alicia Keys, who wrote the book, music and lyrics is very impressive.

The debate is now over. Whew! Our taxi driver this morning, a Biden supporter, said “I thought he was going to faint.” If he had, he would have had a better night.

By now you will have read various versions of what happened and what it means. My take: Biden will stand down or Trump will get his second term. And at this moment of serious international tensions, Biden’s weakness and Trump’s derision of Biden or his replacement will not serve us well. Red lights flashing.

I have often written about institutional failure beginning or ending with thanking our founding fathers that we are structurally strong because in recent election cycles we have been operationally weak.

Better will only come with reform. Each Party has some impressive leaders. But, like merchandise not displayed, they will not serve the nation in its ultimate challenges. So lets go back.

One reason there were only two in the debate is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could not clear the hurdles to qualify on enough ballots. The two Parties, afraid of competition, work hard to keep others out. Maybe Kennedy is looking better. Regardless, precluding competition, the two Parties ill-serve us—no surprise.

Second, the campaigns begin so early that the energy and money required to run a successful campaign rules out most sane people. Question: do I want to enter a soul-crushing two-year campaign that statistics show I am unlikely to win? Or, does my common sense trump my emotions?

Back to money. Do I want to spend virtually all of the next sequence of years on my knees with my hand out? How much of my independence will I have to sacrifice?

Real reform must open the contest for national and international leadership and those who are able to successfully lead electoral reform will be true patriots.

Finally, for President Biden to consider. Do you want to be judged on your record or do you prefer that your final consequential decision be paired with the Afghanistan withdrawal in the historical account? Regardless, the curtain is about to come down—applause preferred.

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. 

 

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

Range of Motion

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A couple of months before he died, my dear friend Marty said to me, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.” That was several years ago, but now I know how right Marty was. Simple movements I used to take for granted—stepping into my pants. tying my shoes—now take considerable time and planning. Getting up from a chair often requires a Herculean effort and maybe a handhold. I’m stiff or sore in places I didn’t even know I had; nothing bends or turns like it used to. What to do?

Fortunately, it’s now officially summer. That means the pool is open, so my wife and I can go to Range of Motion classes twice a week. Class begins at 9am and lasts an hour. We use pool noodles and Styrofoam dumbbells to restore old muscles and build new ones. We stretch our shoulders, necks, calves, and hamstrings; rotate our trunks, wrists, and ankle joints; flex our knees. We even throw in a few yoga breaths before saying “Namaste” to everyone at the conclusion of class. The pool’s buoyant environment enables us to move in ways we couldn’t on dry land, and the water’s resistance adds a dimension of strength training to all the stretching that is both tolerable and, particularly on these sweltering days, refreshing. The instructor counts out the repetitive motions, and I do my best to perform each and every exercise as instructed while keeping my eye on the clock. Every hour may contain exactly sixty minutes, but some hours are longer than others. Know what I mean?

In addition to moving our bodies in healthy ways, there are also some beneficial mental gymnastics in our Range of Motion class that help to build brain and memory “muscle.” Some of the stretches, exercises, and movements we do integrate more complex commands that involve balance, thought, and coordination. We’re exercising more than just our bodies; our brains are getting a workout, too. And guess what: you can’t fall and hurt yourself. If you do, you just get wetter.

But while I’m bouncing around in the pool, I must admit that my mind occasionally begins to wander. Here’s my secret thought: what if there were other ‘Range of Motion’ classes? What about a ‘Range of Emotion’ class where all of us could safely experience everything from utter despair to outright bliss without ever getting emotionally hurt or injured? Or what if there were a ‘Range of Commotion’ class where we indulged in every type of commotion from civil insurrection to biblical Rapture? I bounced my idea off a classmate, and she said, “Maybe we could have a ‘Range of Locomotion’ class where everybody just danced along with Little Eva and did the Locomotion.” I thought she might be on to something, so I started singing “It’s easier than learning your ABCs, so c’mon, c’mon and do the Locomotion with me,” but just at that moment, I noticed our drill instructor—I mean our instructor—eyeing me suspiciously so I piped down and got back on count with the rest of the gang in the pool.

It’s been three weeks now since my wife and I started our summer routine, and I think maybe I’m beginning to notice some real benefits of my enhanced range of motion. OK, so maybe I haven’t shed any excess pounds yet, but at least I can turn my head and look both ways when I cross the street, or actually reach down and pick up something I dropped on the floor, or even make it through an entire day without taking a nap. That’s progress isn’t it?

So, if it’s indeed true that “getting old isn’t for sissies,” isn’t enhancing our range of physical and mental motions a pretty darn good way to show Father Time we’re made of sterner stuff? We think so!

See the boy in the picture that accompanies this Musing? That’s one of our grandkids, and grandkids know everything there is to know about range of motion, or range of emotion or commotion, for that matter. But there he goes, sailing through the air, not worrying for one second about where he’s landing. Those were the days…

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.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.

 

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

Radcliffe Creek School Welcomes New Board President Betsy Duff

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New RCS Board President, Betsy Duff

At the School’s Board of Trustees meeting on June 17, 2024, current member, Betsy Duff, was elected to become the next president of Radcliffe Creek School, taking over the reins from Robert Ditmars, who has served in the role since 2020.

Vice President Brennan Starkey Pʼ10 reflected on Ditmars’ service as President of RCS, “Rob Ditmars worked tirelessly to help navigate Radcliffe Creek School through a very turbulent time marked by the Covid pandemic and a change in the head of school. His unflagging optimism, ability to cut to the heart of complex situations and sense of humor buoyed both the staff and the Board as we made difficult decision after difficult decision. He was the right person at the right time to lead the School.”

Duff joined the Radcliffe Creek School Board in 2021 and has served as its secretary, chair of the Committee on Trustees, a member of the Finance and Advancement Committees, and is currently chair of the Head of School Search Committee.

Before joining RCS’ Board of Trustees, Duff was a trustee and chair of the Board of The Potomac School, director of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, director of The Literacy Lab, member of the International Board of Visitors of MICDS in St. Louis, and board member and president of the Junior League of Washington.

Professionally, Duff is a managing partner and the chief operating officer of Harbour Capital Advisors, LLC, an independent wealth management firm and multi-family office. Her firm works with families to achieve multi-generational financial goals and optimize their invested wealth. Before forming Harbour Capital Advisors in 2011, Duff worked for more than 20 years in private and investment banking at Bank of America, focused on business development, client management, and debt structuring for families and corporations. Duff began her career at the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. after earning a B.A. in International Relations from Brown University. She and her husband, Jim, live in McLean, VA, and spend their weekends in Chestertown.

Duff reflected on her top priorities for the school while taking the helm of the Board: “As Board President, it will be my privilege to work closely with Peter Thayer in his third year as head of school, and then to welcome our next head in 2025. Identifying, hiring, and welcoming our next school leader into the community will be a top priority for the board for the next several years. We will continue to emphasize the health of our school community through higher student admissions growth and retention of our outstanding faculty. We will ensure the school’s financial flexibility and sustainability through fundraising and strong financial management. Additionally, we will oversee the School’s strategic direction as we move forward into its next chapter under new leadership.”

 

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

Adkins Arboretum Mystery Monday: Can You Guess This Photo?

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The answer to last week’s mystery is paw paw fruit, Asimina triloba, pictured below:
Paw paw is an understory tree in its native habitat, but requires full sun for the best fruit production.
Paw paw fruit, which is technically a berry, has a custard-like consistency and is best enjoyed with a spoon. The flavor of the fruit is a cross between a banana and a mango. You likely won’t find paw paw in your local grocery store because the fruits bruise very easily and don’t last long.
Paw paw fruit can grow to a length of around six inches and weight a whopping eighteen ounces each, making them the largest edible fruits of any native plant in the continental United States.
In Fall, paw paw fruits drop and ripen on the ground, while the leaves turn a vibrant golden yellow. The scent of the ripening fruit attracts animals, like raccoons, opossums, and birds, to eat the berries and disperse their seeds.
In addition to tasty yummy, paw paw fruit is very nutritious! It is high in carbohydrates and exceeds apple, peach, and grape in most vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and food energy values.
Mystery Monday is sponsored by the Spy Newspapers and Adkins Arboretum.

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