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November 1, 2025

Centreville Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Centreville

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“No Child Left Indoors” at Radcliffe Creek School

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One critical lesson from the pandemic’s dire years of isolating and monotonous shutdowns was the positive mental health results of reconnecting to the natural world beyond cell phones and computer screens.

This did not go unnoticed by educators, who are already aware of social media’s addictive nature and seeing it compounded by the pandemic. According to Annie E. Casey Foundation research, 95% of teens 13-17 use social media, with 1 in 3 reporting “almost constantly.”

Noticing these trends, Radcliffe Creek School in Chestertown, known for its commitment to environmental education and working with students from kindergarten through 8th grade who have been diagnosed with learning differences, such as dyslexia, ADHD, and other language-based learning difficulties, has announced the launch of a new outdoor education project titled “No Child Left Indoors.” 

Inspired by Richard Louv’s concept of nature-deficit disorder, the “No Child Left Indoors” project aims to ensure every child has meaningful experiences in nature each year. Louv’s book The Last Child in the Woods points out that today’s digital native generation lacks exposure to nature, which he calls “nature-deficit disorder.” He advocates that direct exposure to nature is crucial for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional well-being of both children and adults.

“Our purpose is to ensure that every child has a series of meaningful experiences in nature each year at RCS that will help them be better citizens in their communities and better stewards of their environment,” says Head of School Peter Thayer.

With a generous grant from the Robert F. Schumann Foundation, the project aligns with the Foundation’s mission to improve the planet through environmental education. Radcliffe Creek School has a long-standing commitment to educating children about nature and the importance of environmental stewardship.

To implement the project, Radcliffe Creek School has designated Outdoor Education Coordinators for different grade levels. These coordinators work with teachers to plan educational field trips that tie directly to the academic experience. They also ensure that every excursion is safe, engaging, and educational.

Students are encouraged to reflect on their experiences in nature and document them in their Nature Portfolio. This work is cross-curricular, engaging students’ skills in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.

The spy recently interviewed Head of School Peter Thayer, Discovery Department Head Simone Vagnoni, and Discovery Teacher Amanda Stubbs.

For more about Radcliffe Creek School, go here. 

This video is approximately thirteen minutes in length.

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

Spy Exit Interview: Outgoing Cambridge City Manager Tom Carroll

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The Spy continues our informal series of long-form exit interviews with some of the Mid-Shore’s most well-known leaders in public affairs, the arts, and regional culture at the end of that individual’s tenure of employment. Many of those profiles tend to focus on sometimes decades of work and deeds, but in other cases, like with Cambridge City Manager Tom Carroll, these can be short-lived experiences.

Hired two years ago after successful roles as city manager in Loveland, Ohio, and village manager in Silverton, Ohio, Carroll quickly won the praise of many Cambridge stakeholders with his professional manner and effective management style. He also created a positive working relationship with current City Council members, including Mayor Steve Rideout, as the city worked through several serious municipality challenges.

And yet, despite this early record of success, Tom Carroll gave notice last month, and he is not subtle about the reasons why.

Over the last nine months, Carroll grew increasingly concerned about the strategic vision, transparency, and financial funding of Cambridge Waterfront Development Inc.’s (CWDI) plan to develop over 30 acres of the city’s waterfront. After making efforts to resolve those concerns, the city manager decided to resign rather than support a scheme that he thought had the potential of catastrophic financial consequences for Cambridge and its residents.

In his Spy interview, Carroll specifically details those concerns, but also the progress that Cambridge has made even during his short tenure, and more importantly, his confidence in the city’s future.

Carroll will become the new town manager of Lexington, Virginia, later this summer.

This video is approximately 17 minutes in length.

 

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

This Wild Heaven By Laura J. Oliver

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Laura Oliver will be reading her work at the Stoltz Listening Room at the Avalon Foundation in Easton on April 24th at 6 pm as part of our Spy Nights series. Tickets can be purchased here.

Last night, I was walking my dog Leah when I ran into my neighbor Tom also on dog duty. He’s the exemplary owner of a sweet golden retriever. He carries healthy dog treats and two bags. I own an untrained maniac who wants to dismantle squirrels and is willing to dislocate my shoulder to do so. And I’m a one-bag risktaker. We merged duties, walking into a burgeoning spring together. White dogwood laced our route, pink tulips, and Spanish bluebells graced neighbors’ yards as we passed.

Tom is my hero, although he doesn’t know it. He’s a pediatric surgeon—he heals the most vulnerable among us—and because I’ve been there with a hospitalized 4-year-old, I mean his patients’ parents. But we also have the same questions about life, and I’ve found the greatest connectors of souls are laughter and curiosity. And, okay, dogs.

I’d just given a talk at Washington College on some things I’ve learned over the years about the acquisition of happiness (which can pretty much be summed up as your brain is driving that bus), but which Tom points out is included in the Declaration of Independence. We have the right to pursue happiness anyway. We were not promised the right to possess it because no one can guarantee joy. Or can they? I want to tell Tom that Martha Washington said, “I’ve learned I am as happy as I decide to be.”

But I forget to tell him that because down at Old Woman Cove, my unruly terrier has spotted a squirrel she can’t live without. 

A man in worn blue jeans and a gray hoodie passing by offers helpfully, “My dog caught one, you know.” 

I look at him in horror. “I thought that couldn’t happen.” 

“Caught him by the tail,” he says, “and did this.” He mimics shaking his head back and forth vigorously. 

Geez, I think. A squirrel can leap 20 feet and run 20 mph. They’re so smart they fake-hide nuts to fool other animals who would steal them. (My pup is aquiver now zeroed in on a fluffy gray tail.) 

“So,” Tom asks as we walk on, “where do we find happiness?” 

At the moment, I don’t know. I’m struggling with the question myself–rarely fully present, on a perpetual quest to understand what lies behind the illusion of loss, the stage we call life on which we act in relationship. But I do know happiness comes from a life of meaning, a life with purpose. “You have that,” I tell Tom. “You save children.” 

“A lot of professions have mandatory retirement dates,” he presses. “Where is happiness going to come from then?”

From family? We both bemoan not having enough time with our grown kids. 

Learning makes me happy. I study quantum physics, neuroscience, and paleontology. I go on archeological digs. I took a class in Near Death Experiences and the Nature of Consciousness– another way in which I pursue happiness—looking for evidence of life after life. 

I take an ongoing special interest class in astronomy as well—and it occurs to me that maybe I’m searching the heavens for heaven.

Case in point, we stop in front of my house because I’m about to attend a lecture on zoom. In March of 1980, college senior Peter Panagore went ice climbing on the world-famous Lower Weeping Wall in Alberta, Canada. A 1000-foot rockface that weeps waterfalls in the summer but becomes frozen rivers of tears at 50 degrees below zero. The appeal of ice climbing is that it requires you to be totally present, but without the right equipment, Peter and his climbing partner became trapped on the wall overnight. Overcome by exhaustion and hypothermia, Peter died on the side of that mountain.  

Those long minutes on the other side of existence as we know it, before Peter was resuscitated, changed the trajectory of his life and his ability to feel joy. He went on to Yale Divinity School. He’s written a book; there’s a movie coming out. 

I’m intrigued, I tell Tom, by the commonalities revealed in the research on near-death experiences—commonalities which include encountering an unconditional love of inexpressible depth and being enfolded in an intimate knowledge of everything we have ever done devoid of judgment.  

We aren’t so much forgiven as understood. 

I realize as I speak that I’m looking for that here. Unconditional love, intimate knowledge without judgment. I get glimpses for which I’m profoundly grateful. 

You know who you are.

I’m watching a squirrel digging up one of the 10,000 nuts she buried this fall. Her memory is astonishing. She’ll find 90 percent of those not stolen. Pursuit of her right now would make my dog very happy. 

We part, and I go inside to log onto my class. Peter recounts the story of dying on the side of a glacier years ago. He describes the love that enfolded him, the difficult choice he made to come back to this life.

I wouldn’t want to leave if I could find that kind of love here. It would make dying so much harder. 

But Peter found it there, which has made living so much harder. After all, nine out of 10 people who have been clinically dead utter the exact same six words upon regaining consciousness. The exact same six words.

“Why did you bring me back?” 

I listen as he shares his experience of the love that awaits and the search for happiness in the here and now. He meditates to stay present, has a yoga practice. I mull that over—the mandate to remain present when the future is such a beguiling mystery. Yours, mine. Ours.

More than once, both in high school and college, I was told by boys I was dating that I think too much. Which I interpreted as, “Shut up and kiss me.” 

But maybe it just meant, “Come back from wherever it is that you go. Be here now.”

Be there, then. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

 

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

Food Friday: Prepare for Al Fresco

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We have had just enough warm weather this month to get us acclimated to the notion of summer, and now it is about to get cooler, but in a zesty, spring-y fashion. (We can wear cotton sweaters – and we won’t have to break out our heavy Icelandic wools.) We know that hot weather will be oppressing us soon enough, but we are still giddy at the prospect of being outside again, getting rosy cheeks and feeling the wind in our hair. Wearing jackets again for a week isn’t too great a set back. By golly, it’s almost picnic weather! It’s almost time to plan going to the beach! Take me out to the ball game!

In a couple of weeks I will be meeting up with some old college chums. We know from experience that it takes too much time to herd us all into a car, agree upon a restaurant, and then drive off to it. It is easier to plan a few meals ahead of time, and have elements of them packed away tidily in orderly Tupperware stacks in the fridge, alongside the beer, cheap white wine and packages of Berger cookies. A certain amount of salad will be necessary to counteract our predictable, massive consumption of Doritos, and the onslaught of Utz sour cream and onion potato chips. We know how to wield our expensive liberal arts degrees for the greater good; the survival of the vaguely fit. We will eat our vegetables.

As a group we will traipse down a small hill, laughing, across the grassy lawn, to a wood picnic table on a floating dock on the glossy Chester River for some of our evening picnic meals. Everyone will carry a dish, or a container, a tablecloth and the wine bottles, down to the dock, where we can sit and watch the birds come home from work, just before sunset. There will be cocktails. And laughter.

These veggie delights are easily prepared, fresh and delicious, loaded with nutrients and anti-oxidants. We will merrily enjoy waterside al fresco interludes before we get down to the evening business of frying up crab cakes and talking. Another night will require steamed crabs. Last night lobsters? Sure thing! And once we have laid waste to the food supplies, like so many locust, we will depart. A good time will be had by all.

For your own picnic season, consider the following:

Go for some fresh, sweet peas, radishes and mint leaves – pink and green for springtime!
Pea Salad with Radishes

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Berry Salad – good for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or at midnight when you just can’t sleep yet

Here is a chickpea salad that gets more deelish in the fridge. Perfect to take down to the dock, and easy to make ahead: Chickpea Salad

We should have this on our first night, since we don’t know when everyone will be getting in, and then no one needs to hover over a stove, missing out on our endless hilarious recollections: Avocado Chicken Salad
Add a dash of giggles, some wine, and be thankful that we outgrew our impecunious penchants for Old Milwaukee and Gallo French Columbard.

Pizza was vital in college. We certainly haven’t outgrown it, thank goodness, but we don’t live on it anymore. Maybe a sophisticated spinach salad with mozzarella and pepperoni will scratch that Memory Lane itch:
Pizza Salad

Martha always has the answer. Here is her daughter’s chopped salad recipe that she enjoys feeding to her children. We will have regressed to giddy young things, so it is entirely perfect: Alexis’s Chopped Salad

TikTok Summer Salads are very trendy! No one sends me free samples of Chili Crunch, but I did spend a lot on the same jar of Momofuko Chili Crunch in a chichi wine shop last week. It is overpriced, but not over-hyped.
TikTok Pepper Salad

Next week Food Friday will be a repeat of a previous cooking experience while I am off searching for my lost youth. Enjoy the beginning of picnic season, and lacrosse season, and baseball, and going to the beach. Keep some Tupperware salads handy in case of adventure!

“Never plan a picnic’ Father said. ‘Plan a dinner, yes, or a house, or a budget, or an appointment with the dentist, but never, never plan a picnic.”
― Elizabeth Enright

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

Wading into The Wading Place History in Queen Anne’s County

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Modern Life is challenging in ways our ancestors never imagined.

It’s nice to have a place to get away from it all once in a while.

“A place to unplug and watch the day go by” is the way Bayly Buck, president of the Wading Place Hunting Club in Queen Anne’s County, describes that kind of sanctuary. “A world apart. A step back in time.”

The Wading Place, 1631: Back when English colonists established their earliest communities in America, the shores of the Chesapeake Bay were among some of the first places they settled. In 1631, a pioneer named William Claiborne built a trading post on the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay. Claiming the island for Virginia, Claiborne named his Jamestown outpost after his British hometown of Kent.

Sometime soon after, nobody knows exactly when inhabitants of the region started calling the area where one could pass between The Isle of Kent and the eastern mainland without using a boat, “The Wading Place.”

And not only don’t we know for sure when Kent Island’s Wading Place came into being, nobody really knows where it was either.

An obvious assumption is that it was most likely located near what we now call Kent Narrows, the strait separating the island from the rest of the Eastern Shore while connecting the Chester River to Prospect Bay. According to J. Coursey Willis, president of the non-profit Historic Kent Island (https://historickentisland.org/), the earliest evidence of The Wading Place’s location, patented in 1649, has been lost to the tides of history, but there is an existing survey issued in 1658 identifying a 300 acre parcel on the east side of Kent Island as Wading Place Neck.

In Willis’s opinion, the northwestern landmark of what was the Kent Island side of “The Wading Place” would be located in the vicinity of Queen Anne’s County’s present-day Ferry Point Park and run south to the area around the county boat slips and the Kent Island Yacht Club near Goodhands and Kirwans Creeks. There are also references from this time to Wading Place Swamp and Wading Place Bay. Willis thinks Wading Place Swamp was probably what we call Piney Creek, and Wading Place Bay is what’s been known since at least the mid-19th century as Prospect Bay.

Bayly Buck 1st Duck Fall 1962

The Wading Place Hunting Club, 1945: Locals and travelers alike have always needed to cross back and forth between Kent Island and Delmarva proper. According to Willis’s research, the first official mention of a ferry at The Wading Place was in 1711. A series of causeways and bridges have subsequently been built at Kent Narrows over the years, including a 1902 railroad bridge and the still-existing drawbridge that opened mere months before the Bay Bridge was dedicated in 1952.

When that drawbridge was built, Kent Narrows was nearing the end of its fifty-year run as one of the hubs of a seafood packing industry that supported a big portion of the regional economy. 

In the mid-to-late 1940s and early 1950s, The Eastern Shore was undergoing significant changes. A way of life that generations grew up experiencing was nearing an unprecedented cultural transition.

In 1945, John C. Legg Jr., a Baltimore investment banker, purchased thirty acres of the Horsehead Peninsula on the eastern Grasonville side of Prospect Bay and called the hunting retreat he built for family and friends The Wading Place. Legg created a corporation, issued stock that was issued completely to his two daughters-in-law, and sat a board of directors that consisted of himself and his sons, John the Third and William. John died in 1952 at the age of 41. A year later, William was fatally shot in a hunting accident at The Wading Place. He was 33. His 9-year-old son was in the duck blind with his dad when it happened. Afterward, the Wading Place Hunting Club was sold to eight friends, including Dr. Walter ‘Dick’ Buck, whose cousin’s son Bayly is The Wading Place Club’s current point man.

Bayly Buck first visited the club when he was 12 years old, and though he was not originally a fan of the cold hunting season weather, he learned to love the place and the bonding opportunities he experienced there, as well as the area’s wild beauty and the feeling of being apart from the surrounding modern world. He says that to look at it, the clubhouse doesn’t present much of an image, facilities are rudimentary at best, but members past and present have loved it that way. “Wading Place has remained a boys club,” says Buck. “Cast-off furniture, no doilies, no curtains, and no big chores to do.” It’s a great spot, he says, “to just relax in resplendent squalor.”

The Wading Place, 2024: Between 1981 and 1998, The Wildfowl Trust of North America, with the intent to protect endangered wetlands through education and stewardship, purchased the entire Horsehead Peninsula with the exception of the 30 acres owned by The Wading Place group.  On a mission to create a bond between people and the world around us, the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center (https://bayrestoration.org/) offers both recreational and educational opportunities for visitors of all ages.

An educator, coach, and conservationist, Matt LaMotte, a member of the Wading Place club for more than fifty years, says his group has been longtime advocates of their environmental center neighbors. “We’ve had members who have sat on the CBEC board, we provide financial support whenever we’re needed, and we maintain a portion of the center’s trails.”

Bayly Buck & Matt LaMotte

LaMotte no longer hunts but still visits the club’s property whenever he can to take walks, birdwatches, and soak in either the solitude or camaraderie with other members.  “Sitting on the porch and watching the sunset here is a unique and special privilege,” he says. “For me, it’s been a haven from the hustle and bustle of daily life as well as fellowship among a life-long group of close friends.”

Bayly Buck concurs. He says the Wading Place club is “a tradition handed down to us by the generation before us, which we now hand down to our kids, and recently to our grandchildren.

“Unrepentantly” borrowing the unofficial motto of Montana, Buck calls the club’s waterfront slice of the Eastern Shore “The Last Best Place.”   

“Because we like to sit here (at the clubhouse) and watch the sunset sink into the water, I usually finish notes to the membership with “See ya on the porch.””

It’s a reminder and an invitation to enjoy life’s quieter moments.

See ya on the porch.

Brent Lewis is a native Chesapeake Bay Eastern Shoreman. He has published two nonfiction books about the region, “Remembering Kent Island: Stories from the Chesapeake” and a “History of the Kent Island Volunteer Fire Department.” His most recent book, “Stardust By The Bushel: Hollywood On The Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore”won a 2023 Independent Publishers award. His first novel, Bloody Point 1976, won an Honorable Mention Award at the 2015 Hollywood Book Festival. He and his wife Peggy live in Centreville, Maryland.

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

UM Shore Health’s Khalid Kurtom and Wendy Towers on Brain Injuries and Advances in Neurosurgery

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Anyone who has ever had a chat with neurosurgeon Khalid Kurtom, MD, at UM Shore Health knows firsthand his extraordinary grasp of knowledge of his chosen field but may not realize his in-depth understanding of both the profound complexity and rapid advances in neuroscience and neurosurgery. And that’s why the Spy always welcomes the opportunity to spend time with him.

This time around, we sat down with him and his longtime colleague, nurse practitioner Wendy Towers, to discuss the differences in brain injuries, detailing how they are classified into mild, moderate, and severe categories based on their severity. Mild injuries, usually from minor incidents like falls, require short-term observation and scanning before patients are released with follow-up instructions. Moderate injuries necessitate overnight hospitalization and possibly interventions if there is bleeding in the brain. Severe injuries involve comatose patients who often need to be flown to specialized centers for extensive neurocritical care.

Symptoms of brain injuries can vary but commonly include headaches, confusion, slurred speech, and often a lack of self-awareness that anything is wrong. These indicators often prompt family members to seek medical attention for the patient. More severe cases can progress to more concerning neurological symptoms such as weakness, numbness, vision troubles, and memory issues, typically leading to hospital admission and repeated scanning.

Both Kurtom and Towers highlight two particularly vulnerable groups: the elderly, who may underestimate minor head traumas, and athletes, who are prone to concussions with lingering effects like trouble sleeping and focusing.

Finally, the two discuss advancements in neurosurgery, emphasizing the shift from traditional methods to cutting-edge techniques like robotic surgery and navigational imaging tools that allow precise interventions, significantly reducing hospital stays and improving recovery outcomes.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. For more information about Neurosurgery at UM Shore Health please go here.

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

Braveheart by Laura J. Oliver

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Laura Oliver will be reading her work at the Stoltz Listening Room at the Avalon Foundation in Easton on April 24th at 6 pm as part of our Spy Nights series. Tickets can be purchased here.

If the house catches fire, I’ll knot my twisted bedsheets together and scramble to safety from an upstairs window. Plan B? Jump to the mulberry tree after rallying the family for evacuation. If the pilot has a heart attack… if the brakes on the car fail…you get the idea. From the time I was in elementary school I have strategized the means by which I will save my family if disaster strikes. Tidal waves, earthquakes, collapsing bridges—there’s a plan.  

In novels and short stories, it’s called “saving the cat”—the moment when the protagonist–who may have some pretty overt failings, redeems himself by running back into the burning building to rescue the cat. But when I was 8, I learned you can’t plan for these events. You have to already be a hero, and if that’s what you’re made of, the moment finds you. 

Summer was stir-fry hot. My older sister, her pretty friend Patty, some neighborhood boys, and I were crabbing off the end of our pier while our collie, Beau, kept an eye on us. Normally, we combed the seaweed for doublers within wading distance of shore or searched for unwary crustaceans clinging delicately to the pier pilings. But this time we’d procured chicken necks and that’s where the trouble began.

The smell of creosote baking in the midsummer sun, the saltwater breeze off the river, and dragonflies flitting about in the beachgrass all conspired to create what could have been a typical July afternoon. There were more kids than crab nets, so there was the usual jostling at the end of the pier as we tied thick twine around each boney crook of chicken, securing the other end to a piling with an untoward number of knots before tossing the bait in the water. I’m not sure, but I may have been vain about my knot-tying. I may have thought they were exceptionally tricky or tight. Someone, my father or perhaps a Girl Scout leader, had taught me to tie a slipknot, a bowline, a half hitch, and a square knot.  

Ernie, or more likely, Reese, peered over the end of the dock where we had several lines dangling and yelled, “Doubler! Give me the net!” We clustered shoulder to shoulder as he began gently tugging the string, inch by slow inch, towards the surface. The crabs, which had started the ascent as mere murky outlines, were now crystal-clear just inches below our own rippling reflections. An 8-inch hard shell with a softy attached. With one quick scoop of the net and a flip of the wrist, Reese had the pair scrabbling in our rusty bucket. The chicken neck lay on the splintery dock, a bony hook on a homemade line. 

In that split second, before anyone could stop him, the enterprising Beau lunged between our legs and swallowed the chicken neck whole, the string still secured to the piling. Six kids shrieked with excitement at the new development as the dog began to take huge, panicked gulps of the string in an attempt to finish it off now that the chicken was stuck in his gullet. We desperately tried to unknot the twine as the distressed dog retched but the string had gotten wet, then dried in the sun. That chicken neck might as well have been soldered to the piling.

As we realized we couldn’t pull the chicken out, and no one had a knife, what had been exciting was fast becoming an emergency. 

Suddenly, the resourceful Patty fell to her knees, grabbed the string as close to the dog’s mouth as she could get, and started to chew. Time slowed as the dog gagged, Patty chomped away, and the rest of us stared, silenced by the gross ingenuity of this development. The sun beat down, the dragonflies danced for their lives with only a few months to live, and after an intense minute, the string gave way. The dog polished off the last couple of inches with a happy bark, and we erupted in a rousing cheer.

It has taken me years not to live as a strategist. To cross the Bay Bridge, admiring the sparkling shimmer beneath the span shadows instead of wondering how long I can float on my back when the guardrail gives way. 

I don’t know if this daydreaming was a hope for attention or a childish savior complex. Or perhaps it was where a child’s mind goes who, for good reason, has learned she has absolutely no control over what happens to her. Who has learned that fear is a required course in childhood, but fun is an elective. Who has learned to prepare for the worst because no one’s coming. But for all my preparation, research shows heroes don’t stop to plan or to reason. They act instantaneously and intuitively on an innate urge to serve. The good they do is instinctive.

I hope if the moment ever presents itself, I save the cat. Or the dog. Or someone’s baby or an old man with a cane. I want to cure Juvenile Diabetes, to end addictions of every kind. To feed the starving on a global scale, foster abandoned children, bring laughter to the sad of heart. 

But I think most of us don’t get the opportunity to save the cat. Instead, we have to live with the cat. Long days and unremarkable years of loving in the most ordinary of ways, steadfast and unacknowledged. Commuting insane hours on the beltway to provide for a family, repeatedly rising on sleepless nights to soothe fevers, and one day, reminding the parent who named us of our name.

 If you were loved this way, by anyone, may you be inspired to love this way in kind. That will make heroes of all of us.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

 

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

My Friend Lila by Jason Elias

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“Hi, this is Lila’s machine…”

Whenever I called my friend Lila Line, that’s what I heard and I loved to hear it. From 1972 to 1998, writer/photographer Lila Line lived in this area and graced our presence with wit, empathy, and charm. I was lucky to have met her. And like all circuitous meetings, the reason we met was based on the sorrow we both had in our lives.

Lila Line

I don’t remember the precise moment we met, but I know how we met. It was the summer of 1988 at the Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings held in Easton. My late uncle thought it would be great for the both of us to attend the meetings together.

This was the era when Al-Alon wasn’t enough, and adults used these classes to exorcise their old ghosts.

At the very beginning, I found Lila very interesting. She was about 5’4, with gray hair cut in a bob, tanned skin, a prominent nose, and a very kind face, especially her eyes. For some reason her speaking voice reminded me of Barbra Streisand at times with its sweet, girlish, East-Coast lilt and charm. It was at once high yet deep. When Lila spoke, in joy or seriousness, you listened — very intently.

The meetings were filled with upper-middle-class people, so I wasn’t going to see anyone I knew there. My uncle could talk the paint off the walls so he was right at home. For better or worse, my uncle didn’t like to tell the same story twice, so he left the meetings, and I stayed.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember Lila in the meetings themselves. The time was often taken by flashier speakers with their lines at times rehearsed and filled with cinematic gestures. In fact an infamous artist who left a trail of tears on both the Eastern and Western Shore was at the meetings acting like he was auditioning for Ryan’s Hope.

Regardless of the theater, Lila and I found one another quickly and hit it off immediately. It turned out she lived not more than a mile away from me in Royal Oak.

I was interested in writing and little did I know I’d have someone so close by with such an enviable career and an interesting life. And what a life it was…

Lila Levinson Line was born in Brooklyn in 1924. Lila was a well-to-do yet down-to-earth housewife with three sons when she decided to go for her dream of being a writer at 36 years old. This wasn’t always done as Lila recounted in a 1982 article from The Star Democrat.

“….I realized I was bored with television, and I needed something stimulating. I decided to go to college at the University of Maryland after my third child was born.” Lila continued…

“I knew I loved to write. There was something sitting there that needed to come out.”

That’s the way a lot of writers feel and the life that Lila personified. After all, she started writing at 14, wrote a novel during that time, and she also wrote poetry and short stories. 

Lila was an editor at the Naval Ship and Development Center. If anyone’s ever read their work, it’s difficult to decipher, and no doubt Lila makes it easier to grasp. Lila took years of writing classes at the University of Maryland and Montgomery College.

After living in Washington, DC, Lila became a freelance writer at almost 50 and started to teach at Chesapeake College. 

She won the Queen Anne Literary Press Award for her 1982 book Waterwomen in which she wrote and did photography. The prestigious award was under the aegis of Arthur Houghton. This book, in particular, got Lila write-ups in The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun.

During the time we met, Lila had released her next book, Granddaddy Builds A Bugeye. Lila was working on books, teaching and I was handwriting the world’s worst poetry in Mead notebooks and later hunting and pecking on my typewriter.

After a while I let Lila see my work. She liked it. What I loved about Lila is that she told the truth, she went through my poems with a red marker, putting lines through extra words and commenting on lines she particularly liked. I still have few of the poems she worked on with me, her notes were as good as a byline.

In a way, Lila gave me an upfront view of what a writer was, and I liked it. It was fortuitous that I met Lila when I did. The area didn’t have a lot of opportunities for people who wanted to write and sometimes wanted to read.

The 80’s were often rough to navigate in the area. In comparison the 70’s were halcyon days. As I stumbled into young adulthood the area often wasn’t as kind as it could have been, I was followed in stores from broken down junk shops to JCPenney. Meeting Lila was a lifeline, respite and just a breath of fresh air in an often stagnant community.

Immediately Lila and our friendship was “different.” I never called her “Ms. Line” the or any variations thereof. We never talked about race, she never mentioned it and neither did I.

Since Royal Oak is a small town, especially so in those days, I got to see Lila in her element on an often daily basis, driving to and fro. She had a brown Honda Accord with a bike rack, I’d always be happy to see it on the road. She would also ride her bicycle on the roads.

Our lives seemed to intersect in more than a few instances. To add to the list of similarities, we both were in psychotherapy and we both needed it. For about two minutes, we even shared the same psychotherapist; she didn’t like him, and I saw him for years.

What I got from Lila even early on was a sense of the truth and a kindness. I invited her to my house and I remember how kind she looked and how she acted with my mother.

Although I didn’t quite grasp it then, it was really special to have someone of Lila’s stature to look at my work, tell the truth about it and most importantly not be cruel about my nascent dream. I remember Lila was giving me instructions on how to submit to magazines and papers, she told me to send the work and include a “SASE.” I didn’t know what a “SASE” was until she told me it was a self-addressed stamp envelope.

At the same time I had interactions with writers that weren’t so charmed. My psychotherapist whose cousin was a well-known poet looked at my words and wasn’t pleasant at all. Another poet whose book I carried around with me like a diary visited the Talbot County Free Library, I don’t remember a single word he said but I remember the indifference in his eyes when I asked a question. In comparison Lila was gentle with me.

In all the years we knew one another, there was never one cross word. She always took time even though her schedule was always full.

Lila took extended vacations to see fellow people from her religion, the Quaker faith. She attended the Third Haven Meeting House in Easton. It wasn’t uncommon to see her car there. The religion and the meeting place provided sustenance. 

Talbot County’s bucolic scenery also provided calm. Lila described how she felt in the aforementioned 1982 Star Democrat article that featured her…

“ Nobody told me about Easton and Oxford and Tilghman Island. I fell in love with all of it.” Lila continued…

“My sister hated it down here. She told me not to come down. I had to see what I would hate.”

There wasn’t much to hate in Talbot County. Although she was a habitue of New York and later Washington DC, she truly took to life on the Eastern Shore. Unlike some of the transplants, she didn’t lose her identity and with her keen writer’s eye she knew what made the area work and what was its backbone, the water, the water men and water women who became the subjects of her books and stories.

Lila made a home on the Eastern Shore, in Royal Oak. Her water view cottage was called, “A Place For Lila” and she told that the home was finally a place, for her.

After knowing Lila a few years, I truly grew comfortable with her. I felt very comfortable in her home. To me, it was the archetypal writers home, a bit lived-in with family photos, lots of paper, a typewriter nearby and clips not far from view.

Lila supposedly retired from teaching in 1992, but her teaching continued, and she often advertised in The Star Democrat, offering writing lessons for crafting biographies and later autobiographies. She still taught classes for Chesapeake College and Washington College Academy of Life Long Learning.

Any fans of the late 80’s and 90’s Star Democrat and or fans of Lila Line remember her appearances in the Letters To The Editor section. Lila’s comments were often terse, humorous and correct. She offered a lot of passion in her words whether it was supporting a local teacher friend who was dismissed or lamenting at how friend and renowned poet Gilbert Byron was treated in this area.

As the proverb goes, it takes a village, and it took a village to get me from point A to point B. A close group of people, including my mother, Dr. Robert Lea, and family and friends, kept me afloat through debilitating illness, false starts, and depression. In fact when I was having trouble living in the same household as my grandfather, Lila offered me a place to stay. I had to decline like her house was a sanctuary. In the best of times, mine was too.

Lila’s steady hand guided me as I stopped writing poetry and began writing other things like album reviews. In short, it didn’t matter what I did, she loved to see me active. In fact one time she said that when she was driving past my house at night she’s look to my window to see if the light was on to see if I was listening into music or writing. That was one of the sweetest things anyone has said to me.

By this point, it had been about ten years since we first met. We had a nice shorthand with our conversations. She gave me dating tips and told me nothing was wrong with me, except for the way I walked. A lot of times when I’m walking, I’ll think Lila and try not to walk like a duck.

After publishing a good amount of articles, I finally went to one of Lila’s classes. For some reason, I wasn’t all that into it. She knew it and looked at me with a bit of exasperation, but we couldn’t hide the fact that we were glad to see one another. Of all of the teachers I’ve had, I loved to see Lila in his element. All of the shyness she had disappeared as her voice became more firm and her countenance more imposing. I can still see her hovering over her students and answering questions, it’s one of the best times I’ve ever had.

Lila continued to stay busy and wrote an article about The Fields family for the Star Democrat. It followed the leads of Waterwomen by giving the subject integrity and put a face on one of Bellevue’s most known and loved families. Lila featured the family patriarch and gave a face and presence to people whose virtues had often go unsung.

By the late 90’s Lila started to have an acrimonious relationship with the person who owned her house as the rent started skyrocketing. She talked about it a few times and before I knew she was planning to move to Chestertown. Oddly enough, it was a place where I had family. I never saw them and it’s a place that was longer than a bike ride away.

To be honest, I was a bit resentful that she was leaving, although I understood. She visited me in my yard where I used to play records at an ear-splitting volume, we talked a while and said so long. She knew I loved records, so she gave me a copy of Barbra Streisand’s A Happening At Central Park that she found while she was packing her things.

Her energy and charm loomed large. The area wasn’t ever quite the same without seeing her wave from her car or telling me stories about what she saw on her bike rides. The scenery became less eventful and the language tin-eared.

Not surprisingly, Lila took to her new environment very quickly and continued writing, teaching and advising. Lila later wrote an article for the Three Haven Newsletter called  “Quakers Are Friends” it was about where she’d been and her recent travels.

“One of the functions I attended in Chestertown, which I will long remember and value, was a memorial service for 12-year-old Lucy the Goose, where the Mayor of Chestertown delivered a heart-rendering sermon in honor of Lucy she delivered beside a bridge laden with dozens of visitors, a service I shall never forget.”

That was Lila’s gift, making a reader hang on every word. As a good friend, I was happy that she did get some comfort in her new environment. To be honest, I wasn’t overcome with joy about her new life and digs. I was jealous and missed my friend. I never let on though, I sent her clips from articles and reviews I did and she always reminded encouraging.

We had exchanged letters and I always kept them and I called her on one Sunday when I was hardly working at the Chesapeake Center. It was great to hear her voice again. Out of all things she said, I was struck when she said I sounded mature. It was something I had been putting off for years, to hear it from Lila was great. I wasn’t writing poetry or much of anything, but I was existing which is something she helped me with.

Lila was always in my thoughts, I had talked about her to a friend and for longer than I care to admit, I put off searching for her online. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I hadn’t heard from her in so long and I didn’t want to see bad news. I decided to look her up and saw her obituary. I wasn’t surprised. It was like I already knew. I didn’t take her death well then and I don’t now. It still breaks my heart that someone with such wonder, distinct energy and life is no longer here. But then again, maybe she is.

Writers like actors and such seem to have an immortality. Within the click of a channel or visiting a website, the artist’s work is alive. That kind of omnipresence and longevity is what a lot of writers strive for.

Lila’s work still is being referenced in present day articles, YouTube videos and on display at the Maritime Museum. Lila’s life still impacts the ones who knew her, the students she touched and the friends she made. When I talked with a friend, local and renown writer Helen Chappell she said simply, 

“Lila was totally original, there never was and never will be another one like her.” 

To know Lila was to love her and I was lucky to meet someone so caring to me and so unique to this world.

 Jason Elias is a music journalist and a pop culture historian.

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Food Friday: Presto, Pesto!

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Ah, spring! Yesterday it was warm and sunny, with gentle zephyr breezes, and drifts of swirling white dogwood petals. Luke the wonder dog and I sunned ourselves on the back porch, placidly watching as the crazy robins bobbed and weaved at the birdbath, while the territorial mockingbirds and the alarmist wrens shouted from the sidelines. Today it is raining, with spewing wind gusts, and the new, minute chartreuse leaves on the pecan trees are whipping back and forth in the wet. Not a good day for walking a dog who does not like to get his feet wet, but an excellent day for the nascent basil farm we planted this weekend.

Mr. Sanders and I generally keep a basil plant on the windowsill by the kitchen sink. One of us will remember to water it, usually. I like to take cuttings and root them in small clear glass bottles alongside the mothership basil plant, just to give the cuttings a clear, aspirational example of what we expect from them. That way we will always have a bounty of basil for our insatiable summer pesto appetites. This weekend I planted a batch of rooted cuttings in the new planter we made by the front door. The basil leaves are already adding bright green to the re-purposed copper fire bowl that we filled with Martha-approved dirt, and planted with candy tuft, alyssum, pink petunias, nasturtium seeds, some trailing variegated vincas and electric blue lobelia. Beautiful, and practical: our own tiny victory garden. Maybe this weekend we will get around to planting some tomatoes in the raised bed out back, though first I need to redistribute the tulip and daffodil bulbs, now that they have blazed through their springtime beauty.

Mr. Sanders introduced me to pesto back in our courting days. He was so sophisticated, with a knotty pine shelf of spiral-bound Time/Life Foods of the World cookbooks. Obviously, I was easily impressed. We still have the Italian cookbook – the other books have been lost over time, and this is the recipe that we continue to follow.

Pesto alla Genovese

Makes about 1-1/2 to 2 cups

2 cups fresh basil leaves, stripped from their stems, coarsely chopped and tightly packed
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped pine nuts or walnuts
1 to 1-1/2 cups olive oil
1/2 cup freshly grated imported sardo, romano, or Parmesan cheese

Combine the coarsely chopped fresh basil, salt, pepper, garlic, nuts, and 1 cup of olive oil in the blender jar. Blend them at high speed until the ingredients are smooth, stopping the blender every 5 or 6 seconds to push the herbs down with a rubber spatula.

The sauce should be thin enough to run off the spatula easily. If it seems too thick, blend in as much as 1/2 cup more olive oil. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and stir in the grated cheese.

Nowadays they are many variations on the pesto theme. You can stick with the traditional basil pesto (and the mortar and pestle, although now we use a small food processor) or branch out to spinach pesto, even kale, or parsley, or arugula. Sometimes we skip the pine nuts, which can be expensive. But we never skimp on the garlic. Ever.

Non-Basil Pestos

Pesto Variations

When you get your bumper harvest and make huge batch of pesto sauce one evening, pour the rest in a jar, and stick it in the fridge for emergencies. You can add it to your Friday night pizza, or spread some on leftover bread with Monday night pasta. It even makes a deelish baked potato topping.

It might be a damp and rainy day today, but the basil is enjoying the rain, which means we can look forward to the first joyful summer meal. And then some.

“To share a table with someone is to share everything.”
― Paul Krueger

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Piazza at 15 Years: A Chat with Emily Chandler

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For the record, Spy has done several interviews with Emily Chandler over the years, starting in 2014 when she was operating Piazza Italian Market’s old location in Talbotown. And very much like Talbot County’s other unique food entrepreneurs we’ve profiled, Emily at the time saw a special opportunity to provide the region with a sophisticated gourmet store that few others could see.

15 years later, we believe our Spy readers will enjoy hearing Emily talk about the lessons learned and her own personal growth as she acknowledges that this risky idea has now matured into a beloved culinary institution.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more information about Piazza, please go here.

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