Best Bets

Monday, February 1

Celebrate President’s Month with the Garden Puppet Theatre Mini-Museum in the Kent County Visitor’s Center. Puppets George and Martha Washington will be on display, the same puppets that appeared in the 1994 and 1995 puppet show “The President and Patsy,” presented by the Historic Society of Kent County. Runs through the end of the month.

Location: Kent County Visitor’s Center, 122 N. Cross St., Chestertown

Contact: Patsy Hornaday, 410-778-5841, tph203@verizon.net.

Washington College Film Series will continue with “The Hurt Locker.” Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this critically acclaimed film depicts an elite Army bomb squad in Iraq and the dangers they face in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.

Location: William Smith Hall, Norman James Theatre

Time: 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Thursday, February 4

The precision, vocal gymnastics and excitement of men’s collegiate a cappella singing comes to the Mainstay! Dissipated Eight is the more-than-50-year-old, award-winning men’s a cappella group from Middlebury College in Vermont. They perform both nationally and internationally, at private venues, colleges, and high schools. They sing popular songs from different eras with witty imaginative arrangements, often using their voices to imitate instruments in the originals. Tickets are $10, call for reservations.

Location: The Mainstay, Rock Hall

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Contact: The Mainstay, 410-639-9133, www.mainstayrockhall.org.

 

Friday, February 5

Meander the red-brick, tree-lined sidewalks of Historic Chestertown while enjoying extended shop hours and arts and entertainment throughout downtown during First Friday.

Location: Downtown Chestertown

Time: 5 to 8 p.m.

Contact: www.kentcounty.com/artsentertainment

The Washington College Film Series will present “Good Hair.” When comedian Chris Rock’s daughter asked, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” he decided to find out who had put this question into his little girl’s head. The result is an insightful, entertaining documentary and Sundance award winner.

Location: William Smith Hall, Norman James Theater

Time: 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.

The Washington College Department of Drama will present “We, Tiresias,” a staged reading of a new play by award winning playwright Stephen Spotswood. Directed by Professor Dale Daigle and Stephan Jordan.

Location: Decker Theatre, Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Performing Arts

Time: 8 to 10 p.m.

Saturday, February 6

Chestertown Middle School will hold its Yard Sale and Community Day. There will be tables of crafts, homemade items, children’s clothes and more as well as family games. Rent a table or donate items.

Location: Chestertown Middle School

Time: 8 a.m. to noon

Contact: 410-810-0602

Visitors to Chestertown are invited to step back into the 18^th century and explore the Custom House and the surrounding waterfront district during a self-guided tour. The Starr Center’s free multimedia audio tour, “History on the Waterfront: A Journey Into Chestertown’s Past,” introduced participants to the true stories of the people who once lived and worked along the waterfront, including Revolutionary leaders, British soldiers, convict servants, and fugitive slaves. Held every Saturday of the month.

Location: The Custom House, 101 S. Water St., Chestertown

Time: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Yoga Teachers: Elke Wiedemann

Elke Wiedemann and I are sitting on a bench in the spacious exercise room where she teaches yoga every Monday afternoon at 4:15. She has deep-set, blue-gray eyes, perfect posture and a lilting German accent. A former professional tennis teacher, she still plays, but now it’s yoga that makes her feel, as she says, “really good.”

SPY: When did you start doing yoga?

ELKE: Fifteen years ago. I don’t even remember the name of the class, but it had something to do with health—and if it has something to do with health, I am there! I didn’t know anything about yoga, but after my first hour-and-a-half class, I felt like I was walking on air. It was with Wendy Morrison, who was my mentor. To this minute I remember walking out to my car and thinking, what is this? Why do I feel so good? I took a deep breath, and then it was very simple to know: it was the yoga. I felt so good all around that I said, I’m going to do this more often.

At the time I had lower back issues and was seeing a chiropractor. After six months of taking two yoga classes a week, the backache was gone. Later, when I saw my chiropractor at a health seminar, he said, “I haven’t seen you lately.” And I said, “Doctor, I don’t need chiropracting anymore. My yoga is taking care of everything!” He said, “good for you,” but as a businessman, he knew he had lost a regular customer.

SPY: And you’ve never had to go back?

ELKE (beaming): Never went back!

SPY: Describe your personal yoga practice.

ELKE: As you get older you need yoga stretches even more. I do yoga every morning for a half-hour. But on some days, when there is no half-hour to be had, then I do ten minutes. Based on what has worked so well for me, I recommend to my students that they take class twice a week, and then do some yoga every morning. You don’t need to do a half-hour. Not everybody has that much time, but ten minutes is the minimum. And you can do a lot in ten minutes! Do those stretches that you feel help you the most, and everyday you will see the benefit.

When I travel I always take yoga classes. You can’t meet enough teachers and you can’t try enough forms of yoga. I’m always curious to find out what other teachers are doing.

SPY: What style do you teach?

ELKE:  Hatha yoga. I trained in Anusara, which is a branch of E.K.S. Iyengar yoga.  But to back up a bit, I hadn’t planned to teach. My daughter was visiting and I invited her to come with me to Wendy’s  Monday night class. My daughter wasn’t very interested, but she agreed to come along, and she loved it. Then she just plunged in. She was living in D.C. and took the teacher training in Virginia. Afterwards, she said, “Mom, you can do this, too!” And I thought: I’ll probably be the oldest one, and I don’t know if this is for me, and I’m fine with the way things are right now, I don’t really have to teach it . . ..

And then I thought, why not! I love it so much. I had enjoyed teaching tennis for twenty years. I was a real tennis bum, always on the tennis court. When we moved to Chestertown in 1992, I was still teaching tennis. And then I started doing yoga, and one day I thought, I can’t teach tennis for the rest of my life. And I started leaning more and more into yoga. Now it’s been ten years since I got my yoga teacher’s certification.

SPY: So you’ve always been an athlete?

ELKE: Yes. I’ve always loved outdoor activities. And I still love tennis, but I have to admit that I never feel bad after yoga. I don’t feel bad after tennis, but if you asked me how I feel after a yoga class, I would say, perfect. No aches, no pains.  And if you see me after tennis I might feel good the same day, but the next day, I’m thinking, ah, I overused that shoulder. You just don’t feel 100% well. I also have to say I wouldn’t play tennis as hard as I do if I weren’t doing yoga. The word has spread about yoga and now top athletes swear by it. They do yoga and quite simply they feel better. That’s the best reason for doing it.

SPY: What level is your Monday class?

ELKE: The class is multi-level, but I do welcome beginners. We do some easy poses and some a little more difficult. It’s simple, the more you practice the better you get. But I tell my students, some of whom have been with me for ten years, only do what you can do that day. It should never be painful.

For over a year now I’ve also been teaching two chair-yoga classes to seniors at the Amy Lynn Ferris Adult Activities Center on Morgnec Road, every Monday from 9:30-11:30 a.m.  The classes are large, usually 15-20 students, and they’re free!

But I’ve cut back on teaching. I used to teach three days a week, but my husband is retired and he wanted me to give up teaching so much, to be more available to go sailing with him. I said, well, I suppose I could do that . . ..

Yoga, tennis, sailing—sounds like a great life to this spy! Nevertheless, Elke is quick to point out that yoga is the glue that holds it all together, the ultimate feel-good activity. When something works that well, you’re bound to stick with it.

Elke Wiedemann teaches hatha yoga at the Kent Athletic & Wellness Center every Monday, 4:15 – 5:15. Cost for members is $5 per class; nonmembers pay $8. She teaches chair yoga at Amy Lynn Ferris Adult Activities Center every Monday from 9:30-11:30 a.m.  Classes are free.

Spy Eye: Chestertown Middle School at the Kohl

Chestertown Middle School students art work is now on display at the Washington College Kohl Gallery for a limited time. Washington College graduate Gillian Bourassa, a Social Studies teacher at CMS, gallery intern Riley Carbonneau, and Donald McColl, chair of the Department of Art and Art History, worked with students in school and at the gallery over a period of time. Spy photographer Karly Kolaja was there for the opening.

Yoga Teachers: Lex Fry

Washington College, The Yoga Cave — Go in the front door of the Life Fitness Center, take a right, go downstairs, take a left, go straight back, and there you will find the lair of Lex, a.k.a, the yoga cave.

It’s a spacious room decorated with yoga posters, in the middle of which sits Lex, a super fit blonde with glacially clear blue eyes, behind which about a million watts of energy seems to be surging pretty much full time. No kidding. If Chestertown ever suffers a major blackout, all we need do is wire Lex as a human generator, and I’m sure she could heat and light the entire town with voltage to spare.

Her teacher is Beryl Bender Birch, author of Power Yoga. Lex teaches Ashtanga yoga, where the idea is to heat up the body and sweat. (Not to be confused with hot yoga, where people throw up and pass out.)

I caught up with Lex in the toasty yoga cave earlier this week, and asked her to expound on yoga.

SPY:  What is your personal approach to teaching yoga?

LEX: People come to yoga for a myriad of reasons, and they get a myriad of benefits. But sometimes we take it all so seriously that we start to drown in it. We really inhibit ourselves as adults, so I try to bring humor and lightness to the class so that my students can do it almost as an experiment.

My job here is to facilitate change, and I have no idea what that change will be—nor do I need to know. I may never even see it on the outside, although typically I do.

Recently, a student asked me, “what’s the trick?” She had finally nailed one posture and figured there was some magic way to nail them all.

“The trick,” I said, “is to give up looking for the trick.”

I love teaching yoga to performance athletes. They’re used to doing a repetitive action to produce a piece of skilled performance in some arena. In yoga, you don’t get that kind of instant return, so for them it can be frustrating. Lance Armstrong is one of my Facebook friends, and he’s been doing yoga to prepare for the Tour de France next year. Last week he posted: “Just came back from another yoga class. Damn it.”

SPY: Is expecting an instant return a particularly western attitude?

LEX: It really is. To get results in yoga, you have to make an investment over time, and we’re not used to putting in that kind of sustained effort.

Years ago I was in Tibet and Bhutan on a mountaineering expedition trek, and the mountain Buddhists would find us so humorous. The western approach is one of expectation: what am I going to get out of this? It’s looking for something out there to provide us with the experience we want. The eastern approach is one of intention: what am I going to do right now to make this (intention) happen?

SPY: (with a slightly confused look on her face) Umm . . .

LEX: For example: a student wants to do a backbend. Her expectation is, “will I get a backbend out of this semester?” She’s looking out there for the backbend to come to her. Compare that approach to setting an intention, which might be, “I’m going to practice x,y,z, everyday to increase my flexibility.”  Expectation and intention are separate things.

SPY: You have a broad spectrum in your classes, from Washington College students to various people in the community. How does that work?

LEX: When I started doing yoga, it was disconcerting at first to be in a class where the ages could range from 16 to 70. But everyone’s body is different, and we are all on our own path. In teacher training with Beryl Bender Birch, we would sit around in a circle and share every ache and pain until it sounded like we’re all at the edge of total collapse, and then Beryl would say, “okay, it doesn’t matter. This is all impermanent. Let’s do yoga.”

SPY: You’re also teaching meditation. What’s that like?

LEX: I’m having so much fun teaching this really short meditation class. The group is finally at a point where it doesn’t matter! They’ve reached that place where they can step outside of it all. Truly, not judging yourself is the hardest thing you will ever do.

It’s such and honor watching people work and evolve.

SPY: You’ve studied with several internationally known teachers: Beryl Bender Birch, David Swenson, David Williams, Barbara Benagh, and Rod Stryker.

LEX: And part of my job is sharing the understanding that those of us who teach yoga are just students walking the path. We are all paying homage to the teachers who came before us.

Yoga is a 5,000 year-old tradition of great depth. Yoga means: yoking the mind to the body and the breath, and ultimately to the spirit. We’ve created some confusion in the west about yoga, combining asanas with push-ups, etc. That’s not yoga, that’s exercising. As Beryl would tell her yoga students at the New York Road Runners Club in Manhattan, “this is not a stretch class.”

I’ve always loved learning, and you learn the most from the elders because they’ve done life. It’s simple: the longer you’ve lived, the more experiences you’ve had, and the more you know.

With that Lex stood up and pulled on a yellow sweater. The blond hair, the dewy skin, the sparkling blue eyes: I thought she was like a walking light switch, or like the glo stick app on my iSpyPhone™. She was on her way to teach a private lesson, with [sigh] energy to spare.

ALEXA “LEX” FRY, M.Ed, holds the E-RYT 500 level certification with the National Yoga Alliance. She is a graduate of The Hard and The Soft Yoga Institute. She directs Missing Link Yoga and Pilates. For information about local classes, email Lex at, missinglink@southforkstudio.com

Profiles in Spirituality: The Future of the Episcopal Church (Part 1)

On a very cold and wet evening in November, six local clergy members from the Episcopal Churches of Kent and Queen Anne’s Counties gathered at Emmanuel’s Parish Hall to talk candidly about the future by answering the question: Will the Episcopal Church exist in the 21st Century, and if so, why would it be relevant to believers?

It was not lost on the panelists that a similar discussion, as Rev Osberger points out, took place in 1780 when the rectors of the local parishes gathered at the same spot during a similar time of profound change and challenges.  One of the historic results of that meeting, suggested by The Rev’d James Jones Wilmer, Rector of Shrewsbury Parish, was the renaming of the church itself to the Protestant Episcopal Church, which was later adopted by the American branch of the Anglican Church.

Given this unique history, it seemed appropriate for the Spy to honor this important moment by bringing together the current rectors from some of the same parishes. While the issues have changed since 1780, the Church nonetheless faces equally important challenges of keeping important traditions of the past, while also acknowledging the needs of an entirely new generation of men and women seeking spiritual guidance and answers.

Professor J. David Newell, retired chair of the philosophy and religion department at Washington College, moderates a discussion with Rev. Daniel Gross, Rector of Emmanuel Church; Rev. Nanese Hawthorne, Rector of St. Luke’s Parish, Queen Anne’s County; Rev. Tom Hughes, Rector of Shrewsbury in Kennedyville; Rev. Allen LaMontagne of St. Paul’s; Rev. Charles Osberger of Old Wye Church, and Rev. Heather Cook of the Diocese of Easton.

Part II will be presented next week.

DW

Profiles in Conservation: Dr. Joyce Evans

It’s hard to believe that behind the facade of a simple office building on Lynchburg Street, some of the most interesting and complex aquatic studies for the federal government are taking place.  Joyce Evans leads a small team of researchers in identifying diseases and developing vaccines for the United States Department of Agriculture in a well-equipped laboratory only a block away from High Street.   From oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, to farm-raised fish in North America, or even a major fish kill epidemic in Kuwait, Joyce has been part of a team of experts charged with quickly diagnosing and treating rare forms of aquatic diseases, while being a wife and mother of two boys in Quaker Neck in her spare time.

In Pursuit of Happiness

If happiness is the holy grail that all human action is directed toward, then why do so many of us, even here in Chestertown, feel we are missing something? Are we doing something wrong? Do we even know what we want? And if we do know what we want, are we happy when we get it? Drawing from spirituality, positive psychology and the latest findings in neuroscience, In Pursuit of Happiness is a discussion about how to up our personal happiness ante. We encourage you to participate in the discussion by sending us your suggestions, feedback and stories.

I once shared an office with a woman named Sally who seemed happy all the time. We worked in advertising, where the deadlines were insane. At the eleventh hour, when the rest of us were sweating, swearing, and slamming things, Sally was calmly doing whatever had to be done, and with good cheer to boot.

It was beyond annoying.

One night around nine p.m., after the usual four hours of overtime, I found myself standing at the mirror in the ladies room, next to Sally. I looked like a wrung-out rag doll; Sally, with her stylish haircut and mauve lip liner, was primping for a late supper uptown with her husband.

I was just tired and frustrated enough to come right out with it.

“Look, are you really as happy as you seem?”

She finished rolling a tube of Lancome across her lips. “Oh! Absolutely!”

No doubt my expression was blank, but inside I was fighting the urge to drop to my knees and beg for her secret: How do you do it day after day? Where do you get your energy? Don’t you ever get depressed? And most important, who does your hair?

She must have sensed my desire for additional detail.

“I am very happy, but the thing about being happy—it takes a lot of hard work.” She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes.

I was twenty-six and had no idea what she was talking about.

Sally pointed to my engagement ring.

“Same goes for marriage. You’ll see. A happy marriage doesn’t just happen. It takes a lot of work.”

I watched her run the comb through her hair. Twisting the ring on my left ring finger, I thought, if love is hard work then it’s not really love. Real love is effortless.

Sally and I eventually went our separate ways, but I never forgot that encounter in the ladies room, or the lesson she had attempted to impart, that happiness isn’t an accident.

Twelve years later, I was thirty-eight and newly widowed. During my husband’s two year battle with cancer, I had seen more suffering that I could have ever imagined—his own as well as the many other patients I came to know.

I saw that even in the direst circumstances people could still feel happy, when it would have been so much easier to feel lousy.

Since then happiness has become my favorite subject. I have seen that it is not a random thing that happens to certain lucky people; rather it is an act of personal responsibility. We can’t control what happens in life, or what thoughts come bubbling up, but we can try to control our reactions. That means how we choose to think about what happens, i.e., how we assign meaning to the events of our lives. This is hard work, but the payoff is oh so worth it.

The basic idea is that the road to happiness starts by taking 100% responsibility for yourself. You and only you decide whether you will be happy or not. All it takes is an open mind and a willingness to try new ways of being. Believe me, if I can do it, anybody can!

Are you game?

Great!

Then in the next column we’ll look at habits; good ones and bad ones, and what a huge role they play in quality of day-to-day living. We’ll explore why it’s better to create a new good habit than to try and break an existing bad habit. Finally, I’ll challenge you to pick one new habit to adopt before the end of 2009 that would significantly improve your life. Are you ready?

Start thinking!

Kelly Castro is the Spy’s own certified life coach.

Spy Fortnightly Profile: Dianne Dumanoski

In a sobering but realistic profile of humanity’s negative impact on global planetary systems, author Dianne Dumanoski, our fall Spy Chat speaker (in partnership with Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society), makes a eloquent argument that “the radical experiment of our modern industrial civilization is now disrupting our planet’s very metabolism.” Dumanoski believes that our climate is changing faster than original scientific models predicted, in unexpected ways, and with dangerous consequences. Given the increasingly short window for action, politicians and the traditional media have done little to heed the warnings and avert crisis. Humanity’s future, Dumanoski argues, will depend on our ability to return to systems based on flexibility, diversity, redundancy, and community and away from current trends that rely on technological fixes, unsustainable economic models of growth, and excessive globalization.

Marty Fujita
Green Editor

The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth can be purchased at Amazon.com

Spy Chat: The Episcopal Church in the 21st Century

In November 1780, inside the Chestertown Chapel, a meeting of the Anglican clergy from the parishes of Kent and Queen Anne’s Counties took place at what is now known as Emmanuel Church to discuss the future of their church and faith. One of the results of that meeting, suggested by The Rev’d James Jones Wilmer, Rector of Shrewsbury Parish, was the renaming of the church to the Protestant Episcopal Church, which was later adopted by the American branch of the Anglican Church.

Given this unique history, it seems all too appropriate for the Chestertown Spy to honor this important moment by bringing together the current rectors from some of the same parishes to discuss their church and their faith as the Episcopal Church moves into the 21st  century. While the issues have changed since 1780, the Church nonetheless faces equally important challenges in keeping with the important traditions of the past while acknowledging the needs of an entirely new generation of men and women seeking spiritual guidance and answers.

On Wednesday, November 11th at 7 PM at the Emmanuel Church parish hall, Professor J. David Newell, retired chair of the philosophy and religion department at Washington College, will moderate a discussion with Rev. Daniel Gross, Rector of Emmanuel Church; Rev. Nanese Hawthorne, Rector of St. Luke’s Parish, Queen Anne’s County; Rev. Tom Hughes, Rector of Shrewsbury in Kennedyville; Rev. Allen LaMontagne of St. Paul’s; Rev. Charles Osberger of Old Wye Church, and Rev. Heather Cook of the Diocese of Easton.

Admission is free.

Spy Fortnightly Profile: In & Out of the Studio with Vicco von Voss

John Muir, California’s beloved naturalist, once noted that between two trees there was a doorway to a new world. Local artist and craftsman Vicco von Voss has been finding that door in his own special way since he began his career as woodworker and furniture maker in Kent County almost twenty years ago. His passion for wood and design, coupled with a spiritual context for his work, has led von Voss to his own world in his craft and in his relationship with the Eastern Shore landscape.

Chestertown Spy Poll: Top Issue for Election

As the November 2 election nears, The Chestertown Spy wants to know what our readers believe to be the top issue for our town and community will be in the year ahead.

Profiles in Spirituality; David LaMotte on the Afterlife

David LaMotte, long time Kent County resident and President of LaMotte Chemical, shared many similarities with his late father, the Reverend David H. LaMotte, former rector of old St. Paul’s Parish, Kent. Both men were southern gentlemen, passionate duck hunters, and held a strong sense of family and pragmatic views of life and work. They also shared a fascination with the afterlife and the study of near death experience that David Jr still continues today. In a revealing interview, he talks about this special father-son exploration into the spiritual unknown, and how it changed his views of religion and life itself.

Profiles in Conservation: Tom Leigh

To date, there are only hundred and fifty official Riverkeepers in the United States, and Chestertown, thanks to the Chester River Association, has one of the best in Tom Leigh, the official Riverkeeper for the Chester. Every week, Tom patrols the river, spotting environmental trouble as well as educating boaters and other users on the problems the Chester River faces.   Tom’s work doesn’t stop there.  He provides important advocacy for the river’s protection and works collaboratively with other non-profits, landowners and key stakeholders to keep pressure on local, state and federal lawmakers to insure the Chester’s long term future. This is not an easy job.

Spy Fortnightly Profile: The Art of Kathy Day at Lauren Ames

The pairing of the right art gallery with the right artist can be a difficult feat at times. Beyond the art work itself, there needs to be a partnership of concept. The coupling of Kathy Day’s new work with Lauren Ames’ intimate gallery on Cross Street is a successful merging of two women seeking out the whimsical in both art and design through subtle tones and joyful color.

Kathryn Day’s work is on display until the end of November.

www.laurenamesinteriors.com

Spy Fortnightly: In and Out of the Studio

For almost thirty-five years, Susan Tessem has created a unique vision of the Eastern Shore with her stunning landscapes and breathtaking colors. Her modest approach and exceptional eye has brought a special clarity and beauty to the Chester River experience, and endless pleasure to those who collect her work. She has also exhibited at such institutions as the Norfolk Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Henri Gallery, American Institute of Architects, and the Easton Academy of Art.

As the first full time professor of art at Washington College from 1975 to 2004, she created from scratch a visual arts program that survived its humbling beginnings in the windowless basement of Tawes Theater, while also pushing her students, the College, and Chestertown to develop a real art community that now is perhaps one of the most active on the Eastern Shore today. Of course, she is also known as having one of the best laughs on the Delmarva.

Susan Tessem is represented by Carla Massoni, MASSONIART, www.massoniart.com

One of a Kind: Colchester Farm CSA

Colchester Farm’s community supported agriculture (CSA) project is one of those special resources in greater Chestertown that is not immediately noticed by most.  Over the past five years, the CSA has slowly increased its membership to 140 families, providing fresh, pesticide-free produce for almost half the year to its subscribers, while also creating a special connection to those that grow this food on some of the most special and fertile land in Kent County.  At a time when more and more Americans are rethinking what they eat and where they get their food, Colchester Farm has created a viable option for our community through the creative energy of this non-profit’s dedicated staff and board, as well as its members donations and support.

The Chestertown Spy will be hosting a benefit for Colchester Farm’s CSA with a special showing of the award winning documentary Food Inc. on September 24 at 7:30 PM at the Prince Theatre in Chestertown.   Students (of all ages) are asked to donate $5 and the adult suggested donation is $10 at the door.  For more information, please visit  www.eventbrite.com

Food Inc. A Spy Benefit for Colchester Farm CSA

The Chestertown Spy will be presenting the highly acclaimed documentary film, Food Inc, as a benefit event to support our local Colchester Farm CSA on September 24, 2009 at 7:30 PM at the Prince Theatre in Chestertown, MD.

Colchester is a community-based organization that grows pesticide-free vegetables, provides wholesome food, and offers education on sustainable agriculture to its members and surrounding communities. It strives to be an alternative model of farming, dedicated to maintaining the agricultural heritage of the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

A brief video presentation about the CSA will be shown before the film. After the viewing, a panel discussion, moderated by Spy Green Editor Marty Fujita, will follow to answer questions, and discuss local resources and concerns.

For more information on Colchester Farm CSA , please visit their website at http://www.colchesterfarm.org.

Profiles in Spirituality – The Voice of Karen Somerville

It seems fitting that Karen Somerville would be the Spy’s first profile in spirituality.  While Karen could easily have fit into many categories, including music or African American history, it is her faith that connects the dots to her singing and her lifelong commitment to her community.   It is a story of love, belief, and healing that has given her a voice that rivals some of the best vocalists performing today.   She is a unique gift to all who live in and around Chestertown.

DW

Branches: Howard & Mary McCoy Exhibit on View at Adkins

It’s hard not to think of Andy Goldsworthy when viewing the outdoor sculpture of Howard and Mary McCoy currently on display at the Adkins Arboretum.  Not because they are similar in look or theme, but because all three artists create a special link between art and nature within a landscape as opposed to a man-made space  like a gallery or outdoor sculpture gardens.  These delightful (and sometimes well hidden) structures, along with their more individual indoor work, are now on view at Adkins for the summer.

The Chestertown Plan: A Design Strategy

Since the late 1660s, there has been some sort of plan in place for Chestertown’s growth. From its early beginnings as a prospective port village for the British Crown to today’s comprehensive plan, the “town plan” has governed how it must function commercially and socially, and also lays out a hierarchy of sites for government, religion, residential, retail, shipping, and even death. Local architect Peter Newlin walks us through the Chestertown plan’s many stages over the years and poses interesting and challenging questions for the town’s future.