Eastern Shore

Mt. Washington firehouse call is close to home Firefighters assigned to Engine 45 and Truck 27 on Glen Avenue in Mount Washington didn't have far to go battle a blaze yesterday -- it began inside their firehouse. The incident began about 1 p.m., when a firefighter noticed smoke coming from a second-floor recreation room at the station in the 2700 block of Glen Ave. and alerted others, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. Cartwright said the fire, apparently the result of an overloaded circuit or a frayed wire, set a couch on fire, causing smoke to fill the recreation room.

Fear not, leaf peepers of Maryland. Although there was less rain than usual across the state this summer, the drought conditions will take only the slightest edge off the glories of your favorite time of year. "So many factors impact fall foliage - temperature, humidity, soil conditions - that they tend to cancel each other out," says Kenneth Jolly, a forestry expert with the state's Department of Natural Resources. "To the average person, things won't seem much different. Expect the same lovely array of colors [across the state]

NANTICOKE-- --The distance between the two Methodist churches in this Eastern Shore village is little more than a mile. Yet for decades, it seemed as if a great gulf separated them. One church was black. The other was white. Though the two communities in the watermen's town got along fine, come Sunday, people went their own way. White families flocked to Nanticoke Road for prayers at the picturesque Nanticoke United Methodist Church. Black families followed the narrow roads east to the equally pretty Asbury United Methodist Church on Hickman Lane.

Mary Lynn Pretl Dougherty, an animal lover who owned Kildee Kennels on the Eastern Shore, died of lung and pancreatic cancer Aug. 23 at her home near Centreville. She was 55. Born Mary Lynn Pretl in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, she attended St. Dominic parochial school and the Institute of Notre Dame, where she was a 1970 graduate. Family members said her free spirit often clashed with the school's rules and regulations. They also said that her devotion to needy animals became apparent at an early age. She sheltered stray kittens and injured birds.

Theodore A. Haapala Jr., a retired information services engineer and Navy veteran, died of heart failure July 24 at Memorial Hospital in Easton. The Greensboro, Caroline County, resident was 66. Mr. Haapala was born in Worcester, Mass., and spent his early years in Maynard, Mass., and Ipswich, N.H. He later moved to the Eastern Shore, where he graduated from Preston High School in 1959. During his 20-year naval career, he served as a chief petty officer aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Virginia.

Maryland: Inauguration O'Malley plans series of events Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley plans a week of inaugural events, including a parade and a performance by Kool and the Gang, according to a schedule his transition team released yesterday. Before being sworn in Jan. 17, O'Malley plans a seven-day tour of the state, including stops in suburban Washington, Southern Maryland, Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore. He plans to attend prayer breakfasts, hold town hall meetings and eat lunch with Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer at Chick and Ruth's Deli.

Gasoline prices in the region are at near-record levels. Hotel rates are up 13 percent since last year. The roads, bridges and tunnels are going to be crawling with police. And more Marylanders will be on the road this Memorial Day weekend than ever before. That's the forecast from AAA Mid-Atlantic and Maryland police agencies as they look forward to a weekend of near-perfect spring weather, lavish consumer spending and clogged transportation corridors. Mahlon G. "Lon" Anderson, a spokesman for AAA, told a news conference yesterday on Kent Island that the auto club's polling shows it should be a banner weekend for travel to Ocean City and other resorts close to the Baltimore-Washington region.

PRESTON --Twenty years ago, when Mimi and Bill Willis were still considered newcomers in this Eastern Shore village, they whiled away late-summer evenings on the front porch - chatting, rocking, listening to warm-weather sounds and counting the reasons they'd left the congestion of suburban Washington. ... Not anymore. Like their neighbors who live along Main Street, they have long since retreated indoors to block out the din of cars and trucks rumbling through - 11,149 vehicles a day, by the State Highway Administration's count.

Man gets probation for melee on airliner A 35-year-old Arizona man was sentenced yesterday to three years' probation for punching two America West crew members aboard a flight from Phoenix to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in March, according to federal prosecutors. Bryan Leon Spann also was ordered to undergo a substance-abuse evaluation, complete an anger-management program, write a letter to the two flight attendants and donate $1,500 to the Air Charity Network, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office said.

VIENNA -- John Smith slept here. Or somewhere near this Nanticoke River town, where the wind twists through vast marshes and gulls wail overhead. Never mind that the great Chesapeake Bay explorer's visit was short, or that it occurred 400 years ago. Vienna is banking on the lore of Smith's voyage to bring tourists into this sleepy Eastern Shore hamlet a mile off U.S. 50. The town is planning to build a John Smith discovery center along the Nanticoke, an...

She sees herself as lucky to be part of a seminal moment in her field's history. But environmental educator Bronwyn Mitchell helped make that moment happen. Nine months ago, when she became executive director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, Mitchell knew the influential nonprofit organization would be celebrating 25 years of existence in 2010. She also knew Americans have generally come around to realizing that a passion for the environment need not be the sole preserve of a few neo-hippie types.

She sees herself as lucky to be part of a seminal moment in her field's history. But environmental educator Bronwyn Mitchell helped make that moment happen. Nine months ago, when she became executive director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, Mitchell knew the influential nonprofit organization would be celebrating 25 years of existence in 2010. She also knew Americans have generally come around to realizing that a passion for the environment need not be the sole preserve of a few neo-hippie types.

State hasn't made its case The problem with the proposed closure of the Upper Shore Community Mental Health Center is that Health Secretary John Colmers has failed to make the case that shutting this facility will provide less restrictive care at lower cost. First, the secretary gave the wrong patient profile to the Board of Public Works at the time of the closure vote, leaving the impression the facility was just a processing center rather than an important part of the Eastern Shore community.

James McBride had no idea Maryland's Eastern Shore would be the setting for his next novel when he first headed there about seven years ago. In fact, he says, he was on his way to Washington to research a book on the death of Abraham Lincoln when he impulsively decided to turn left on U.S. 50 instead of right. "I wanted to visit the house where Lincoln died," says McBride, a Brooklyn native with homes in New York and Bucks County, Pa. "I started driving down that way, but then I just veered off at Annapolis and started heading in the other direction."

Volunteer lawyers and land experts will hold two workshops this week on the Eastern Shore on how to deal with issues of what is known as "heirs' property," or property that has been passed down through so many generations that it is owned by dozens of family members. "One of the biggest reasons that African-Americans have not been able to hang onto family property and family farms is because of a lack of education," said Vince Leggett, director of the African-American Land Trust. Many people do not know what options they have through wills and trusts to protect family ownership, he said.

Gov. Martin O'Malley learned last week why to hate economists. In the same week that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke declared the recession "very likely" over and less than a month after shrinking the state's general fund budget to three-year-old levels, he's now been told he must cut about $300 million right away - and instead of a $1 billion shortfall next year, it looks to be $2 billion. Forecasts, shmorecasts. Like a concrete block tossed in a pond, the ripple effect of high unemployment rates continues to spread long after the initial splash.

Hear a name often enough, and you won't think twice about it. But that doesn't change the fact that Maryland has some oddly named places. Accident, for instance. Or Boring. Or Bivalve. I wonder if a strange name keeps people from moving in. I'd like to think it instead attracts residents who like a little whimsy in their lives, or at least their mailing addresses. Accident, in Western Maryland, does not appear to be named after a disaster. Historian Mary Miller Strauss writes in "Flowery Vale," a history of Accident, that it's impossible to say for sure, but she believes a story about land speculation.

The more than $600 million in federal money allocated to Maryland transportation projects, which began trickling into the state's economy this spring, is now flowing steadily - resurfacing roads, upgrading transit facilities and boosting demand for contractors from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore. Although many question the stimulus program's impact - in a recent Gallup poll, 57 percent of those surveyed said it was not working - in the short term there is little doubt that the Obama administration's effort is creating and preserving construction jobs in Maryland.

A fourth person has died of swine flu in Maryland - but unlike previous deaths in the state, the person did not appear to also have an underlying medical problem, health officials said Friday. Officials gave few details on the death, saying only that the person was an adult from the Eastern Shore with no "immediately apparent underlying medical condition or risk factors." State health officials said the death of someone without pre-existing illness should serve as a reminder to the public of how serious this flu, known as H1N1, can be - even in otherwise healthy people.

Harvesting the rewards of incumbency, freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil has expanded his financial edge over potential 2010 Republican challenger Andy Harris, according to new campaign finance reports. Their latest Federal Election Commission filings show Kratovil outraising Harris by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.The contest for Maryland's 1st Congressional District, which includes the Eastern Shore and parts of Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties, is one of the most closely watched in the nation.