Eastern Shore

On Maryland's Eastern Shore, everything leads back to chickens. The poultry industry is the largest piece of a key sector of the local economy — agriculture — and its reach is broad: from the truckers who move products and the many farmers who grow corn for chicken feed to the corner stores and other businesses that rely on customers' income. Any hint of disruption to that economic ecosystem makes people nervous. And these days, it's more than that. The bankruptcy filing this month of Allen Family Foods, a Seaford, Del., poultry firm that provides direct employment to hundreds on the Maryland Shore, has left many more here worried about their future.

You might expect winter on the Eastern Shore to be slow. I know I did. So even though it was Presidents Day weekend, I told my husband that the holiday wouldn't be a hindrance to a quick two-day trip to the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay, a resort I've been meaning to visit for a while. Plus, I said confidently, Bay Bridge traffic would be a breeze compared with summer. We'd get a great rate — the Hyatt was offering a promotion with rooms starting at $99 a night. It's a huge resort, so we'd likely have at least some portion of it to ourselves.

With its leafless landscape and almost eerie yellow and pink light, the Eastern Shore in winter is wonderfully different from its warm-weather self. This time of year, it is stripped down to its essence — quiet and spare. Summer, with its crowds and ocean-bound traffic, seems very far away. And that's how a lot of us who live there like it. Not that the Shore is inhospitable in winter — far from it. It's the time of year we celebrate eagles, oysters and muskrats. And, thanks to winter getaway packages, praise be as well to dining and lodging on the cheap.

President Barack Obama will sign a proclamation Monday creating a Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument on the Eastern Shore, a designation long sought by advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. The designation protects the land from development and complements plans to create a state park in Dorchester County, where Tubman was born, escaped slavery and helped lead other slaves to freedom. The monument will be managed by the National Park Service. Members of Maryland's congressional delegation have for years sought to approve funding to honor Tubman on the Eastern Shore.

Now is the time. Early fall is when the pleasures peak in Talbot and Dorchester counties. That's when these Eastern Shore towns stop being detours along the way to the shore and turn into full-fledged destinations. There are practical advantages to visiting St. Michaels, Easton and Cambridge after Labor Day. Hotel rates plunge, beach traffic is a nonissue and the kids are, as they say, back in school. There are even a few reasons to put off an Eastern Shore trip as late into fall as you can. Migrating wildfowl begin to arrive here in late October.

State and local officials have returned to the Eastern Shore communities ravaged by superstorm Sandy's heavy rains and high winds to comb over the damage in hopes of appealing federal officials' decision to deny aid to Maryland. The Federal Emergency Management Agency declined the state's request for funds for individual residents because the damage was not considered substantial enough. But U.S. Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Ben Cardin, Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration and other state leaders vowed this week to appeal the decision, citing extensive damage to the area, where more than 300 homes are estimated to have been severely damaged.

State officials are seeking a developer to build a mixed-use project on 12 waterfront acres in Cambridge on the Eastern Shore. The state's Department of Transportation, which owns the site off Route 50 on the shores of the Choptank River, issued a request for qualifications Wednesday, state Transportation Secretary Beverley K. Swaim-Staley said in a statement Wednesday. The Cambridge Marine Terminal/Sailwinds site, owned by the Maryland Port Administration and leased to the city of Cambridge, sits downriver from the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Resort.

A 39-year-old Eastern Shore man accused of trying to run down a police officer in Cambridge, Md. over the weekend was arrested in Northeast Baltimore on Tuesday night, state police said. Demetrice D. Demby was arrested at about 9:30 p.m. in the 2800 block of Erdman Ave. by state troopers, who were assisted by city police and local U.S. Marshals. Police said Demby was at the home of an acquaintance and was arrested without incident. Police said Demby was driving in a truck that was stopped by Cambridge Police officers just before 12:30 a.m. on March 18. As a police drug dog was conducting a scan of the vehicle, police say Demby accelerated toward an officer standing in front of the truck.

Marshall E. Price, a Caroline County blacksmith, met his fate at the end of a rope wielded by a lynch mob on July 2, 1895, for the murder of a 13-year-old girl, Sallie E. Dean, whom he accosted as she made her way to school. Earlier this month, with a friend, Joe Coale, I went to the Eastern Shore to spend a perfectly wonderful sun-splashed autumn day with former Gov. Harry R. Hughes, who lives in Denton. After talking for a while in the den of his home, Hughes suggested a tour of some of the county's historic sites.

This letter was sent to the head of the Maryland Department of Environment and a similar one was sent to the head of the Department of Natural Resources. A copy was provided for publication. In August, the U.S. Geological Survey published a report titled "Flux of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Suspended Sediment from the Susquehanna River Basin to the Chesapeake Bay during Tropical Storm Lee, September 2011, as an Indicator of the Effects of Reservoir Sedimentation on Water Quality.