Smith Island

TYLERTON -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening hopped a ride on a fire engine, pulled a rope that set a church bell ringing, learned to pick crabs and otherwise made his presence known yesterday during his first-ever trip to Maryland's Smith Island.Not that any of the 347 people who inhabit the island's three small towns -- Ewell, Tylerton and Rhodes Point -- could have been unaware that the governor, along with an entourage of media, state officials and others, was paying a visit.Even the sea gulls perched atop the piers and the herons wading through the Chesapeake Bay grasses seemed to take note of the hubbub as the ferry Chelsea Lane Tyler -- the boat that takes the island's youngsters to school on the mainland -- shuttled the group around Smith Island.

Marylanders braced today for torrential rains, high winds, pounding surf and bayshore flooding as Hurricane Floyd bore down on the state after crashing ashore early this morning in North Carolina.Tropical storm warnings were posted from Baltimore County south to Southern Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay north of the Virginia line, the entire Eastern Shore and Ocean City. Sustained winds are expected to reach 40 to 50 mph today in Baltimore, and 50 to 70 mph on the Shore with higher gusts. Twenty-foot surf was likely at the beaches.

It is one of the bay's most stirring comebacks. The regal brown pelican, a bird hammered low in past decades by DDT and other now-banned pesticides, has been rapidly expanding its range.Ten years ago, it was rare to sight a pelican around most of the Chesapeake. Then, in the early 1990s, a nesting colony appeared on a sandy spit known as Shanks Island, just below the Maryland-Virginia line, around Smith Island.Pelicans returnThat colony now numbers more than 100 pelicans each summer. And last year, Maryland biologists discovered 15 pairs nesting for the first time in the Maryland portion of the bay, on Spring Island, a few miles west of Deal Island in Tangier Sound.

SMITH ISLAND -- For Elmer Evans and more than 100 of his neighbors, the issue is as clear as the heads of churchgoers on Sunday mornings -- there's no reason to change this island's 300-year-old ban on alcohol sales.For the third time in a dozen years, almost one-third of the citizenry of this remote Chesapeake Bay community, most of them tee-totaling Methodists, piled into two ferryboats this week to attend a hearing at the Somerset County Courthouse. There, they pleaded with the county liquor board to reject newcomer Stephen Eades' plans for beer and wine sales at one of the island's two small grocery stores.

Maybe this crab cake tastes so good because I am eating it on Smith Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Or maybe this crab cake tastes so good because of the effort involved in getting here.I drive two hours from Baltimore to Point Lookout State Park on the southern tip of St. Mary's County early in the morning. By 10 a.m., I hop aboard a ferry, the Chelsea Lane Tyler, and make the 1 1/2-hour passage from the Western Shore to the island.The boat deposits me and other passengers on the docks of Ewell, where the Bayside Inn, a family-style restaurant, serves up crab cakes and other fare.

PRINCESS ANNE -- Smith Island, a fishing community known for its pious sobriety since the 1600s, will keep its ban on alcohol sales.A handful of islanders sat quietly last night as the three-member Somerset County liquor board rejected shopkeeper Stephen Eades' plans for a seven-day tavern license that would have allowed beer and wine to be sold at one of the two small grocery stores that serve 347 residents who live in the isolated villages of Ewell, Tylerton...

WHEN THE one-room schoolhouse at Tylerton on Smith Island closed last year, it seemed to many residents that their world was coming to an end. For April Tyler, the last teacher at Maryland's last one-room schoolhouse, the world was turned upside down. She was transferred to a middle school in Crisfield, commuting daily from the island. Ms. Tyler had hoped the school board would fund a teaching position for her on the island when classes began in September. Sadly, it was not to be, and in late August, Ms. Tyler and her family left Smith Island.

EWELL -- There is much to love about Smith Island: pristine wetlands that serve as a protein factory for the Chesapeake Bay; magnificent sunsets unimpeded by the clutter of civilization; the striking absence of brain-rattling noise, and the opportunity to see great blue heron and other waterfowl in their natural habitat.There are also 350 hardy human souls who still live on the island -- some of the finest people you would ever want to meet.Sadly, Maryland's last inhabited offshore island is rapidly vanishing due to erosion.

Fire department ready, willing, ableYour June 2 editorial ("Can't skimp on fire protection") hit the mark on many issues regarding the Baltimore Fire Department. Yes, the number of firefighters employed by the department is smaller today. Yes, the incidence of fires has continued to escalate in the city. Yes, the department is experiencing a deficit in its overtime budget. But the implication is that all of this has occurred in a management vacuum. It has not.Since my appointment in April 1992, and with the support of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, the Fire Department has been able to enhance its fleet with the purchase of 12 fire engines, seven fire trucks, a new command vehicle, a hazardous materials vehicle, a collapse rescue vehicle, a special operation van, a SCUBA van and 18 medic units.

TYLERTON -- The usual signs of spring have appeared here on Smith Island. The "snowball bush" by Miss Virginia Evans' house is blooming. Pesky gnats fill the air when the breeze dies down.But the season also has brought signs of anger and despair to this 400-year-old fishing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Four red-and-white billboards have been erected by the island's watermen, attacking the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for its advocacy of government restrictions on their livelihood.

baltimoresun.com/10spot -Many beloved literary figures, including Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Rachel Carson, have left their marks in Maryland. Here are the best places to relive a bit of bookish history. Fort McHenry. Francis Scott Key's poem, "The Defence of Fort McHenry," was inspired by the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812, but it would take more than a century for it to be officially recognized as our national anthem, renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner." Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum (203 N. Amity St.)

Here's an idea: Why don't the residents of Smith Island - at the fragile center of the Chesapeake Bay - rent a few scuba-diving suits and hold a town hall meeting under water? Scientists say a huge part of the Chesapeake region could be below water in a few decades due to rapid global warming. So why not practice up? Just grab a few wetsuits and goggles and rehearse for the aquatic life to come. A similar rehearsal took place last week in another island area: the archipelago nation of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

SMITH ISLAND - It wasn't nostalgia that prompted Dwight "Duke" Marshall to seek legislation honoring a multitiered cake he has loved since childhood. No, the Smith Island layer cake needed to become Maryland's official dessert for a more practical reason: to boost the island's nascent tourism industry. "No. 1, we need a way for people to keep making a living here," says Marshall, who, like many island natives these days, doesn't work as a waterman. "People are interested in our island way of life.

Acquisitions *Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson, a Sparks-based consulting engineering company, has acquired Kupper Associates, an engineering services company based in Piscataway, N.J. Terms weren't disclosed. The combined company has a staff of more than 700 with offices in Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. Appointments *Nicholas J. D'Ambrosia, owner/broker of GMAC Real Estate/Real Estate Center in Largo, has been named chairman of the state Real Estate Commission.

Would this be my Al Gore moment? After a career writing about the plight of the Chesapeake Bay, I had been called to advise a committee of the Maryland General Assembly. About cake. About making Smith Island eight-layer cake Maryland's official state dessert. No Oscars for that, or Nobel Prizes. And with taxes and sea levels rising - and the Chesapeake ecosystem tanking - "Let them eat cake" might seem impolitic. But there's more to saving the bay than boosting oxygen counts and reducing toxic algal blooms.

Each day, tourists, Smith Island residents, mail and supplies are transported across the Chesapeake Bay on a small fleet of boats. Residents depend on ferrymen such as Otis Tyler, since no bridge connects the island - 12 miles out in the bay - to mainland Maryland. The ferrymen carry packages, groceries and other supplies that Smith Island residents don't have at home. About 250 people live on the island year-round. Tyler, who charges $10 for a ride to or from the island on his boat, the Island Belle, has been moving people and supplies for 24 years.

SMITH ISLAND --Michael Lisicky had the kids of the Ewell School right where he wanted them yesterday - in their classroom soaking up every note, every passage, even a few honks and squawks thrown in for laughs by his Trio La Milpa. Unlike other music education programs that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra oboist has conducted, this one couldn't have been any cozier. The entire school - 14 students from pre-K through seventh grade - took part. The children listened to the oboe trio while sitting at their desks in their one-room schoolhouse here in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. None has ever heard a symphony orchestra.

Could there be a more American way to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 than this: collecting petition signatures to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Oprah? In times of national tragedy, some people look to political leaders. Some to God. And some, it seems, to the daytime talk show queen. Rocky Twyman of Rockville, founder of the Oprah Winfrey for Nobel Peace Prize Fan Club, was at the Inner Harbor a few days before the anniversary, collecting about 100 signatures and linking his crusade to the terrorist attack.

Despite its undeniable appeal for artists, nature lovers and loners, Smith Island - Maryland's only inhabited island not connected to the mainland by bridge or patois - isn't everyone's idea of paradise. The sublimely beautiful marshes are filled with some of the hungriest mosquitoes this side of Panama. The alluring creeks and guts that cut through the quaggy archipelago are littered with too much manmade detritus. Summer storms can pound the houses and crab shacks like a giant mallet.

TYLERTON -- The aroma hits as soon as the screen door to the Drum Point Market swings closed. It wafts up from behind the ice cream cooler, near the cracker packs and stacked boxes of Jell-O, filling up the garage-sized general store in this remote Smith Island town. The regulars - hardened watermen, tourists who keep coming back - know that smell. Those are Mary Ada Marshall's crab cakes in the deep fryer, and they might just be the best in the world. In a place where crab is king and every island lady has her own closely guarded recipe, that claim is no small boast.