Tangier Island

The drive to Onancock, Va., feels interminable -- mile after mile of highway along the pancake-flat lower Eastern Shore. I begin to wonder if it's worth the trip. But I stop wondering as I roll into town. Unlike some of the down-at-the-heels villages on the lower shore, Onancock looks prosperous. Market Street, the town's main drag, is lined with upscale cafes and restaurants, galleries and B&Bs. Perennial borders, herb gardens and overflowing planters grace homes and shops. I wander down the streets, aware that a stranger in this small, close-knit town of about 1,000 people stands out. But instead of curious stares, I get smiles of greeting from the natives and the non-natives, known as "come-here's."

John Kershaw Hinson, a pioneering Maryland aviator who was the first person to fly in and out of what is now Baltimore-Washington International Airport when it opened in 1950, died of natural causes Saturday at North Arundel Hospital in Glen Burnie. He was 89 and lived in Hanover.A pilot for nearly 60 years, Mr. Hinson taught flying and sold airplanes to thousands of people in the Baltimore area."He just loved to fly," said a son, Dallas Hinson of Baltimore. "He was the first pilot to land at BWI -- and this was during its construction."

IT'S THE TIME of year for the Defenders' Day re-enactment at Fort McHenry, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore.But during such re-enactments little mention usually is made of the role African Americans played in the War of 1812. Black soldiers fought on both sides.What whites of that era feared most was a black slave uprising in the wake of the British assault.Some members of the British high command were planning just such a dreaded revolt.After taking command of the newly formed North American Station on Apr. 1, 1814, the next day Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane, 55, issued this proclamation to black slaves in the United States that made white Americans' blood run cold:"This is therefore to give notice that all those who may be disposed to emigrate from the United States, will with their families be received on board His Majesty's ships or vessels of war . . . when they will have their choice of either entering into His Majesty's sea or land forces, or of being sent as FREE settlers to the British possessions in North America or the West Indies, where they will meet with all due encouragement."

EVERY COLUMNIST freely dispenses advice. An environmental columnist assumes the added burden of regularly saving the world.This last can get you down, the world being a large place, and not always embracing your notions of salvation.(I tell those wanting to "save" the bay's watermen: Do all you can, but if you get between them and a crab, prepare to not be thanked.)Long ago I learned that sanity lies in taking my best advice: The healthiest thing you can do for the environment is to get out in nature.

SMITH ISLAND -- Spring journal for March 14.Here in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, between Potomac and Pocomoke, halfway from Norfolk to Havre de Grace, it's three hours to dawn, two days until full moon, a week from the first day of spring.But the first spring day, make no mistake, arrived yesterday, as a strong sun kneaded the winter marsh to life and set crabs to crawling out of the mud in the shallows.Great blue herons were nest building even as the wild swans, flocked here since November, hullabalooed through the evening, knowing they must be Alaska-bound to breed during the Arctic tundra's short summer.

Drug use in suburbia sounds a loud alarm that must be 0) heededThank you for your April 5 article "A 'monster' drug unleashed in Md." on heroin addiction in the suburbs. It is a subject deserving of our attention. Your coverage was compelling.It is necessary that you continue covering this subject. In particular, there is a need to study the effect of our misguided "war on drugs." As your article makes clear, it is a war that has been a failure -- at least as we have waged it.It has been 80 years since that war began.

THE FIRST TIME I met the bedazzlingest crab I ever saw was an afternoon in the mid-1980s, just off a flight into Baltimore-Washington International Airport. There in the main concourse, large as a small car, it balanced delicately on claw tips and the points of its swimmerets. The afternoon sun streamed warmly through the creature's jewel-like body, kindling olive and ivory, cerulean blue and jade and ruby-red. The stained-glass creation was an accurate crab, faithfully rendered down to the differing serrations of either pincer - the one adapted for slicing you up (for indeed, one felt like prey in its massive presence)

Earlier this week, state transportation officials said they were considering activating a high-speed ferry route that would carry both passengers and vehicles from Southern Maryland across the Chesapeake Bay to the Lower Eastern Shore. With the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1952, and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in the 1960s, passenger and vehicular car ferries vanished from the bay. Currently, the only passenger ferries plying the bay are those that call at Smith Island and Tangier Island, Va. There were ferry boats on the bay as long ago as the 17th century, with one of the oldest and most heavily traveled routes being that from Rock Hall to Annapolis, 25 miles that in good weather could take two hours.

FROM ABERDEEN Proving Ground to the Atlantic Fleet's home port in Norfolk, the Chesapeake is very much a military bay.All told, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines occupy 66 installations in the bay's watershed, covering about 550 square miles.Anyone who has boated long in these waters will have witnessed jets strafing target ships off Tangier Island; naval destroyers shelling midbay marsh islands, and the periodic closures of waters around Aberdeen and Dahlgren on the Potomac, when the big guns are booming.

Delicious and different Nanaimo bars were the request of Judy Henderson of Bend, Ore., who wrote that she believed the recipe came from Canada.She was right. Nanaimo is the name of a city on Vancouver Island, and the recipe originated there. Ann Dahne of Towson sent in a recipe that came from the Vancouver Sun and was written by Barbara McQuade.Joanne Wolverton of Prineville, Ore., sent in a similar recipe, and she noted that there is no known date for the original Nanaimo bar nor a name of who introduced it. Whoever did, she says, put Nanaimo on the map. Some accounts say the Ladies Auxiliary of the Harewood Neighborhood Volunteer Fire Department made the first presentation at a benefit dance.