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May 8, 2025

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

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Chamber Hosts Post-Legislative Session Discussion with 36th District Lawmakers

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Pictured from left to right: Moderator Tom Eleuterio, Senator Steve Hershey, Delegate Steve Arentz, Executive Director Sarah King, Delegate Jeff Ghrist, and Delegate Jay Jacobs.

On Wednesday, April 23, the Kent County Chamber of Commerce welcomed legislators from Maryland’s 36th District for a Post-Legislative Session Discussion at Heron Point in Chestertown. The event provided local residents, business owners, and community leaders an opportunity to engage directly with elected officials about the outcomes of the 2025 Maryland General Assembly session.

Chamber Executive Director Sarah King opened the forum with a recap of several issues relevant to Kent County, including the 18-month delay of the Maryland Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program, the status of the Kent County Middle School cost-sharing bill (which passed the Senate but stalled in the House), and the projected local financial impact of The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future (Kirwan).

Tom Eleuterio moderated a robust panel discussion with Senator Steve Hershey, Delegate Jay Jacobs, Delegate Steve Arentz, and Delegate Jeff Ghrist, who shared legislative updates and fielded questions from attendees. Topics included:

  • Expanding the Sales Tax on Services: Legislators discussed a new 3% sales tax on select technology-related services aimed at addressing the state’s $3.3 billion budget shortfall. The expansion could directly affect over 15,000 employers and 99,000 jobs statewide, with broader implications across Maryland’s economy.
  • Energy Legislation: A trio of bills—the Renewable Energy Certainty Act, the Next Generation Energy Act, and the Energy Resource Adequacy and Planning Act—were passed to fast-track renewable energy infrastructure, particularly solar. These laws mandate local governments to approve compliant solar projects and incentivize battery storage and nuclear Residential electric customers may see rebates of up to $80 next year.
  • State Budget Update: Lawmakers reflected on the FY2026 budget, and the difficulties they experienced this year trying to create a balanced budget. The Legislators noted growing uncertainty in the state’s fiscal landscape, while potential cuts in federal education funding are emerging adding pressure to already strained state resources.

“The conversation was insightful, informative, and vital for anyone doing business or living in Kent County,” said Sarah King. “We thank our legislators for their continued engagement and leadership, and Heron Point for providing such a welcoming venue.”

The Kent County Chamber of Commerce remains committed to keeping members informed and connected on matters of policy and progress that affect the local business community.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

4th Annual Saturday in the Park May 31

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You guessed it: Chestertown’s fourth annual community party, Saturday in the Park, inspired by the song of the same name, is being held again on Saturday, May 31st (the weekend after the Tea Party Festival) in Wilmer Park. As always, the schedule includes a variety of activities designed to appeal to all ages and interests, including live music, arts, outdoor games for children and adults, kayaking, fitness demonstrations, wellness booths, pet adoption, craft vendors, and food.

At 10:00 am, a free guided kayak tour of Radcliffe Creek will depart from the kayak launch at Wilmer Park on the Chester River. Bring your own kayak or borrow one of many available onsite. Also, there is a Kayak Swap 11-4. Bring your kayak, canoe, SUP, wind surfer, sunfish or other non-motorized vessel to swap or sell.

From 11:00 am until 6:00 pm, local musicians and other entertainers will perform on a raised stage. To book a slot, send a message to [email protected]. The entertainment schedule will be posted on the Chestertown Recreation Commission’s Facebook page as the date gets close. WCTR Radio will broadcast the entertainment live from the festival. Come see your favorite radio hosts at work.

“People talking, really smiling. A man playing guitar and singing for us all.”

From 11:00 am until 4:00 pm, local volunteers and organizations will host a wide range of fun amusements and happenings, including:

  • Children’s art activities
  • Outdoor games for children
  • Games for teens and adults—volleyball, bocce, and cornhole
  • Yoga and martial arts demonstrations
  • Health, fitness, and wellness organization tables
  • Art and craft vendors
  • Free popcorn all day
  • Cotton candy and snow cones
  • Walker Family food truck

Volunteers, community organizations, and art/craft vendors are key to making it a success. To participate, email [email protected].

The Town of Chestertown and the Chestertown Recreation Commission heartily thank the Kent County Department of Public Health for their continued support for this annual event.

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Bay Journal: USDA shuts down ‘climate smart’ program

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture in April announced the termination of its $3 billion “climate smart” program, a grantmaking initiative that was supporting hundreds of millions of dollars in conservation work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

An April 14 USDA press release called the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, which promoted farm conservation measures with climate benefits, as a “slush fund” with high administrative costs and often low payouts to farmers.

It said some of the projects may continue under a new initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers, but only if 65% or more of the project’s funds were going directly to farmers and the work aligns with Trump administration priorities.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Biden administration’s climate smart program was designed to “advance the green new scam” and benefited nongovernmental organizations more than farmers.

“We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity,” Rollins said.

The climate smart program was launched in 2022 as part of a “once-in-a-generation investment” that would enable universities, businesses and nonprofits to work with farmers to promote conservation measures that would help them adapt to climate change and market the products they produced.

Most projects did not begin until 2023 or later because of delays in paperwork, and some had just started up last year.

But the USDA froze funding for the program in January, leaving organizations that had incurred costs unable to recoup their expenses. In its announcement, the department clarified that it would honor eligible expenses incurred prior to April 13, 2025, but would review existing grants to determine whether they could continue.

Some working with the program said it appeared they would be able to successfully reapply under the new program, but others were unsure.

Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, was managing a $59 million climate smart grant that supported work it was carrying out with a dozen other organizations on farms from Maine to South Carolina. With funding stalled, it laid off 60 employees in early April, leaving it with fewer than 10.

“We are honestly not sure what the announcement means for our project,” said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director. “They said we can reapply, but we don’t know if that means for our current project or a completely new project under the new program.”

Smith-Brubaker said Pasa’s project did not meet the 65% farmer payment threshold because the USDA was not counting costs of providing technical assistance to farmers for planning, implementing and maintaining projects.

She said about 45% of the project’s funding went directly to farmers, but if the technical assistance were included, farmer support under the grant would be between 75%-85%.

Richa Patel, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, also said it was “disappointing” that the department was not counting technical assistance as part of the farmer support funding.

With the USDA already reducing its own staff, she said, “the administration must take every opportunity going forward to increase access to technical assistance and support the staffing levels necessary to provide efficient and dependable customer service for our farmers — those working directly with USDA and those working with the farmer-serving organizations it partners with.”

Lack of technical support is considered a major impediment to widespread adoption of conservation measures by farmers.

Mike Lavender, the national coalition’s policy director, said he welcomed the ability to continue some projects under the new initiative, but said the USDA did not provide any clarity about whether grant recipients can make modifications to meet the new criteria.

As a result, he said the announcement brings “unnecessary hardship nationwide to farmer-serving organizations and likely farmers as a result of USDA changing program requirements and cancelling projects midstream.”

Nationwide, the climate smart initiative made awards to 140 organizations, businesses and institutions, which were supposed to benefit more than 60,000 farms and cover more than 25 million acres of farmland. The USDA estimated that, if successful, the work would sequester an amount of carbon equivalent to removing more than 12 million gas-powered cars from the road.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of that work was to have taken place in the Chesapeake watershed, managed by nonprofit organizations, universities, agribusinesses and others. The five-year program was one of the largest investments ever made in support of conservation measures on farmland in the Bay region.

It supported many traditional conservation practices such as nutrient and manure management techniques that reduce emissions of nitrous oxides, a powerful greenhouse gas. It also supported measures that curb runoff, such as cover crops, stream fencing and no-till farming. Those measures also help build organic matter in the soil, which allows it to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Smith-Brubaker noted that just a 1% increase in organic matter in a farm’s soil absorbs 22,000 more gallons of water per acre, keeping it from washing nutrient-laden runoff into local streams.

The climate smart program also promoted monitoring efforts to quantify how well the conservation efforts were working, and it supported marketing efforts to inform consumers about the environmental benefits of that work — which could increase the value of those products and expand markets.

By Karl Blankenship, Bay Journal

 

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KCHS Students Explore STEM Careers with Local Businesses

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Dr. Bill Schindler, archaeologist and Director of Modern Stone Age Food Lab, explains how ancient discoveries in food sciences influenced the evolution of humans.

Kent County sophomores participating in the STEM program recently got a taste of real world occupations when they visited a variety of local businesses that employ professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Each year, eight leading Kent County businesses open their doors and share their expertise with curious students as they begin planning for their futures. Each student visits four of the eight participating businesses where professionals explain how the business operates, the products and/or services it provides and who it serves.

Kevin Shearon, civil engineer and partner in DMS and Associates, points out engineering details on a site plan

They describe their own role within the organization along with the day-to-day functions they perform. They also outline the educational requirements to work in the field and long-term trends that might affect future job opportunities. The program is a timely resource for students as they look into secondary education and any specialized studies they will need in order to qualify for the careers they desire.

Kent County STEM students, their parents and teachers greatly appreciate the businesses and professionals who share their time and resources to make the program a success.

Participating businesses this year included Chesapeake CNC; DMS & Associates; Eastman Specialty Corp.; Modern Stone Age Food Lab; Sunrise Solar; University of Maryland Shore Medical Center; Washington College GIP Program; and the University of Maryland Extension, which partnered with Red Acres Hydroponics to demonstrate the wide range of advances in agricultural technologies.

Lead photo: Bryan Williams, founder of Red Acres Hydroponics partnered with Beth Hill of the University of Maryland extension and Ag Educator Dwayne Joseph (not shown) in demonstrating the latest innovations in farming technologies.

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Victory Garden 101- How Do I Start?  By Nancy Taylor Robson

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Aji Limon in pots

So, you want to start a victory garden. Or your version of it. What next?

“You just put a trowel in the ground,” says Master Gardener Eileen Clements. “There’s almost no wrong away to begin.”

Other Master Gardeners agree. Sara Bedwell is growing in buckets drilled with drainage holes. Deb Silberg starts seeds in reused plastic pots, and plants out her seedlings into raised beds. Others add a few veg plants in a sunny perennial border. Barbara Flook seeds greens directly into raised beds and harvests salads all spring, fall, and often throughout winter. (The Kent County Master Gardeners have directions to make salad boxes, which they offer free). You can stuff a tomato or pepper plant or push a few bean seeds into a tub beside the kitchen door. There are probably as many ways to do this as there are people who want to experience the pleasure and satisfaction of producing food.

Deb Silberg began to grow some of her own fresh vegetables when she moved to Kent County.

“I was inspired by living in a community where people were interested in farming,” she says. “And I got inspired to try.”

Sara Bedwell grows tomatoes partly because hers taste so much better than the store-bought kind, which are often bred for transport rather than flavor. Flook wanted a broader selection of Asian greens than she found in the produce aisle.

Plus, growing your own is economical. For example, a $5 packet of Sungold tomato seeds produces enough plants to share some with the entire neighborhood. And each plant can provide about 40 quarts of cherry tomatoes, a huge savings. (Plus, you know, flavor).

Will your victory garden be perfect? Probably not. But it doesn’t have to be perfect to be satisfying. In any new enterprise, there is always a learning curve, but we have no shortage of people here who offer gardening advice. Not always useful,

Silberg harvested greens

but always well meant.

“It’s trial and error,” says Bedwell, who has been the recipient of some of that advice. “What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, so you learn what works best for you.”

Silberg agrees.

“I failed a few times,” she says. “I talked with a few people at The Mill, who were so helpful. And I pestered the Master Gardeners at the booth so often that they suggested I take the course!” (Which she did).

“Learning by failure is the only way to do it,” agrees Flook. (The old adage is: ‘You’re not really a gardener until you’ve killed at least 100 plants). Flook’s gardens have morphed considerably over the years. “When I began, I double-dug my garden,” she says. (Double digging was then in vogue along with French intensive gardening, both of which are just as exhausting as they sound). “If I had it to do over, I’d just have thrown a carboard flat on the ground to kill everything underneath it and then be ready to start in the spring” she says now.

Regardless of how you approach it, start small. It’s better to have less space than you think you want and expand as you gain knowledge and experience rather than to get overambitious, overwhelmed, and discouraged.

Sara Bedwwell potted garden

“Not having too much space to deal with was kinda my goal,” says Bedwell, who works two jobs and is in the process of clearing a piece of ground for a bigger gardening project. Containers limit the work since they are a snap to weed and water. They also offer an easy way to experiment with positioning. “We’ve started with buckets because pots and buckets can be moved.”

If you’re starting in-ground, south-facing is best – vegetables and fruits need a minimum of six-eight hours of direct sunlight daily.

“Choose carefully where you’re gonna put that garden because you need to have sun and access to water,” Flook advises.

Once that choice has been made, Flook urges gardeners to: “Plant what you like to eat. Lettuce and greens, which are easy to grow, work well in containers and raised beds, and are so good for you,” she says. “They also tend to be ready to eat within about six-seven weeks from seed.”

This is especially good for young gardeners. It’s not instant gratification, but it’s swift enough to be both encouraging and educational. Peas, beans, herbs, (which are often quite expensive), and greens, all of which usually germinate in about 5-8 days, and grow fairly quickly, are great for youngsters to start with. And, if you let the seeds of pole beans dry on the vine then store them in an air-tight container in a cool place, you can plant them next year, another savings.

“I started with a lot of tomatoes and peppers and things that were easier to grow,” says Silberg. “And I kind of expanded because I’m feeling more confident now.”

Determinate tomatoes (often hybrids), which grow to a genetically predetermined size and production, are usually better for pots but will also do well in the ground. Indeterminate tomato varieties (often heirloom) continue growing and producing until frost gets them, but are usually too rangy for pots, though doable if you set up a sturdy support to attach them to and secure it so the pot doesn’t fall over in a wind.

Whatever way you decide to start, know that you’re in good company and have plenty of local encouragement.

“The sense of producing something that you can eat and share was really compelling to me,” says Silberg. “I grow flowers, but I share a lot more of the things I grow to eat, and I have seedlings that I can give away and they can grow it, and that makes me happy, too!”

https://extension.umd.edu/programs/environment-natural-resources/program-areas/home-and-garden-information-center/master-gardener-program/about-program/grow-it-eat-it/

 

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Op-Ed: Anything Goes, but Pete Hegseth May Go First By Aubrey Sarvis

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Springtime in Trump’s Washington is a mad, mad, mad world, one without humor, subtlety, or joy.  Washington is now a dangerous and chaotic place to work and live. Just ask the senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, who has been among the few Republican senators with the courage to respectfully disagree with President Trump and vote against him when she believed he was wrong.

The Alaska Daily News first reported that while speaking in Anchorage this week Senator Murkowski told a startled audience, “We are all afraid.” The context involved her colleagues in the U. S. Senate and the President of the United States.  After a few moments of silence and reflection, the senator elaborated, “It’s quite a statement.  But we are in a time and a place where I have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real.  And that’s not fair.”

In a few words, the senator went to the crux of what is happening in our nation’s capital and none of it is flattering to our unstable president, nor to many of Murkowski’s spineless senate colleagues.

Most of the madness and chaos and fear of the last 100 days began with and remains with our fickle president who flips and flops and is incapable of being honest and trusting the American people with the truth.  I fear the president cannot trust himself with painful truths, something as elementary and factual as the Electoral College results of the Biden-Trump 2020 election.

Long before Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat and brazen scheme to remain in office, lying was the essence of Donald Trump’s character. Lying remains a cornerstone of how he manages, controls, and manipulates. President Trump admits he operates pretty much by instinct, acknowledging there is no overarching comprehensive plan in place. How he runs our country of 340 million people is mostly by the seat of his pants, and much of it is raw, offensive, often vulgar, and invariably presented as factual on social media.

So of course, lying and vulgarity are now part and parcel of business throughout Trump world, especially among those who serve at his beck and call or are out to curry favor with our transactional president.  No surprise that among the first causalities in this Trump White House are truth and integrity.

Lies and liars consume a great deal of attention and time.  Working for a serial liar is demanding, demeaning, and exhausting.  Constantly the handmaidens show the needy boss how much they believe in his enterprise. Shamelessly some throw in “genius” and, “Wow, Mr. President!” This is about performance, demonstrating fierce loyalty.  These toadies were not hired for their credentials, high IQs, or remarkable achievements.  No Lincoln or Roosevelt team of rivals here.

You can catch several of them performing in the president’s staged press conferences in the ostentatious, redecorated gilded oval office. There, the not so esteemed and clueless Attorney General Pam Bondi on cue ignores the subject of due process, a man’s right to be heard in court before he is deported.  Instead, Attorney General Bondi glibly asserts the United States is powerless to facilitate an imprisoned Maryland man’s return to the United States.  The mighty United States and our all-powerful president cannot spring a man from a flea bag prison in a third-rate country. Really?  Need more? Watch Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, tell a whopper regarding Supreme Court language refusing to lift a lower court’s order directing the Administration to ‘facilitate” the return of a Maryland man jailed in El Salvador so he can be heard in a United States court.  Rushing in to foolishly play lawyer, non-lawyer Miller declared a White House legal setback was in fact a victory for the president.  Some victory, when the highest court in the land agrees with the lower court directing the White House to comply forthwith.

Trump itches for an immigration court showdown, lying and stalling to deflect and focus on “immigration” rather than his disastrous and costly on and off again tariff fights against most of the world that has cost American trillions of dollars in just a few weeks. Of course, Trump would prefer a noble fight between a dangerous immigrant and a heroic president battling the courts and overeducated liberal judges to keep America safe from a notorious gang member who robs our good men and does unspeakable bad things to our fine women.

The president picked this cabinet. This is his best and brightest.  Unfortunately, they are also the folks who will guide and advise him when we face the next military threat to our security and well-being. They will be front and center managing any Russian-Iran-Chinese nuclear crisis.

The president’s favorite in his cabinet is the smug Pete Hegseth who has been tap dancing since he was nominated for and became Secretary of Defense, a critically important post for which Mr. Hegseth is uniquely unqualified for by intellect, temperament, experience, and judgement.  Beware of the “warrior” who promotes his patriotism, bravery, and brand on and in the clothes he wears.  The Hegseth wardrobe includes a bright stylized U. S. flag handkerchief, folded inside his front jacket pocket; a U.S. flag stitched on his socks, and the colors of our flag for the inside lining of his tightly tailored suit jacket. This is the same preening defense secretary who, according to The Washington Post, recently ordered a make-up studio near his office in the Pentagon be upgraded for his many TV appearances, but the secretary’s aides were quick to insist he does his own make-up.  On that, I believe him. I suspect Mr. Hegseth does his make-up very well; he has had years of practice.

However, I do not believe Mr. Hegseth when he repeatedly lies and denies he put classified information about an upcoming dangerous military operation on the commercial Signal chat platform. We already know from whom and where Hegseth received that Yemen intelligence about Houthi targets.  We know the reckless secretary’s actions could have put service members under him in harm’s way.

This is not just another Hegseth “rookie” mistake. He is now the leader of the most powerful military in the world, and he is exercising the judgement of a whining junior officer.  I fear the entitled Hegseth expects a waiver from any rule or regulation that gets in his way or his priorities.  This Signal Gate began with Hegseth determined to get around a Pentagon prohibition on cell phone use in his area of the building, a prohibition deemed necessary to protect our security and nation’s secrets.

Secretary Hegseth who served twenty-years of duty retired a major.  When asked about that rank, Hegseth pointed to generals who didn’t know how to fight and lead in war, and Pentagon lawyers in air-condition offices who wouldn’t let him shine in combat for his not attainting a much higher rank.  He played the victim card, blaming others, just as he is doing today, fingering his hand-picked aides and MAGA appointees in the Pentagon out to get him.

Secretary Hegseth fails to grasp that a warrior’s responsibility is to protect the men and women who serve under his command, not use them as props to show off before friends and family on a commercial chat platform. An investigation has been requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee.  If it is a thorough investigation, Mr. Hegseth’s lying, and conduct will be exposed and neither President Trump nor his Defense Secretary will be able to withstand the heat. Mr. Hegseth will have to go.

Secretary Hegseth serves under a reckless president who craves attention and blames others. They have a lot in common.  In a passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby one might easily substitute the president and the secretary for Tom and Daisy:

They were careless people, Tom and

Daisy – they smashed up things and

creatures and then retreated into

their money or their vast carelessness

or whatever it was that kept them

together, and let other people clean up

the mess they had made.

 

Aubrey Sarvis is an Army veteran and retired lawyer.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Bookplate Author Event: Poet Rachel Trousdale

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Rachel Trousdale

The Bookplate is continuing their 2025 season of author lectures on May 14th with poet Rachel Trousdale for a 6pm event at The Kitchen & Pub at The Imperial Hotel. She will be discussing her new book; Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem. Trousdale’s book- an inventive, poignant, and witty collection that speaks to the intricacies of love, both domestic and wild- is the winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize.

“A rare gift in art is directness: to turn a clear, unsentimental gaze on love and grief in all their variations, with no smokey or mysterioso evasions. Almost as valuable is meaningful surprise, the stunned laughter of recognition even if the subject for marvel is loss. The heartfelt, unpredictable poems of Rachel Trousdale attain that kind of discovery.”

~Robert Pinsky, Judge, 2024 Cardinal Poetry Prize

“You can’t literally make modern poems with a laser, nor comedy with a magnifying glass, but if you could and you got it all just right—accurate, even-tempered, and delighted by life’s bizarre turns—you’d get something like this wise, sharp-witted and generally exceptional debut, by a poet who knows what to do when you fall in love as well as what to do when the world spins fast enough to throw you sideways and you have to hold on, for your kids, to your kids. How is a baby like ‘a brood of termites?’ ‘What have we taught our son?’ ‘Where are our robot sharks?’ What if a yeti visited a mature, equable, family-friendly Auden? If any poem, any life, amounts (as the poet says) to ‘an incomplete experiment,’ this one’s got lovely results, a thesis, an antithesis, and six kinds of love: filial, amorous, amicable, intellectual, maternal, and one that remains as an exercise for the reader. ‘I Swear This Is Not Intended as a Back-Handed Compliment,’ one poem declares, and neither is this self-conscious sentence: you can trust these technically gifted sonnets, prose poems, sestinas, poesie concrète, punchlines and acrobatic sentences to take you anywhere, and then (as the poet also says) to bring us home.”    ~Stephanie Burt, author of We are Mermaids and Don’t Read Poetry

Rachel Trousdale is a professor of English at Framingham State University. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The Yale Review, Diagram, and other journals, as well as a chapbook, Antiphonal Fugue for Marx Brothers, Elephant, and Slide Trombone. Her scholarly work includes Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination.

For more event details contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. These events are free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. The Bookplate will continue their 2025 event series on May 21st. Author Henry Corrigan will be discussing his queer horror novel, Somewhere Quiet, Full of Light. Copies will be available at the shop before and after the event. The Kitchen & Pub at The Imperial is located at 208 High Street in Chestertown, Maryland.

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Registration is open for MPT’s Chesapeake Collectibles season 13  taping event in October

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Maryland Public Television is looking for collectors across the region who want to share stories of their prized possessions at a two-day taping event for its popular weekly series Chesapeake Collectibles. The event takes place on October 4 and 5 at the statewide public TV network’s Owings Mills, Maryland studios.

Chesapeake Collectibles has entertained, surprised, and enlightened MPT viewers for more than a decade. Each season, taping event guests meet with expert appraisers to learn more about their family heirlooms, flea market finds, and cherished collectibles. The most interesting items and stories are selected for evaluation in front of the MPT cameras, resulting in priceless moments as guests share their tales, discover the histories of their items, and receive an answer to the all-consuming question: How much is it worth?

The recording of segments featuring appraisers and collectors discussing their treasured items will provide Chesapeake Collectibles producers and editors with the content needed to develop 13 episodes for the series’ 13th season, which will premiere in 2026.

Paid registration is required to attend. The cost is $135 and includes verbal evaluations of up to three items by a team of experienced appraisers and a chance to be selected to appear on the show. It also includes a one-year membership to MPT.  Registration information and attendance details are available at chesapeakecollectibles.com. Walk-ins cannot be accommodated because of occupancy limits.

“Whether they collect vintage sneakers, movie memorabilia, abstract art, or commemorative teacups, we want to give everyone an opportunity to possibly share the stories of their treasures with our viewers,” said Patrick Keegan, Chesapeake Collectibles executive producer.

In October 2024, nearly 1,000 people from across the Chesapeake Bay region brought their cherished collectibles to MPT to have them evaluated during the two-day taping of the series’ 12th season, which premieres Monday, June 2, at 7:30 p.m. on MPT-HD, the MPT livestream, and the free PBS app.

 Past series episodes can also be viewed online at video.mpt.tv/show/chesapeake-collectibles/ and pbs.org/show/chesapeake-collectibles/.

Fans of the series can read the latest posts from the popular series’ Talkin’ Collectibles blog, available at mpt.org/blogs/chesapeake-collectibles/.  It’s an insider’s look at the world of collecting and collectibles.

Major funding for season 13 of Chesapeake Collectibles is provided by Alex Cooper Auctioneers,  Second Story Books, and the generous members of Maryland Public Television.

More information is available at mpt.org.

…

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MPT premieres Maryland by Air documentary on May 1

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 Maryland Public Television will premiere its one-of-a-kind, “shot from the air” documentary, Maryland by Air, on Thursday, May 1, at 8 p.m. on MPT-HD and online at mpt.org/livestream. A preview is available to view at https://bit.ly/4jclshS.

Captured from a helicopter, drones, and the cockpit of a 1940s-era biplane, this breathtaking film’s aerial footage

highlights the natural wonders of the Free State, from its picturesque western hills and bustling metropolitan areas to its scenic shorelines and pastoral farmlands. The one-hour film includes an inspiring original musical score and is narrated by former Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame infielder Cal Ripken, Jr.

The four seasons are represented along with striking visits to landmarks such as the Antietam National Battlefield, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Fort McHenry, and the Maryland State House. Viewers take in a birds’-eye view of historic communities in Annapolis, Baltimore, Cumberland, Southern Maryland, and the Eastern Shore, plus stunning footage of Ocean City, Deep Creek Lake, and the wild ponies of Assateague Island.

Following its May 1 premiere, Maryland by Air will have encore broadcasts on MPT-HD on May 3 at 3:30 p.m. and May 4 at 6:30 p.m.  MPT members with access to MPT Passport will also be able to stream the full program anytime following the May broadcast premiere.

By special arrangement, a 45-minute version of the film will be presented at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore as an IMAX “resident film” over the next decade.

Maryland by Air complements earlier award-winning MPT aerial productions Chesapeake Bay By Air and Potomac by Air: Our Nation’s River.  The film is produced by John Paulson Productions with MPT’s Steven Schupak, executive vice president and station manager, and Eric Neumann, managing director of On-Air Fundraising & Development Productions, as executive producers.

The film is made possible in part by the MPT Foundation New Initiatives Fund established by Irene and Edward H. Kaplan, University of Maryland Global Campus, the Eric Stewart Group, and Frank Islam and Debbie Driesman.

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