Ocean City, Maryland, Midsummer 2009

Family Vacation Time
The next couple of weeks in Ocean City will be hot, sunny, happy and crowded. Daytime highs in the 80’s, sometimes hitting 90. Nighttime lows 65 to 75 degrees. One gas station reduced the price of regular to $2.41 today.
We’re at the peak of the summer vacation season here in Ocean City, Maryland — [...]

Ocean City Ready For Picture-Perfect July 4 Weekend

Sunshine and more sunshine is the forecast for the long Fourth of July holiday weekend in Ocean City, Maryland, from Thursday right on through at least Monday. It will be seasonably hot, high temperatures each day in the 80-84 degree range, just right for swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. The surf felt warm this morning, [...]

Boys in Danger: The End of Civilization in Maryland?

Item: A funeral was held this morning (Wednesday) for Christopher David Jones, age 14, who died after an attack by five to seven youths on a tree-lined street of townhouses in Crofton, Anne Arundel County. Two minors have been charged in the incident. A community meeting will be held at 7 this evening in Crofton.
Item: [...]

Best Things In Life Are Free, In Ocean City

Is it beach art? Or is it playground equipment on the beach? Is it interactive and educational?
Like so much in life, it all depends on your perspective. A bench is nearby, so that parents can relax and watch their children play, and ponder the meaning of it all.
In this season of stress and uncertainty, [...]

John Grisham – ‘The Appeal’

John Grisham’s latest, The Appeal, is out in paperback!
Grisham has been working on an evolving formula of legal suspense fiction for two decades or more. Some of his novels, like The Pelican Brief and The Firm, take the legal genre to the edge of action and suspense. They build to a page-turning, spine-chilling race against [...]

Slots In Maryland — Another Tax On The Poor

Slots and Taxes
Part I
To cheer for slots/ One must ignore/ This open secret:/ Slots tax the poor

Don’t tax the poor/ On voting day,/ [...]

Labor Day, A Hinge in Life

Where to start, after a late-summer vacation from blogging?
Labor Day, the slow, sweet, changing of the seasons.
My father was born on Labor Day weekend, 1920, a day or two earlier than expected. His mother’s doctor had checked with her; she said she felt fine. So off went the doctor on a Labor Day fishing trip. [...]

Slots ’till You Drop – These Are Not Your Father’s Slot Machines

Remember those good old slot machines in Maryland?
I put a quarter in a slot machine at Beverly Beach once, when I was a kid. There were a couple dozen slot machines in an open-air arcade, not far from the French-fry stand. They called them “One-armed bandits.” Men and women in bathing suits put in a [...]

Violence In Maryland

Violence in the schools. Teachers verbally abused and physically assaulted in Baltimore schools. A gun fired at Albert Einstein High School in Montgomery County. Gangs in the schools in nearly every county in central Maryland. Bullying everywhere. Students beating others as friends stand by and film the beatings.
Violence on the bus. Road rage on the [...]

War Is Not Good For Children

What kind of country sends mothers with babies to war?
What kind of country exempts able-bodied men from service, and sends the mothers of its children to fight foreign wars?
Of all the outrages in our privileged, self-centered, greedy, materialistic society, sending mothers of young children to war is the most outrageous. Top it if you [...]