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Seek to find the harmony and balance in all things…recognizing that we live in an ever-changing, dynamic world. Find balance between old and new, urban and rural, the needs of this generation and future generations.
Imagine if each Marylander planted one tree per year, pledged to help our municipalities clean our waterways, and kept our farms and forests vibrant. We would enhance the beauty of our great state. We would keep its resources safe and protected, and we would invest in our own health and the health of generations to come.
Christine Bergmark, Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland
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Donate oysters shells—or sign up restaurants to donate shells—to the Oyster Recovery Partnership, an Annapolis-based nonprofit which facilitates statewide Chesapeake Bay oyster-restoration efforts. The organization launched Maryland’s first Oyster Shell Recycling Alliance in late March of this year, together with more than 25 restaurants, catering companies, and seafood wholesalers, the regional oyster-shucking community, and volunteers. The alliance collects used oyster and clam shells—limited resources that constitute the preferred substrate on which new oysters can grow—to help restore the bay’s dwindling oyster population.
The native Eastern oyster is a keystone species of our bay, filtering algae from the water and providing a home for other important marine life, including the blue crab. A single mature oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. The entire bay used to be filtered in days. Now, it takes more than a year.
In 2009, the Oyster Recovery Partnership processed, cleaned, and transported 60,000 bushels of shells that were, in turn, used to plant more than 650 million baby oysters in the bay! With the Maryland State Hatchery expanding its facilities in 2010 to be capable of producing up to 2 billion oysters per year, the Oyster Recovery Partnership will require nearly 200,000 bushels of shells annually. To learn more, call 410-990-4970 or visit www.oysterrecovery.org.
Heather Epkins, Oyster Recovery Partnership, Chesapeake Appreciation Inc.
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Get involved with PlanMaryland. By joining our efforts to create the first statewide plan for sustainable growth, you can help shape Maryland 20 years from now. Growth patterns of the past 30+ years have not only consumed land at rates faster than population growth, they have contributed to a less-healthy bay, more traffic congestion, and a decline in productive farmland and affordable housing.
State government, along with federal and local governments and the private sector, must work with the public to reduce sprawl. We’ve just completed 13 public forums about PlanMaryland around the state. If you didn’t get a chance to attend—or even if you did—please follow our progress in developing a state growth plan and offer your input at Plan.Maryland.gov.
And consider attending a future session next fall and winter, after we roll out a draft of the plan as it progresses. The actions, or inactions, of today will affect how Maryland grows in the next 20 years.
Richard E. Hall, secretary, Maryland Department of Planning
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Use traditional social networking. Talk to people. Learn by example. Learn by listening—especially to new neighbors who are different from you and old friends who are stewards of community history and tradition. Embrace both continuity and change. This is not idealistic multicultural feel-good-ism: 21st-century Maryland is a place of staggering geo-cultural diversity, and it can get complicated, especially if we grow reliant on Facebook-style means of connecting only with compatibility.
We think most clearly when we are not afraid: Understanding our collective folklife can help us know ourselves better and overcome our fear of others. Folklife—or traditional expressive culture (familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, and regional)—is a powerful means of understanding the beauty of our differences and interconnections, while also revealing the deep cultural meanings behind our own identities and those of our neighbors.
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