Jim Brady, Doug Schuetz and Mike Starling gather in their WHCP radio station studio to go over the day’s programming. Local FM StationWHCP has put Cambridge on the broadcasting map with lively programming led by a band of master-level volunteers On the surface, WHCP in Cambridge seems like a mom and pop local radio station. There are three recording studios buzzing with local residents conducting interviews or hosting their own shows, while volunteers earnestly adjust equipme

Darlene and Howard Dixon share a private moment near the shoreline in Oxford on a clear winter afternoon. Darlene and Howard Dixon Through the Years How did you meet and fall in love? Darlene: We’re high school sweethearts. We met while we were employees at McDonalds and flirted from across the grill. Our relationship progressed rather quickly. We just celebrated our 40th anniversary. Howard, smiling ear to ear: I knew she was the one. What keeps you together? Howard: First,

With a crystal ball in October 1990, Rob Etgen couldn’t have pictured what the next 30 years would look like at the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. That was when he became ESLC’s executive director and its first staff member. Fast forward to 2020, as Etgen and the land conservancy enter their 30th year together, they’ve created a track record of success anchored by preserved land, innovative town planning projects, and a growing professional staff who are carrying on ESLC’s m

The soul-stirring vocalizations of Canada geese announcing their return from the north is a harmonious rhythm of nature that coincides with the fall grain harvest. Guided by an unerring internal guidance system, gigantic flocks of Canada, blue, snow, and speckled geese joyously honk and cackle as they arrive at their wintering grounds on the Eastern Shore. Growing up on a farm on the Wye River in the 1970s, it was not uncommon to see 10,000 geese land on the river in a single

On the horizon, a light appears, glowing and neon. Something about the quality of the light makes it seem unnatural and foreign. What appears is not a headlight, not a flashlight, not a plane, not a lighthouse. The light dances about. It races forward at an incredible speed. It flickers off and disappears. This seems like a scene from the 1977 Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it is also a real event that took place in the summer of 1952 in Wicomic

There’s not a millennial that steamrolls the underachieving, parent’s-basement-dwelling stereotype like Easton helicopter pilot Chloe Tong. While earning a helicopter pilot’s license by 26 might have sufficed for mere mortals, Tong’s energy and passion also sees her serving as the executive director and head coach of Eastern Shore Community Rowers and moonlighting as president of the board and company member at Continuum Dance. Tong, straightforward and outspoken, seems nonpl

In the mid-2000s Phil Liske of Preston sought to diversify his personal business portfolio. He had a successful hay-hauling company, and his wife, Vickie, was a hairdresser. But Phil wanted something sustainable that would fulfill his lifelong dream of owning a farm like the one his grandparents owned in Connecticut when he was a boy. His entire adult life, Liske held onto memories of the old farm: long-running stone fences, bubbling streams that tripped over rocks, and lives

There is a slice of paradise in downtown Easton if you know where to look. The Talbot Historical Society gardens, off Washington Street and Glenwood Avenue, are award-winning and spectacularly gorgeous. They make for a tranquil place for an outdoor lunch, a haven for plein-air painters, and a scenic backdrop for weddings and special events. The one-acre gardens were created and are maintained through a partnership between the historical society and the Talbot County Garden Cl

Much how a dog provides a great reason to go for a walk, a fly rod gives you the world’s best excuse to get out on the water and a new way to enjoy the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. I don’t like to use the word ‘expert’ to describe myself because there’s always someone that knows more than you. Fishing guides are experts. Biologists are experts. I’m just a writer. But I know the Eastern Shore. Even though I wasn’t born here, it’s home. And even though I no longer live here, i

Lesley Giles is a painter with a fondness for color and lines. She’s exhibited all over the world and is currently based in Cambridge. She’s originally from London and describes a bit of the reaction her colorful paintings received there: “Bit bright, isn’t it?” “You’re not really English, are you?” She recalls such statements in good humor and absolutely no apology for the type of art she enjoys creating. She says her paintings are post-cubism and landscape pop-art. “I love

Mary Lou Bartram mounted her horse and eyed the path in front of her: 80 yards, with three wooden structures each dangling one key-ring sized trophy. She let her horse know it was time. They were a team on this one. The horse had to run steady, and she had to keep her eyes on the rings. Bartram leaned forward as the horse galloped down the track. Tucked under her arm was a stick about nine feet long, with a pointed tip. She needed to spear all three rings in one go. Sometimes

The first thing I heard from a customer after walking into Caldwell Shoe Repair Service at 15 West Street in Easton was, “The art of shoe repair is a lost art.” Since 1935, Caldwell Shoe Repair has been repairing everything from high heels to wingtips, and from purses to horse saddles. The shop was founded in 1935 by Charles Caldwell after he went to school for shoe repair in Bordentown, NJ. He operated the shop with his brother Stanley until their deaths in the late 1990s. T

Larry Hindman, owner of Yellowdog Retrievers, talks about raising pups and a love for the Shore’s beloved breed Labrador retrievers (black, chocolate, or yellow) are the most popular dog in both the United States and United Kingdom. Originating in Newfoundland in the 1700s, they were first known as a “St. John’s” or “lesser Newfoundland” dogs and are widely used for retrieving upland game birds and waterfowl, serving as guide dogs, and even saving lives as explosives detectio

It is dusk and the clock on the courthouse has just chimed 8 p.m. as we begin our Chesapeake Ghost Walk down High Street in Cambridge, leaving the shopping district and heading to Long Wharf on the Choptank River. The walk includes 18 properties along High Street, touted as the most haunted street in Maryland. According to our tour guide and the owner of Chesapeake Ghost Walks, Mindie Burgoyne, soldiers, governors, jilted women, oystermen, an eccentric cat lady, a dying daugh

A bishop and a rabbi walk into a restaurant. This may sound like the opening of a joke you have heard, but it is the reality of friendship for two local men. One plays the marimba, drums, and the piano; the other is a former symphony orchestra executive and producer/host of an NPR syndicated classical music show. In the end, however, it was their intellectual curiosity and search for knowledge that 10 years ago formed the friendship between Anglican Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson

Will White, 28, is the social one, chatting it up or telling stories with clients aboard his Easton-based, Tilghman-bred Kinnamon, Shore Feels Right. Will is the one who will remember the expression of the toothless seven-year-old from Baltimore who caught a fish, before he will remember the fish. While Will entertains, one of his brothers, Adam, 22, or Matt, 25, pilots. Owning a fishing charter seems like a dream, but with earthly rewards of an honest living and cooler full

Derek Wilson of Easton and Nick Hargrove of Wittman became lifelong friends as children, but fate brought the two together as business partners as adults, working together as watermen on the Chesapeake Bay. The owners of Wild Divers Oyster Company of Wittman became friends while playing Little League baseball in the Bay Hundred area. Years later, the two became partners in diving for oysters in the winter and crabbing in area creeks and rivers in the summer–taking part in a t

Quiet, soft-spoken Richard Scofield has worked for 33 years to restore some of the world’s most iconic boats. He has the history of being the longest tenured staff member ever at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, a distinction that would make him an institution in itself, but Scofield is too modest a man for such a label. His retirement earlier this year is the passing of a torch of knowledge, the type of knowledge you can’t learn from a book. It is a torch he has passed ma

It’s hard to find a quiet spot almost no one knows of these days. With social media and communication technology, those spots we thought we’d been lucky enough to discover, we quickly find have been common knowledge to everyone but us. And maybe that’s what we’ll find here. These hidden gems throughout the Mid-Shore are, for all intents and purposes, right under your very nose. And maybe we’ve shot ourselves in the foot by divulging these secret-to-us locations. Nevertheless,

The Chesapeake Bay is in recovery. In 2016, the Bay earned a grade of C- on the “State of the Bay” report — a positive sign that recovery efforts are working, according to environmentalists across the board. This is the first time the Bay has received a grade of C- since the first “State of the Bay” report was issued 20 years ago. According to Alan Girard, Eastern Shore director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, who oversees the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s presence on the Eas