Now that Jesse Turner is moving on at the age of 86, thousands of people in the area will no doubt will be wondering, “Now what will we do?” Turner, who’s owned the Berlin Shoe Box for decades and seems to have worked there since the beginning of time, is one of those people out-of-towners… Read more »

If local governments and community associations were marching bands, they would be moving to the beat of conundrums. A bad pun that may be, but it is a good way to describe how small government operations find themselves in an endless struggle to keep assessments at a politically acceptable level, while also ensuring that services… Read more »

A take it or leave it approach usually results in no one walking away truly satisfied, and this could end up being the case with Saturday’s decision by the Ocean Pines Board of Directors to proceed with installing a pirate ship playground at the yacht club. Like many things these days, discussion focused on pitting… Read more »

The infuriatingly wrong thing about the slogan “Make America Great Again” is that it declares that the United States has become an also-ran in the global lineup. It also begs the question, if America is no longer great, who among the other nations has moved into that top spot? Some would argue that the country’s… Read more »

The last thing anyone would have expected 49 years ago, when Ocean Pines came into existence, was that the community would find itself with a heroin problem. But that’s what’s happening, according to Police Chief Dave Massey, who said that this, one of the safest population centers in the state, saw 70 overdose cases in… Read more »

The year 2016 was a mess: rough weather, flooding, bomb threats, lawsuits, ugly politics, the loss of good citizens, and business that was OK, but not so wonderful that it overshadowed the year’s difficulties. It was, in many respects, like the year before and the year before that. With the arrival of each new year,… Read more »

Peace on earth and good will toward … Oh, right, that’s out the window these days. How about this then: peace on my patch of the earth and good will toward people who agree with me. For reasons sociologists will spend lifetimes trying to sort out, political and religious differences are no longer just sensitive… Read more »

Charities in this area — and there are plenty of them — get frequent publicity, because it’s necessary to remind the public that all these institutions and organizations can only do their good works if residents do their share as well. As dedicated as the volunteers and leadership of these groups might be, their efforts… Read more »

If nothing else, the Ocean Pines Board of Directors’ consideration of a fiber optics infrastructure project that would involve Director Brett Hill’s company is awkward. No matter how much the Ocean Pines Association and others might want blazing-fast Internet connectivity, no matter how much it might cost Hill’s company, FTS Fiber, to do the job,… Read more »

Even though the historical purpose of Thanksgiving is to acknowledge our good fortune, that has become secondary to many of us, as our comfortable circumstances allow us to look on the holiday as less of a day of thanks and more of a time to eat as much as we can possibly hold. If that… Read more »