It’s the thing I have never understood about the men and boys who go out to pretty places to fish. Some of them leave their trash along the river banks and trails — piles of beer bottles and fast-food packaging, empty bait containers and discarded fishing line. It happens on trout streams, but you also … Continue reading The one thing about fishing I’ll never understand
Followup: Yes, some people are giving up lawns to combat climate change
I received a great deal of response to my recent column on suburban America’s obsession with big lawns and the need to plant more trees as an answer to the climate crisis. Aside from a few readers who complained that having more trees means more leaves to rake in the fall, the responses ranged from … Continue reading Followup: Yes, some people are giving up lawns to combat climate change
Electric ferries need to be considered for the Chesapeake Bay
To some people, a ferry crossing sounds like a quaint throwback to an earlier time, before Maryland built the first bridge across the Chesapeake Bay in the 1950s. A second span went up in the 1970s, and now the Governor of Maryland, a road-warrior Republican, has the state's transportation department studying when and where to … Continue reading Electric ferries need to be considered for the Chesapeake Bay
A little story about a fairly big rock
If trout had a 'spirit-home,' it might be the spot behind this rock in the Youghiogheny River in western Maryland. I am quite familiar with it. Among fly anglers who fish this section of the river, it's practically a tourist attraction. No matter the level of the river, nor the season, there always seem to … Continue reading A little story about a fairly big rock
Why they call it Smalltimore
It took me most of an hour to buy two bunches of flowers at the Baltimore Farmers’ Market on Sunday, and not because the line was long but because I kept bumping into people I know and like. Before you think otherwise, I’m not complaining. This is how life in Baltimore is supposed to be. … Continue reading Why they call it Smalltimore
Make this Italian summer vegetable stew with two spellings and multiple pronunciations
If you want to make use of all that zucchini and all those tomatoes showing up in the farmer’s markets right now -- and get a delicious and meatless meal -- try making what my mother, the late Rose Popolo Rodricks, used to make: Giambotta. She pronounced it, “Jumbottella,” but the Italian spellings are either … Continue reading Make this Italian summer vegetable stew with two spellings and multiple pronunciations
Casting into the bubble line
You see that? That’s what we call the bubble line, those little specks of white that float on the surface downstream of a riffle. It’s where we look for feeding trout in Father’s Day Creek, and just about everywhere else. Sometimes you’re casting to flat water, a place in the river that looks almost still, … Continue reading Casting into the bubble line
A year since Bryan McKemy’s senseless death; his parents among many in the long wake of Baltimore’s gun violence
Today marks a year since the gun insanity in Baltimore reached the McKemy family. Scott and Angie McKemy received the shocking news about the death of their 27-year-old son, Bryan, in the early afternoon of Aug. 7, 2018. Bryan was employed by a home-improvement contractor, and he was working on the rear of a house … Continue reading A year since Bryan McKemy’s senseless death; his parents among many in the long wake of Baltimore’s gun violence
Trump and the Nightingale’s song
Presidents have lied to us before -- Democrats and Republicans about the war in Vietnam, a Republican about the war in Iraq, a Democrat about sex with a White House intern -- but none ever looked so shallow, so hollow, so unmasked as a fraud as Donald Trump on Monday, Aug. 5, 2019 in his … Continue reading Trump and the Nightingale’s song
When you can no longer compartmentalize climate change
In my recent Baltimore Sun column about Wolf Den Run State Park in western Maryland, I held back personal feelings about the state’s nascent plan for the place. The column represented the Sun’s first story of any kind about the new park, and it required a lot of reporting; facts took up most of my … Continue reading When you can no longer compartmentalize climate change
Dan Rodricks 