If you haven’t discovered the Sultana Education Foundation’s Lawrence Wetlands Preserve by now, plans are underway for a public reopening by Downrigging weekend in October. 

A five-minute walk from the Foundation’s Holt Education Center on Cross St., the 8.5-acre preserve opens to a parallel universe of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems surrounded by 400 newly planted trees, new topographic excavation, paths, and flower-blooming fields. It’s hard to believe this complex ecosystem is so close to town, veiled only by a wall of phragmites along the bike trail.

Just days ago, construction began for the long-planned Nature Center, a key component to the foundation’s mission to offer “educational opportunities that promotes stewardship of the Chesapeake Bay’s historic, cultural and environmental resources” that will serve as a base of operations for Sultana’s outdoor classes.

“The whole reason that we got involved with the property was to turn it into a land-based teaching center, which is the one thing we have never had. We have Sultana, which gets kids out on the big parts of the Bay. We have canoes and kayaks to get kids out on some of the smaller waters, but we’ve never had a land-based part of our campus,” says Vice President of SEF and former Chestertown Mayor Chris Cerino.

Cerino says that SEF programs have now returned to pre-pandemic levels as they serve school kids from Dorchester County to Kent. 300 students are scheduled for Sultana events this summer alone, from canoe camp and five-day kayaking to Sultana Camp and five-day Sultana trips.

In fact, the programs have become so popular that for this season, all reservations have been filled, with waiting lists for most of them. Cerino recommends that people check out 2024 programs when they are released in December. 

While Cerino continues to manage much of Sultana Foundation’s year-around activities, the town recently reached out to him to help with the decades-long dream to build a river walk from the end of High St. to Radcliffe Creek, including along the College Environmental Center, and circle back to town. A waterfront committee will be formed, and Cerino wants to make it an inclusive endeavor by holding a charrette with the community and developing a list of suggestions to present to the town council.

“It’s one of those projects that you just need to grab like a pit bull with a steak in its mouth, and it’s going to be a multiple-year project. It’s not going to be cheap. But I honestly believe that the town, college, and community can get on the same page.” Cerino says.

The Spy caught up with Chris Cerino to update us on the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve, Sultana Programs, and his enlistment once again to help guide Chestertown to complete the long-planned river trail. 

Photos provided by Sultana Education Foundation.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. To find out more about Sultana, go here.

It’s not unusual in our lives to encounter something that that seems outside our daily experience. A distant friend calls the moment you are thinking about them; two people describe the same dream, a sense that a departed love one has re-manifested in your life.

Over the years, Dr. Robert Abel has collected close to 900 stories describing unusual accounts of near-death experiences.

“I found these narratives fascinating and just put them in a drawer to think about. The pandemic allowed me to take refuge in my house in Tolchester and take a closer look at them,” he says.

Abel, a Wilmington ophthalmologist who lectures worldwide on vision and integrative medicine, says that his newly published book, Is Death a Mystery? Personal Stories that Lift the Veil offers narratives without a theological or philosophical bias.

Although he is widely informed by his life-long studies of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Lucretius, and medical research, he would rather leave the stories of near-death experiences as they are—for the reader to decide.

Abel describes a “your whole life flashes before your eyes” incident in his childhood while hiking with friends. As he dared to jump across a potentially fatal crevasse, his life flashed like a compressed cinematic moment. It was a life-altering experience and one that informed his empathy while listening to others.

The vignettes in the book describe a wide range of near-death, out-of-body, and spirit visitations without medical asides. In interviews, however, he is comfortable talking about neuroscience and their approach describing such phenomena as “merely projection” and will braid the discussion with quantum physics and Einstein formulations.

Clearly, many of us sense some indescribable dimension outside the five-senses. Abel has collected snapshots from those who believe they have been there, and all stories are linked by a common thread: healing, compassion, and love.

This video is approximately nine minutes in length. Dr Abel’s book Is Death a Mystery? Personal Stories that Lift the Veil may be found on Amazon.

“Should I start in the 1800s?”

Since I was only writing an article, I explained to Robert “Bobby” Richardson that I would need him to condense it to a more modern time epoch. “You want to know why decoys are valuable? Well then, I’m only going to go back to probably the 1930s and come forward.”

Bobby Richardson who handled many of the famous Ward decoys, Crisfield, MD is seen holding his beloved 1938 Ward Goose

He’s not kidding. The amount of information known by Cambridge native Richardson on the subject of decoys (also known as ‘birds’) is staggering, and your first reaction is that he should write a book. Well, he has, and it’s not just any book. Chesapeake Bay Decoys: The Men Who Made and Used Them, published in 1992, is still considered THE definitive guide for collectors and other enthusiasts. Even buying a used copy commands a hefty price.

Having attended the Waterfowl Festivals throughout the years, I knew decoys (ducks primarily, but also geese and swans) were used as lures to attract ducks. I had even bought a couple to display on my mantle, but I had no idea about the extent of their popularity—or price. Not that this was always the case. Richardson remembers speaking to a curator at an art show a long time ago. “She said, ‘Bobby, are you aware that this is an illegitimate art form? We’re not accepted, but when they understand that decoys are three-dimensional art, then we will be accepted and loved.’ And within the 50 years since, she was absolutely right, it’s an art form that we had missed.”

But what makes it art? According to Richardson, it goes beyond the visual. “Unlike the art on a wall, or a sculpture in a museum, it’s physical; you get to touch it.” Besides that, of course, there is the monetary aspect of their increasing in value.

“I started collecting in 1968,” said Richardson, “which makes me one of the earliest collectors. I remember talking to a guy who had an auction house and how it was unheard of to sell decoys in New York. Now, he told me, 60% of his buyers are from New York City. And that’s where the art world is.”

As Richardson explains it, necessity is what started him in the business. That and a good eye. As a hunter, he said, he would sometimes pick up a lure and think, “that’s a good-looking decoy.” He began accumulating and then selling them at a time when he needed to raise some money. But his expertise almost drove him out of the business he helped create. “I would sell them for $500 or 5,000. But after I sold it, the price would go up, and when I went to replace my inventory, I had to pay more than what I’d sold it for. So, it was a progression that I couldn’t control, because like a beautiful antique, every time it changes hands, it increases the value.”

Despite there being so many birds in the market, Richardson said there are only approximately 5% that can be considered a collectible. And this is where the 1800s come in. Back then, places such as Peterson Decoy or Mason Decoy Factory, or Animal Trap Company were carving, painting, and producing wooden decoys. By the time World War II started, some of these factories that were still in business switched to helping the war effort, manufacturing, for example, gunstocks for the army. After the war, the decoy industry changed, and few decoys were hand made. Instead, machines were churning out lighter-weight plastic decoys.

Suddenly, Richardson said, wooden decoys started to generate interest. “People would pick one up and say, ‘I love it, that’s a green ringed teal.’ Or ‘isn’t that a pretty mallard, or ‘gosh, isn’t that a nice black duck.’ And the rest is history. Everybody started collecting and wanting them like they’d want a good tea table or a good work of art for the wall.”

By the 1970s, decoys were a big business and were viewed as an important form of Americana and folk art. Richardson, who said he’s sold over 10,000 decoys in his career, would agree, recalling how he even received $42,000 for a single sale at an auction. Of course, when coming in contact with as many people as he has throughout his lifetime, Richardson has a vault full of interesting memories of people he’s met. People like Don O’Brien, Nelson Rockefeller’s family lawyer, Walter Chrysler, the founder of Chrysler, and Zalmon Simmons, who founded the Simmons mattress company, to name a few.

He remembers early in his career selling a swan decoy to entrepreneur Kathleen Mulhern owner of the renowned The Garden restaurant in Philadelphia. “She wrote me a check for $25,000, and on my way home, I nearly flipped the car over, looking at that check. I had never had $25,000 in my life.”

But not all exchanges were successful. Richardson recounts one experience at Easton High School, during the Waterfowl Festival, where he and a friend were exhibiting their birds. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, showed up and asked for the price of three decoys. “He was told it would be $300,” said Richardson. “Kissinger replied, ‘So now if I write you this check, are you going to cash it?’ My friend asked ‘why the hell wouldn’t I?’ And Kissinger said, ‘because I’m Henry Kissinger, and you’ll want it as a souvenir.’ ‘I don’t care. I’m going to cash your check,’ he said. Wouldn’t you know it, Kissinger never bought the birds.”

These memories also surprisingly included many of the decoys that have gone through Richardson’s hands “When it’s something you love, you know a lot about it. I get so much fun out of the auction catalogs because I see so many old friends.” And by old friends, he means the birds.

But don’t mistake his love for the collectible as a love for a particular bird. When asked how many decoys he still owns, Richardson, who sold off his collection a few years ago, said he only kept around a dozen. “The sale is basically what I live off of now. The irony of it all is I’m not unhappy that I sold everything because they’re made of wood. And I’m made of flesh and blood, and that’s more important to me.”

So, I wondered, are the ones he kept, the birds he couldn’t bear to part with? “No, no, no, no, no,” he responded. “They’re there because they have no value. If they had any great value, they would be gone. I did this to make a living. I didn’t do it because I was rich, but I love the art form.”

Richardson is now in his early 80s. He and his wife, Nancy, still live in Cambridge, and now that he no longer collects decoy, he’s taken up a new hobby–making folk art crow and owl birds. But he’s also found contentment with creating and painting chess/checker game boards.

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that a Bobby Richardson original would become a collectible in the future.

Val Cavalheri is a recent transplant to the Eastern Shore, having lived in Northern Virginia for the past 20 years. She’s been a writer, editor and professional photographer for various publications, including the Washington Post.