Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Cambridge
The Dorchester & Delaware Railroad laid a line connecting Cambridge to Seaford in 1869. The D&D went bankrupt in 1883, and the Pennsylvania Railroad gained control of the peninsular railroad system in 1891, renaming it the Cambridge & Seaford.
The railroad provided easy market access for Dorchester County’s seafood and farm produce. Due in part to that, Cambridge saw rapid population, industrial, and commercial growth in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
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It’s report card time again, and I find myself smiling when I think about how this tradition has evolved over the years. In most elementary schools, report cards are handed out quarterly, marking the rhythm of the school year. They’ve changed so much since I first began teaching. Instead of the familiar A’s, B’s, and C’s, today’s report cards focus on standards-based feedback. Teachers use codes to communicate how children are progressing on specific skills, academic areas, and learning behaviors. I’ve come to really appreciate this newer, gentler approach, it gives parents and caregivers a deeper look at how their children learn, not just what they know. It helps everyone see the whole child: their strengths, their challenges, and the progress they’re making along the way.
As a grandmother, this time of year feels extra special to me. Both of my elementary aged granddaughters received their report cards last week, and I was curious to hear how they’re doing. Of course, I already know they’re excelling. They both have such bright minds and kind hearts, a combination that makes for wonderful learners. They’re naturally curious and motivated, always asking questions, always wanting to understand why and how.
I suppose I’m not entirely objective; after all, I had the joy of teaching both girls in preschool and kindergarten. I saw their spark from the very beginning, the eagerness in their eyes when we read a new story, their delight in discovery during science explorations, and their care for others during playtime. Teaching them was one of the greatest privileges of my career and one of the sweetest chapters in my life. Now, watching them grow from those curious kindergartners into confident students fills me with pride and gratitude. Their report cards may list skills and standards, but what shines through most clearly is their love of learning, and that, to me, is the truest measure of success.
I was absolutely delighted to see how much both of my granddaughters enjoy reading. There’s something so heartwarming about children who truly love books, especially in this digital age. Winnie, my third grader, actually asked for books for Christmas this year, quite an achievement considering how much she also loves her tablet! I couldn’t help but smile at that request. It’s a reminder that, no matter how many new technologies come along, there’s still something magical about holding a real book in your hands and getting lost in a story.
This school year has placed a big emphasis on maintaining a strong home routine as well as consistency at school. I find that balance so important; children thrive when there’s rhythm and predictability in their days. It’s been a joy to watch my daughter, Cece, incorporate many of the same routines from her own childhood into her family life. I take it as a wonderful compliment that she values those traditions enough to pass them along to her children.
One of my favorites is the candlelit family dinner with cloth napkins. Even little Homer, who is almost five, is emphatic about the candles being an important part of that special time each evening. There’s something about dimming the lights, lighting a candle, and gathering together that invites calm and connection after a busy day. It’s not about perfection, it’s about presence.
Another tradition that has carried forward is sharing gratitude each day as a part of the dinner conversation. Everyone has transitioned from the hustle and bustle of school activities to the peace of being home and is ready to share parts of their day. Whether it’s for a person, a moment, or something simple like a favorite treat at lunch, taking a moment to express appreciation brings so much peace and perspective.
Winnie took her turn in telling about an occurrence in the cafeteria the other day. As a wonderfully dramatic little girl, Winnie, using her hands, demonstrated a Daddy Long Legs climbing down from his web onto her head. She then went on to show the fear of her fellow classmates as she gingerly moved the spider from her hair to a safer spot outside. Winnie knows the benefits of a Daddy Long legs in pest control this time of year with fruit flies, she also loves them and knows that they are harmless.
It warms my heart to know that my grandchildren are growing up surrounded by this rhythm of gratitude, love, and family connection, values that will serve them well all their lives.
Kate Emery General is a retired chef/restaurant owner who was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Kate loves her grandchildren, knitting, and watercolor painting. Kate and her husband, Matt are longtime residents of Cambridge’s West End where they enjoy swimming and bicycling.
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Dennis Herrmann developed a life-long interest in astronomy at an early age and got his first telescope at the age of 12. Through his 43 years of teaching at Kent County High School he taught Astronomy and Earth/Space Science and coached track and field and cross country. He led and participated in numerous workshops on astronomy at the Air and Space Museum (DC), the Maryland Science Center, and the Mid-Atlantic Planetarium Society. He loves sharing and explaining the night sky to increase understanding and enjoyment of it to folks of all ages.
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High Street is known as the most haunted street on the Eastern Shore, possibly even in all of Maryland. Fourteen buildings there have haunted stories, legends, and folklore attached to them. Some of the stories date back to the 1700s while others are as recent as present day.
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My formative years unfolded during a time of great social unrest in our country. The world was changing, loudly, messily, and all at once. Protests filled the news, songs carried messages of defiance, and questions about fairness and equality seemed to hum in the air like static. Inside our home, my parents were quietly living out their own version of that social revolution. They believed in equality, not just in theory, but in the daily workings of our family life.
My mother, especially, stood apart from most women I knew. She managed her own finances, investing in the stock market, paying all of our household bills, and keeping credit cards, a checking account, and a car in her own name. That independence wasn’t a rebellion for her, it was simply the way she lived. My father respected her completely, and their marriage was a partnership, one I took for granted as normal until I grew older and saw how unusual it was in that era.
Our dinner table was the center of our home, a place of conversation, debate, and discovery. Topics ranged from local news, like sheep ranchers shooting bald eagles to protect their flocks, to larger issues like the civil rights movement and the growing demand for women’s equality. My parents encouraged us to think, to form our own opinions, and to defend them with reason. Books were woven into these conversations, their themes often spilling over into the real world around us.
It was during one of those years that I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. The book still grips me in a way few others had. Tess was a character unlike any I had encountered, innocent yet strong, victimized yet resilient. Her world was mercilessly unfair, and Hardy’s sympathy for her, his insistence on her purity of spirit despite society’s condemnation, stirred something in me.
When I wrote my paper on the novel for my English class, I argued that Thomas Hardy was an early feminist. I believed he saw Tess not as a cautionary figure, but as a mirror reflecting the cruelty of a world built on male privilege and rigid moral codes. Hardy’s condemnation of the double standards of Victorian England; where a man’s sins were forgivable but a woman’s were ruinous, felt both historic and hauntingly current. I saw echoes of those same double standards in the world around me, where women were still fighting to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be allowed control over their own lives.
Tess’s suffering made me think about my mother. Though their circumstances were worlds and generations apart, both lived in societies that placed invisible boundaries around women. My mother had quietly pushed against those walls, making her own way, refusing to ask permission. She might not have called herself a feminist, but her actions spoke for her. Reading Hardy’s novel gave me a language for what I had witnessed growing up, it named the struggle, the injustice, and the quiet courage it took to live with integrity in a world that didn’t always allow it.
I remember the ending of the novel vividly, Tess’s tragic acceptance of her fate, her calm resignation in the face of inevitable punishment. I was devastated, angry even. It seemed unbearably unfair that such a pure-hearted character should be crushed by a society so blind and hypocritical. Yet, in that anger, something awakened in me: the realization that literature could illuminate truths that polite conversation often avoided. Books could challenge the world.
That idea, born somewhere between my mother’s quiet strength and Hardy’s fierce compassion, stayed with me. It shaped the way I approached life, teaching, and even the way I raised my own children. I came to see that empathy, once awakened, is a kind of moral compass. And it often begins with stories, stories like Tess’s, that make us see injustice not as an abstract concept but as a fault in the human spirit.
Looking back, I can trace so much of my understanding of equality, dignity, and resilience to those early years, the dinner table debates, the newspaper headlines, and the paperback copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles that I read, notes written in the margins, until the spine cracked. I learned that ideas have power, but compassion has endurance. Hardy taught me that literature can stir the conscience. My mother showed me that courage can be quiet. Together, they formed the foundation of who I have become.
Kate Emery General is a retired chef/restaurant owner who was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Kate loves her grandchildren, knitting, and watercolor painting. Kate and her husband, Matt are longtime residents of Cambridge’s West End where they enjoy swimming and bicycling.
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Constructed in the last quarter of the 19th century, 1000 Locust Street was one of Locust’s earliest houses, an ornate Queen Anne-style residence that originally had a lumberyard in back. Most of the “gingerbread” details have long since been removed.
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Years ago, when we owned General Tanuki’s Restaurant, the health inspector, Margaret, stopped by for one of her routine visits. It was a raw, icy winter day, the kind when the cold rain seeps into your bones and the sidewalks glisten with a deceptively evil, slippery, shine. I remember greeting her at the door and grumbling about the miserable weather as she entered, her coat dripping, her clipboard tucked safely beneath her arm.
We had a wonderful rapport with Margaret; she was thorough, fair, and kind, a rare combination in her line of work. I tried to make light of the dreariness, muttering something about how days like this made me wish I’d stayed home by the fire. She smiled warmly, brushing the ice from her sleeves, and said, “You know, after surviving breast cancer, I don’t take a single day, or its weather, for granted.”
Her words stunned me. The hum of the kitchen, the clatter of dishes, even the hiss of the fryer seemed to fade for a moment. Here I was, fussing about the rain, while she had stared down something infinitely more daunting, and come out the other side with gratitude rather than complaint.
I never forgot that moment. Years later, karma had its quiet way of reminding me of her wisdom. After more than fifty days as a care partner to my husband during his stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital, I found myself needing time outside every single day, rain or shine, for my own sanity. The weather no longer felt like something to endure, but something to embrace, each drop of rain or ray of light a small reminder that I was still standing, still breathing, still grateful.
A study written by the Oncology Nursing Society has shown that Americans typically spend 90% of their time indoors. During the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, many sought relief in the safety of the outdoors. Green spaces became a popular space for leisure, with a 291% increase in use during the shelter in place order. The study went on to state the mental health benefits of spending time outdoors, but most of us have reverted to the pre-pandemic lifestyle, more time inside and more stress.
Now that I’m home, I find myself outside as much as possible. The air is cooler now, perfect for long walks with my dog, the kind that quiet the mind and loosen what’s been held too tightly. It feels strange to realize that I completely missed most of August and September, as if those weeks were swallowed by hospital corridors and worry. There’s a gap in my memory, a stretch of time that exists only in fragments, the onslaught of doctors and technicians tapping on the door at all hours of the day or night, fluorescent lights, hushed voices, and the constant beeping of machines. The days and nights blurred into one long stretch of worry and waiting. Being outdoors again, I’m slowly remembering how to breathe in full sentences.
Kate Emery General is a retired chef/restaurant owner who was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Kate loves her grandchildren, knitting, and watercolor painting. Kate and her husband, Matt are longtime residents of Cambridge’s West End where they enjoy swimming and bicycling.
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Dollar General Store on Race Street in the 1970s.
The Maryland Historical Trust, which reviewed the buildings and houses of Cambridge in the 1970s, called the “large gaudy” Dollar General Store signs on the Phillips Hardware Company Building at the corner of Race and Muir Streets “unattractive” and “inappropriate to the building” and said they “detract[ed] from its appearance.” The structure, designed by J. Benjamin Brown, is significant as an example of early 20th century architecture.
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In the 1980s, when I was raising my children, landline phones were our lifeline. My yellow rotary phone hung on the wall in the kitchen, its long, coiled cord stretched across the room while we talked. There were no text messages or FaceTime calls then, just the familiar hum of a dial tone and the comfort of a voice on the other end.
Most evenings, after my babies were tucked into bed and the house finally grew quiet, I would call my mom. At that time, I was living first in California and later in Hawaii, while she was all the way in Wyoming. The distance between us felt enormous, but somehow, the phone made it smaller.
We would talk for over an hour, about the children, our family, her friends, my friends, the weather, what I was cooking, and how her garden was doing. It wasn’t the big news that mattered most, but the sound of her steady, loving voice. After I called her, she always said the same thing: “Hang up, I’ll call you right back.” She insisted on paying for the long-distance call, never wanting me to worry about the cost.
I always kept a notebook next to the phone, part reminder pad, part sketchbook. While we talked, I would jot down to-do lists, calendar reminders, or phone numbers, then fill the margins with little doodles and swirls. Those pages became a quiet record of our nightly conversations, my drawings looping across the paper as her words filled the room.
While exploring and expanding my painting and knitting skills this fall, I found an article about the therapeutic value of doodling. Research has shown that engaging in creative activities can activate the brain’s reward center, releasing dopamine, the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitter.
One of the most beautiful aspects of doodling is its ability to transform chaos into creation. Doodling taps into the part of the brain that fosters self reflection and introspection, which can be profoundly healing. In a world that often demands swift solutions and immediate results, the power of doodling offers a different perspective.
At the end of our lengthy talks, my mom would often laugh softly and say, “Well, we’ve solved the world’s problems, so the only thing left to say is, I love you.” And that’s how every conversation ended, with love that reached across the miles, carried by a simple landline phone, a tablet full of doodles, and a mother’s voice that I can still hear in my heart.
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
