A 1957 Corvette recognized as one of the very best C1 Corvettes in the United States will be a highlight of the 6th Annual Chesapeake Bay Motoring Festival taking place this June 4 & 5 at the Kent Island Yacht Club. The award-winning Corvette is owned by William Lightfoot of Vienna, Va., and recently earned high points as a National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) Top Flight award winner.

Other classics on display will include a 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo, a 1983 Ferrari, and a porcelain white 1971 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Luxury Saloon that was first owned by popular American singer and entertainer Perry Como and his wife Roselle.

Not-to-miss on the water will be an 80’ USNA Yard Patrol vessel that has been converted to a yacht, and the U.S. Army Air Force P-520 World War II and Korean War Crash boat that once helped rescue pilots in the Pacific and Korea. A 1947 and 1963 Chris Craft are also registered, among other classics.

Advanced ticket holders can enjoy all the amenities of the Kent Island Yacht Club throughout the weekend, including an outdoor pool. Limited, free day-docking is available for small boats wishing to bring guests by water.

On Saturday, June 4, the event’s traditional Cars and Coffee event begin at 8:00 a.m. for entrants and ticket holders, and at 9:30 a.m. pre-registered motoring entrants depart by police escort in a motoring tour to several historic colonial sites, culminating in a private gourmet lunch.

On Sunday during the 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Car & Boat Show, food and libations from the Kent Island Yacht Club will be available for purchase, along with live music, market tents, and a unique awards ceremony—including a People’s Choice Award—wrapping up the day’s festivities.

Singer-songwriter Jayme D. will be performing from the Kent Island Yacht Club’s waterfront Tiki Bar from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. People’s Choice ballots will be due before the 1:30 p.m. awards ceremony, when automobile and boat registrants receive champagne prizes for the festival’s other cheeky awards, with winners deemed in categories like “best car to take your momma to church,” or “car most inclined to stop for gas,” for example.

The Chesapeake Bay Motoring Festival is presented by the St. Michaels Concours d’Elegance and sponsored by Bentley, the Antique & Classic Boat Society, and the Classic Yacht Club of America. Children under 12 get in free with an adult ticket, with online early-bird discounted tickets available through May 24 only and more at www.chesapeakebaymotoringfestival.org.

University of Maryland Shore Regional Health celebrated April as National Donate Life Month, honoring organ donors and bringing awareness to saving or enhancing lives through organ, eye and tissue donation. On April 22, UM SRH team members wore blue and green in honor of National Donate Life Blue and Green Day, which encourages the sharing of the Donate Life message and promotes the importance of registering as an organ, eye and tissue donor.
“Thanks to the generosity of donors and their families, and the dedication of health care and transplant professionals, many lives were saved through donation and transplantation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Chris Wright, Hospital Services Coordinator for The Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland and UM Shore Regional Health. “Those families who have experienced organ donation from the giving side are comforted in knowing that, even in death, their loved one is helping others.”
Created by Donate Life America in 2003, Donate Life Month is observed annually to honor organ donors and their families’ choice to save lives. In 2021, more than 41,000 lives were saved in the United States through organ donation, and of these, more than 34,000 were saved thanks to deceased donors.
The Donor Council of UM Shore Regional Health and The Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland regularly educate the community about organ donation through information sessions about the donation process as well as awareness tables on our hospital campuses.
About 95 percent of adults in the U.S. support organ donation, but only slightly more than 50 percent are registered donors. Educating hospital staff about the process supports organ donation registration by enabling them to educate the public and encourage discussion among family members about options for their end-of-life wishes. Maryland registered more than 220,000 new organ donors in 2021.
To register as an organ donor, visit the Maryland Vehicle Administration while obtaining or renewing a driver’s license or state ID, or visit The Living Legacy Foundation of Maryland online at www.thellf.org .

CENTREVILLE —Grief reactions are often intricate and complex. When you add that your loved one died from an overdose, accidental or not, or death by suicide, it complicates matters. There are myriad emotions that occur when someone dies, but when the death is from an overdose or suicide, the most difficult ones rise to the surface. If you have experienced the death of a loved one from an overdose or substance abuse or suicide your reactions may be unlike anything you have ever experienced. Your feelings and reactions are common in what feels like an abnormal situation or uncharted waters.
If you have experienced these or continue to experience these, please know that the intensity and duration changes over time. Often, understanding the grief process can help you navigate these unchartered waters. We would like to invite you to join us for a Grief 101 Workshop, that focuses on the unique grief that surrounds the death of someone who has passed due to a substance overdose or suicide. Compass is offering two opportunities to participate:
Location: Kent County Community Center
Address: 11041 Worton Rd.
Date: Tuesday, May 24th
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Register by May 20th

Location: The Barnett Center (Compass)
Address: 255 Comet Drive, Centreville, Md 21623
Date: Thursday, June 2nd
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Register by May 27th

For more information or to register please reach to Rhonda Knotts at rknotts@compassregionalhospice.org or 443.262.4120.

Compass
Since 1985, Compass has been allowing patients to spend their final months the way they choose, guiding loved ones after a life-limiting diagnosis, and showing individuals healthy ways to manage their grief. Today, the organization is a regional provider of hospice care, supportive care, and grief services in Caroline, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties. Whether serving their patients in private residences, skilled nursing facilities, or Compass’ residential center in Centreville, staff and volunteers are guided by their mission to ensure that individuals facing end of life can live out their days in a full and meaningful way.
Compass is a fully licensed, independent, community-based nonprofit organization certified by Medicare and the state of Maryland and accredited by the Joint Commission. It is affiliated with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and the Hospice & Palliative Care Network of Maryland.
Are you interested in setting up a planned gift? Leave a legacy of caring by making a planned gift to Compass. This could in remembering Compass in your will, naming them as a beneficiary in a life insurance policy, charitable gift annuities, and more. To learn more about planned giving opportunities to Compass, please contact Kenda Leager at kleager@compassregionalhospice.org or 443-262-4106. For more information about Compass, call 443-262-4100 or visit compassregionalhospice.org.

The St. Michaels Community Center is kicking off the first capital campaign in its 32-year history to renew, rebuild, and revitalize its aged building in the Town’s Historic District.

The St. Michaels Community Center purchased its Railroad Avenue headquarters in 2015. The structure was constructed before World War II as a lumber storage warehouse. It’s had only minimal changes and upgrades since then. The nonprofit has made do with its crudely constructed interior, no windows, no heat or air conditioning in most of the building, and without handicapped accessibility, among other issues.

“Our building’s primary asset is its location in the commercial district near the people we serve,” said St. Michaels Community Center Executive Director Patrick Rofe. “This long-awaited adaptive renovation will make the St. Michaels Community Center the only fully-equipped resource center for social services on the Bay Hundred peninsula.”

The planned renovations will include a fully equipped modern commercial kitchen to expand food distribution and meal service to those in need, and training for jobs in restaurants and hotels. Bright, well-equipped classrooms and a multipurpose room for community gatherings are included in the plans, with the Community Center anticipating double the number of people making use of the Center compared to today’s participation levels, once the new building is fully operational.

“This will give us a place to do our best work and have the greatest impact on the lives of the children and adults we serve,” said SMCC Advisory Board President Langley Shook.

Shook says more than half of the necessary funding already has been raised, including $1.225 million from the State of Maryland.

“The State’s support is a great vote of confidence for our first-ever capital campaign and an investment in securing a sustainable future for the Community Center’s essential work,” said Shook. “We serve at the heart of this community, and these improvements will give us a much better platform from which to serve our community.”

“This funding will help us to have the improved facilities needed to support our food distribution program and a new culinary arts workforce training program, for example,” said Rofe. “This will benefit our participants and local restaurants in need of well-trained employees.

“We’d like to start a Farm-to-Table program that will explore every topic related to nutrition and health, and for growing vegetables and fruits in our 40 community garden plots.”

Rofe says the Town’s Historic District Commission praised and unanimously approved the design of the renovated building, and an application for a building permit has been submitted to the Town.

The nonprofit is now inviting the public to participate in fundraising for the new building, with naming opportunities and more in the works before an anticipated 2022 groundbreaking.

“SMCC’s priority commitment is to the needs of the region’s population who lack the resources to lift themselves from poverty,” said Shook. “We will continue our long-time commitment to the food insecure and will add to that workforce development programming to enable adults’ transition to self-sufficiency.”

Architectural renderings of the new building and more about SMCC’s capital improvements, including information about how to support the campaign, can be found at www.stmichaelscc.org/future.

The St. Michaels Community Center’s mission is to serve, empower, and connect the community, with year-round programs and activities for children, families, and adults. Donations to SMCC and proceeds from its Treasure Cove Thrift Shop on Railroad Ave. in St. Michaels help the nonprofit provide year-round programs, services, and community events for residents of St. Michaels and the Bay Hundred area.

Like enormous 3-D drawings, vines sweep and spiral, bend and corkscrew around the trees in Howard and Mary McCoy’s outdoor sculpture exhibit, Re-Vision, at Adkins Arboretum. Interspersed with Mary’s poems directly inspired by the Adkins landscape, they are on view through Sept. 30. On Sat., June 4, from 2 to 4 p.m., there will be a reception for the McCoys’ outdoor show and Chinese painter and calligrapher Kit-Keung Kan’s exhibit in the Visitor’s Center, including a guided sculpture and poetry walk.

Grapevines swirl up from the forest floor in “Reconfigure,” and pale bittersweet vines twirl in wide arcs around a tree trunk in a tall sculpture called “Reorganize.” Nearby, a poem called “Not for the Faint of Heart” is wrapped around the prickly trunk of a devil’s walking stick plant.

These two Centreville artists have served as Resident Artists at the Arboretum for more than two decades, helping with the art program and periodically exhibiting their own work. This is their twelfth show of site-specific sculpture and the first to include several of Mary’s poems.

A map showing the location of the sculptures is available in the Visitor’s Center, and each sculpture is marked with a bright blue sign on the ground. To find the poems, however, you must keep an eye out for the same blue—perhaps on a tree, a signpost or even the railing of one of the wooden bridges that cross the Arboretum’s stream.

“I want the poems to be surprises that you come upon unexpectedly,” said Mary, who is a 2022 recipient of a Regional Individual Artist’s Award in Literary Arts from the Maryland State Arts Council. “For me, they were gifts from the landscape itself—feelings and ideas that came to me while I was walking through the forest or just sitting quietly on a log.”

The McCoys also walked the forest paths together, keeping an eye out for vines growing up into the treetops.

“Vines are like three-dimensional drawings,” Howard explained. “We both used to like to draw and paint a lot. It’s sort of like the paintings of Jackson Pollock or some of the other Abstract Expressionist painters—gesture painting. It has art historical context, and it’s sometimes hysterical what it ends up doing.”

The two artists chose to call their show Re-Vision not only because their work offers new ways of seeing nature, but also because they have “revised” the way the vines were growing and because both the vine sculptures and Mary’s poems were created by experimenting with trying one thing, then another, revising each work until it finally felt lively, balanced and whole.

As to why they cut vines out of the trees, Howard said, “We’ve talked about it with a couple visitors who came by while we were working—the importance of clearing vines off the trees so that you save the tree from the choking vines, and at the same time, you’re making sculpture, making art.”

“They are wonderful materials,” Mary said. “But you have to follow what they dictate. You want it to curve one direction, but because of the way it grew with an elbow or some tight curvature, it’ll want to go the exact opposite. So it’s a real collaboration with nature. We feel like the idea of collaboration is important not only when we’re making art in nature but in the larger context, that if we all were more interested in collaborating with nature instead of dominating it, we might be better off.”

Re-Vision is part of Adkins Arboretum’s ongoing exhibition series of work on natural themes by regional artists. It is on view through Sept. 30 at the Arboretum, located at 12610 Eveland Road near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. Contact the Arboretum at 410–634–2847, ext. 0 or info@adkinsarboretum.org for more information.