Lifestyle

BERLIN — In 1996, while working at the Middleton Tavern in Annapolis, Greg David decided he wanted to make a distinctive Bloody Mary and began developing a formula that would set his apart. Although it was almost an immediate success, the concoction David was serving was only very good. He wanted it to be excellent. By the time he’d satisfied his goal of a singular Bloody Mary, five years had gone by and people began suggesting he bottle it. Unfortunately, making the drinks was one thing, digging in his heels and doing the grunt work involved in design, trademarking and developing a business plan was a little daunting. Bottling his recipe was one of the last things he was interested in. Instead he was content to get annual recognition for his efforts in various Bloody Mary contests. Within a month of the Globe’s opening, David had won the Best Spicy Bloody Mary award at Seacrets’ annual Bloody Mary event and the Globe was on the map as among the best places to...

WEST OCEAN CITY —  Tom Cavanagh and his band threw in the occasional Johnny Cash song as part of their own original shows for years and their renditions were popular with the crowds because they were spot-on. Eventually they began to discuss doing a tribute show and tour. For his part, Cavanagh already had more than a little experience touring both with original acts as well as having participated in tribute shows. While he endorsed the notion, he let it be known how important it was that the show not be farcical or slap-dash. The group resolved to take the time and make the effort not only to get make sure they were authentic, but also to ensure that the show was worth people’s time. “It’s a Broadway-level show,” Cavanagh said. “The stage is always changing.” The first order of business, then, was to go and get some Carters. The group already had one woman singer and recruited two more to round out the team. The rest of the band, which...

BERLIN — Over the next two months Berlin will begin its transformation into the unofficial wine capitol of the Eastern Shore. It is fitting then that on the occasion of the 2nd Friday Art Stroll, the first of several shops offering upscale wines will have its major coming out party. Robin Tomaselli and her sister Shelly Eppard who own the Baked Dessert Cafe and Gallery on Bay Street had always planned to sell wine and craft beer from their shop. Their original place on North Main Street was too small to accommodate the project, but once they moved to the larger place the shop now occupies, they began planning to do so. The bakery has been developing a clientele interested in purchases beyond desserts. Over the last year-or-so they’ve created a niche selling artisan bread and local cheeses. Regular customers stop in for these items as part of a nice dinner. The centerpiece of a nice dinner is a good bottle of wine, so the transition made complete sense. “This just l...

BERLIN — Although this year marks the 5th time the Chamber of Commerce and WESM 91.3 FM will sponsor the Berlin Jazz and Blues Bash this will be the second year the Town has truly embraced the spirit of the festival. Until last year, the festival was more geared to early afternoon attendees, often ending just after lunch. Last year, the Chamber tried something different, booking the event well into the late afternoon and turning the Jazz and Blues Bash into an event people could plan their day around or elect to just participate partially. As it turned out. a significant number of people used the event as an excuse to plan an entire day in Berlin, coming for lunch, spending the afternoon in the sun listening to act after act, and staying on afterwards for dinner, drinks or just to hang around. The festival is set in such a way that attendees can catch every act from a distance by taking their place at one of the picnic tables set along Main Street between the two stages or mov...

BERLIN — Last week members of the Berlin Lions Club spent the afternoon as they do with some regularity — giving free eye exams to young children. The exams are not the type typically associated with a rip to the optometrist. In fact, they aren’t in any way meant to replace a regular doctor’s office visit.  What they are though is part of the Lions Club’s mission to help people prevent or overcome eye maladies. The are also part of the frank admission that sometimes kids don’t make it to the eye doctor as often as they should. This is why the tests that they give to every county child under the age of 6 that they can reach is aimed not at checking for vision inadequacies but in trying to detect Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye. “When Amblyopia is detected in children under six, 95 percent of the time they can have their vision saved or restored,” said Donna Burke, the Berlin resident who administers the program for all the Lions C...

BERLIN — Bill and Ginger Taylor have inarguably the shortest commute to the Berlin Farmers Market, where they set up their seafood stand each Wednesday and Friday.  The Berlin couple live blocks away from the market and got into the seafood retail business as part of preparing for Bill’s imminent retirement. Bill, who has spent the last 60 years “foolin’ with seafood” said that when they began looking for an opportunity coming to the Berlin Farmers Market seemed to make the most sense. As retailers, they don’t have to go to the boat to get their fresh seafood, it comes to them fresh before each of their market days. They sell from the Salisbury Farmers Market Saturdays but never miss their Wednesday and Friday gigs at Berlin. Although the market remains open into the late afternoon, so successful do the vendors tend to be that there wasn’t much left after 1 p.m. one recent Friday, which vendors said it’s peculiar for this time of y...

OCEAN CITY — As it turns out, Worcester G.O.L.D. is a model philanthropic group in more ways than one. At last week’s annual fashion show fundraised, the group was honored with a renewal of their status as a non-profit that meets the Standards of Excellence, a set of guidelines established by Maryland Non-Profits, an independent oversight group Amy Coates Madsen, the program director for Standards of Excellence, said that the guidelines were established as a “Model for how the most effective non-profit organizations are run.” The 55 standards cover everything from how board meetings are conducted to how paid employees of a non-profit should be treated to how the accumulation and distribution of funds should be accounted for. In order to be considered for the certification, Worcester G.O.L.D. must submit an application delineating every detail of their operations. The submitted packet is then reviewed by Maryland Non-Profits staff, a peer review committee and ...

BERLIN — There were no shortage of openings at last week’s 2nd Friday Art  and among them were relative newcomers to the scene as well as places that have been participating regularly for years. j.j. Fish this week featured miniaturist Monica Graham. Miniaturist is kind of an odd description but Graham was pressed for a better one. She joked that the usual description “miniature basket maker” wasn’t appropriate because it made it sound as if she was small, but miniaturist isn’t terribly descriptive. Simply put, Graham weaves very, very small baskets. The baskets are collectable both as art in themselves and as pieces of interest for a larger culture of people who furnish dollhouses with handmade items alone. Although she wears glasses, Ghaham doesn’t use them when she weaved. In fact, all the intricate work she does on the various baskets is mostly by hand. If it gets particularly tricky or the medium is not cooperating she may elect ...

OCEAN CITY — The Brown Box Theatre Project has never been afraid to rely on local audience support for new and sometimes challenging topics and they continue to push the dramatic envelope with their newest production “A Feeble Mind” opening at the Captain's Table restaurant next weekend.  On the surface, the play is about a 1950’s-era eugenics proponent, Paul Grant as he struggles to come to grips with the challenges his domestic life poses to his idealism.  Although the play is a work of fiction, the character is based on real-life eugenics proponent Paul Pompano who wrote extensively in popular magazines about how “undesirable” traits, including race and poverty, could be removed from the human population by selective breeding and sterilization. But the deeper question the play explores is how a person — and in this case a family — can be affected when pure, true and absolute belief in a thing is confronted with facts tha...

BERLIN — There was so much to explain, and so many qualifications to the explanations that Rina Thaler moved into stream of consciousness mode discussing her newest show “Israel - Life in the Holy Land”, which opened at the Globe during 2nd Friday Arts Stroll and will remain open throughout the month. She’d recently returned from a trip to Israel and found that the experience was almost too big for art.  The few photos from which she intended to work were likewise too small so she hit upon a middle ground, combining realism with impressionism for a striking show about a varied and complex region. Moreover, Thaler hasn’t worked much with political themes, restricting herself to tamer topics for her shows. The decision to bring a hot-button topic to the fore in her first big Berlin opening weighed on her a bit. In the end, it was an opportunity as well as a chance that she wanted to take. “I wanted to make a statement,” she said. “...