Around Maryland

Last week, Laurel Mendez and her husband were bringing food to a donation site in Baltimore, like they do several times a month. They got off the bus and immediately came upon a seven-inch crack in the sidewalk. “Between the broken sidewalks and the big gaps in the sidewalks that haven’t been repaired, I could barely get from the bus stop to somewhere that I could actually roll my wheelchair,” Mendez says. “I had to cross the street and then cross my arms across my chest while barely steering my wheelchair with the other hand to get through a gap between untrimmed bushes and a fence that was sticking out.”

More than 75 surfers of all ages paddled into the midtown surf in Ocean City last Saturday with hopes of “dropping in” and becoming a Maryland State Champion. The Delmarva Chapter of the Eastern Surfing Association (ESA) hosted the day-long event on the beach at 36th street, premiered a brand new electronic scoring system and showcased an abundant level of young talent and endless “stoke.”

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, and Maryland Coastal Bays Program partnered to create a nesting platform for Maryland’s endangered waterbirds. The partners will research and monitor the nesting platform, an artificial island that is an effort to preserve the birds. The populations of the Common Tern, Royal Tern, and Black Skimmer have declined by 90-95% since the 1980s because of shoreline erosion and sea level rising in the coastal bays.

With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading, particularly among unvaccinated Americans, it may be time for much of the country to put masks back on, experts said. “We are at a very different point in the pandemic than we were a month ago,” Dr. Leana Wen told CNN on Tuesday. “And, therefore, we should follow the example of LA County and say that if there are places where vaccinated and unvaccinated people are mixing, then indoor mask mandates should still apply.”