When the heat climbs up towards 100 degrees, the only time to take a walk is early in the day. At 6:30 a.m. it’s still reasonably cool enough for a light jog down to City Dock.

Oh how I wish the Farmers’ Market on Sundays would open even earlier than 8:00 a.m.. As the sun rises high in the sky I’m already starting to wilt even if the lovely produce stays fresh and fragrant under sheltering tents. Located at Fawcett’s parking lot, it remains open until noon. And then if you’re still in the mood for Farmers’ Market Shopping you can head over to the parking lot of the Annapolis Westfield Mall where the market will just be opening for the afternoon.

On my way home this Monday morning, cup of coffee in hand, I noticed a newly emptied storefront on Main Street. Comfort One Shoes is gone, kaput, vanished. Not even the remnant of the storefront sign remains. This was a place that I liked to buy shoes, so I take note of what they’re showing in the window and when they’re having a sale.  I checked the Comfort One Shoes website when I got to the office and noticed the Annapolis location is no longer listed. Wow that was fast. I called the corporate offices and talked with the vice president of sales. He preferred not to give a comment except to let customers know that if they call the Annapolis store phone number, their call will be forwarded. If they want to go shopping for shoes, they’ll have to drive to Baltimore.

Further up the street La Belle Cezanne, formerly located at 117 Main Street appears to be nicely settled into their new storefront at 184-86 Main Street, the multi-storied brick building that replaced the building devastated by fire back in 1997. They now have a multi-level space with plenty of alcoves for displaying their fine jewelry.

Closer to my home, the news is that the Starbucks at Park Place is slated for closing. Ironically they just opened, seem to be quite busy, and may have been a factor in the demise of Cafe Matisse, a locally owned coffee shop that had to close.  Evenings the outside dining areas of Fado and Carpaccios are bustling with business. The economic times may be a bit shaky, but people are still spending money.

Want to find out more on what’s up in Annapolis and through-out the Chesapeake Bay region? Visit our website at www.WhatsUpMag.com

Often when I write about a subject in my monthly antique column in What’s Up? magazines and also published on the website www.WhatsUpMag.com, I receive inquiries from readers seeking to sell an items I’ve just written about.

Such is the case with the following email:

Black Dog both a nutcracker and attactive collectible.

I have a very old dog nutcracker.  It must be at least 200 years old.

It has printed on it “Old Dog Tray”.

I can’t tell the artist because it appears to have several coats of paint on it.

It looks exactly like the picture in your article in Annapolis “What’s up” for July/August.

 http://whatsupmag.com/home-garden/home/0708-antique-dogs.aspx

Do you know of anyone (dealer) who I could take this to in order to learn the value?

Thank you.

G L

Severna Park, Maryland

Response:
The nutcracker you refer to is a handsome example, but it is approximately 120 years old, not 200 years old. Your nutcracker was made by pouring the molten iron into a mold.  This is a nutcracker that is a product  manufactured in an early factory setting at the start of the industrial revolution, placing it in the late nineteenth century. Earlier hand lever nutcrackers were crafted entirely by hand. Some were made as early as the 1300s and 1400s.

A little cruising on the internet yielded quick results. I found a similar dog nutcracker being offered by a dealer for $325. They dated their piece as being circa 1900.

If deciding to sell your lovely heirloom, expect to receive approximately half of the retail value when selling to a dealer to allow for their profit margin.

Generally fair market value is midway between wholesale and retail price.

For more information about antique nutcrackers, a great website is http://www.nutcrackermuseum.com/about.htm

We made a deal, my husband and I. No television, internet, email, ipod or anything electronic for an entire day—yesterday.  That was Saturday and I had a great time, I did use my car to drive to the library and the grocery story, but that enabled me to check out some books and replenish our pantry.

It was a day for reading and fussing over a home-cooked meal.

I took a walk, refusing to wear a watch because what did it matter what time it was. I had no place I had to go. No particular plans.  I sat and day dreamed planning  out some stories I’d like to write. Playing with ideas in my head of how best to create a story I’ve been thinking about.

I did work on some writing—in long hand. It was not a hardship because I always choose paper and pen when I want to deliberately be thoughtful about the words I choose.  I was working on the October Editor’s letter for What’s Up ? Annapolis and What’s Up? Eastern Shore, a challenge because I’m still in June.

How will I be feeling in October? What will be happening then and what will other people be doing and thinking about? I know what October looks like, the colors of fall, but I won’t know what will be happening in politics.  It will be after the Democratic and Republican conventions. The campaigning will be in full swing. Maybe they’ll be an outrageous scandal or a wonderful invention will hit the street – a break through fuel that liberates us from our dependence on gasoline.  How will I know about these things if I don’t listen to the radio, plug into the internet, or start text messaging my friends? It’s not practical to be unplugged for more than a day, but oh what a glorious day!

Several readers of What’s Up? Magazines have sent me emails asking for further help on identifying and appraising their oriental rugs. The following letter is one of several that have come in during the past three months.

Dear Nadja,

I read your excellent article in What’s Up? (Apr 200 and was inspired to research further, and/or sell, a rug handed down to me. If it’s not too presumptuous, I thought you might be able to guide me towards someone who could identify and value the rug. I suspect it’s a Bokhara Oriental but not sure and it is in excellent condition.

I can only assume the following: handmade/knotted, natural dye, no fading, no stains, double pile and fine wool.

Size: L=9′2″ X w= 8′4″, fringe= 4.5″

Pictures are attached. Any direction you might provide on this rug would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, in advance, for your time & consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

D.B.B.

Response:

There is no doubt looking at the photograph that this rug is a Bokhara and it looks relatively new, of fine quality, and definitely in excellent condition. As to whether vegetable dyes were used, it is hard to tell in a photograph. The yellow certainly looks bright, which brings into question the age and type of dye.

How do you value an antique rug or any antique for that matter when it is time to sell?  In the case of your rug, I really think your most practical course of action is to visit other rug dealers. You can do that online at eBay, Craig’s list or other auction/sales sites and compare the prices being asked and received.  If you spend money on an appraisal, it will cost you a between $75 and $250- money you want to make not spend.

If you need to sell  your rug, you’ll receive a better return if you sell it yourself rather than selling to a dealer. A dealer needs to make a profit in order to cover their time and overhead expenses. In the antique business, dealers are primarily looking for rare and unique items or severely underpriced items. The bottom line is profit.

I hope, what I’ve told you is helpful. If you do have a place in your home to use your rug, it is an item that will only appreciate in value as long as it properly maintained. Put a mat underneath, reposition it periodically for even wear and keep it away from direct sunlight.  If you inherited the rug from someone you are fond of, it is a nice way to remember them.

To read the original article on Oriental Rugs go to: www.whatsupmag.com/home-garden/home/0408-antique-column-oriental-rugs.aspx

I receive quite a bit of email at What’s Up? Publishing. While many readers write to me about the general content of our publications I also receive specific questions about antiques inspired by my monthly antique column.

I usually set those questions aside with the intent to answer them later. This particular photograph arrived in my inbox several months ago and I was struck by the remarkable similarity of the look of this tumbler to Moser glass.  The Moser Glass Company was founded in the mid nineteenth century in Bohemia. Nowadays we call that part of Europe the Czech Republic.  The problem is that Moser Glass is hand blown , gorgeous cut crystal. The tumbler in the photograph is molded glass, meaning the glass gets its shape from a mold.  It does have beautiful heavy gold decoration reminiscent of Moser Glass.

After pouring through a number of reference books and searching online as well as searching my memory banks, thinking back on all the decorated glassware I’ve seen over the years–I’ve come to the conclusion that the green glass tumbler is very likely early 20th century, Eastern European, and created in imitation of the more costly Moser Glass.  As to value– a single one of these glasses would retail in an antique shop for approximately $35. A set is always more valuable and can increase the worth of the individual glasses (presuming they are all in excellent condition with no chips or wear to the decoration) by as much as 25%.

My initial interest in Moser glass started quite by chance when I owned an antique shop. Often at auctions, groups of items are put together in a box lot.  Among my box lot purchases with an interesting piece of glass- a narrow neck vase that varied in shade from deep green to clear crystal. The body was engraved with a floral motif.  Averaging out the cost of the various items in the box I estimated the vase cost us one dollar.

I put $35 on the price tag, feeling proud of how much profit I’d make when the vase sold. It sat in the shop. No one was interested. My father-in-law suggested raising the price. I changed the price to $68 and still it sat on the shelf.

One day, while redesigning our window display, I decided to put the vase in the  window in a prominent position. Maybe this time it would sell!

Sure enough, I arrived at the store one afternoon and one of my sale clerks told me how someone had seen it in the window and hurriedly bought it, asking very few questions.

That fall I was exhibiting for the first time at an antique show in Washington D.C. The dealer across from our  booth looked at the name of our shop, “Rare and Beautiful Things.”  He told me, ” I think I purchased a piece of Moser glass from your shop this past summer. I sold it quickly to a collector.”

I took a look in his booth. He had several pieces of Moser. The least expensive piece was $600.  Maybe I hadn’t made the huge profit on my one dollar purchase that I thought. However, he showed me where to look for the etched signature on the bottom of the glass. (My piece had been signed and I didn’t even know it.) So I learned a great deal and I certainly got a fair return on my dollar.

Read some more of my antique columns online at www.whatsupmag.com if you’re not a subscriber to our magazines and if you have any questions try contacting me on my blog!

The grass grows high some days in our front yard, and who jumped out right by my feet but a baby rabbit. I call him Bun bun. My husband Peter refers to him as Wilbur.

Our Annapolis neighborhood, a 20 minute walk from City Dock, is teaming with wildlife. Bunny rabbits skirt their way across the streets at dusk, families of mallard ducks select the secluded side yards of homes on the banks of Spa Creek to build their nests. A blue heron searches for breakfast at Old Woman’s Cove at daybreak, while squirrels busily dig up the spring bulbs I planted seeking nourishment for themselves and their babies.

Each morning leaving for my walk, I eye my one tomato plant with tomatoes (purchased at the Farmers’ Market) to check no one has been nibbling at its fruit. The leaves of my basil plant are mysteriously absent. But it’s in a pot, and I have  no witness account of a creature sampling its minty flavor.

With such a large population of rabbits, it’s not surprising to also see a handsome red fox steathily walking about in the evening near Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Everyone has to eat. What’s next, coyottes? Has anyone seen any recently?

What are they doing? It’s the 2008 Flagship Class of Leadership Anne Arundel doing a few stretches before starting a dance class.

It’s been a very rainy week and all week long I’ve been worrying and asking the fates, “Will it rain on Saturday?”
Saturday was Customer Appreciation Day at the Peter B. Crilly Nationwide Insurance Agency  in Annapolis. My husband Peter had scheduled a Moon Bounce, Satellite Glass was set to do free glass repair to damaged windshields and he’d bought lots and lots of food for a barbecue buffet.
The wind was blowing hard but the sun was shining. Associate Agents Kathy Gascon, Pamela Lewis, and Debbie Whittaker worked late

into the night making baked beans, macaroni salad, potato salad, and cole slaw. One of the customers brought home baked brownies. Fellow Nationwide agent Ed Owens and his wife Sharon were flipping burgers and hot dogs.
Our daughter Alex set up a face painting table and painted butterflies, footballs, kitty cats, and polka dots on the faces and forearms of at least 35 children. Debbie’s husband Chip volunteered to have a Nationwide symbol painted on his head. Over 125 people came by to enjoy the party. All I had to do was stand behind the tables and serve up the side dishes.
      My other “extra-curricular” project for the week, Leadership Anne Arundel Cultural Arts Day, was not quite a stress free—being an entire day of activities, but all went well. LAA  for those who are not familiar, is a program that mentors emerging leaders in the corporate, volunteer, and political sectors of Anne Arundel County by teaching them about some of the primary infrastructures—health & human services, education, criminal justice, government, environment, economics, the arts and how they are related to each other in a variety of ways. The flagship program, which I participated and graduated from in 2002, is a nine month program that requires a commitment of one to two days per month plus additional time for “homework” and the development of a community leadership project that you create and execute with some of your classmates. I have continued to volunteer with the program as a chair of Cultural Arts Day, the day that puts the focus on the arts and local history.
        This year my Co-Chair was David Jones, former Executive Director of the Chesapeake Arts Center and we worked with Davina Hill, the current CAC Executive Director, April Nynan Executive Director of the Arts Council and Linnell Bowen Executive Director of Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts to formulate a day that included artists workshops, round table discussions with some of the forty plus non-profit county arts groups, and culminated with a viewing “Pip and Zastrow” the local documentary film released earlier this year about the relationship between former Mayor Pip Moyer and retired Staunton Center Director Zastrow Simms. And it just so happened to be Zastrow’s birthday so we sang “Happy Birthday”.
         LAA participants learned drumming, drama, ceramics, dancing, and painting. Opening remarks from Lee Streby President and Executive Director of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra kicked off the morning activities and the day ended with creative presentations from the ‘Core Learning Teams” (a term you’ll just have to learn about if you take the course) sharing what they’ve learned about the county and themselves with their classmates.
Of course I can’t blog about what we’ve been working on at What’s Up? Publishing because then I’d be revealing our plans for the July/August, September, and October issues but we’ve got some great articles in the works plus new items every day on our website www.WhatsUpMag.com. If you have suggestions, send your comments. Thank you for reading.

I was driving down the road today, Mother’s Day, a little over the 65 mile per hour speed limit, and I started to wonder why am I driving so fast? If I wanted to conserve on fuel, I should be driving 55 miles per hour. Everyone knows that once you exceed 55 mph your mileage goes down, or do they? I’m of that age that remembers the oil embargo close to 35 years ago when everyone was trying to conserve– keep the heat thermostadt at 68 degrees, carpool, and drive 55 mph. We reduced oil consumption by as much as 20 percent. What happened? We all became complacent and forgot, brainwashed by the energy companies and now we’ve done so much damage to our planet no one has time to care. We’re all too busy trying to get somewhere quickly.
I was on my way from Annapolis to Baltimore to visit my mother. I came bearing gifts, although I wasn’t certain if they were the “right” gifts. My mom has a talent for asking for things as gifts that I just can’t find, although they sound simple enough. She wanted a turtleneck (to hide her ugly neck she told me) but in May a turtleneck is not easy to find other than by going online. But I was running out of time so I bought her a red knit top. I thought it looked nice but she didn’t want it, so that’s another trip back to the store. She did, however love the flowering potted plant I brought her, even though she didn’t want a plant.(I figured the plant would last longer than cut flowers). “The color of the flowers are great,” she told me. Okay I did something right. Here I am, a middle aged woman still trying to please my mother.
My mom has lots of plants. Unlike me, she has a green thumb, and is always taking cuttings and creating more potted plants to populate her cluttered home. I made lunch rather than taking her out(Crabmeat and avocado salad), because with her arthritic hips she prefers staying in and headed home before the next onslaught of rain. (No I did not reduce my speed to 55 mph.)
Meanwhile I’ve received phone calls from both my sons and my daughter was working on my Mother’s Day gift –planting a garden with her dad and making me dinner. (Hope they can keep up that garden!) It doesn’t matter really, at least they put the effort in and as to what they’re serving for dinner? It’s a surprise. Whatever they prepare I’m going to love it!
For me the biggest gift is taking the time to slow down, enjoy the green earth while it’s still here, enjoy my family. So maybe it is time to see about getting those speed limit signs changed!

If you’re casting about for something to do with your Mom on Mother’s Day and she happens to love musicals and strong women, take her to see Vanishing Point. There’s only one more show left, Sunday afternoon May llth at the Annapolis Unitarian Universalist Church, a production of the Dignity Players and directed by Mickey Handwerger with music direction by Mark Hildebrand. The story is about three famous women who vanished—Amelia Earhart, Sister Aimee , and Agatha Christie. Or did they? Agatha Christie, one of my favorite early 20th century mystery writers vanished for eleven days in 1926. That same year evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished for three weeks. In 1937 Amelia Earhart set out to fly around the world and disappeared on the last leg of her journey over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. How are their three disappearances linked?
All three actresses—Margaret Allman as Agatha Christie, Wendy Baird as Aimee Semple McPherson, Sheri Kuznicki as Amelia Earhart have lovely voices and incredible stamina as they perform this intense story that draws on historical record and the authors’ imagination.
Also opening this weekend is The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia by Edward ,Albee Winner of the 2002 Tony Award at the Bay Theatre Company in Annapolis directed by Lucinda Merry Browne., if you attend this Friday there is a Pre-Show reception.
Over at the Colonial Players in Annapolis is Hauptmann and you can read my review in the “Entertainment Blog” on the WhatsUpMag.com website.
And if you want to make a visit to Baltimore, The Color Purple is playing at The Hippodrome through May 18th and is excellent. Leading actress Jeanette Bayardelle has a phenomenal voice. While I loved the movie, the staged musical is completely different, equally as poignant and uplifting in a different way.
Yes, I am a theater junkie. Good live theater is inspiring and we have plenty of great opportunities to see a wide variety of plays within a small geographic area.
The May baskets around town are starting to wilt and fade, but many colorful azaleas and tulips are brightening up the Annapolis Historic District. My favorite time to walk downtown Annapolis is early morning, before it gets too crowded, but for those of you who may live further away, next time you’re planning a trip to your favorite downtown restaurant allow some time to stroll. Spring is a great time to soak up the local scenery.