LOVE, 15 Ways

1. Open Love

By Anonymous
The secret gifts of an open marriage.

I am home alone working when my phone rings. My wife, A, is in Spain. She tells me she is having a wonderful time at her conference and wishes I could have stayed with her instead of returning home to work. Then she says she met a handsome Spanish man. Could she spend the night with him?

I ask his name. I ask if she trusts him and feels safe. Then I tell her yes, have fun. And make sure to come home to me.

Another time in another place, I am at a festival out of town with a woman with whom I had been flirting over texts and email. I call A and ask, Can I spend the night? A tells me to have fun—and to come home to her.

For the past three years, this ritual has been part of our secret, wonderful, open marriage. It’s a gift, this thing.

From the start, we had rules, all of which stemmed from one guiding desire: to take care of each other and each other’s feelings. We make sure the other person is safe. We answer any question the other one asks. We don’t reveal marital secrets to our lovers. We don’t complain to our lovers about our spouses.

We tell each other “I love you” often. We always say we are coming home to the other, even though there is never a doubt. I love that part of the ritual. 

There is a word that many people don’t know: compersion. It means feeling a sense of happiness when someone you love is happy. I feel this when my wife finds a lover. It is the opposite of jealousy.

Not that there isn’t jealousy sometimes. A always starts off a bit jealous if one of my lovers is younger than we are. But we accept that jealousy exists the same way we accept that attraction exists.

For all the reasons you expect, not many people know about our open marriage, and I kind of like it that way. When I do tell people, the most common reaction is a question: “Then why be married at all?” 

I am married because I love the way A can read a children’s book and cry. I love the way she and I cook together. I love the sound of her voice. I love how she squeals in delight at animated movies. I am married because my life is better with A in it.

I have so much love in my life. I get to flirt with wonderful potential consequences. I get to feel nervous energy when a new relationship is starting, and I get to feel wonderful heartbreak when it ends. I get to feel jittery anticipation before a date and the sensation of a first kiss.

I am happier and more in love with my wife—and life, itself—than I ever expected. My marriage is 15 years strong and the envy of many of my friends. If they only knew how good it actually is.

2. Viola Love

Nothing comes between Baltimore Symphony Orchestra violist Karin Brown and her instrument.

“I bought my viola about four years ago. It’s an Italian instrument, made in Rome, about 1750. It’s made out of poplar and spruce from the workshop of Julius Caesar Gigli. It’s very possible he worked on it or oversaw it. If it had been authenticated that he made it, it would have been way out of my price range—like $350,000. I still paid six figures for it.

It was sort of love at first sight. It had been in [J&A Beare’s shop in New York], and I played it for a while, but I wasn’t sure it was exactly right, so I returned it, but I kept thinking about it. Six months later, I contacted the shop and they still had it. I felt like it was waiting for me.

When you look for an instrument, you try to discover how it communicates with you, how you can coax different characters and sounds out. That’s a relationship you nurture and cultivate for years. Four years later, I’m still discovering more nooks and crannies and possibilities. With any great instrument, it’s going to have that potential—just like any great relationship. You’re kind of married to it almost. It’s like this extra appendage. Sometimes I’ll be driving somewhere and look in the back seat and if it’s not there, I’ll start freaking out and then remember, “Oh, yeah, I’m not going to rehearsal, I’m going to the grocery store.’”

—As told to Joe Sugarman

3. Dog Love

By Marion Winik

A guy I was dating last fall and I had an occasional ritual of getting together for tea after we dropped our respective kids at school. One Monday morning, I breezed in with my dog, stuck a container of homemade beef stew in his refrigerator and settled down on the couch. My extremely sociable miniature dachshund, Beau, climbed into his lap.

After a minute or two of chitchat, he said, “I have something serious I need to tell you,” then informed me that he was going to get back together with an old girlfriend. I was so blindsided by this news, I went blank. I didn’t know what to say or do.

But Beau did. He rocketed from the couch, marched to the door, and looked back at me as if to say, You coming? My brand-new ex-boyfriend and I couldn’t help laughing. Meanwhile, I took the dog’s cue, got up, and followed him out the door.

Oh honey, don’t be sad, Beau told me in the car, assuming his customary position in my lap, paws hooked over my arm, nose out the driver’s window. Three’s a crowd.

Half the people in the world will understand exactly how I feel, half will think I’m a sick woman, but I can hardly say how much I love this dog. Through the hellish years at the end of my marriage, along the bumpy road that followed, after every weird date or bad-news phone call or really, any time at all, he has been my constant comfort, my velvety hot water bottle, my methodical and dedicated kisser, my watchful baby.

I knew before I watched the “NOVA” documentary on oxytocin release during dog-petting that he had magic power to soothe me. He is my Zoloft and my Ativan, my gin and my tonic, too. 

Have I mentioned his glowing coffee-bean eyes, his expressive tan brows, his long, delicate muzzle, his big paws on his short legs, his proud chest nearly grazing the floor? What could be more endearing than his long black tail, held high as he bounds lopsidedly through grass as tall as he is, floppy ears flapping?

“You love the dog more than me,” my daughter used to say, and I would say, “Well. Not more.”

But a dog and a person can love each other in a way two people can’t, absolute and wordless. Like the documentary said, we are made for each other.

4. Ice Cream Love

By Kathy Hudson

Beloved ice cream, I could not survive without you. Neither could my family. My entire clan is crazy for you and your entire clan: gelato, sorbet, Italian ice, soft-serve, frozen custard and frozen yogurt.

I love your new and exotic flavors—burnt sugar, pumpkin, paw paw (!)—as well as my old standby, coffee chip.

You were there in the freezer all through childhood. Well past midnight, our father clicked downstairs in leather slippers for a bowl of Sealtest chocolate marsh-mallow or Delvale coffee.

On car trips, we left at dawn and by 9 a.m. we were ordering mocha chip at Howard Johnson’s. In Manhattan, we’d head straight to Schrafft’s to savor peppermint or coffee ice cream. In Italy, my sister and I tore each morning to the gelateria for a perfect breakfast.

Ice cream, you forged my relationship with my husband. When he and I started dining together, we’d go for dessert at Howard Johnson’s and Friendly’s. I’d have coffee ice cream with hot fudge (no whipped cream or cherry); he’d have vanilla ice cream with the works.

Now, at every Valentine dinner my husband and I return to our cherished sundaes. Who cares if the caffeine keeps me awake? Ice cream, I’m yours.

5. First Love

By Jessica Blau

The name of the camp was Santa Barbara Youth Theater. And what I quickly discovered was that summer camps are always about sex. Everyone wanted to talk about sex, or touch each other, or spy through the cracks in the dressing room doors. There was a pungency to camp that didn’t exist in school. Maybe it was the arts, the way creative forces flush desire to the surface of your skin. At 10 years old, covered with freckles and doughy flesh, I was primed to fall in love.

Twelve-year-old Dean could tap dance so well that his upper body looked like it was hanging around waiting for a bus while his legs and feet did triple time. His singing voice projected so loudly, he didn’t need a mic. Of course he could do a British accent—he could even do a Scottish one, although only our voice coach could tell which was which. I watched him continuously as if he were a live television show that I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, turn off.

The last week of camp, I inched my way into the cluster of kids surrounding Dean in the F and G rows of the theater. The directors were working on stage with Fagin, practicing the pick-a-pocket song.

Dean’s pals were trying to outdo each other with stories that revolved around the costume designer’s protruding nipples (she was a French woman who wore sheer shirts without a bra) and re-creations of the fart scene from the movie “Blazing Saddles.” When Lionel proclaimed in a dramatic whisper, “I know for a fact that Tammy Rondo has a giant, gnarly bush down there,” Dean laughed so hard that I could see into his mouth, past his protruding eyeteeth, down that enormous pink throat that had sung just about every solo assigned that summer. The foggy, shapeless thoughts I’d been having about Dean, swooped, circled and condensed into an oatmealy lump that sat in the pit of my stomach. I was irrefutably in love.

The final day of camp, as I walked with Dean’s group across a nearby field during lunch, the wind blew back my wispy hair. “You look pretty like that,” Dean said, and I trembled like a toy poodle when he picked up my hand and held it for just a few seconds. Later, nestled beside the thick, red curtain in the dusty wings, Dean kissed me. On the lips. Once. It felt like an electric fire had exploded in my head.

I told my six best friends everything about Youth Theater and my boyfriend, Dean.  All six signed up the following summer. And that first day back, while we sat around the piano warming up our voices, my heart expanded like a helium balloon as I watched Dean across the room. Kathy, my pal, sidled up to him. She had been instructed to tell Dean I had returned and was ready to resume our passionate affair. This is the conversation as it was reported to me:

  “Jessica’s here.”
  “Jessica who?”
  “Jessica Blau.”
  “Who’s Jessica Blau?”

Exactly.

6. Fan Love

Think you love the Ravens? These “super fans” cheer on the team every week in rain, snow—and sequins.

(left to right):
Bird Man  – Greg Hudnet
Sports Steve – Steve LaPlanche
Capt. Dee-Fense – Wes Henson
Purple Dame – Cindy Pierce
Poetic Justice – Rick Bowlus
Fired-Up – Chip Riley
Dee-Ciple – Brian Donley

7. Wine Love

Restaurateur Tony Foreman has sampled many vintages over the years, but has fallen in love with only a few.

“Every year, there’s a group of us that goes down to Bern’s Steak House in Tampa, Fla., which has a lot of curious things in its wine cellar. During a visit in 2009, we pulled a 1920 Bordeaux from the estate Chateau Dufort-Vivens. It had been making mediocre wines for the last 80 years, but I knew historically it had a good reputation prior to 1920. We pulled the cork and once decanted in the glass it just had an incredible color—a super pale garnet with a dusty rose shimmer. From the first scent, I could tell it was alive. As I drank, I had this image of a 1920s film star with fine features coming down a staircase. She was in her 80s now, but still dressed fabulously and the light was on her face and you could still see the beauty of her youth. It was unbelievably delicate and exciting and entirely sensual. But within 20 minutes, after the air had mingled with it, it was gone—like a puff of wind. I felt like we got the last beautiful breath of that wine. I was entirely romanced by the experience. It was a lot like seeing a ghost.”

—As told to Joe Sugarman

8. Band Love

Terry Sapp, 42, is the emergency coordinator for Baltimore County Health and Human Services—and the world’s most dedicated Twisted Sister fan.

“It was the summer of 1983. I was 13. MTV was just starting and they had a promotional trailer that featured Twisted Sister. It was barely five seconds long. But I saw it and I was instantly enraptured.
I started watching MTV for hours each day hoping to see Twisted Sister. When I saw the video of “We’re Not Going to Take It,” it was a sense of exhilaration, almost a giddiness. I loved the message of self-expression and being true to yourself no matter what other people think. I loved that they looked so shocking, so horrible, that they horrified everyone.

I had been experiencing a lot of bullying at school and when I came home each afternoon, I put on the headphones and the music took away the angst and pain. It was almost like a drug.

During my darkest days, Twisted Sister’s music got me through.

It was horrifying to my parents. They were praying that this phase would end soon. Little did they know.

In 1986 I wrote to the band and they wrote me back and sent me backstage passes to the concert at the Capital Centre. My mother reluctantly agreed to go as a chaperone. She was petrified being surrounded by all these heavy metal fans. But she said for the first time she felt like an outsider, and she realized it must be what it was like to be me. That concert changed our relationship forever.

I was a senior, 17 years old, when the band broke up in 1987. I remember the disillusionment, the jadedness, the thought that I’d never love again.

I waited loyal and devoted for 16 years. In 2003 Twisted Sister decided to do a reunion tour. One of the first shows was at Six Flags in New Jersey. They came onstage wearing their original costumes from the 1985 Stay Hungry tour and they sounded just as good, if not better. I felt 14 all over again. 

After that I went to every concert I could. I’d get there hours early and endure incredible heat and cold just to be in the front row. After each concert I wrote down as much as I could remember and posted it on their website forum as “The Armadillo Road Report: The Official UN-Official Concert Review.” After attending two shows in South America, it was in Greece in 2011 that I became the official Twisted Sister road reporter. Dee Snider pointed me out in front of thousands of fans and dedicated “The Price” to me.

I wept the whole way through the song.

Last summer I spent a month on tour with Twisted in Europe as an honorary part of their road crew. They became my new family, my Twisted family. I know the reunion tour will end at some point. It will be equally as heartbreaking as it was the first time, but my love for them is eternal.

I’ll never put a woman’s name on my arm. But I got a Twisted Sister tattoo. This was my proclamation that it wasn’t a phase. I will never outgrow it. After 30 years, 10 countries, 30 cities and counting, I consider it the longest relationship I’ve ever had. This love will never die.”

—As told to Laura Wexler

9. Baltimore Love

By Laura Lippman

I was middle-aged when I began cheating on the love of my life. I wasn’t dissatisfied or restless. I wasn’t looking to change. I am uncommonly gifted at doing the same thing, day-in, day-out. It has been suggested that my fondness for routine is pathological, or possibly a form of self-medication. And when my spouse offers that diagnosis, I remind him that it’s good to have a wife who’s good at monogamy.
I loved Baltimore and could not imagine loving—or living—anywhere else. Certainly, I saw the charm in other places. If, four years ago, fate had popped up and said “London”—or New York, or Seattle, or Portland, or San Francisco, or Chicago—I would have been intrigued, perhaps even a little giddy. (Note: Not a warm city in the bunch.)
Instead, fate said New Orleans. And I said: “Hmmmmmmm.”

Of course, I liked New Orleans. I had been there a lot, for the usual reasons (Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, fun) and not-so-usual reasons (the Republican National Convention of 1988). But it’s not the kind of place that a stodgy middle-aged lady imagines herself living. I have little talent for hedonism and—between us—I think the cuisine is a tad over-rated. Wonderful but narrow. Also, it has to be said: Utz beats Zapps. Although, to be fair, I confess I’m comparing the fresh Utz chips from Cross Street Market to the bagged Zapps at Louis Armstrong International Airport. Plus, Utz owns Zapps now. To which I would add: Yes, Utz owns Zapps.

New Orleans and Baltimore should be sister cities because they’re alike, yet not. My memory tells me that the New Orleans exteriors for the film “And Justice For All”—or was it “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”—were faked with some grillwork on Baltimore’s Broadway, but that’s not what I’m talking about. No, Charm City and the Crescent City have a sibling energy, with all that entails. The grind and the beauty. The good son and the prodigal. Baltimore and New Orleans could be Etta and Claribel Cone. Or even the Collyer Brothers. Symbiotic enablers, entombed in their passion for their own past.

New Orleans is very good at a few things that Baltimore would do well to emulate. Parades, celebration in general, music, support for the arts. But New Orleans would do well to look to Baltimore’s work ethic, which is much more pronounced. Which is to say—it exists.  I wish they would stop competing in the arena of homicide, but so it goes.

I now love both. Which means the only thing I’ve accomplished is a state of perpetual homesickness. I am writing this in New Orleans, where I woke up this morning wishing I could have breakfast at Spoons or even the new Johnny’s, both of which fix poached eggs and bacon to my somewhat high-maintenance specifications. But if I were in Baltimore, I would be longing for lunch at Coquette’s, where the chef is from the Eastern Shore and the menu sometimes includes a superb soft-shell crab.

In the parlance of our day: It’s complicated.

10. Blankie Love

It’s worn and tattered, but Charlotte Subelsky, 4, can’t do without it.

“I like to suck my thumb with Blankie and I like to hug him and make holes in him. I love when Grandma mends him, but not the part where I suck my thumb.

I like to throw him up in the air and I like to take him for walks.

I’m afraid when he takes a bath because when he gets out he doesn’t smell regular.

Blankie dreams about princesses. He talks to me and I talk to him.

Blankie is 41⁄2 years old, like me. He was born in the same hospital as me. Blankie has a brother at Grandma’s house, but I like Big Blankie better.

I hold him under the covers when I sleep. I’m not supposed to hit people with him.

Blankie likes to lie in a warm spot. He likes to have a blanket over him.

Blankie is my best friend.”

—As told to Laura Wexler, her mother

11. Red Love

Jean Brune, headmistress of Roland Park Country School, has a very colorful obsession.

“I’ve always loved red. I’m a Roland Parker [class of 1960]. The school colors are red and white. Maybe being a Roland Parker did it.

At first I didn’t wear red every day, just for games, and when I was representing Roland Park. I had a watch with a red face, so I always had on a little red. One day a student saw me and said, ‘Mrs. Brune, no red? You represent the spirit of Roland Park in red.’ Since then I have consciously made sure I wear red every day. That was 2005. It is seldom, if ever, that I come in here without red.

The shade is Roland Park red, red-red, not the maroon of Boys’ Latin and not the red of Friends.

At home I have deep-red Oriental rugs. The library is painted red. The candles on the mantel are sort of cranberry. I have red towels. My toaster oven is red. And, I have red pajamas.

My previous car was a red Subaru Outback. When I went for a new one, the salesperson said, ‘They don’t come in red now, but the Forester does.’ So I have a 2007 Forester. Can you imagine me driving around here in something not red?”

—As told to Kathy Hudson

12. House Love

By Ron Tanner

I fell in love with my house at first sight, the way an animal lover might fall in love with a sweet stray dog. The house— a three-story brick Queen Anne rowhouse built in 1897—had been abused and abandoned and was condemned property when I purchased it “as is” in the winter of 2000. My “love” for the house, at that point, was more for its former glory. It was so far gone, having been abused by the fraternity that had owned it for a decade, I wasn’t sure that it would ever be so grand again. And this made the house an object of pity, if not regret.

Still, even in its ruined state, the Queen Anne remained a beautiful structure, built of robust materials and of an impressive scale, with high ceilings and huge windows. As I worked to restore it, I loved standing in its welcoming space and watching the morning light glow across the yellow pine floors.  The more I mended its wounds over the past 12 years, the more I felt it grow stronger and more beautiful, and I felt we forged a partnership of sorts.

That’s the thing about a house I can love: it responds to the care I give it and so I feel invested in the right ways— my work matters. A house that cannot return such love, a house that was poorly built and can’t be mended, would break my heart. Love for a house must be, in this way, reciprocal. During the East Coast’s recent earthquake, I was on the third floor of the Queen Anne and, together, we swayed with the earth’s bucking. When it was over, I made an inspection of my house and was gratified and grateful that, though plaster cracked here and there, the Queen Anne stood strong. A house worth every hour of care I have given it.

Of course, a house this large and old makes great demands, as any valued relationship must. I cannot ignore the Queen Anne’s many needs, whether it’s a roof repair or a leaky faucet. Small slights add up, reminding me that love is a matter of respect—which is all about listening and paying attention. And so, every day I pay attention, listening to the floorboards murmuring beneath my weight, the wind whistling against the tower windows, the ticking radiators announcing their delivery. And I am reassured that I belong with this house and this house belongs with me.

13. Wall Love

A few years back, local artist Michael Owen developed a mural design in which four hands spell out the word “love.” From that sprung the Baltimore Love Project, an organization that works to build and unite communities across Baltimore. “The project is far bigger than the artwork,” says executive director Scott Burkholder.

2 murals were painted in 2009

16 Baltimore Love Project murals dot the city currently

20 feet high and 45 feet wide is the average mural size

15 to 25 hours are required to complete each painting

$6,000 is the average cost

4 more murals will be painted, bringing the total to 20

1 to 2 miles will be the distance between each when the project is complete

14. How to Write a Love Song

The last album Baltimore-based band Red Sammy released was called “A Cheaper Kind of Love Song,” which featured eight songs all dealing with love. We figured the band’s singer/songwriter Adam Trice would be the perfect candidate to share a few tips of the trade.

•  Don’t be overly sentimental. (Hallmark greeting cards don’t work for interesting love songs.)

•  Don’t enter the process saying, ‘I’m going to write a love song.’ Just write a song.

•  Use unlikely metaphors. ‘Love is a liquor store on fire.’ Keep things conceptual.

•  Remember that longing is part of the human condition.

•  Don’t make it too personal; it’ll sound forced.

•  It’s better to write about the girl who got away rather than the girl you’ve got.

•  Crazy people and situations fuel great love songs (think Kathy Bates in the movie ‘Misery’).

•  Music is key to the success of a love song, but only after the words are right.

•  Love songs involve pain, repair and continued maintenance.

•  Let your wife think that some of the prettiest songs are about her. Otherwise, you’ll be sleeping on the couch.

Red Sammy’s next album, “These Poems with Kerosene,” is scheduled to drop on Valentine’s Day. http://www.Redsammy.com

15. Friend Love

In 1953, Jay Pritchard saw Michael Marlow jumping in a mud puddle in his backyard in Towson and ran to join him. They were 5 years old at the time, and they’ve been best friends ever since.

Marlow: Our parents would let us out after breakfast and we didn’t come home until dinner. We played cowboys and Indians, army, baseball. We’d walk the railroad tracks to Towson and steal cigarettes and go smoke in the woods.

Pritchard: It was a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn existence. We would go arm in arm down the neighborhood streets singing, ‘The Old Gray Mare.’

Marlow: One day I was playing football by myself and he started to interfere. I got mad and he got mad. It ended up being this wrestling match. After 10 seconds Jay was sitting on top of me with my arm behind my back. He had me. We stayed in that position for an hour because I wouldn’t give up. Then our mothers called us for dinner.

Pritchard: I think we only ever had that one fight. We mostly ganged up on other kids in the neighborhood.

Marlow: When we were 20 years old, we rode around the country in a Ford Fairlane for a couple weeks.

Pritchard: One night we didn’t have a place to stay so we pulled off in a field and slept in the car. We woke up the next morning and about 50 yards away was a cliff with a 100-foot drop-off. We got pretty lucky.

Marlow: He’s known me longest in life. He’s linked to my whole past.

Pritchard: We’ve never lived in the same town as adults, but we’ve always kept in touch.

Marlow: When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, we started saying ‘I love you’ more often. He knows I love him. I know he loves me.

—As told to Laura Wexler

What do you love?

• Berger cookies and milk, Katie O’Malley, first lady of Maryland

• P.G. Wodehouse, Patricia Bennett, painter

• Plain Utz salty potato chips, Emilie Blaze, owner The Little Shoebox

• Boobs, Anne O’Brien, executive director, Tyanna Foundation

• Red bean and cheese pupusas, Bonnie Weissberg, hospice social worker

• Blokus, Betsy Royall, casting director, CSA

• Artichokes, Barbara Dale, cartoonist

• Fox-hunting, Nemo Niemann, fashion photographer

• (Husband delivered) coffee in bed, Jamie McDonald, co-founder, GiveCorps

• Dad’s brand oatmeal cookies, Hugh Sisson, owner, Heavy Seas Beer

• Scrimshaw, Dr. Morton F. Goldberg, former director, Wilmer Eye Institute

• Steak tartare, Madison Smartt Bell, author

• Michael McDonald, Charisse Nichols-Stephenson, private dining manager, Pazo

• Wrens’ song in spring,  Eleanor Oster, artist/floral designer

• My Boston terrier, Scooter, Gary Vikan, director, Walters Art Museum

• Fleece socks, Bev Wright, investigator

• James Bond movies, Stephanie Bradshaw, creative director/designer

• Reading obituaries, Kathleen Haser, acting president, Jesuit Volunteer Corps

• The Wizard of Oz, Linda McFaul, manager, Ropewalk Tavern

• Margaritas on the beach at sunset, Sue Caldwell, owner, Lovelyarns

• The Poe Room at the Pratt, Phoebe Stein Davis, executive director, Maryland Humanities Council

• Lovely Lane United Methodist Church, Diane Y. Macklin, storyteller

• Independently owned businesses, Hathaway Ferebee, executive

• Grandparenthood, John Schmick, headmaster, Gilman School 

• Ensō, Elizabeth Spires, poet

• Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne, Dr. Carla Hayden, CEO, Enoch Pratt Free Library

• An evening at the Charles Theater, Dr. Peter Agre, professor and director, Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 

• Rehoboth Beach, Cathy Bennett, director, Michael Phelps Swim School

• Single track, Scott Burkholder, executive director, Baltimore Love Project

• The Amalfi Coast, Mary Ann Cricchio, owner, Da Mimmo Restaurant

• Fire, Walker Babington, artist

• My 1968 red Mustang convertible, license plate: VRRHEUM, Dr. Iredell W. Iglehart III, rheumatologist

• J. R. R. Tolkien, Gregory R. Weidman, curator, Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine and Hampton National Historic Site

• The smell of dirt and grass, Jean Trout, former owner, The Mitre Box

• Labradors Abbey and Bailey, Joe Radebaugh, florist

• A transformed block in Pigtown, William J. McLennan, executive director, Paul’s Place Inc.

• My garden, JoAnn Fruchtman, owner, The Children’s Bookstore

• Mowing the lawn, Jonathan Oleisky, president, Kalix Communications director, Safe & Sound 

• The garden court at the Frick Museum, Carol Macht, principal, Hord Coplan Macht

• Felco 2 pruners, Peter Bieneman,  general manager, Green Fields Nursery and Landscaping

• Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park, Mary Pat Clarke, 14th District, Baltimore City Council

• Everything Harry Potter, The Rev. Scott P. Bellows, Rector, St. David’s Episcopal Church

• Cape Cod light, Kate Blom, supervisor, Howard P. Rawlings Conservatory

• Smalltimore, Diane Lochte, owner, Gundy’s Gifts

• Ice hockey, Maureen Walsh, headmistress, The Bryn Mawr School

• John Derian decoupage paperweights, Jennifer Grove, creative director, Sky Blue Events

• Well-written dialogue, Pamela Berwager, owner, Sprezzatura

• Audio books,  Michael Flanigan, antiques dealer and appraiser, PBS “Antiques Roadshow”

• Autumn afternoons in the Jardin du Luxembourg (Paris), Laura Mason, senior lecturer, Department of History/ Program in Film & Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University

• The breath,  Katherine MacLean, instructor in the Deptartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

• My Marcus Garvey collection,  Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of Center Stage

• Closing the deal, Patrick Turner, principal, Turner Development

• Almond Smash Soda, Ann and Ed Berlin, owners, The Ivy Bookshop