Character Reference

"Since you should know something about me, I have asked the Reverend Simon Simpless, of St. Hilda's Church near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, to write to you. He has known me since I was a child and is fond of me. I have asked Lady Bella Taunton to provide a reference for me too. We were fire wardens together during the Blitz and she wholeheartedly dislikes me. Between the two of them, you may get a fair picture of my character."

A letter from Juliet Ashton to Amelia Maugery in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Don't ask for much, do we?

Collect of the Day
Sunday, October 5, 2009

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire to deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

We would also like a pony.

Byron, Bryon

Byron* has been popping up in my line of sight again lately. Sara Joy is rehearsing Arcadia and her Facebook status updates are peppered with Hannah's dialogue; John Malkovich appears in the film version of J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace and has this comment about his character, a professor of Romantic poetry: "Probably if you spend your whole life reading Byron and Keats and Shelley, partaking of their worldview, then you might have a different moral compass than those who don't."

So the lame brat is on my mind again.

A couple of nights ago I was reading a Time magazine from a few weeks back and came across a book review. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes** describes "an era when science was both glamorous and dangerous" and the review by Lev Grossman notes that at that time "Poetry and science weren't wholly separate yet: they were seen as complementary ways of piercing the veil of everyday phonomena. William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and the Shelleys (Percy Bysshe and Mary) followed scientific breakthroughs like sports scores."

And the single hardest part of Arcadia for me to memorize is back in my head:

I had a dream which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air... ***

In rehearsals, before those words were secure (which nearly required a nail gun) I would get to that point in the script, look intelligently**** at Patrick and say "Bryon, Bryon, end of Byron" and we'd go on with the scene. I think the director was a little afraid that I would do that in performance, too, but I did not.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. Perhaps while I am between scripts, I'll read some Romantic poetry and see what - if anything - it does to my moral compass.

Assuming I have one, that is.


* George Gordon, Lord Byron

** I don't think it's the same Richard Holmes as the baritone who sings for NYGASP, but that would also be a nice piece of serendipity, wouldn't it.

*** Darkness

**** Or so I like to think.

Camping ... in Pennsylvania

A couple of years ago, when I was working on Taking Leave, I would have dinner after rehearsals with a friend. We'd chat about this and that and I don't really remember how much of my Markland experience peppered my conversation but apparently enough because one day he said something along the lines of "This camping you mentioned: did it happen ... in Pennsylvania?"

Why, yes. Yes, it did. I used to go to the Pennsic Wars every August and be all medieval surrounded by hundreds of other people being all medieval, too. There was very little that was modern as far as the eye could eye could see. Well, except for the coolers.* And the sunglasses. And the paperback science fiction.

Every Pennsic had its own character but certain things seemed to be a given: There would be at least one torrential rainstorm during the week which would teach excellent lessons about the inadvisability of having one's blankets touching the edge of one's canvas tent and about how efficient a process "wicking" can really be; at least one person would get what everyone else called the Plague but more literal me called a flux,** although thankfully not a bloody flux; and at least one someone would hook-up with one someone else with said hook-up turning out to rather regretable and a fruitful source of mockery in the future.

I haven't been to a Pennsic in years, so imagine of my delight when I found this post on Medieval News.***

Ahhh, good times.


* We used coolers for our food because food poisoning is no fun no matter what century you are currently inhabiting. And it's even less fun when you are a modern person sleeping in a tent and sharing a port-a-potty.

** See the reason for the use of achronistic coolers, supra.

***I should note, however, that even though the "Voice of America" video says that the winner of the Pennsic War receives the title to Pittsburgh, them of us what were there, know that it's the loser who takes possession. See? Even those strangers on Wikipedia agree with that.

Beets - the worst vegetable ever

Quinn and I are quite different in someways, I'm extroverted and like Facebook; she's introverted and likes Twitter, but there's one way in which we are soulmates.

I despise beets in any form. Canned, baked, precious little heirloom ones on a fancy salad, they all taste like iron filings to me. I’d sooner lick a handrail; same flavor and you’re done faster. But beets are very good for you and I’ve always felt badly that I hadn’t given them more of a chance, when I wasn’t shooing them off to the corner of my plate. I’d eat a jar-egg and it would taste in some way of beets and even if I never did another brave thing in my life, I’d have that. If Daughter flinches at the sight of a Brussels sprout, I can lean over to her and say knowingly, “At least it’s not marinated in beets.”

A few years ago when some friends and I participated in CSA*, Stacey and I had half share each**. When the food arrived each week, Stace and I would divvy up our share and try to figure out what we had. Our general fall-back was that if we didn't recognize a vegetable, it couldn't hurt to roast it. This is a very good rule. Well, for everything except lettuce. Just don't even roast lettuce.

Anyway, for a while there we were getting ourselves some beets. We tried all kinds of ways to prepare them and no matter what we did, they remained beets. Roasted beets? They are beets with a slightly less horrible than usual exterior.

So if Quinn is willing to eat a beet-marinated jar-egg in order to set a good example for her daughter (or at least not lose too much of the moral high ground), I can but admire her. Would that I had the same strength of character. Because while I would get up at dawn if I had to in order to provide a good example, I am not eating anything marinated in beets.


*Community Supported Agriculture, or Tree Hugger Food.

**There are four people at Stacey's house. My house is me and the not-very-vegetable-eating cat. Even a half share resulted in much soup being made from the left-overs of each week's bounty.

***Don't know what a jar-egg is? Read her post. But not, perhaps, over lunch.

Of course it does

I am enjoying Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma*, but this bit made me laugh:

"Angelo called it rapini, and said the young leaves were delicious sautéed in olive oil and garlic."

Because, really, aren't most things delicious when they are sautéed in olive oil and garlic?


*As I was typing this my fingers really, really wanted me to misspell "dilemma." Which meant that I kept seeing "The Omnivore's Deli." And you know? That sounds pretty good. I know I'd stop in.

Time to buy some rap

Bill Forman wrote such an interesting piece about Busdriver that I'm going to have to pick up a couple of his songs. Because even if they don't sound entirely like G&S, it's hard to resist someone this engaging. And it will add another entry to the list of stuff that people wouldn't suspect that I have on MyPod.*

As on previous albums, he employs a rapid-fire delivery and convoluted rhyme schemes, like some unholy offspring of Jamaican dancehall deejay Bounty Killer and light opera savants Gilbert and Sullivan. Asked which he found more influential, Busdriver says he appreciates rap's debt to "old-school Jamaican toasters, but I never really sought that out. So I would have to say the latter. Unfortunately, I don't spend enough time with [Gilbert and Sullivan's work], but I know what you're talking about and I do shoot for things like that."

*Or in my bookcase. Unflattering f'rinstance: "You? Like Mamet? You? Really?"

The Birds of New York

Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills. I will never live to see it, of course, but I know just how it will sound because I've lived up high and I know the sort of watch birds keep on us. I've listened to sparrows tapping tentatively on the outside of air conditioners when they thought no one was listening, and I know how other birds test the vibrations that come up to them through the television aerials. 'Is he gone?' they ask, and the vibrations come up from below, 'Not yet, not yet.'

Loren Eiseley (via The Writer's Almanac)

It pays to have smart assy friends

Because then you don't get in trouble for saying stuff like I did yesterday. I would probably never say anything so snarky to my very nice and not Smart Assy Friends.

Smart Assy Friend: So how's your Mom doing?*
Me: Oh, pretty well. She was pretty incoherent there for a while but she's recovering nicely.
SAF: Yeah, I spent some of the weekend incoherent, too.
Me: Yes, but with my mother, we can tell the difference.


*Mom spent a few days in the hospital with the UTI. Between the infection and the dehydration, she was not very lucid for a couple of days, scaring the bejeebers out of me. Yay both for anti-biotics and Mom's dislike of superbug-creating anti-bacterial everything.

Knee stabilizing exercises

This actually *exactly* what I need! I have what is called a "mal-tracking patella" which means that my kneecap doesn't run vertically in its little grove, but cants off to the outside a bit, in a kind of diagonal action. Remind me, the next time I see you, and I'll show you what I mean.

Thanks, New York Times!

Bookmark!

Via Claire's Facebook post:

David likes to describe the rehearsal hall at the Stage as the place where the stuff in one's attic goes to die. Well, it seems that we missed a bet because the all of the fabulously terrible (or merely impressively outdated) items in Awful Library Books are still sitting cheerfully on the shelves.

Still a few bugs in the system

Google tells us that we can now use Google Maps to get transit information. "Oh, how nice!" I thought, because WMATA's website isn't always very user friendly and Google Maps usually is.

So I went to the site to give it a try and I picked a pretty darn simple trip: from my office to Silver Spring Stage, which is about 2 1/2 miles, largely up a main road served by about a zillion buses. I typed in the two addresses and got the following:

[my office address], Silver Spring, MD 20910

Travel time: about 46 mins
Showing Trip 1
Walk to 10145 Colesville Rd
About 46 mins

Beta: Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.

1. Head west on [] Ave toward Georgia Ave/US-29 194 ft
2. Turn right at Georgia Ave/US-29 0.1 mi
3. Turn right at Colesville Rd/US-29 0.9 mi
4. Slight right to stay on Colesville Rd/US-29 1.2 mi

Walk to 10145 Colesville Rd
About 46 mins

Hmmmmmm. So I figured it was some kind of little glitch and ran it again using the car option (worked fine) and then ran it again using Public Transit. Apparently, Google wants me to get more exercise, because it still suggests that I walk the 2.3 miles. (And it seems that Google thinks I won't actually make the hike if they tell me how far it is because the total mileage figure doesn't show on the "public transit" results.)

So I tried WMATA. They have a newer, spiffier, prettier website since my last frustrating experience with them. I typed in the office address* and the theater's address and voila! I got three different suggestions, with cost information.**

I wouldn't have thought to go to WMATA's new site without the prompt from the less-than-optimal response from Google Maps.

So - once again - Google has quickly and easily provided me with lots of useful information! Just not in the way they had intended.


*Important trip: Type in only the street address, not the city, state, or zip because that's apparently just TMI and confuses the software.
**WMATA really, really wants us to use SmarTrip cards. One gets a ten-cent discount on the bus fare with a SmarTrip card.

What I learned at the Neurologist

Mom had an appointment at the neurologist's office the other day and I went along for moral support and, possibly, practical assistance.

Mom has been living with Multiple Sclerosis for the past twenty years. An auto-immune disorder, MS is a particularly vicious foe which attacks the nervous system of the body, destroying the myelin sheath which covers nerves - effectively cutting the phone cord in the house of the body, like the villain in a thriller. Only MS isn't all that thrilling.

Mom has chronic progressive MS*, and suffers from spasticity and muscle loss. She hasn't walked at all in nearly ten years, her vision is affected, and her cognition is somewhat impaired. She can't write legibly very often and cannot remember things long enough to tell them to me if I'm not standing in front of her when they occur to her, which means that when she does remember, she tells me things over and over.** I know quite a few people with MS and Mom has it the worst of all of them. She now lives in a "skilled nursing facility" which wasn't how she intended to spend her retirement years.

So, anyway, one of the staff where she lives noticed that Mom hadn't seen her neurologist in the last five years and suggested an appointment. The appointment was duly made and I met her there and we saw the neurologist. He asked some questions, checked her muscle strength in her arms ("Push against my hand. Uh-huh.") and her coordination ("Touch my finger. Now touch your nose. Now touch my finger. Uh-huh."), and then sat down to talk to us.

What he told us I essentially regard as good news. My biggest fear about Mom has been that she would get worse and worse and eventually be in a lot of discomfort all the time. But the doctor told us that if we could see her the nerves coming off of her spinal cord, we wouldn't see any active lesions, just areas where the nerve had withered. Mom has stabilized. In other words, he said, she is a paraplegic, and could be compared to someone who had been hurt in a riding accident as Christopher Reeve was, rather than to someone with, say a slowing progressing cancer, such as Elizabeth Edwards has. The flood has been and gone; Mom won't be living in the middle of a river with the water getting ever higher.

Which is good news for appropriate values of good news.

After the appointment, we went to Baja Fresh for lunch and I learned that while Mom zips around the nursing home in her electric wheel chair at speed, she is much more sedate on the sidewalks of Wheaton. And that when she crosses the street at less than a mile an hour, the kindly drivers wait for her very patiently. Thank you, Kindly Drivers!

A very educational trip. If one is supposed to learn one new thing every day, I'm up two.



*The other kind is relapsing/remitting where the patient has good days and bad days. Mom generally has bad days.

**Of course, I tell people things over and over and I don't have MS. Maybe it's a mother-daughter thing.

I'm a loser, just like Sarah

From Triumph Dining's Essential Gluten-Free Blog's list of Celebrities with Celiac Disease:

Comedienne and author Sarah Vowell, who says she has a “wheat allergy” is obsessed with the magaine “Living Without,” which she says “has the most downbeat name of any magazine since ‘Downbeat.’” She wonders why “the publishers don’t come clean and call it “Loser?” She also admits that the “corny” and “reassuring” magazine makes her feel less alone because her friends have “an underwhleming grasp of the pros and cons of various brands of soy flour.” Her hilarious segment on This American Life about living without wheat* is worth a listen (it starts at about 17:35).

In case, you are wondering, no, I don't subsribe to "Living Without." David offered me a subscription not long after I was diagnosed but, frankly, for me it would be like getting a heapin' helpin' of depression in the mail once a month.

I also liked this bit from the GF Celebrities list. Sarah mentions Governor Swift in her piece.

Jane Swift, the youngest women ever elected to the Massachusetts State Senate who later became the first female Governor of Massachusetts, underwent many medical examinations before being diagnosed with Celiac disease. When she goes to a political function, her staff calls ahead to tell the food servers about gluten-free options. Unfortunately, Swift often finds that people think she’s being difficult.

*Episode #256, which originally aired on 9 January 2004.

The cost of doing business

David is off on a field trip this morning and while he was out the phone rang. Message from the Guy who is supposed to give David an estimate on replacing his derelict back fence reminding David that he would be by around 2:00 for the walk-around. David should be back then and is very responsible about his appointments (as he generally is about everything), so I didn't worry too much about it.

I went about my business, including retrieving the very lovely flowers that I was given last night by Brian and McCall to celebrate the opening of the show that Brian wrote and I directed.* The flowers were a little overdue for some water and TLC and I don't get flowers so often that I am cavalier about their care, so I brought them in and noticed some guy in a car outside.

A few minutes later the phone rang and it was Jack (the Fence Guy) again. I didn't quite catch what he said, and I don't normally answer David's phone, but I tried to pick it up to let him know that David is out and would be back in time for their appointment. Didn't quite get there in time. So he called again and I answered.

I confirmed that I wasn't the Mrs. but a very good friend. Told Jack about David being out but coming back.

"Oh." (Pause) "Did I just see you carrying flowers into the house?"

"Yes. Is that you outside?"

"Yes." Jack was now hoping that I would let him walk around and look at the fence. I told him that I would be right out and then the Imp with the Weird Sense of Humor that serves as a brain for me added "Of course, you realize that the cost of me doing you a favor is a dozen roses, right?"

"Uhhh... Uhhhh ..."

"Which, of course, would be a pass-through. You'll include it in the estimate."

"Uhhh... okay."

I got outside and Jack (a very pleasant man) told me that, you know, his wife doesn't actually allow him to give other women flowers. She is pretty emphatic about that.

I suggested that he remind her that In This Economy, we have to do what we can to secure business, even if that means giving women-not-his-wife flowers. He was dubious as to whether or not she would believe this but seemed willing to give it a try. Or was willing to pretend he was in order to see the fence.

I walked him around, we looked at a fence that is the Board on Batten equivalent of drunken stupor. He said "hmmmm" and measured things. He made some notes. He rolled his eyes at the way other fences nearby had been installed. We agreed that he would call David this afternoon and then send him the esimate by mail unless David objected.

We parted on good terms and my share of the good-byes included the cheery: "The flowers can be delivered here."

He smiled and laughed. That's because he thinks I'm kidding. Hey, it's a tough economy out there.


*Which played to a full house! Come and see it! "Dictionary" at Montgomery Playhouse at the Kentlands Arts Barn! Playing in rep with five other spiffy one acts! Alternating performances July 17, 18, 24, & 25!

Timing

Part of the fun of one acts is comparing and contrasting how things are going for each show. I especially enjoyed this exchange between a couple of actors in different casts after a couple of pages were skipped in the later show:

"Well, we managed not to do our 35-minute show in 45 minutes."

"Yeah. We did our 30-minute show in 25."

My kind of lease renewal

I moved into my apartment in August of 2007 and signed a lease agreeing to pay a rent of [large sum]. In August of 2008 my lease came up for renewal and I thought I'd be looking at a rent of [large sum + $100]. So I was pleased to get a letter from the management company saying that, as I am a valued tenant*, they would like to renew my lease at a rent of [large sum + $85]. Oh, how nice! I promptly signed it and turned it in.

A few months later the prices of everything were exploding, so we got a note informing us that rents would have to be raised to compensate, at which point my rent became [large sum + $85 + $35]. Well, less nice, but oh well.

In all the time that I have lived here the building has never been full, so as the time for my lease renewal approached and I steeled myself to see [large sum + ($85 + $35) + $100]** on the lease renewal letter, I decided to ask my Boss for some help.

Before he (for his sins) became my Boss, he was, among other things, an accountant and an investment banker. Now he is the CFO of a medium-sized*** engineering firm, so he knows a bit about markets and negotiations. I figured that he could give me some guidance on how to ask for certain concessions in exchange for the rent increase. Maybe one of the covered parking spaces ($30/month) at no charge or something.

But before he and I could sit down and map out a Rent Concession Strategy for Someone Who is Too Nice for Her Own Good, I got this year's lease renewal letter.

Dear Resident:

Due to the increasing costs of maintaining the community, it is necessary for your rental rate to increase effective 9/1/2009.

Uh-oh.

As required by Section 29-54 of the Montgomery County Landlord/Tenant Code and other applicable provisions**** of law, this letter is to provide you with sixty (60) days noticed of your rent increase. The voluntary rent guideline set by Montgomery County of 4.4%.

Uh-huh.

We look forward to your continued residency with [building name]. Below you will find your renewal lease options. Please mark your choice for renewal and return this form to the office by August 10, 2009.

___ Yes, I/we wish to renew my/our lease agreement for one year at the rental rate of $[exactly what I'm paying now], a 0.00% increase. You are currently renting at the rate of $[large sum + etc].

What? I re-read that paragraph.

___ Yes, I/we wish to renew my/our lease agreement for one year at the rental rate of $[exactly what I'm paying now], a 0.00% increase. You are currently renting at the rate of $[large sum + etc].

Yup, that's what it said. Moving on.

___ Yes, I/we wish to renew my/our lease agreement on a month to month basis at the rental rate of [large sum + ($85 + $35) + $100] a 6.49% increase. You are currently renting at the rate of [my current rent].

If you feel this is excessive, you may request the Montgomery County Department of Housing & Community Affairs to review this matter.

Etc.

Whoo-hoo. My Boss and I agreed that my best choice is to leave this sleeping dog slumbering happily in place, so I have signed that puppy pretty quick and will be dropping it off at the office at my first opportunity.


*Which I am assuming means that I pay my rent on time. But I don't discount that I am relatively clean, quiet, and cooperative. And they would really value me if they knew that I am typing this with the air conditioning off and the windows open. No point in using all that store-bought air when it's so nice out right now.

**Huh. Someone who didn't know me who read that might be lead to think that I am not as much of a math imcompetant as I sometimes am.

***Read that as "small-sized" if you represent the Small Business Administration, please.

****It actually says "provisiions," but let that pass. Let she who is without typo ...

My thought process: a cross-section

"Now pay attention, because it's very muddly and half the time I won't know what I'm talking about."

Roderick Alleyn in Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh

Not to mention the obligatory scantily clad girl

These two words usually keep me out of a theater: Ray Cooney. Cooney is an English typist who cranks out one feeble farce after another. These lamentable confections jumble together stick-figure characters to recite stale jokes and play out thinly stretched, formulaic situations. Think six-minute Carol Burnett sketches expanded to 2 1/4 hours. But without the laughs.

Michael Toscano, in the Washington Post in a glowing review for It Runs in the Family at Little Theatre of Alexandria

Not the conversation she planned to have

On Memorial Day I was attending a cook-out in Falls Church just up the street from the town's Memorial Day Fair. I wandered around the Fair, mainly looking for the friend who was handing out show fliers for All My Sons, figuring that I could give her a hand. I couldn't find Tina, but I was individually intercepted by several members of an environmental group*, who were working the fair in order to fundraise and educate.

They had been well trained and thus got right and my path with a cheery hello and a some kind of "Do you know about [Organization]"-type question. I blew each off with something like "No, but I'm looking for a friend. Maybe later."

Never did find Tina, but I figured that the young environmental volunteers deserved their turn so I went back to the last of the interceptors and we started to talk.

"I didn't find my friend, but you wanted to tell me about [Organization]."

"Yes! We ---" and she actually got a few words into her pitch before I stopped her.

"Actually, I have one question." Pause "What is [Organization]'s position on hydropower?"**

And then we had the big pause as truth battled with telling me what she deduced that I wanted to hear.

She told me slowly and carefully that she, personally, did not have a position on hydropower and wasn't positive what [Organization]'s position was but she did not think that they support it.

We looked at the binder she was carrying which showed pretty pictures of wind farms and solar and no pictures of Eagle buffets.

So instead of her telling me how important it is to save the environment and couldn't I make a contribution today (no, not based on looking at a binder at a fair), she got to hear my Benefits of Hydropower speech.

(Summary: Hydro is clean and renewable. No form of energy is without cost or limitation: wind farms can often have the same effect on birds that Captain Sullenberger's Flight 1549 had on that flock near the Hudson and they can be very noisy, disrupting wildlife reproductive habits; solar works well in areas with lots of sunshine, so Forks, Washington wouldn't get much use from it; geothermal is expensive to build and maintain; nuclear power plants are hideously expensive to build and I'm still not sure about the waste issue; etc ... Hydro has its costs and limitations as well, obviously, but it should be part of the energy mix.)

I told her that I'm in favor of any clean/renewable source of energy, including nuclear power. "Basically, I am in favor of prett' near any energy source that doesn't involve scrapping the tops off of mountains." She liked that sentence. Most people I've said to do, but then I don't have a lot of close friends in the coal industry.

She also seemed to agree with my assessment that "clean coal" - like compassionate conservatism*** and, oh, kindly spouse abuse, tries to twist-tie an otherwise not only unrelated, but actually opposite, attribute onto something unpopular.

Just for good measure I threw in my fun fact about electric cars: They are only as clean as the electricity that powers them, so great if you live in Idaho which is largely hydro-powered and terrible if you live in West Virgina, also known as the Mountaintop Removal State.

I believe I also mentioned that the word "hydropower" has not - to my knowledge - appeared in Time magazine in any context in the past several years, unless they are covering China. Environment + China = bad.

I'm not suggesting damming free-running waterways, just perhaps adding a hydro component to the 90% of Americans dams that don't yet have it. And keeping hydro as part of the menu of alternative energies.

So we left it that I would check [Organization]'s website - and I would if I had been smart enough to write down their name - and she would consider bringing up the concept of hydro with the people who send her out to be lectured by random passers by at Memorial Day Fairs.

I'm glad we had this little talk.

And, for the record, here is Maryland's energy mix for 2007****:

Coal 23,509,862
Petroleum 3,571,272
Hydroelectric Conventional 2,298,910
Natural Gas 1,522,443
Nuclear 1,251,416
Other Gases 488,197
Other Biomass 371,074
Wood and Wood Derived Fuels 149,118

Total 33,162,292

Maryland’s coal-fired power plants typically supply more than one-half of the electricity generation within the State. Nuclear power typically supplies more than one-fourth of generation, and petroleum- and natural gas-fired plants supply much of the remainder. Although Maryland produces a small amount of coal in the West, most of the State’s coal-fired power plants burn coal shipped from West Virginia. The State’s only nuclear plant, the dual-unit Calvert Cliffs facility, supplies all of Maryland’s nuclear power. The Conowingo hydroelectric plant on the Susquehanna River, one of Maryland's largest generation facilities, provides almost all of the State’s hydroelectricity. Approximately one-third of Maryland households use electricity as their main source of energy for home heating.

Coal includes anthracite, bituminous coal, subbituminous coal, lignite, waste coal, and synthetic coal.

Other includes non-biogenic municipal solid waste, batteries, chemicals, hydrogen, pitch, purchased steam, sulfur, tire-derived fuels, and miscellaneous technologies.

Other Biomass includes biogenic municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agricultural byproducts, other biomass solids, other biomass liquids, and other biomass gases (including digester gases and methane).

Other Gases includes blast furnace gas, propane gas, and other manufactured and waste gases derived from fossil fuels.

Petroleum includes distillate fuel oil (all diesel and No. 1, No. 2, and No. 4 fuel oils), residual fuel oil (No. 5 and No. 6 fuel oils and bunker C fuel oil), jet fuel, kerosene, petroleum coke, and waste oil.

Wood and Wood Derived Fuels includes paper pellets, railroad ties, utility poles, wood chips, bark, red liquor, sludge wood, spent sulfite liquor, and black liquor, with other wood waste solids and wood-based liquids.

*And if I remember the name of the group, I'll update this post with it.
**Disclosure statement: I worked for two years for the National Hydropower Association.
***Which is not to say that conservatives are not compassionate. Most of the conservatives I know are kind and generous people. But when the brand has Dick Cheney, Anne Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh as the front people, "compassion" will have to be attached by way of staple-gun.
****Source: The Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy.