Oxford Map and History

Oxford is one of the oldest towns in Maryland. Although already settled for perhaps 20 years, Oxford marks the year 1683 The Strand Tilghman as its official founding, for in that year Oxford was first named by the Maryland General Assembly as a seaport and was laid out as a town. In 1694, Oxford and a new town called Anne Arundel (now Annapolis) were selected the only ports of entry for the entire Maryland province. Until the American Revolution, Oxford enjoyed prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations. Today, Oxford is a charming tree-lined and waterbound village with a population of just over 700 and is still important in boat building and yachting. It has a protected harbor for watermen who harvest oysters, crabs, clams and fish, and for sailors from all over the Bay.

For a walking tour and more history visit https://tidewatertimes. com/travel-tourism/oxford-maryland/.

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Benoni Ave. Pleasant St. Robes Hbr. Ct. South Morris Street Bachelor Point Road Pier St. E. Pier St. Oxford Road

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Oxford Community Center

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natured exemplar of Motherhood:

“Here—we—are,” said Rabbit very slowly and carefully, “all—of— us, and then, suddenly, we wake up one morning and, what do we find? We find a Strange Animal among us. An animal of whom we have never even heard before! An animal who carries her family about with her in her pocket! Suppose I carried my family about with me in my pocket, how many pockets should I want?”

“Sixteen,” said Piglet.

“Seventeen, isn’t it?” said Rabbit. “And one more for a handkerchief ~ that’s eighteen. Eighteen pockets in one suit! I haven’t time.”

After getting sidetracked updating his family’s number, Rabbit ultimately hatches a plan: “The question is, What are we to do about Kanga? . . . The best would be this. . . . to steal Baby Roo and hide him, and then when Kanga says, ‘Where’s Baby Roo?’ we say, ‘Aha!’. . . so that Kanga knows that we know where Baby Roo is. ‘Aha!’ means ‘We’ll tell you where Baby Roo is, if you promise to go away from the Forest and never come back.’”

In the course of executing the plan, of course, all the natives of the Wood get to know and appreciate the new neighbors with unWoodsian customs. Personally, I’ve had a number

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of role models at different stages of my life, from Winnie-the-Pooh to my Labradorish Retriever, the late Chuck Abbott. In between those two, as a wiseacre teen, having outgrown Pooh Bear, I fell for Alfred E. Neuman. One could do worse than follow an insouciant youngster with the attitude “What, me worry?”

While Mad taught generations about satire and alternative viewpoints, Neuman’s image on its cover displayed none of the snarkiness of the magazine’s contents. Alfie’s motto urged readers not to get too riled up about transitory day-to-day events. A valuable lesson. But perhaps Alfie would have been wise to pay more attention to business, as Mad was relocated from New York to California, repeatedly absorbed by larger and

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larger corporate behemoths. Regular distribution of original content ended in 2020. Nonetheless, Alfie’s rather-vacant, gap-toothed visage endures. In 2022, he and his optimistic motto graced the cover of the magazine’s 70th anniversary issue. And he doesn’t look a day older than when he debuted around 1900 in ads for “painless dentistry.”

In considering past and present role models, the absence from my list of an actual human being became troubling. Admirable people abound, but they are such mixed bags ~ swayed one way and another by nature, nurture and, as we now know, genetics. Science has recently uncovered a specific trait affecting disposition, carried in both canine and human genomes. Our two species’ mutual chromosome relates to Chuck’s most endearing quality but, in rare human cases, is associated with a mutant disorder. Too much information indeed.

Chuck himself was a mixed bag: predominantly Chesapeake Bay Retriever in appearance and Labrador in disposition. We two used to camp in an old island house, me on the sofa, he beside me on the floor. Around sunrise, before Chuck stirred or opened his eyes, the thump, thump, thump of tailon-linoleum foretold the start of his day. Never having been a morn-

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ing person myself, I couldn’t help but admire his attitude. Once he was alert, his expression wasn’t dissimilar from Alfie’s. Now I’m learning that science has an explanation for Chuck’s sunny disposition.

A husband-and-wife team at Duke University, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, authored a book in 2020, Survival of the Friendliest, which attributes evolutionary success not to the biggest and baddest of a species, but to the friendliest. Their theory suggests that natural selection favors the least aggressive specimens of a species ~ for example, that evolution selected us over several other hominids with whom we once coexisted because we were more sociable than they.

In the case of dogs, they suggest dogs’ evolution from wolves was likely due to a tendency of some wolves to live closer than others to humans. Dining on scraps of our food waste, wolves doing less hunting required less aggressiveness. Over tens of thousands of years,

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variations in canine size and coat eventually developed, along with a mutation in dog genes that predisposes them to befriend humans, a trait not present in the genome of wolves.

Comparing wolf and dog genes, Bridgett vonHoldt, a Princeton geneticist, identified in 2010 the development in dogs’ chromosomes that she calls “the friendliness mutation.” Since it’s absent from wolves, she thinks this is a mutation that evolved from pre-dog days and relates to a dog’s ultimate inclination to bond with humans.

While absent from wolves, the friendliness mutation suggests a link between dogs and humans. If the same chromosome in a human lacks several genes, their absence causes Williams Syndrome, a genetic condition identified with exceptionally friendly and sociable people. Along with emotional vulnerability and several adverse physical issues, those with Williams Syndrome exhibit outgoing, empathetic personalities and are gifted with good facial recognition and excellent long-term memory. In social situations, they tend to focus on another’s eyes, leading to the shorthand description of their “cocktail party” personalities.

Anderson Cooper has been tracking studies of canine, as well as human, mentality for years. In a recent segment of 60 Minutes, he met Ben Monkaba, a young man with Williams Syndrome, and asked what makes him unique. Ben said, “What makes me unique is my way of giving happiness to people, my friendliness, my kindness.

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When people are happy, it makes me feel like I’ve achieved something.’ Asked his feelings about scientific discovery of a link between dogs and humans, he smiled and said, “It makes me feel so happy and proud that dogs and people have similarities.”

These particular scientific findings reinforce my ambition to be more Chuck-like. Perhaps it may be possible after all for me to follow closer in the footsteps of Pooh, Alfie and Chuck ~ maybe even to the footsteps of a human, Ben Monkaba.

Forty-some years ago, A.M. Foley swapped the Washington, D.C., business scene for a writing life on Elliott Island, Maryland. Tidewater Times has kindly published portions of one upcoming work, Chesapeake Bay Island Hopping, along with other regional musings. Foley’s published works are described at www.HollandIslandBook.com.