20050712 This Year Halloween Comes Early in Maryland

This Year Halloween Comes Early in Maryland

July 12^th, 2005 by Kevin Dayhoff (739 words)

Who among us has not heard of the Salem witch hunt trials of 1692 in Massachusetts? Did you know that in Maryland, we had a few witch hunts between 1665 and 1686, one in 1712 and apparently, another hunt is scheduled for the summer of 2005?

According to a Carroll County Times article on October 31^st, 1993, “Belief in witches and supernatural spirits were part of the Pennsylvania German culture brought into this area by the settlers.” Apparently, some folks in Maryland still believe in hunting witches.

The Times article mentions that in the December 1936 edition of Maryland Historical Magazine, Judge Francis Neal Parke wrote an article entitled "Witchcraft in Maryland."

Judge Parke was one of Maryland’s most celebrated jurists. He was born in Westminster in 1871 and admitted to the bar in 1893. He was appointed Chief Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit in 1924 and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1941. He returned to private practice on Court Street, in Westminster, until his death in 1955.

In his article, Judge Parke discussed that the “earliest cases [of alleged witchcraft] involved the hanging of women assumed to be witches while aboard ships traveling from England to the colonies in 1654 and 1658” shortly after Maryland was founded in March 25^th, 1634. Judge Parke reports five additional cases of alleged witchcraft. “The first four cases occurred between 1665 and 1686, and the fifth was in 1712.”

Back to the future, I read an Associated Press article in the Carroll County Times the other day that House Speaker Michael E. Busch has actually, for real, I’m not making this up, named a “committee of four Democrats and two Republicans to join six state senators in an inquiry into the personnel polices of the Ehrlich administration.”

In a published account last May in the Washington Times, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., said, “A lot of people have indicated they want to testify before a commission… It is not going to be a witch hunt.”

Oh, I feel better all ready.

Perhaps the team of Miller and Busch feel a good witch hunt, every 300 years or so, does a state good. According to an account of the Salem witch hunt trials, that I have in my library, by Douglas Linder, in the summer of 1692 nineteen men and women were convicted of being witches and hung. An 80 year old was crushed to death under some heavy rocks for refusing to agree to go on trial. Take heed, if anyone out there is considering not playing along with the Annapolis version of “Salem 2005”; I suggest that you re-read the previous sentence.

The senators and delegates named to the committee are some of the most talented and capable elected officials in Annapolis. I just wish that they weren’t wasting their time on a witch hunt.

Perhaps, our Maryland General Assembly leaders aren’t aware of some of the other challenges facing us in the State of Maryland.

For example, how about a committee on the continuing crisis in health care? A little committee on the cost of prescription medicine? How about a small committee on the state’s continuing structural budget deficit? School construction? Road congestion and transportation needs? How about the challenges in our juvenile justice system? Attracting new business to Maryland? Business retention? Teacher compensation and retention?

For all you folks reading this at home, these issues are affecting your quality of life and mine. Do not, for one minute, think that this little parlor game of political charades is none of your concern.

The state workforce includes 80,000 employees. According to a Washington Times article on May 25^th, 2005, “Lawrence J. Hogan Jr., the governor's secretary of appointments, said the Ehrlich administration in three years has fired 280 of its 7,000 at-will workers. Mr. Ehrlich's Democratic predecessor, Gov. Parris N. Glendening, fired 309 at-will workers in a single year from the Department of Transportation alone…”

Paul E. Schurick, the governor's communications director, said it better than I could in a June 3^rd, 2005 Gazette article by Thomas Dennison: "The double standard is as gross and as egregious as I have ever seen. The fact of the matter is, dozens of legislators have made a career of trying to influence the hiring and firing of state employees."

Happy Halloween. Shenanigans like this out of Annapolis sure aren’t a treat and the trick is on us.

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at: kdayhoff@carr.org

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