Home Care In Olney, MD

A 222-year-old United Methodist Church congregation in Montgomery County, Maryland, has 56 days to raise $4 million, its senior pastor said Wednesday.

Without the payment, Oakdale Church in Olney will lose its sanctuary when it departs the denomination, which has become divided over the role of LGBTQ people in ministry.

In the first 10 days of a fundraising effort, the 750-member congregation has raised $500,000 — one-eighth of the total, the Rev. Kevin Baker said in a telephone interview.

“We’ve got a ways to go” to meet the Oct. 25 payment deadline, Mr. Baker said.

Initially, Oakdale leaders thought they would have until the end of the year, when the current terms for exiting the UMC expire.

The building buyout comes on top of national church requirements for exiting congregations to contribute two years of annual apportionments — $200,000 in Oakland’s case — and money for unfunded pension liabilities, Mr. Baker said.

Established in 1801, Oakdale is one of 22 churches seeking to leave the UMC’s Baltimore-Washington Conference — a regional body akin to a diocese in other denominations. The conference voted to approve the departures earlier this year.

Mr. Baker said the congregation, which opposes LGBTQ clergy, had satisfied the regional body’s other requirements, including meetings about a departure and a congregational vote that approved the exit decision with a two-thirds majority. Oakdale’s in-person attendance on Sundays ranges from 275 to 300 people, with another 130 to 150 viewing online.

However, Oakdale and the other churches are being asked to pay half the assessed value of their real estate, a figure Mr. Baker said adds up to $10 million for the 22 congregations. At $4 million, the Olney congregation has been asked to pay 40% of that figure, he said.

“We’ve gone basically to our congregation with an emergency appeal that we need $4 million by October 25 To be able to buy the building that we’ve already paid for,” the pastor said.

“The conference didn’t pay for any of the building. We’ve paid for the building,” he said.

Along with a historic chapel on the property built in 1914, the main church building and sanctuary were constructed “around 1985” and underwent “a fairly substantial renovation” in 2014 that cost $4 million, Mr. Baker said.

“We’ve said that feels punitive,” he said of the demand, noting that conference Bishop Latrelle Easterling was part of a national team that worked out the rules for congregational departures.

Bishop Easterling; the Rev. Dawn M. Hand, the district superintendent; and communications director Melissa Lauber did not respond to a comment request.

Mr. Baker said neither his clerical superiors nor the conference’s trustee board have been willing to negotiate with Oakland Church. He said that won’t deter the congregation’s mission of evangelism.

“We feel God’s called us to an amazing vision,” he said. “This is just, unfortunately, an obstacle that we’re just going to have to pay the price to get moving forward. We’ve tried to continue to be faithful and gracious. I wish they would have been more willing to negotiate with us, but that has not turned out to be the case.”

While the congregation “would very much like to stay in the building that they’ve paid for,” Mr. Baker said, “the staff, the board and the congregation are committed to being Oakdale Church with or without this building.”

Salt & Vine has “welcome” splashed all over it.

You pull up outside the historic venue, which locals might know as the former Olney House, to find tables spread across the patio and porch of the grand white facade of the building. Step inside, and your appetite is piqued by a wood-burning pizza oven to the left and a tony lounge to your right. A host asks if you have a reservation. Judging by the crowds that flock here, you’re relieved to have a confirmed table. All my visits, I’ve been led upstairs, to one of several dining rooms, each with a different wall treatment. Walking through them is like taking a tour of an interior design showroom.

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A stranger tipped me off to Salt & Vine, and subsequent online sleuthing suggested the Italian-themed restaurant, opened in May by chef Thomas Zipelli, would be worth my sharing with a larger audience. A 2010 graduate of Johnson & Wales, Zipelli went straight to the celebrated Eleven Madison Park in New York for his internship, after which he was hired and worked his way up to the fish station. When an old roommate told him about an opening at the equally renowned French Laundry, Zipelli left the East Coast for California’s Napa Valley, where he worked his way up to become saucier.

Dining with Tom Sietsema

I’m Tom, the food critic for The Post since 2000. I review restaurants in the Washington region every week, and every month I round up my current favorites. Twice a year I curate a special dining guide: In the fall I write about dozens of top picks, and in the spring I spotlight new restaurants.

I love hearing from readers: Email me at [email protected], join my weekly online chat (Wednesdays at 11 a.m.), and click the Follow button on my author page to keep up with everything I write.

Essential reading:

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From there, the chef took his knives to Canlis in Seattle, another revered dining destination, and later heard from his father: What about opening a place of his own? In 2016, Zipelli returned to Howard County, where the New York native spent his teen years, and took over the Coho Grill in Columbia, which he rebranded as the Turn House. Next, he took over Ricciuti’s in Olney with the intention of simply expanding the bar. But the structure — the former Olney House — was in such bad shape (“about to fall down,” says Zipelli) the chef decided on a top-to-bottom renovation that took more than three years, no thanks to the pandemic. In the meantime, Zipelli added Maggie’s in Westminster, Md., to his collection.

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On paper, there’s promise at Salt & Vine, where day-to-day cooking falls to chef Eric Frisch, recruited from the Hamilton, part of the Clyde’s Restaurant Group. At first glance, it looks like the kind of restaurant that’s handy for date night, with a group, or when visitors come to town. Thought has gone into the sleek table lights, broad marble tables and comfortable butterscotch-colored leather chairs. I was charmed when I was able to call Salt & Vine to make a reservation after I struck out on Open Table, and a live person found a table for four on a recent Saturday night.

Really, what’s not to like?

Well, let me tell you about the bread basket I was promised my first meal and never saw, or the calamari so dark they looked as if they were fried in the Phoenix sun — and so small and hard I could have worn them as rings. Their one redeeming quality were the pickled peppers in the mix, which I fetched out and ate as a relish. Half a squeeze bottle of balsamic vinegar appeared to form the thick brown stripes on a clump of radicchio, endive and mozzarella, a sad salad with some oranges tucked into it.

The portions are generous, which some diners appreciate. Today’s dinner can be tomorrow’s, too! Unfortunately, a heaping helping of something inferior tends to magnify the dish’s flaws. Mushroom risotto so stiff and dense you could plant a flagpole in it isn’t going to improve on the ninth or tenth bite. Same with the bucatini tossed with sails of pancetta that taste like raw bacon. My most satisfying encounter with pasta here was orecchiette, ear shapes that caught drops of creamy-tasting parmesan sauce and crumbles of fennel pork sausage, sepia tones contrasted with bright broccoli rabe — a common pasta combination done right.

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This isn’t a complete Titanic, in other words. Navigate around the icebergs on the menu and let “grandma’s” tender meatballs float your boat. The recipe, incorporating beef, veal and pork, pays tribute to the owner’s paternal grandmother, from whom he learned some tricks of the Italian trade on weekend visits to her home outside New York. I also like the oysters, served in their shells with garlic butter, topped with cheese and breadcrumbs that are crisped in a wood-fired oven. And if you’re in the mood for meat, rack of lamb marinated in Dijon mustard, olive oil and herbs trumps the lackluster rib-eye steak. The entrees come with a choice of accompaniments. I side with the crisp smashed potatoes or velvety roasted peppers.

Everyone seems happy to see you, but not everyone goes about their duties with the same skill or attention.

The best servers know the history of the place, explaining that the pizza oven is the only element to survive the renovation, let you know half-orders of pasta are available and reveal a sense of humor. “Let me tell you about our one-calorie delight,” an attendant said in reference to a plate of housemade truffles. But I’ve also encountered servers who merely fly by after food has been dropped off (“Howseverythinghere?” one said on his way to another table) and staff who show up with dishes that have nowhere to land, since plates haven’t been cleared, forcing diners to scramble to make room for a pizza whose blond bottom appears to have been cooked with nothing hotter than a hair dryer. (Salt & Vine has lots of company when it comes to erratic food delivery. Layer on lesser cooking, though, and customer patience gets stretched.)

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“My ears are bleeding,” a companion said at the mention of dessert. DID I MENTION SALT & VINE IS LOUD, TOO? The upstairs dining rooms have light from multiple windows in their favor, but little in the way of soundproofing. Given the earlier uneven performances from the kitchen, no one wanted to stick around for another course. But duty calls and we stayed in our seats. Plus, I wanted to see if anyone on staff would free the table of the big shrimp tail, a remnant of an order of seafood stew, left directly in front of me.

The truffles, rolled from chocolate infused with raspberry Earl Grey tea, butter and cream, are satisfying. Other confections went unfinished after a sample. A wedge of tiramisu cake was shy on the expected flavors, and the acrid limoncello panna cotta seemed to be sponsored by Pledge. No, grazie.

Critics make repeat visits to test places for consistency and sample the range of a menu. I can tell you the drinks and wine list at Salt & Vine are good, beets and goat cheese make a better starter than raw tuna folded over roasted peaches, the fried calamari is always as bronzed as Magda in “There’s Something About Mary,” and the chicken stuffed with cream cheese goes down like chicken Kiev without its breading (and with fat as the prominent flavor). Remove the bland salmon from the cioppino — but keep the plump shrimp — and you’ll have a decent herbed seafood stew. Further, just because something is made on-site doesn’t mark it delicious. Proof: the vapid, snow-white focaccia I eventually received.

I can also tell you it gives me zero pleasure seeing so many people working so hard to please their audience with food that doesn’t always hold up its end of the deal.

In a story I wrote last year, I explained that while I went to more than 125 restaurants a year, I didn’t bother reviewing all of them. For instance, small or out-of-the-way places that aren’t very good typically go in the Why Bother? category. I felt compelled to write about Salt & Vine because of its history, the owner’s résumé, the pretty packaging and my mission: As much as I like to steer readers to good places to eat, I’d be remiss not to warn them away from middling (or worse) cooking.

I eat bad food so you don’t have to.

Dessert is typically the last chance a restaurant has to make an impression, one way or the other. In my case, the parting memory at Salt & Vine was the aforementioned shrimp tail — still hanging around on my table, even after I paid my check and rose to go home.

3308 Sandy Spring Rd., Olney, Md. 301-570-3388. saltandvine.com. Open for indoor and outdoor dining 4 to 10 p.m. daily. Prices: appetizers $13 to $35, main courses. $22 to $125 (40-ounce porterhouse for two). Sound check: 84 decibels/Extremely loud. Accessibility: Wheelchair users can access the ground floor via a ramp near the entrance and the side of the building; restrooms there are ADA-compliant.

Winter City Lights, the highly anticipated holiday lights festival in the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), kicks off on Saturday, November 18, 2023, and closes on the last day of December.

A 1.5-mile trail through enchanting woods adorned with a staggering one million lights will dazzle the participants. The festival’s centerpiece, a 52-foot Christmas tree, will send beacons of light into the night sky. And guess what? Guests will be treated to complimentary cups of hot chocolate!

But that’s not all! Winter City Lights will introduce an array of new holiday displays that will leave you in awe: a towering 30-foot snowman, a gleaming Gold Ribbon tree, and a shimmering path through the most magical woods you’ll ever encounter. The Penguin Plunge snow tubing ride will give a dashing adrenaline rush if that’s what you’re looking for.

Spanning over 18 acres, Winter City Lights boasts more than 200,000 square feet of holiday displays, earning it the well-deserved title of the Second Most Magical Christmas Light Display in the country from Country Living Magazine. This extraordinary event is produced by Steelhead Events, the same top-tier production company behind the renowned Field of Screams Maryland, which was voted the Best Haunted Attraction in the Country by USA Today in 2022.

We pride ourselves on offering guests an immersive holiday experience. From our signature Christmas tree and canopy of lights to our 33 bonfires and hundreds of charming displays set along a breathtaking 1.5 mile walk through the woods, our guests can relax and enjoy the beautiful surroundings of a truly magical holiday experience.

Christian Cedillos, Co-Creative Director, Steelhead Events

While exploring Winter City Lights, indulge in delectable concessions: adult beverages, hot chocolate, made-to-order pizza, BBQ sandwiches, funnel cakes, pretzels, s’mores, and the famous Blizzard, a towering delight featuring funnel cakes, fried Oreos and Twinkies, Cool Whip, powdered sugar, chocolate sauce, and sprinkles!

Rest assured, Winter City Lights is an environmentally conscious event featuring energy-efficient lighting and recycled aluminum displays.

Visit www.wintercitylights.com for tickets and information. Located at 4501 Olney-LaytonsvilleRd., Olney, MD, 15 minutes from the Capital Beltway, 25 minutes from Northern Virginia and Baltimore. Opens November 18 – Dec. 31, 2023. $39 for adults, $34 for seniors, $31 for children 4-12, FREE for kids 3 and under. Penguin Plunge and Lumberjack Axe Throwing are additional. FREE PARKING.

Editor’s note: Since this review was originally published on November 19, it has been revised in response to readers to whom we are grateful for bringing to our attention an inadvertently insensitive subtitle.

“TRADITION…TRADITION!” Those words, in the opening prologue of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, stir emotions. Director Peter Flynn’s Fiddler, now playing at the Olney Theatre Center, stirs its own set of emotions in 2023: as a thought-provoking, competent, and yet confounding staging of a timeless classic.

This is the story of Tevye, a milkman in the village of Anatevka who struggles to provide for his family and is guided by Jewish traditions. Tevye and his daughters remain the focal point of the story throughout — as each daughter chooses to marry for love in relationships Tevye finds difficult to accept.

Fiddler on the Roof is also the story of Jewish life in Russia at the turn of the 20th century; as such, amid a tale of love and tradition, it is also about religious persecution, pogroms, and the expulsion of Jews, which adds to the gravitas of the story. Flynn’s production of Fiddler, in a significant departure from the original, sets this story at Ellis Island — where it unfolds via flashback, and where it ends — to emphasize his perspective that this is a story of all immigrants.

Howard Kaye as Tevye effectively handles the sarcastic banter of this legendary role (in one memorable scene, he humorously questions the tailor’s worthiness for his daughter). He is musically best in songs like “If I Were a Rich Man,” where the veteran actor handles Harnick’s fast-paced lyrics admirably. Kaye, however, lacks the commanding presence and voice that a quintessential “Reb Tevye” demands. He harnesses the humor but not the heartbreak of this legendary character.

Fiddler has 23 different roles, and strong among the many on stage at Olney was Noah Keyishian as the student Perchik. Keyishian emotes with conviction; it is believable that he would cross the barrier to dance with women at Tzeitel’s wedding. Rachel Stern as Tevye’s wife, Golde, is a wonderfully loving and angst-ridden Jewish mother. Sophie Schulman as eldest daughter, Tzeitel, shows tremendous vocal chops. And Chess Jakobs as Lazar Wolf, the wealthy butcher who wants to marry Tzeitel, is striking for how he balances the pride and indignity of this character.

Graciela Rey, as The Fiddler, possesses considerable talent as a dancer. Yet Flynn unfortunately does not commit to a clear role for her. She is on rooftops, pirouetting in musical interludes, one of the bottle dancers at Tzeitel’s wedding, and dancing solely with Tevye in another scene. This decision to make her a focal point of this production unnecessarily steers attention away from the main characters on stage.

That said, Flynn is to be commended for the creative team he has pulled together. Choreography by Lorna Ventura incorporates traditional Jewish dance, most wonderfully in moments of joy like the iconic “To Life” and “The Bottle Dance” at Tzeitel’s wedding. Scenic designer Milagros Ponce de Leon crafts different wooden sets with height and authenticity. Her work meshes beautifully with Max Doolittle’s lighting design in the first act’s “Sabbath Prayer,” with candles in dimly lit windows as a stunning backdrop to the stage. Doolittle’s lighting, overall, is a mix of subtle and striking spotlights — particularly in the closing scene as the cast walks through the light of doors into the new world of America.

Flynn’s production features a diverse cast; cast members are African American, Japanese, Ecuadorean, and of other ethnic backgrounds. It is a production, per an Olney press release, with “an eye toward the global shtetl.” Olney effectively showcased a plus-sized African American Belle in its 2022 production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and here again recognizes the importance and necessity of diverse casting.

Olney’s challenge with this casting for this particular show, however, is that Fiddler on the Roof, based on the stories of the Yiddish playwright Sholem Aleichem and the first commercially successful show about Jewish life in Russia, is a point of cultural pride for many Jewish people.

Flynn’s perspective — which emphasizes that this is the story of every culture, in every part of the world — is a thought-provoking one. That perspective is at the core of a production that makes a number of unconventional artistic decisions — from larger-scale choices like the role of The Fiddler, the diverse casting, and setting the play on Ellis Island to details like placing a tallit on the female actress playing The Fiddler (a tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl, is traditionally reserved for men in orthodox Jewish communities like the one Fiddler depicts) and the fact that you do not hear a glass being broken during the musical’s wedding scene.

This is an enjoyable production of Bock and Harnick’s classic play; it is also a complicated one, and at times, uneven. It considers a Jewish play and asks whether it can be a universal story. Credit the Olney production team for sparking this conversation, and consider what ‘TRADITION!’ means to you.

Running Time: Two hours and 45 minutes with one 15-minute intermission.

Fiddler on the Roof plays through December 31, 2023, at Olney Theatre Center, Roberts Mainstage, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney, MD. Tickets ($39–$95) are available online or through the box office at 301-924-3400, open from 12 pm – 6 pm Wednesdays through Saturdays. Discounts are available for groups, seniors, military, and students (for details click here).

The program for Fiddler on the Roof is online here.

COVID Safety: Face masks are recommended but no longer required to attend events in any Olney Theatre Center performance spaces.

Last week's winds took down the more than 200-year-old Lone Oak.

OLNEY, Md. — One tree creates the identity of the Lone Oak Farm Brewery in Olney, Maryland. For the Miller brothers, it became a living symbol of their ambitions.

"We went to high school locally, we used to drive by, that kind of looks like the tree of life," said co-owner Charlie Miller. "Then one day, 15 years later, we actually ended up purchasing the property and owning it, I guess if you could own such a thing."

Brother and co-owner Chris Miller added that the tree was like a lone pillar of strength out of the middle, exposed to all the elements.

"That was the only tree out there," Chris Miller said. "That's part of the reason why it had such an iconic shape. Trees in the forest are all competing for light, they grow straight up. This was the lone oak out in the field. So it had all of the space, it could spread out that crown, that 150-foot wide crown that was just perfectly symmetrical and just a testament to its location in consideration of those surrounding landscape."

Credit: Becca Knier

Lone Oak Farm Brewery co-owners Charlie and Chris Miller

Children played, businesses grew, and families united, all within sight of the Lone Oak of Olney. To the Miller brothers, it was, to borrow a line from a poem: "The Giving Tree. It gave us all the seasons."

However, The Giving Tree grew tired after hundreds of years.

"I live on the property. So we were dozing off my wife and I, and all of a sudden this kind of weird bang happened. And she hopped up and said, 'I think that was the tree.' And I was kind of out. I was like, 'No, there's no way it was a tree.' And sure enough, we went to the window and looked out. And under the bright moonlight, we could see the tree was down," recalled Chris Miller.

Credit: Becca Knier

The Miller brothers in front of the fallen Lone Oak of Olney

The tree symbolized a lot for the brothers, not only as a business but in their lives.

"Charlie and I went into this endeavor, young kind of wide-eyed entrepreneurs not really knowing how is going to work out and the tree was always this symbol of kind of excitement and hope and strength," said Chris Miller. "So to see it down, was kind of surreal, in a tragic way. But we had some signs leading up to it. So I started to prepare myself mentally. But actually having it happen. It does hurt."

The Lone Oak of Olney gave all it could. Beyond turning the wood into tables and chairs, the brewery has plans to put the Lone Oak into their beer.

Credit: Becca Knier

A tap at Lone Oak Farm Brewery

"In about two years, our hope is that they'll have milled the wood, dried it, put the vessel together and send it back to us and we can start aging our beer in that vessel," explained Chris Miller. "You'll actually have the flavor of the oak in the product."

Credit: Becca Knier

Cans of beer at Lone Oak Farm Brewery

Local legend has it that during the Civil War, the Lone Oak divided two families. On one side, a family siding with the Union. On the other side, a family sided with the Confederacy.

Josh Nadler leads efforts to take clippings from the Lone Oak and graft them onto living tree sprouts.

Credit: Becca Knier

Grafting a tree to re-plant the Lone Oak of Olney

"We're basically cloning the tree's genetic makeup. And if we can get some of those clones to take and become viable, then we'll be able to in a few years from now, when they develop, replant one of them," said Chris Miller.

Growing a new Lone Oak will take several decades. Nadler’s son Hunter is helping to give the Lone Oak new life. If successful, this 10-year-old may one day know what it looked like. The Miller brothers hope to see their old friend, in a new form, one more time.

"I'll see one of them and it will cast a shade that I can rest under maybe one last time as well," said Chris Miller.

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