History of NAEP, Maryland Farm Policy, and Finding a Good Map with Gary Kelman

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Gary Kelman, Independent Consultant & NAEP Board Member representing the Mid-Atlantic Regional Environmental Professionals about the history of NAEP, Maryland Farm Policy, and Finding a Good Map.   Read his full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 

1:31  Shout outs

3:08  Nic and Laura discuss agricultural BMPs

8:06  Interview with Gary Kelman starts

8:56  Gary Kelman talks about the history of NAEP

21:45  Gary Kelman discusses Maryland farm policy

28:02  Field Notes segment- The Bethesda trash incident

33:48  Gary Kelman shares his insights on collecting and finding a good map

44:12  Outro

Please be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review. 

This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Gary Kelman at https://linkedin.com/in/gary-kelman-ms-cep-m-asce-6431063

Guest Bio:

Gary Kelman’s professional career began in 1977.  It includes heading the CAFO Program, Office of Permitting and Customer Services, the Maryland Pretreatment Program, and developing industrial and municipal discharge permits during a 40-year career at the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).  Prior to MDE, Gary was an environmental consultant.  He was MDE’s Employee of the Year in 2010, was named a Fellow NAEP in 2010, and received the Richard J. Kramer Memorial Award for Environmental Excellence from ABCEP in 2015.  He was named a Life Member of ASCE in 2018.  Gary received a MS in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland and a BS in Life Sciences from Philadelphia University.  He was credentialed as a Certified Environmental Professional (CEP) in 2005.  Gary Kelman is currently enjoying being an independent consultant.

Music Credits

Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa

Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

[Transcripts are auto-transcribed]

Nic 
Hello, and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode, we give our shout outs, Laura and I talk about agricultural best practices, we interview Gary Kelman and an NAEP fellow and retired Chief of animal feeding operations division at the Maryland Department of the Environment, about the history of an NAEP, his work with farmers in Maryland, and then we geek out a little bit about our love of maps. And finally, humans need saliva, to be able to taste food human chemo receptors responsible for tasting your favorite foods are called gustatory receptor cells which is just a terrible name, they need to fix it because it sounds awful. But there's about 50 And just one taste bud, right and those are what are contained in the papillae which are the bumps on your tongue. Right. And so each of those styles has a gustatory hair even grosser. And when they make contact with the exterior through today's pores molecules mixed with saliva, Enter the taste pores and the sensation of taste is then created and again now that I've said it out loud. I'm pretty sure I just grossed out  everybody so I'm sorry that science for you, you know sometimes it's not pretty but it is cool. I thought that was pretty neat.

Laura 
I hope nobody's hungry right now.

Nic 
If they were they're not now. Apologies for everyone listening. As always, please be sure to subscribe, rate and review.  Hit that music.

[Shout outs]

Laura 
All right our shout out for today is for the Environmental Management stewardship conservation indoor protection Award, which goes to the North Carolina Department of Transportation corridor K improvements for the innovative land bridge mitigation to preserve habitat connectivity within the Nantahala National Forest, which I love so awesome. Also want to give a quick shout out to our one of our volunteers, Kara Lubold that she's been helping us behind the scenes here and in the studio and it just wanted to bring it up, not only to thank her for her help, but also, if you hear another person chime in any of our conversations, that's us talking, we mentioned previously the environmental professionals connection, which is NAEP's environmental hub for articles research studies and leadership blogs from hundreds of leading sources, hopefully will also feature EPR there soon. But we learned recently that it's also has an algorithm that will allow you to cave the articles to ones you like to read so if you get in there and don't see what you like quite yet go in there and start liking and setting your preferences and then it will act more like social media for your science preferences so check it out at environmentalprofessionalsconnection.com And then if you would like to sponsor a future episode of EPR head over to environmentalprofessionalsradio.com I gotta breathe before I check in and check out the sponsor forum there for more details.

Nic 
We also did environmental professionals connection, like it was a question mark that was,

Laura 
like, it was. I had turned like a German shepherd to, yeah, let's get to our segment.

Nic 
Oh, and you mentioned farm agricultural best practices that you wanted to put with Gary's episode, I don't know what you mean by that.

Laura  
As in any type of industrial or manufacturing or any there's a million ways to approach something right like so, growing carrots or onions, there's different ways that you can farm and. And speaking of like water resource issues, no different than like people watering their lawn people who don't know, will  water their lawn in the middle of the day when it's hot and most of its gonna evaporate anyway. And essentially just kind of wasting the water when you're better off doing it in the evening. And so for farming. There are lots of best practices and things that they can actually put into place that not only helps them be more effective but helps them save money. So, you know, you'll see different farms running different types of watering mechanisms for their crops and, you know, some crops require different things than others but instead of using the big machines that are like basically giant sprinklers, you can put in machines that run tubes, and they basically run this like mist on the plants instead which is much more effective, but of course it depends on the crop I don't know enough about it to talk about specific crop watering practices but in general, probably any way that you were watering your crops, there's more efficient, effective ways to do it but there's also you know putting buffer zones between where your animals or plants are in any water systems, natural waterways that might be flowing through their property, putting in wetlands like, there's different things that farmers can do to reduce the impacts that they might potentially be having on local waterways, and so, so at least in Hillsborough County, there is an organization or department whose job it is to work with farmers to help them come up with these best practices and then also give them grants and money to implement them because one of the reasons why farmers don't do these things are because it's going to cost them money, it might cost them might save them money in the long term, but to come up with the money, especially now when farmers are losing a lot of their revenues, it's hard to, You've got to incentivize them, you know, to, to spend the money to put these new, because many of them probably want to do, quote unquote the right thing but having the resources available to do it so if there's any other city states organizations out there who are looking for a way to work with their farming, there's definitely this group in in Tampa and Hillsborough, who I think is a really great role model for that in having this grant fund available to help farmers, implement this type of project.

Nic 
Yeah, that's really cool I mean that's one of those things where like been the excuse of, you know it costs money goes away, and excuses the wrong word but that basically means the challenge. Yeah, that's really cool, like those kinds of things is that ongoing now

Laura 
or is I believe it is, if anybody's interested they can let us know and I can, I can actually or we can put in the description or whatever like the actual organization because that's just escaping my mind right now but right, I'm pretty sure that they are still and I think they have also documentation and things of what they offer and what they're suggesting to farmers, you know, it's kind of part of the grants where the pollution recovery funds from the Environmental Protection commission. And so basically the Ag association would apply for those grants and then they would administer the grants to the farming program. I'm pretty sure all that has to be public reports, there's probably there's case studies and all kinds of things that would be available from that. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah,

Kara 
I think American Farmland Trust has some programs to your point that they connect farmers with like grants and and subsidies and things like that to help with like water quality or things they can do for like, reduce their climate, you know impacts and things along those lines.

Laura 
And they're saying that I was kind of thinking like as I was speaking and I was like there must be another organization that does those. Yeah,

Kara 
I think you're right. One of them is like, one for each state that specifically deals with the states like I know around here in Pennsylvania and Maryland, they have prop they have issues with the cattle and the cows going into the streams the local streams, which creates, you know, all kinds of issues, so they are trying to get the farmers, to create buffers and fencing to keep the cattle and the cows out of the local streams, and to keep maintain water quality.

Laura 
Yeah, cuz they can. They're worried about the shorelines and also create turbidity issues mentioned coliform. Yeah, yeah that's

Nic 
I learned something new today.

Laura 
Yeah I know.

Nic 
You know, plenty that I don't it's no worry, yeah. That's funny. Alright, let's get to our interview.

[Interview with Gary Kelman]

Laura 
Sounds good. Welcome back to EPR we're super happy to have Gary Kelman with us today. Gary is an MS, MASCE, CEP, lots of letters, and currently working with MAREP, more letters, Mid Atlantic NAEP chapter, and Gary was the technical chair at the Baltimore conference which is where he and I got to meet so happy to see you again, Gary. Welcome to the show.

Gary Kelman
It's a pleasure to be here.

Laura
Great. So the first thing that I wanted to ask you, or talk about was, no I was reading over the history that you sent us and I noticed that you said you had joined NAEP from a brochure that you read in 1997 which is the year I was born

Nic 
1977, 1977

Laura 
 What's it been like to be part of any NAEP over the years.

Gary Kelman 
It's really changed, I mean it used to be very serious, but friendly, and you would go to meetings and we're all friends, we'd go out drinking afterwards and it was really wonderful. But there were battles, especially over local chapters, versus the national most organizations, you have to join the National before you join the local chapter, and there were literally fist fights in the parking lot for cause people disagreed on whether you could be a local only member.

Laura
Wow.

Nic
Literal fist fights.

Laura
Glad I asked that question. That's interesting.

Gary Kelman 
Well, not only fist fights but at one point one guy tried to run over somebody else in the parking lot.

Nic  
No my god, it's different, that is different.

Gary Kelman 
That's a little different that were a little more politically correct nowadays.

Laura 
Yeah so that happened, pre drinks or after drinks.

Gary Kelman
No, this was right after the board meeting.

Laura
Okay, so yeah, board meetings are bad, no, no, actually they are very good. Wow, that's so interesting, but back then, was there, like how did you know communications is different, you know, we are able to obviously meet virtually for NAEP How did the national group kind of function. When it first started,

Gary Kelman  
I mean we would have quarterly meetings, of course, now it's COVID but we would have quarterly meetings, you know, they wanted you to go to the boardroom so people have to travel, you know, we had airplanes back then. So, so people would fly in meet at the airport, go to the meeting place and it was all over the country. It was wonderful place, a way to travel around the country I loved it and the people were great. And they were like important people like you know somebody way up in the Federal Aviation Administration and TEQ  was involved back then, also, as a matter of fact, the consulting firm that I initially worked at after graduate school. This guy Robert Harris, who was the Horst Greczmiel of the 70s, you know when see CEQ, I think what he's like when the NEPA part of it was first formed, was a good friend of head of my consulting firm so he would come over all the time. And that's how I learned about CEQ. And I was a young whippersnapper back then so yeah it was a very good experience. And I first started getting involved with the local chapter and then went on to the national board they say, Hey, why don't you run for national board and I said me, I'm a nobody. I'm the president and all that and and the national board and I ran and I got on the board, and it was wonderful and they had a lot of their meetings, down at the old EPA headquarters that Waterside Mall which was destroyed. You know they they knocked it down now of course they're the federal center so it was different.

Laura 
So let's take it back just a little bit how did you get started in environmental work to begin with.

Gary Kelman 
Well it was by accident. I wanted to be a medical doctor, my family was medical doctors I wanted to be a medical doctor, but it was during the Vietnam War, when everybody was applying and wanted to get out of the draft, and whether we're applying to medical school so I applied to medical schools a big mistake I made was I only applied to medical schools in the Philadelphia area which is where I grew up and I like five medical schools and the five medical schools rejected me. And I went and I met was the Director of Admissions. He said, Look, go get a master's degree in the highly scientific rigorous curriculum do really well. Re submit your application and we'll let you in. Well, you know i All my life I wanted to be a doctor, so I had no idea what what to do but I had this great course. In, I think college called biological interrelationships an ecology course. And you can imagine this was way back when, like Earth Day had just occurred in 1970, and all this, so I said well maybe I'll maybe I'll do something in environmental well my cousin's match me up with somebody down at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. I had a date with her and I said well this is a great, great, great place, and I got the Graduate School catalog, and I opened it up and there was a course called, what was it, the Human Ecology. I said, Great, how humans relate to the environment. So I went to the that part of the college. And it turns out that's what they called their nutrition course in college. So I said, Oh no, sorry I said bleep. And I dropped the catalog on the floor. I picked up the catalog, it was open to the Department of Civil Engineering. And I said, civil engineer, I never really thought about engineering I didn't have undergraduate in engineering I graduated in life sciences, which was a lot of physics and chemistry and biology and all that. And so I went and I met with the head of the department and he said, Look, you just have to take fluid mechanic course, this summer, and we'll admit you that our graduate program and you can  get a master's degree in civil engineering and specializing in Environmental Engineering, and the rest is history.

Nic 
Nice.

Laura 
Oh that's cool. I like when the universe speaks to everyone,

Gary Kelman 
And it was all by mistake. I've loved it ever since I was very seriously. It's been very rewarding ever since.

Laura 
That's awesome. So tell us about some of the work that you've done, I know you've done a lot in water and wastewater industry, like, what kind of things were your favorite things to do, what kind of work do

Gary Kelman 
Well. I did, is trying to sing or. Yeah. Yeah,  going for the easy way out. I after graduate school, one of my graduate professors offered me a job to go work for his consulting firm. So I said that's great and with a small consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland, and I went there, and you know small consulting firms, you have to do everything he had a water quality lab and I operated the GC Mass specs and the spectrophotometers and all that kind of stuff, I went out and collected samples that I did a paper on where do odors come from composting, and they were just starting a thing where they were composting, a raw human silage, and I had to climb on top of these big mountains of human sewage compost and dig down and stick my hand down in them, and get get samples and analyze them for what organic compounds were coming off them, so it was great experience working for a small consulting firm because you got to do everything, then I got tired of it.

Nic
That's a great experience.

Gary Kelman
Oh yeah. Yeah, but I you know I know most of NAEP people are consultants, but I didn't like certain things about the consulting business, so I was looking for another opportunity, and I got an opportunity with the state of Maryland, they were consolidating their environmental regulatory departments. Prior to that it was scattered throughout the department, but then they decided to make one department all regulatory, so I joined that and the first place I joined was writing municipal and PDES permits, then I went on to industrial NPDES permits. Then I got one of my favorite programs a pretreatment program where we tried to make local governments into regulators like environmental regulators. So, my staff and I would go around the state of Maryland, and teach, local governments, how to develop sewer use ordinances and developing permitting programs. And so I got a chance to you know go and see how a lot of these local industries, worked because you had to take the toxic stuff out of them because they don't want toxics going in and ruining the wastewater treatment because most of the wastewater treatment is a biological process. So, you know, heavy metals and things like that would kill off the bacteria and they don't want that. So we would want local industries to treat and remove these toxic compound before they went down into the sanitary sewer, so that was my favorite program I did that for like 15 years, and I had an opportunity in the Office of the Secretary, which was like the top level of the department to have to be a director that is the Office of Special Programs, and we ran the pollution prevention program, we oversaw all of the enforcement in the whole department and developed a legislatively required enforcement report which was sent to the Maryland legislature every year, and that was nice too, that was, but then in four years, the head of the department decided to do away with that whole office to Gary, what do you want to do, you know, go around to the different directors of the air and water and waste and you know they all like you, and you see what interesting things they have. And so I went around and I kind of was making my decision and they said, Look, we don't have anybody who wants to do this concentrated animal feeding operation program right, and the closest I've been to farm animals in my entire life was a petting zoo. So I said well you know I'm from Philadelphia, I'm a city guy want to buy they said look we want you to do this, and then I went and I met with a guy, and the director of that administration. And he said, You will be the most hated man in Maryland. Farmers don't don't like to be farmers don't like to be regulated, of course and also the all the environmental groups, hate farmers. So, you get it from both sides, but that was in 2009, and I loved it I loved working with the United States Department of Agriculture, with EPA, with a farmers with the banks that lend farmers money. It was a wonderful staff, and that's where I ended my career in 2019.

Laura 
That's awesome. I just was talking to students this morning and telling them that most environmental professionals are not doing what they thought they would do when they first started, and that you're just an example of that, yeah. And sometimes it doesn't sound very pretty on paper.

Nic  
Yeah,

Gary Kelman 
I remember going out to one farm, and they were showing how useful manure was, you know, and this pile of manure would substitute for this pile of chemical fertilizer and manure is free, chemical fertilizer costs money. So we brought our attorney. We brought our attorney on on the trip, so all the farmers and my staff are crowded around this pile of manure, which is somewhat fragrant and my lawyer was way in the back. And they said, isn't she with you. As I say, Oh, I bet she's your lawyer. Lawyer Yeah, so, but I, I really like the CAFO program.

Nic  
Yeah, and taking a step back a little bit like that's really, you're talking about working with local governments, when you were at the Maryland Department of the Environment, it seems really, really innovative something that I haven't heard a whole lot of is just going out there and doing that what was the impetus behind that program.

Gary Kelman 
Well it's a national program, again, it was to remove. There were a lot of industries in most industries discharged into sanitary sewers, they don't discharge into rivers, or if they do discharge into River, this is like cooling water, or something like that. They don't discharge or toxics into rivers they discharge them into the sanitary so where's where when we flush our toilet. That's where the stuff goes and wastewater treatment plants are designed to mimic rivers because rivers have a biological process and way back when when there aren't weren't wasn't such a large population that stuff would go into the river and that would be fine but now we created these cities, and the cities have concentrate put all their waste into these pipes, and the pipes go out to rivers, and what happens to rivers you have algal blooms because of all the nutrients that go in there so they decided to mimic rivers in wastewater treatment plants, but then all these industries, connected to the sanitary sewers and we're wiping out the bacteria that were used to treat the sewage, so they had to figure out some way to treat the pretreat the wastewater coming from these industries to remove the Toxics before it went into the sanitary sewer to save a wastewater treatment plan for being knocked out. And that's what the program was all about basically teach most local governments. They want industries there to tax base, it adds to the revenues and employs their people, but may produce, so they wanted to be nice to the industries and not, but the industries were discharging these terrible things and their wastewater treatment plants will be knocked out periodically and what how that happened. Well it's a toxic from Thomas's English muffin plant something great, something like that.

Nic 
Yeah, that's really wild and, you know like the Maryland has a really good stormwater program. I think it's really kind of come up like right around 2007 They had the Stormwater Management Act, few other things going on, was there, other legislation or guidance that influenced like what you did in your career that you could maybe speak to,

Gary Kelman 
you know, generally the programs that I worked on were delegated programs basically the NPDS program National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program, whose delegated from EPA So EPA would set up, guidance and background materials, so you more or less, followed what EPA wanted you to do, but in Maryland and in fact a lot of the industries and municipalities, didn't like as a Why does Maryland, always have to be first. You know we're innovative, getting down on us. So it was a challenge in both directions.

Laura 
Right, so you've worked in government and private work to MD for a long time, like, Do you have a preference of working in the government outside the government

Gary Kelman 
Well, I love the government, yeah I'm not a big risk taker, and to work for government, you know, you have to be really bad for them to fire you, and which is, which is a problem when, when they get an employee who's really bad, you know, you get a pension after a certain number of years. So now I'm collecting a pension from there and it's a nice pension they have 401 K's they have all the stuff that private industry. Plus, he work, you know, eight hours a day, and you go home. It's very rare unless you like me, you get into management that you really have to worry about what's going on, because you go home. Play with your family. Your family recognizes you. Consultants on the other hand, talking to them. You know I'm at meetings with them, they're always working on projects during the meetings and they're multitasking and I don't want to do that, I wanted a life. I wanted a family, and this seemed to be the best way to go. I didn't want to take a lot of risk. You know I wanted to be able to go to work every day and I have a job. Yeah, so that's why I prefer over government but I always wanted to work for EPA, I always wanted to work for EPA

Laura 
That was my next question. Were there special things about working for the state or what's the difference between working for state or federal.

Gary Kelman 
Well, federal government, they're the ones that kind of start the ball rolling. Yeah, but it's the federal government, it's like dragging an elephant, you know, if you want to change anything you really can, you know, it doesn't happen. For years, state government is a little more flexible and local governments are even more flexible, but I state government, I thought you could do more. You could do more with programs, you're a little more flexible, whereas EPA is really, this is the way it goes, you have to do step one before you do step two you have to do step two before you do step three. Yeah, whereas states could be more innovative, and my mind is very innovative, I really, you know, think out of the box, and I take, even though I do take risks with a job, I take risks with coming up with different ways to do things on the job, where with federal government, you need your supervisors approval, then you need the senators approval and you need the president's approval. It's crazy. So, I thought the state was a good medium.

Nic  
Yeah. Yeah, it really is and, yeah, he say, I hate to even move on let's say for the sake of time, one thing we want to talk about as field notes you know we talk about people's funniest work stories, and you mentioned the water quality lab that you worked with in Bethesda, you mentioned that you worked with, with waste but you also had a, an unfortunate incident with the trash in that facility. So what happened there with that what was that story.

Gary Kelman 
Oh like like I said, they had a water quality lab there, and they had a GC Mass Spec and other equipment that had to be calibrated. Well, one of the things that you calibrated it where they have these old glass ampules and they particularly one that we were using butyric acid, and they'll be now butyric acid kind of smells like got rancid butter. And so and it's odor, has a very like low odor threshold, you know, every little bit goes a long way. So, we were calibrating a piece of equipment, we got done calibrating it, we threw the ampule in the trash the trash was taken way 16 stories down to this dumpster and then later on the day I left work, and there were police and fire trucks and all that went outside and Bethesda Maryland smelled like smelled like a swamp. Smells like rancid. It was horrible. So I looked the other way and I went home. I didn't want to take credit for it.

Laura 
You want to try another fun trick on your colleagues leave a bunch of bananas in the car and the Florida heat it that does the atmosphere inside the car for the next year. Oh, we were talking earlier and you mentioned that you, it sounded like you did a bunch of reading or that you'd like to read so do you have some favorite books

Gary Kelman 
or right now I'm really into this series called Sapiens by this Israeli author they have Sapiens, and then his follow up is Homo Do. And basically he talks about how Homo sapiens, developed and why didn't homosapiens win out over the Neanderthals and things like it's fascinating he talks about, about how everything developed and about migratory patterns and it's a great book and now they have different versions and graphic version of it and they they're great. It's great if you ever get to read Sapiens cool, it's wonderful, but I read a lot of books I'm really interested in Washington DC, and the history behind Washington DC and how it developed. And so I read a lot of books on the history of Washington.

Nic 
So what's the takeaway from the little nugget from Sapiens, maybe for the audience, like one thing he talks about that's really interesting.

Gary Kelman  
Okay, animals. Okay, when you're developing with animals, they say, have a task to do, they do the task, then basically, they forget about it, you know, they can only add to do a task, you know, maybe they could get can, you know, 10 Neanderthals to come together to do a task, because they're so focused on this one task where homosapiens, they were able to get 1000s of people together to do the task. And that's why homosapiens won out over Neanderthals, because they were less like like scattered they could kind of focus on a task.

Nic 
That's really interesting. Yeah.

Laura 
Yeah, I think I've heard that book mentioned a couple times recently so I have to pick it up.

Gary Kelman 
It's been on the bestseller list for ages, Sapiens.

Laura  
Cool. Well, speaking of other interests, I'm also a photographer so I didn't know we had that in common and I also didn't know NAEP at one time had an official photographer. So what did you do with that role,

Gary Kelman 
Well they actually gave me a plaque for being the photographer yeah I remember I just had Yeah, yeah, I was a photographer and I have no photographer. One of my hobbies, was, you know, taking pictures. So I would bring my picture of every NAEP board meeting in every conference and all that is out here, and this is before, phones, this is before you know we had everybody had a camera, so it was like Oh, Gary, can you take pictures of the board, Gary, can you take pictures of this can you take pictures of that. so it just gotta be a traditional thing every year, it would be me who took the pictures I have some great pictures of NAEP over the years, but unfortunately most of them are like actual photographs and not digitized. Yeah, so I have I have boxes and boxes and boxes of pictures from NAEP meetings live from the early 80s on. So,

Laura  
yeah, that'd be great to digitize some of those and turn into a slideshow for future.

Nic 
Yeah, I'd be really cool

Laura 
Is NAEP 50 years yet, or when does that happen.

Gary Kelman 
Right well an NAEP, I believe started in 75, so do the math,

Nic 
yeah

Laura 
okay so slideshow in a couple years at the conference.

Gary Kelman 
Yeah, that's that's an idea, once we actually all get together virtually I suppose in the virtual meeting you could have a slideshow too but yeah

Nic 
it's not the same, you know, they would laugh together again. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you also have this, so I love vintage maps I think the historic maps are really really cool and you're also an avid map collector so what sparked your interest in maps and do you collect maps on based on where you travel, or you just look for something that looks interesting.

Gary Kelman 
Well my wife and I have been married for this year, I think it'll be 39 years. And our first anniversary is first anniversary is paper. paper anniversary, so we were living in downtown Baltimore at the time, and there were antique shops down the street, so my wife picked a map of old map from like the 1850s of Baltimore and framed it and brought it over to me and so ever since then, like at least once a year, I would buy a new map, started off with maps of different parts of Baltimore, then it would be if an NAEP would have a meeting in New Orleans, I get a map, old map of Louisiana, and if we travel over to Italy, I would get an old map of Italy, my oldest map is part of Italy it's from the 1500s. But I collect map, a lot of maps in Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay and pictures of North America and the world which kind of show like the western United States is unknown territory. My wife ran a Museum and the head of the museum basically said, things that are made out of metal, the last forever by things that are made out of paper, they become more and more valuable over the years because if they're not treated properly they disintegrate. Yeah so, I would just collect maps now we have maybe 50-60 maps, and we don't have any more wall space to, I noticed you have a map in the background there Right exactly. But yeah, so they're wonderful you could stare at maps for hours and new stuff happens. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, so from all my all my maps are from all over the place in fact my wife is saying, you know, how do we get rid of some of these maps. So we joined. So, there's a Washington map society, which has weekly lectures at the Library of Congress. And as people that are like a lot more serious than I am about collecting maps I mean some of these maps, they go for $50,000 $40,000 and my maps are in like the hundreds, right now by but some of these maps that they try to sell they're $14,500, based on the rarity, they're not necessarily that old, but they base it on how rare it is that maps are great collecting old maps are great people,

Laura
Where do you find them?

Gary Kelman
Well originally there was a place on the eastern shore of Maryland, called Unicorn Books where you would go in and they would have all these musty smelling books and people had traded in, but they also had you know first editions and all that but upstairs, they would have a map room, and I would have a lot of clients on the eastern shore of Maryland and every time I'd swing by there I would go in there to this map and then I buy a map, and my wife, ready to divorce me but every time, every time I went over there I would come home with a map and I thought they were great. The problem is framing them was a lot of times more expensive than the actual map, but they're great

Laura
$100 map with a $300 frame. Gary, What are you doing?

Nic 
Yeah. Yeah. You're giving him flashbacks now.

Laura 
That's great. Does your wife still work in a museum.

Gary Kelman  
No, well, She's in the hospitality for 20 years, she worked for the State of Maryland in the Department of Business Development, trying to encourage businesses and people to come to Maryland. And then she had an opportunity to start a pop culture Museum in downtown Baltimore right near Oriol Park, and it was great. It's a rich guy had this collection knew they wanted to show in public. So, but yeah, she's in tourism and I think she was just retired. And now cause hospitalities not doing too well with Covid and she was ready to retire in year two anyway so

Nic
that worked out well.

Gary Kelman
So now we're with each other all the time. It's great.

Laura 
Right answer Gary, that's the right answer.

Nic
we are recording this.

Laura
So maybe now I know why you've been volunteering so much. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the volunteer work that you do.

Gary Kelman 
Well, my mother in law was a volunteer for years at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, and worked for 40 years, she knew Mr Hirshhorn she knew he could. So I knew there was an opportunity to volunteer at museums and they had always tried to get me interested in art, and I'm not really that interested in art, but I'm interested in history and news. So across the street from the National Gallery of Art, there is this museum called the Newseum, and it was basically a First Amendment, journalism, things like that so I volunteered there for 12 years and until it shut down the end of 2019, Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, took over the building and now they're changing this neat building into a classroom buildings right on Pennsylvania Avenue, all of the demonstrations in Washington would occur like right in front. Museum 1000s of people as couple blocks from the Capitol building. So I volunteered there as a tour guide there, and then when I heard they were shutting down, I volunteered at the Capitol Visitor Center, which I took people around and showed them the Capitol building course the way COVID That kind of stopped. So then I look for an outdoor place to volunteer, and they just open this Eisenhower Memorial it's right near the Air and Space Museum, a couple blocks from the Capitol, so I volunteer there because it's outdoors, I won't get COVID, and I'm it's kind of interesting in your meet all your volunteering in Washington, you meet all these really, you know, they're real lives are non volunteer. Life is there, the publisher of USA Today, they're the publisher of the Detroit Free Press. They're the longest serving Vietnam veteran, they're fascinating people. And what I wanted to say was, it's very important for environmental professionals to do stuff on the outside, and it's also very important for them to participate in the profession, and that's why a NAEP is so important because it allows them to, you know, if you're a chemist, you always look at stuff in one way chemistry. Chemistry chemistry, you come to NAEP of chemists and biology and and lawyers and doctors and all this and you get a better view on all your projects and you always come out of NAEP meetings, you feel like you've learned something because you get all of these different views you're not hanging around people like you all the time.

Nic
Really good point, for sure.

Laura  
Yeah, and speaking with of and sort of running out of time but I know you're doing a lot of stuff with MAREP, and I see a lot of things from MAREP because I'm, I'm on your list. And I see your events and stuff that are going on, any last things you want to share with us or things that are happening with MAREP.

Gary Kelman 
MAREP is the latest incarnation of the Maryland chapter Neverland, Illinois and Michigan chapter where the first three chapters of NAEP, and I first got involved with NAEP from the local chapters standpoint of Maryland chapter. Then when the Maryland chapter went downhill. I made it, the Chesapeake chapter and we took it in Virginia and Delaware and DC. And then once I left I was a sparkplug all the chapters you need a sparkplug. If you don't have a spark plug, it's very difficult for the chapters to continue. And so now MAREP is the latest incarnation of that. And I just wanted to be great. The area is right in Washington, and we have all of this stuff going on Washington all this politics going on, and it's, I mean it's a wonderful opportunity to get elected officials involved with an NAEP, because NAEP Chris Van Hollins once met the state of Maryland's senators once did a president, he was the keynote speaker at one of our conferences, when I was president of an NAEP, and I was able to make him an honorary member of an NAEP, so the Mid Atlantic chapter it's a wonderful location for a chapter and I'm glad to be involved with NAEP again I took a few year hiatus, but it's a great opportunity to meet with young people, because you always want to hang around young when you're old, you always want to hang around young, young people because it keeps you young.

Nic
For sure.

Laura 
Awesome, well thank you so much for being here today and sharing all your history and with NAEP especially, and just, I was happy to see you again and catch up.

Gary Kelman  
Maybe we'll see each other again in person.

Nic
Yeah, fingers crossed, it's, we're getting closer, so

Gary Kelman
I can't wait. thank you,

Nic
Yeah, Thanks Gary.

Laura
Thanks, Gary.

[Outro]

Nic
And that's our show. I want to thank Gary for coming on with us today. It was really fun having him on a lot of great wonderful stories, so thank you thank you and please be sure to subscribe, rate and review, and we'll catch you, each and every Friday. See you, everybody.

Laura
Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai