I 🖤 Maryland. Not the red heart. The black one. Because loving this state is a full-contact emotional sport. You will sit in traffic on the beltway for ninety minutes to go eleven miles, pay a toll for the privilege, and then get cut off by a guy doing 95 in the left lane with a crab decal on his trunk. And you will do it again tomorrow.
It is a place where the weather does all four seasons in one Tuesday, where people put a seasoning blend on everything including fruit and their own children, and where ordering a crab cake with filler is considered a hate crime. We are not bitter. We are just saying the heart is black for a reason, and that reason is humidity, Old Line pride, and the quiet rage of knowing the beach is three hours away in summer traffic.
Built soft, built heavy, built to survive both the swamp months and the cold snap. Holds its shape, holds its color, holds up under aggressive seasoning.
