Village Green/Town²

  My time is not my own right now but I cannot miss the opportunity today to honor Rob White, whose passing I learned of last evening. Rob was a musician, a teacher, and retired from the Howard County Schools as what was then called Music Supervisor/Instructional Facilitator for Music. There’s a lot I could tell you about him. And I probably will on another day. But the Rob White I remember most is the musician with the heart of a teacher who was brave at a time when it was very hard to be brave.  Howard County Music Changing? , Village Green/Town² February 19, 2014 This post, which garnered well over 5,000 views, was the result of Mr. White’s honesty. He shared what was happening to music instruction as a result of the Model Schools Initiative instituted under a former superintendent of schools. The information I learned in a meeting of Howard County Parents for School Music was exactly what you would imagine that a parent music advocacy group would be interested in. But beca...

  Men are not okay.  Let’s start with the man who didn’t just disagree with me on the Couny Executive’s Facebook page but actually wrote out in detail the opinion he wanted me to post instead. Are you out of your mind? What kind of hubris is this to think I want someone else’s opinion to replace my own? That I would care that he doesn’t give me permission to have my own opinion? Men are not okay. Like the police office who engaged in a high speed chase in an unmarked car in the middle of the night which led to the death of a seventeen year old county resident. What kind of thinking can justify using these tactics over a traffic violation? How in any possible way does the punishment fit the alleged crime? Men are not okay. This is the kicker. The man who was in police custody and somehow managed to get released and to kill his estranged wife within hours. 1. The man himself. 2. The (very likely) men who released him. 3. The men who make the laws that lead to occurrences like th...

  When I learned of the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson a vague memory rose to the surface. I reached out to my sister and brother in law who live in Indiana. She is a special education teacher and advocate, musician, and filmmaker/videographer. He is a Methodist minister (also a musician.) To my sister: Am I hallucinating that you were a big fan of Jesse Jackson especially because of his vision of the Rainbow Coalition?       We voted for him when he ran the first time. That's what I thought.       We went to hear him speak when we were living in Dayton. It was a great experience! Thank you, I've been thinking about writing about him and I thought you had a direct connection.       No more direct connection than that! G. and I saw him at a nice restaurant in Chicago one time. He was waiting for a table just as we were. Thank you! To my brother in law, a retired Methodist minister: Do you all have any memories as Jesse Jackson supporte...

  Friends, I have been trying to act as though everything is going along normally over here but, it isn’t. Someone near and dear to me took a bad fall last Friday night and suffered a pretty serious break to their humerus. A trip to the orthopedist today will let us know how bad. What this means is that I am now living away from home and sleeping on a pull out couch - - one ear always on alert for the sound of the little bell sitting on a bedside table across the hall. This makes blogging a challenge. I am not complaining. Honestly, I am scared out of my mind but I am not complaining. True to form, I’m going to respond to this challenge by putting you to work.  I’m looking for helpful information about home care, what Medicare will pay for, how to organize friendly, helpful neighbors in a way that respects them but is, first and foremost, helpful to the patient. Is there a Maryland help hotline for people like me who are new to being caregivers? And, just to make you laugh, ...

It’s February 17th and a local business is shouting: SUMMER IS PRACTICALLY HERE!!! I look out the window. I disagree. But the business is Maslow’s Loom and they are selling summer camp experiences for school children. I think what they mean to say is, if you haven’t already planned all your kid’s summer camps already, you’re in trouble. Many folks try to get all that squared away in January. It’s February, for Heaven’s sake. Time is running out!  I remember realizing that I would never get to be at home in the summer with my first child. It was a bitter moment. I was divorced. I had to work. Luckily I worked at the school summer camp so we got to be closer together than most. But there was absolutely no choice, no agency in how we spent our summers. On the other hand, my mother was saddled with three children in the summers back in the day as my father headed off to work. No one asked *her* what she’d rather do. I remember an endless string of days filled with outdoor play, running...

I promised myself that, if I got my piece on the Talbott Springs Pool written and posted, I would treat myself to some local pizza from a place I had never tried before. And I did. Last Thursday’s lunch from Pupatella I was driving home from a friend’s house and had the idea. I stopped at the Giant Palace 9 parking lot, perused the menu at nearby Pupatella on my phone, and placed an order. By the time I drove down 108 to the restaurant, my order was just about ready. Wowza. Pupatella has 11 locations in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. They specialize in authentic Neapolitan pizza. “It’s chewier,” the woman at the restaurant hastened to inform me when I came in to get my order. (I wonder if this means that some folks don’t understand differing styles of pizza and expect it to be something else.) The service was friendly and welcoming and I would definitely feel positive about coming back another day to eat-in. (At an uncrowded time, of course.) I wasn’t there long enough to take in how ...