Skip to main content

Out of the Box


One night, a long time ago, I was printing, slicing, and taping name labels to each of my daughter’s crayons. And pencils. And markers. Today I opened a bin of random stuff and saw her old pencil box, from 2009, I think. Inside were almost all of what I had put in, unused, save for the markers and a few pencils. I don’t really have an explanation for this. What I do know is that I packed it all away because “it was perfectly good” and “maybe someone would need it.”

This afternoon I sat with a wastebasket and carefully removed the name from each pencil and crayon. I cleaned off the pencil box. Added a pair of school scissors. I’m finally going to see if I can find someone who can use them.

Something about the repetitive motion of removing each label, so carefully applied - - to no purpose - - made me think about how we do so many things over and over again in Columbia. Sometimes the names are the same, and sometimes they change, and the ages of the players shift. But the arguments are so mind-bogglingly familiar and in general it often feels as though there is no purpose. 

People accuse one another of malfeasance, secrecy, incompetence, greed. Motives are challenged and facts are laid by the wayside. The addition of social media serves to magnify the drama and to minimize the understanding of the eventual outcome. People still write hot letters to the newspaper, too. (I have been known to send a few myself.)

There are a couple of letters to the editor this week about what may become of the Columbia Flier property. They reminded me what a Columbian thing it is to resist change. And how I’ve been indulging in a little of that myself lately.

Newly minted opinion: do with that property what is best for Columbia now and going forward. What could go there that would be a natural fit with nearby Howard Community College and Howard County General Hospital? We need symbiosis, not silos.

While we are at it: it’s kind of crazy how purely unwalkable it is over there. One might say it’s a lovely parkway but I am having a hard time finding the beauty in a set-up that requires you to get in your car to do anything. HCC has a shuttle (the Dragon Wagon) to ferry students to satellite parking. If the mix of businesses at that end of LPP evolved to contain a healthy variety of locations appealing to HCC and HCGH, would they partner on a shuttle that stopped at various places along that loop? 

It might give that part of town the sense of place that I think is lacking.

I once received an invitation to a party which announced,  “we will be gathering to celebrate our annual futility rites.” It was meant to be witty but the words came back to me today. So many of us (myself included) keep doing the same old Columbia things and expecting a different outcome. 

That’s futility all right. Maybe it’s human nature. But don’t we claim to admire a visionary who did bold and untried things in creating a New American City? 

I wonder if we would be on board today.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...
1 comment
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more