Village Green/Town²

Jim Smith served in the U.S. Army from January 2001 to July 2005. He was originally stationed in Fort Meade, Maryland. A combat photographer, he went to Iraq for the initial war in 2003 from January until July, and again in 2004 for an additional year. He lives in Long Reach with his wife and son. He wrote the poem that follows ten years ago. You’ll find it’s not the typical Memorial Day post.  I am sharing it with his permission because I think his personal insight is especially valuable to those of us who have not served. Smith raises an important issue when he notes that not all military casualties occur on the battlefield. We should remember and honor all lives lost today. ***** Damaged for a purpose? To our wives and families we are heroes. Carrying weapons thousands of miles away. Fighting for something bigger than any one of us. Sacrificing for a symbol, a flag, and a political cause. We send back photos in uniform, with weapons, looking tough. Women swoon, children admire,...

It’s hard to say which creates more buzz in Columbia/HoCo: the opening of a new restaurant or a new playground.  After a year of limited recreational activities, local parents are spreading the word about the new Play for All playground in Blandair Park. When they say it’s a “Destination Playground” they are not kidding. I’d hazard a guess that my little corner of the world has hosted more new visitors in the last week or so than in the last year. This playground is a family-magnet. If you haven’t heard, or you just haven’t made it over here yet, here’s some info: The folks from the County kindly directed me to the Rec and Parks Flicker page for photographs and video of the opening day. What I particularly like there is the overhead view provided by drone. It gives you an idea of the scope of the facilities. I was really looking for some kid’s-eye view photos of the equipment, so I was thrilled to discover a thorough description of the playground on a Facebook page called Kid Frien...

On May 25th a community member called the police in response to racist hate speech which was defacing signs in Harper’s Choice. Defacing signage is property damage, but racist hate speech is a crime that harms more than a property owner. Interestingly enough, members of a local Facebook group mocked the woman who called the police.  Why? Because the person in question is an advocate to remove police/SROs from schools. The fact that these “mean kids” could barely wait their turn to spew ridicule and scorn is not surprising but still appalling. Their words showed that they could not perceive the difference between responding to a crime scene and policing young people inside of school buildings. I would think this was a rather obvious distinction. I can’t quite figure out why the article in the Sun by Ana Faguy shapes the story this way: Racist flyers found in Columbia on anniversary of George Floyd’s death; Howard police investigating There is absolutely no mention of the signs that...

Monday the last of our family pod was fully vaccinated. Tuesday we went out to celebrate. The weather was lovely and we fancied eating outside. We remembered there was a picnic table in front of Pepperjacks , a family favorite for subs and enormous portions of fries. (Don’t ever order the “bucket” unless you bring a team of committed eaters.) When we arrived we discovered that Pepperjacks had created a new outdoor eating area.   We went inside (yes , we were masked and so were employees) and placed our orders. Then we went outside to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We had come a bit on the early side so we had the outdoor patio to ourselves. While we were there a steady stream of customers came to pick up takeaway orders.  Just the feeling of being outdoors, away from home - - no masks- - on a lovely spring evening was delicious, if a bit strange. It felt like the world in which this was normal was a long, long time ago. I’m not sure how long the outdoor eating area has been open ...

So the Howard County Council voted for a budget that does not include the Housing Trust Fund, the one that Bridges to Housing Stability was asking the community to support. In their words: The Housing Trust Fund will promote and support equitable, geographically disbursed and affordable rental and for-sale housing opportunities; will assist in alleviating the the difficulties of many low- and moderate-income households to obtain and maintain housing; and will meet these needs by providing funding for rental housing development, preservation and rehabilitation, rental assistance, homeownership, home improvements and other affordable housing opportunities. Their reasoning was not convincing enough to the members of the council who voted to strip it from the budget. I have a question for those who say they support affordable housing but keep opposing opportunities for the same whenever they arise. Can you please point me towards communities in the US where they are “getting it right” in ...

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, a murder committed in public in front of witnesses who implored the murderer to stop. Details of the murder have played out in public over and over again during the last year. It would be horrific even if it were the only such murder to ever have occurred. Instead it is just one in a long line of similar brutality perpetrated by police against Black citizens of our country. Yesterday might have been a day when our Black friends and neighbors were reliving the fear and pain that such brutality evokes.  It could have been a day of anger or sorrow. It could have been all of that and yet also powerful with the resolve that these murders must cease and the system that promotes such brutality must be challenged and changed forever. Yesterday when no one was looking someone left racist graffiti on signs in Harper’s Choice in Columbia. Photo credit Tanisha Lockett “White lives matter” “No white guilt” The day was already...

  It looks as though some members of the county council are on the verge of cutting funding for affordable housing. Again. In protest, or, perhaps in weariness, I am running this post again: Pie (August 9, 2019) I’ve been thinking a lot about pie charts lately. I had an epiphany when reading an appeal to the community to donate school supplies. The writer, a local realtor, related that the cost to outfit a student with the requisite supplies would cost about sixty to eighty dollars and that there were many families in Howard County that couldn’t afford that. Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. (Or, over my head. Whatever they do in cartoons.) This is not as simple as saying “we have poor people in Howard County.” Much of this is probably connected to what is called Housing Insecurity. And this is where that pie chart comes in. Imagine that the whole pie is a family’s total income. The sections are expenditures they are required to make: food, housing, medical, clothing, etc....

An ad from the Oriental Trading Company caught my eye on Facebook this weekend. Can you guess what it’s for? I had to stop and think for a moment. My first thought was that it was intended for classroom use. Many of us have seen the heartwarming videos where children participate in a daily morning greeting where they are able to choose a hug or a high-five to begin their day. Could these colored wrist bands be a non-verbal way to communicate a student’s preference for interaction? Another thought: you may remember my writing about my discomfort at being hugged at political events by people I don’t know. Would these wrist bands indicate levels of consent so that there would be no ambiguity about how to best interact at events like these? Lastly, I smiled to remember a presentation I attended years ago where an alumna of Mount Holyoke described her college experience during the war years. (WWII) With many young men off to fight, there were few opportunities for the kinds of dances and pa...

  I know you are probably reading a lot of stories these days about how the world is “coming back to life” as the pandemic recedes. I’m sharing this particular story because it hadn’t even occurred to me and I think it’s important. The local AFS area team is still looking for host families for foreign exchange students for the 2021-22 academic year. As you might imagine, those programs were largely put on hold last year because of COVID. According to the  AFS website  there are eight students still awaiting placement in our area. I’ve learned a lot about AFS from Christina McGarvey, hosting coordinator and area team chair for the Baltimore area team. AFS USA a nonprofit organization that's part of the international nonprofit AFS Intercultural Program.  AFS is over 100 years old.  American Field Service (AFS) started out as American who volunteered as ambulance drivers during World War I.  After the experiences of World War I and World War II, seventy y...

 After two nights of pretty terrible sleep, my idea of a blog post is one that would write itself. A few things: There’s a Farmers Market at Clarksville Commons today from 10-2. To learn more about their offerings, check out their Facebook page.  You’ll discover more than the Market. The Commons hosts outdoor movie nights and live music as well. Peter and the Wolf will be presented at the Chrysalis today (Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.) The good news is: both performances are sold out, which reaffirms the Chrysalis as a community venue and their choices of programming. The bad news is: both performances are sold out, which means that, if you don’t already have tickets, you are out of luck. Check out their web site to stay on top of future events. The folks at Bridges to Housing Stability have put out a call for advocacy letters to the County Council in support of the Housing Trust Fund. It’s time sensitive - - letters must be received by May 24th. From their Facebook pa...

  The fireworks are back. That’s pretty big news after a year of canceled events due to the pandemic. I hope this makes the local population happy but of course I await complaints from those who think that the accompanying precautions will put a crimp in their style. We’ll see if the return of the fireworks will be enough to sate their desire for normalcy or whether the announcement that there will be no bands, food vendors, or other entertainment will provoke their ire. In other words, how much do they think the county owes them on the Fourth of July? There’s probably some overlap between our COVID complainers and the folks who were enraged some years back by the proposal to eliminate sugary drinks from vendors’ menus for the Fourth of July event. Never mind that they could bring in the drinks of their choosing, it was clearly governmental overreach to promote healthier drink choices. Will this year’s “scaled back” fireworks celebration receive the same contempt?  I hope not....

  I’m spoiled for choice this morning, as Twitter has yielded two perfectly quirky local stories. Let’s have both. From MLQ - - Major League Quidditch - - comes this announcement: MLQ is excited to announce the newest addition to MLQ Championship: Take Back the Pitch! Take Back the Pitch is a showcase that challenges the current understanding of gender in quidditch and opens opportunities for gender diverse athletes to play quidditch out from under the scrutiny of misogyny, transmisogyny and misdirected misogyny. Through The Gender Diversity Initiative, MLQ seeks to address the very real ramifications of sexism and transphobia for cis and trans women, non-binary folk and trans men. Through the open-access Take Back the Pitch tournament, MLQ aims to highlight and lift up athletes that are overlooked by their teams and in the community on account of sex and gender and give them the leadership opportunities, playing time and diverse skill training they deserve all the time. Given that...

One year ago today I wrote a post critiquing an article from Newsweek entitled “Baltimore restaurant owner can’t get employees to return because they make more in unemployment.” Here’s my piece: The Truth About Choice It’s striking that one year later we are still seeing the same arguments of why low wage, high risk workers should be forced to return to work. In other states there’s talk of removing benefits to make it happen. This sentence I wrote last year still rings true: I continue to be enraged by the attitude that “affluent people like us” are naturally responsible and trustworthy, while low-wage workers are treated like bad children.  Whenever you see politicians and business owners holding forth on what “those people” need to do, you will know instantly that this kind of paternalism is at work.  I had to laugh when I read this headline this morning: Desperate for workers, US restaurants and stores raise pay  , Christopher Rugaber, AP Shocking, isn’t it? Employers...

One sentence. In a release from the Howard County Police Department yesterday one sentence stood out. Why? It was completely unnecessary and not entirely truthful.  In an account of arrests made on the property of a county high school, the following sentence was included:  Currently, there are no school resource officers (SROs) in the schools under a resolution passed by the Howard County Board of Education. Why do I say it was unnecessary? Well, if you read the release without that sentence, it is a complete account of how events unfolded and were handled by the police department. It is not necessary to the understanding of the incident in any way. It functions as an editorial comment. To my knowledge editorial comments don’t belong in this type of report. “Just the facts, ma’am.” (I know, I’m showing my age.) As to its truthfulness? This is the part that is wavering on the edge of falsehood:  ...under a resolution passed by the Howard County Board of Education.  Th...

  Welcome to your semi-annual reminder that arts education is good for everyone. Today’s example merits a HoCo Holler! From the Howard County Schools website: Hammond HS Senior Recognized Nationally in the Arts Hammond High School senior Mohamed Elhassan has received numerous national and international accolades for his poetry and artwork. Notably, he’s proud of his poem, “We Ask to Not Be Black,” which earned him a silver national medal from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and is being considered for the organization’s anthology. Elhassan’s illustration, “And Mama Keeps ’Em Growing,” was selected for the cover of international literary journal, Waxwing. I think we’d all agree that this is an admirable achievement and cause for celebration. What jumped out at me was the information that Elhassan intends to pursue a career in the sciences. In the long run, Elhassan hopes to make an impact as a physician and scientist.  I continue to bump into people who think that arts ...

It was billed as a cookout in honor of Mother’s Day but we got rained out last weekend. Yesterday was the rain date. Everyone brought their own lawn chairs and came masked. We sat in a friendly circle, commenting on the pleasant weather and how good it was to see one another. Family? Friends? Kind of. We were at church .  Abiding Savior Lutheran Church, small but mighty, is on Owen Brown Road in Hickory Ridge. Guided through the pandemic by a relatively new pastor, congregants emerged from isolation on a lovely May afternoon to eat hot dogs and savor the joy of being together “in real life.” That new pastor?  She brought us through the storm and was at home in the circle of lawn chairs like the rest of us. We’ve grown together. An interesting twist for me was the discovery that our church driveway is now an actual road with an official road sign and the back of our property is now home to a small community of rowhouses. Since I’ve been “away” for a year it feels as though they...

  We have gotten used to public objections to new housing development in Howard County. I noticed the other day that Council member Liz Walsh described the Ilchester Road area as being “consumed” by development. I must admit I find it puzzling that so many people look at new houses with revulsion, however, that is not what this post is about. Apparently Howard County government wants to give the community a fire station but nobody wants it. Well, I suppose they aren’t opposed to fire stations in theory. They don’t want one in Cedar Lane Park East. Okay, giving up green space is hard. I get that. But it isn’t as though the County wants to put in a toxic waste dump. It’s a fire station, for heaven’s sake. The only reason to build a new one is to increase public safety. True confession: I am not highly educated on this fire station controversy but I do feel sorry for the county for getting so much hate. I wonder how it feels when you try to give people a fire station and they don’t wa...

  I’m not enjoying the state of current events this morning. The County Executive has been accused of being anti-Semitic because of a message he released on the occasion of the Muslim holiday Eid. The Governor goes straight to an “I stand with Israel” message during the same time period. The Maryland Girl Scouts organization has voted to sell the Camp Ilchester property. The Woodlawn home explosion and shooting rampage committed by someone the community had known was troubled for years. The surprise announcement by the CDC that vaccinated people can go without masks. The big surprise? There’s no way to know whether people around you have truly been vaccinated. I know it’s Friday and I should be excited about the weekend, but my inclination is to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Let me know if you have some local good news. I could use some.

  Over the course of the last year I have watched a lot of shows about RV’s. It occurred to me the other day that there is an entire script of things that people say on these shows while going through different units to decide which one is best for them.  Looking at storage: the children could sleep in here, ha ha. Considering an oven: could you cook a turkey in there? Converting dining table into bed: I think it would get old doing this every night. In bathroom: let’s see if we can both fit in the shower together. Of bunk beds for kids: it’s great they have their own TVs and connections for all their devices. Looking at outside of unit: of course we need an outdoor tv. Reflecting on the RV experience: we just want to have more meaningful time together as a family, making memories. I have begun to think that it would add to the entertainment value if the couples said these familiar phrases in the wrong places, for example: Looking at storage: let’s see if we can both fit in th...

Every morning, in preparation for writing the blog, I do a quick search of a list of local terms on Twitter. Sometimes this yields an interesting story, but, not always. At the top of the list? Elkridge. So far, that search term has not resulted in any useful information. If one were to go by Twitter alone, absolutely nothing is happening in Elkridge. Well, that’s not exactly true. Right now you can find out where CVS is administering the vaccine, what flavors Rita’s will be serving today, some job listings, real estate offerings, and health club ads. But this is not what I am looking for. I am sure that plenty of things are happening in Elkridge. I just can’t find them on Twitter. I have long felt that I don’t know enough about Elkridge. I even wrote this back in 2011: A Letter to Santa — Of Sorts — On Behalf of Columbia I would like a tour of Elkridge from someone who loves it and knows it well. (I'll pay for gas and snacks.) This is definitely an area where I need to learn more ...

I’ve been looking at some photographs this morning. Taken by Jeffrey F. Bill of Baltimore Sun Media, they show the recent rally to support funding for the renovation of the East Columbia 50+ Center. You can see those images and read about the event here: ‘It is time to reinvest in this community’: Hundreds rally in support of East Columbia 50+ Center renovation - - Ana Faguy, Baltimore Sun Those photographs. Such beautiful photos, I thought. Dancers. Speakers. Those in attendance listening attentively, holding signs, spread out over the space like a well-planted garden plot. People of all ages. A diverse and feisty bunch. Wait. It’s not the photos I’m noticing. It’s the people. It’s the people who are beautiful. Organizing to speak out for what they believe in. Helping one another. Believing that the community has a responsibility to lift up everyone. From the article: The Rev. Paige Getty of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, who is co-chair of People Acting Together...

  Everybody seems to be pretty excited about the cicadas. Whether pro or con, there’s been a whole lot of local hubbub. So far my feeling is a solid “meh.” I don’t really care one way of the other. Perhaps when there are scads of them I may have a more fervent opinion.  My husband loathes them. When our younger daughter’s preschool teacher (the last time around) suggested that her students bring one in for “homework”, he was not impressed, possibly because he was in charge of homework that night. Somehow we all survived. In Howard County, the Conservancy is encouraging you to undertake a Cicada Scavenger Hunt   and/or a Cicada Walk.  You can also learn more about Brood X from the Conservancy’s program with University of Maryland expert Mike Raupp. If you just can’t get enough of cicadas, or the nationally-recognized expertise of Dr. Raupp, you can take a listen to this episode of podcast Elevate Maryland. I haven’t yet listened to this one but I heard their is...

  It’s Mother’s Day today and all I can think about is Howard Cooper.   Howard Cooper - -still a child, fifteen years old - - was hanged by a white mob outside the Towson jail in 1885. From yesterday’s story in the Baltimore Sun: Cooper was convicted by an all-white jury that, within minutes, concluded he was guilty of raping Katie Gray, a white teenager, in an area then known as Rockland in Baltimore County. Neither Gray nor Cooper testified that Gray was raped. His sentence was death by hanging. He was lynched in the early hours of July 13, 1885, before his attorneys could appeal his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. Today is Mother’s Day.  Howard Cooper had a mother. Can you imagine how she felt?  Yesterday Governor Hogan granted posthumous pardons to 34 Maryland lynching victims. They all had mothers, too. And so it goes,  all through America’s history and into the the present moment. Eric Garner has a mother. She speaks to us in Alan Scott’s music...

  I seem to be going through one of those “I don’t wanna” phases with the blog. It looms over me like an irritable mother demanding that her teen clear their room. This happens every so often. As with many things, the only way out is through. So, bear with me. The posts between now and when I hit my groove again may be rough around the edges. We have one azalea in our yard which appears to bloom later than all the other azaleas in town. It has a very odd shape and could probably use some professional pruning. But its color is so beautiful and we love it, despite its oddities. In addition to being a lovely sign of Spring, our azalea also heralds one of my favorite times of year: Farmers’ Market season. The first one in the area began last Saturday at Clarksville Commons, then the Markets operated by the Howard County Farmers’ Market group on Wednesday at the Miller Branch and tomorrow at the Oakland Mills Village Center.  It used to be that all the local farmers’ markets operat...