Skip to main content

How We Got Here


Why are you here?

No, I’m not asking the great existential question. 

I’m asking, why are you here in Columbia or any other part of Howard County? What brought you here? Why?

Perhaps you were born here. There is that. As for me:

I moved to Columbia in 1999 and I’m still trying to figure it all out.

In my life I have lived in quite a few places.

  • Cleveland Heights, Ohio
  • Columbus, Ohio
  • Stamford, Connecticut 
  • South Hadley, Massachusetts 
  • Princeton, New Jersey
  • Baltimore (City) Maryland 
  • Baltimore County, Maryland
  • Columbia/HoCo, Maryland
This is the place where I have taken root, grown, and flourished more than any other community that I’ve called home over the years. This is the place where I’ve met interesting and engaged people who’ve connected me to local places, events, and issues.

Picnics at Lake Elkhorn
Cookie Swaps and Jazz concerts in Oakland Mills
OM Board meetings, CA Board meetings, giving testimony at the George Howard Building 
Fireworks
Letters to the editor
School events
The Second Chance Saloon
Farmer’s markets 
Concerts at the Chrysalis 
Sitting on my back patio when the weather is nice

How did all this happen? How did I go from barely being able to find the grocery store without getting lost to driving to nineteen different county schools for my work? Why am I sitting here before sunrise writing my 3,057th blog post?

This is why:




On November 13th, 1999 I married the love of my life and began my new adventure in a whole new place.  Today we’re celebrating our twenty-second wedding anniversary which may or may not include carry out from Maiwand and discussions on having the front door replaced on our adorable little Oakland Mills quadroplex. All the important things in life: marriage, Maiwand, home repair.

So that’s why I’m here. Why are you here? Everyone has their own story. I’d love to hear yours.









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