Thursday’s Top Ten

There’s no lack of local things right now to write about. There might be too many, I suppose. But the little light switch that goes on in my head to allow me to write is malfunctioning this morning. Perhaps it’s a lack of sunlight. Perhaps there’s just too much to assimilate.

Here’s a sampling:

The current political season
The County Executive’s announcement of an LGBTQ+ Commission
Upcoming Independence Day festivities in Columbia/HoCo
Final days of the old Talbott Springs Elementary School
New restaurants opening
CA Board meeting reviews on The Merriweather Post: citizen journalism?
Upcoming girls and boys Nike National High School Lacrosse Showcase at Blandair Park, to be televised live
The Board of Education race
Local attitudes towards renting vs owning
Why e-scooters?

That last one: not a criticism. I’m just curious.

Bonus question today comes from the Columbia Conversation account on Facebook:

Do you consider Columbia a city-like suburb or a suburb-like city? Why?

I’ll be back tomorrow with F ³: Free Form Friday. If you have opinions on any of the above local topics, or have any topics of your own to suggest, please chime in here:

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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...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

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 ...

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