Village Green/Town²

  Question of the day: before social media, what did people do to get attention? This question has been floating around Twitter this week. I caught a response from a Baltimore journalist who wrote: Bright colors. A ritualistic dance. Vibrating their wings. Mating calls. My own response was nowhere near as visually arresting. Question: Before social media, what did people do to get attention? Me: Cranky letters to the editor. I liked this question and the subsequent replies because they made me think. It may seem naive to you but I tend to think people are on social media to communicate. To make contact. Sometimes to learn. I honestly hadn’t given much thought to the concept that people are on social media to get attention. I know, I know. How could I be so…clueless? Well, I don’t hang around in the places where a lot of that is going on and I don’t travel in the same circles as those who are desperate for social media attention. Instagram and TikTok are full of that if you are look...

  This starts out rather strangely but it will eventually make sense. I promise. Bear with me. Have you ever seen this mall? No? That’s probably because it’s a photo from a mall in Colombia, South America, not the Mall in Columbia. Someone posted it with the comment that our mall would never do this. While our mall is taking away the fountain, this is what other malls do with ‘dead’ space. We are never in the forefront of innovation. While the fountain actually went away quite some time ago, for this person that loss still rankles. They look at this photo and see innovation. Fair enough. I see allergies and asthma. It’s all in one’s own perspective.  I was rather surprised to see the word “innovation” pop up here. I see many, many complaints that Columbia/HoCo tries to be too much in the forefront of innovation. We even have our own innovation center , for goodness’ sake. But the original poster is probably talking about the Mall specifically.  Is the Mall in Columbia at...

  Trumpet fanfare! I saw my first robin of Spring yesterday.  I am having a hard time shaking the feeling that we ought to have had a more significant winter with some decent snow to play in. But there’s only so long I can sit around in denial. There are flowers in that photo. The grass is greener. Forsythia is in bloom around the neighborhood. As if to cement the turnover of seasons, Clarksville Commons is back this Saturday with their annual Farmers Market Spring Preview Event.  It’s from 10 am - 2 pm. Go to the event page to see what vendors will be on hand. The weather predictions are for a high of 71 but a 60 per cent chance of showers. With any luck, any showers will not fall between 10-2. Elsewhere on April 1st is a workshop on Ukrainian Egg Dyeing. The Community Ecology Institute is hosting this hands-on session from 11 - 12:30. The instructor is a friend of mine and I actually learned the pysanki egg decorating technique from her some years back. It’s fun! You...

  The regularity with which school children are slaughtered in our country brings to mind an episode of the original Star Trek   called “A Taste of Armegeddon.” On planet Eminiar VII a war is being conducted with planet Vendikar through a computer simulation program. But the designated casualties are required to turn up for their own very real executions.  We send young people to school with hope, with love, with dreams for their future. But we can give them no reassurance that they are not reporting for execution. In the NGC 321 star cluster, where this episode is set, the leaders of two warring planets have decided that war is an inevitable product of human nature. They view the computerized system they have devised as a way to limit the impact, minimize the destruction. To the viewer the meaning of the allegory is clear: instead of looking at war and doing everything in their power to prevent it, these people have built an entire culture around incorporating and t...

Do you remember word problems? You know, like this : Oh, how I loathed them.  The more difficult the math got, the more I hated them. I was definitely one of those kids who saw no possible use for math in my future. My mother used to say, “Some day you may need to buy a rug and you will need to figure out the dimensions.”  I allowed as how that might be true but I was certainly never going to need to determine the behavior of trains . Train A heads north at an average speed of 95 miles per hour, leaving its station at the precise moment as another train, Train B, departs a different station, heading south at an average speed of 110 miles per hour. If these trains are inadvertently placed on the same track and start exactly 1,300 miles apart, how long until they collide? I am here today to announce, before God and these witnesses, that I have found a word problem that I am interested in. Finally. As shocking as this is, you won’t be surprised that I found it on Twitter.  ...

Time…is…running…out… That’s today’s message from the Howard County Times. Time is running out to nominate your favorite Howard County dishes, chefs and restaurants. The nomination period for Howard Magazine’s Best Restaurants contest closes at 5 p.m.  Here’s the link to make your nominations: Favorite Howard County Restaurants . The categories are:  Ambience Bakery Barbecue Bar food Bartender (include full name and restaurant) Beer list Best overall Black-owned restaurant Breakfast/brunch Burger Chef (full name and restaurant) Chinese Cocktail Coffee Crab cake Deli Dessert Fine dining Food truck Frozen treats Greek Healthful menu Happy hour Indian Italian Japanese Korean Late-night dining Latin Live entertainment Lunch menu New restaurant (open 1 year or less) Outdoor dining Place to take the kids Place to take out-of-towners Pizza Seafood Server (include full name and restaurant) Steak Sports bar Sushi Thai Takeout Value Vegetarian options View Wine list You don’t have to vot...

  The Mall in Columbia made an official announcement this week that they will be instituting new entry restrictions for teens at the 52 year old property.  The Mall in Columbia announced Thursday that youth must be chaperoned by adults after reports of unruly behavior at the shopping center. The "parental guidance required" rule will take effect on March 31. Any visitors under 18 will need to be accompanied by a parent or supervising adult who is at least 21 years old after 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, the mall said. During those hours, officers will be present to check the IDs of young visitors.  If I were the kind of person who had the patience to identify, document, and sort social media responses to this news I think there would be some interesting things to learn. I can tell you a significant chunk of them lean racist. I worry that the implementation of this new policy will lean the same way. Then we have an interesting divergence of opinion among adults who gre...

Once upon a time , a very long time ago now, about last Friday… Some of the children’s books I read growing up began as bedtime stories for children. American culture is not as focused on the art of oral storytelling as many other, older cultures. Bedtime stories are the place where many of us have our first (and sometimes only) experience with it. I remember telling my older daughter stories about going on adventures to a magical kingdom on the back of her magical pink pony.  And they went trot-trot, trot-trot, trot-trot and - - whoosh! into the sky… Did you know that March 20th is World Storytelling Day? Image from The Maryland State Library on Twitter  World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the March equinox, on March 20. #MDLibraries carry on oral storytelling tradition through programs and events, including story time for young children. This was news to me, so I did a bit of digging around. This expl...

  I am not raising funds for a cause for my birthday. I have a pretty good feeling that everyone I know on Facebook and even everyone who reads the blog is the sort of person who donates and volunteers and gives of their time already. Thank you for that.  Do I have any birthday wishes? Maybe.  The big ones are continuing to have a capacity for enjoyment and the ongoing desire to still be open to learning something new.  Oh, and for goodness sakes, let this be the year I finally fall in love with walking. Not a sexy wish, mind you, but one that would make a big difference in my life. Today I have reached what I jokingly said to my husband is the Lennon and McCartney birthday. (If you know, you know.) At this juncture I still feel very strongly that voices other than my own are important in Columbia/HoCo. They aren’t necessarily going to be setting up a blog or even a podcast so you can find them easily. You have to look and listen. Whether it’s at Columbia Association...

 Three things. One place.  Howard Community College. Today from 11 - 4 on the Quad at HCC: the second annual Althea’s Almost Famous Roy Peart Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser The delicious culinary creations of Althea Hanson will be back on campus today to support the scholarship fund she established in memory of her father, Roy Peart, who worked at HCC for 28 years. The scholarship supports students pursuing careers in music, theatre, and dance education. On hand today for the fundraiser: Althea's Almost Famous food truck Queen's Temple Handmade DMV Taqueria AppleCore's Bake Shop On Friday, March 24th, HCC President Dr. Daria Willis is back on The Couch (remember The Couch ?) for a discussion of Women’s History Month with Tonya Aikens, President and CEO of the Howard County Library System. This live event will take place on Instagram beginning at 2:30 pm. They’ll be discussing women's history and issues facing women in leadership positions. You can even submit a questi...

I could give you quite the list of local happenings worthy of a blog post this morning. It’s not as though there’s nothing to write about. But there’s an image sticking in my head and it won’t move out of the way. It’s from the Instagram account for UMBC. Speed Friending: Join us for snacks, games, and new friends! One of the sponsors of this event is the UMBC Office of Off-Campus Services, so I’m guessing it’s targeting commuter students who aren’t in residence at UMBC. Still, it may have been open to anyone. I’ll check. But certainly it can be harder to forge social connections if you don’t live on campus.  Why is this on my mind? Over the last four years I’ve seen frequent posts on the Facebook parent page for UMBC about the difficulty of students connecting and making friends. I’ve been wondering if there’s something about how we are educating our kids that is somehow shortchanging them in the crucial social emotional skills that foster human connection and friendship. Certainl...

  As we move through anniversaries of those early days of the COVID-19 shutdown I’ve been seeing quite a bit of online reminiscing about events from three years ago There’s something so human about going over and over “where we were when” a major event changed our lives forever. It reminds me of how I used to unconsciously feel the place on my finger where my wedding ring wasn’t anymore after the dissolution of my first marriage. Oh, that’s right. It’s gone. I was looking over old blog posts from that time period and came across the one that talks about my last restaurant meal in The Before Times. It was at Cured . Tuesday Night Treat , Village Green/Town², 3/11/2020 What strikes me about it is it’s ordinariness. Although we knew at the time that COVID was spreading around the world and would soon impact us, that fact doesn’t make it into my write-up at all. We knew cognitively , but we couldn’t have known how deeply it was going to change our lives.  It took a long time for ...

  Compare and contrast. You remember those high school essays, don’t you? Some memories stick with you. I find that juxtaposition informs a lot of my work here. Images, especially. Today I have two images for you from the Howard County Republican Party. The first was taken by Maryland Reporter’s Len Lazarick at a fundraising event. MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick The second was posted on the Facebook page of the Howard County Republican Party. Image from Facebook: Howard County Republican Party The first photo accompanies a piece on Maryland Reporter entitled “ Ex-Gov Ehrlich tells Howard County Republicans they still have a chance. ” (Len Lazarick, Maryland Reporter, 3/12/2023.) The caption for the photo reads: Former Republican Gov. Bob Ehlrich on the stairs speaks to a crowd of Howard County Republicans during a Feb. 25 fundraiser at the home of Marleen Eck, far right, in Glenelg. Next to her is the county's GOP Chair Beth Lawson.  The second image was posted on ...

  Today, from 4 to 9 pm, Dar Al Taqwa Islamic Center is hosting a Pre-Ramadan Bazaar. Ramadan begins the evening of March 22nd. If you don’t know much about Ramadan, here’s an article that will give you the basics. 10 Things non-Muslims should know about Ramadan , Jennifer Preyss, Victoria Advocate  I do not know the significance of a pre-Ramadan Bazaar event but I can tell you they are held all over the world, so this is not simply a Howard County thing. It’s a part of a much larger tradition. This is Dar Al Taqwa. In 2019 I attended a vigil here in memory of Muslims killed in mass shootings in their mosques in New Zealand. Over the years it has been the target of hate and community criticism .  This week County Executive Calvin Ball marked International Day to Combat Islamophobia with statements on his social media accounts. Last year, the United Nations adopted a resolution which designated March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Today, on this inaugural...

  As I was out driving this week I heard a bit of news on the radio that intrigued me.  Here’s a piece from Inside NoVa that explains. ‘My drivers have become my trainers’: Superintendent to become part-time bus driver amid shortages Superintendent Dr. Shannon Grimsley is occasionally stepping away from her desk to transport students to and from school.  Photo by Holly Jenkins Shortage of school bus drivers is pretty much a national thing these days. We’re certainly struggling with it here in Columbia/HoCo. So the thought of a school system superintent getting behind the wheel caught my attention. Was it just a publicity stunt? Or was there more to it? Grimsley’s mission is to try and see what limitations or challenges currently exist within the hiring process for bus drivers, and if that could be contributing to the ongoing shortage. Grimsley has so far completed about several hours of classroom instruction.  “It seems really overwhelming at first, and I think that ...

Oops. They did it again.  Recognize that building? It’s not the Columbia Association headquarters. This is. It is now 2023. CA moved from its old HQ at the Lakefront to its new location on Hillside Court in 2015. And the Baltimore Sun/Howard County Times still hasn’t caught up yet. This really gets my goat. They’ve made this mistake at least twice before since 2015 and I see I’ve written about it in dismay both times. Small Story , 2016 Local News, Local Lives , 2020 Apparently our local newspaper got stuck in 2015 and cannot be budged. Therefore, Allan Kittleman is the County Executive, Renee Foose is Superintendent of Schools, Milton Matthews is the President of the Columbia Association. This is the Howard County Courthouse.  Photo from Howard County Government website  Things that don’t exist in 2015: The new Elkridge Library The new Wilde Lake Middle School The Merriweather District  The Chrysalis  Clarksville Commons and The Common Kitchen The new Wilde La...