A Box of Kindness and Other Local Treasures

In a completely unscientific poll on Twitter, sixty one per cent of the respondents had coffee tables. This is not even remotely useful information but more a sign that it is easy to make polls on Twitter and not on Facebook. 

Every once in a while I hit on a topic that people are eager to talk about. It turns out that coffee tables bring out good conversation. That was fun.

Last week a package was delivered to my house and it was actually for me! Even better, it was full of fun, gifty things from the SECU Kindness campaign. I guess some thoughtful soul told them about my blog post. Thank you, thoughtful soul. It came with a set of kindness cards and I am contemplating dispersing them around town to spread the message a bit further, rather like kindness rocks but less lumpy.

Howard Community College hosted a Fall for All Festival on Friday, opening the Quad to the community for some fun, kid-friendly activities while public schools were not in session. I must say that’s a great way to get people on campus who may never have been there before. Even better, the weather was in their favor, which meant good times on the enormous inflatable thing, or whatever you call this.

Image from Howard Community College social media

Tonight at Jailbreak Brewing Company: Ignite Howard County #8. Tickets are still available, use this link.

Presenting on a subject of their choice, 12+ speakers have exactly 5 minutes (and 20 slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds) to teach us something, enlighten us or simply inspire. The goal is to create collisions of conversations & collaborations between people in our artistic, entrepreneurial, creative, technical and innovative communities.

I went a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I found the format to be really engaging and Jailbreak is a great place for an event.

Tuesday night is the annual State of the County speech by County Executive Calvin Ball at the Horowitz Center at HCC. Tickets are free but you do need to register. I’m not able to go this year but I have been in the past. It’s a time for summing up accomplishments. A lot of people/departments are recognized for their work. You get a strong sense of what our priorities as a county are and where we are intending to go in the future. 

As someone who has difficulty sitting through long presentations, I found this to be a stretch, but doable. I wouldn’t want to do it once a week, but once a year is entirely acceptable and, I think, worthwhile. It is important to stop “doing, doing, doing” every so often and take stock of where we are.

If you go, let me know what you think.

Have a great Monday!