June IS Busting Out All Over

The weather looks good, folks! Here’s a quick rundown of things going on around town.

The Markets:

Freetown Farm Plant Sale, 9 am - 1 pm

Maple Lawn, 9 am - 1 pm

Clarksville Commons, 10 am - 2 pm

Some school events open to the community:

Thunder Hill Elementary School Wellness Fair, 10:30 am - 2:30 pm

Running Brook Elementary School Fair, 4 - 7 pm

An excellent educational opportunity from the Anti Racist Education Alliance and Columbia Community Care:

Unlearn University Annual Conference, Wilde Lake High School, 9 am - 1 pm*

A cooking workshop at the library:

Scrappy Cooking, Miller Branch Library, 11 am - 12:30 pm*

Festivals!!!

BikeAround Downtown Columbia, Mango Tree Lane, beginning at 9 am today and running til 6 pm tomorrow*

Downtown Columbia Maker Faire, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, 12 - 4 pm*

Old Ellicott City Pride, Main Street Lot F, 1 - 8 pm

Savage Fest, Baldwin Common and Carroll Baldwin Hall, 10 am - 5 pm

A Lakefront Concert* and a Main Street Movie:

If you see an asterisk* that indicates that there is some form of registration involved. Click the link to learn more.

Columbia’s official birthday is June 21st, in case you were thinking that the Columbia Association had scheduled it on the early side. They did. Why not celebrate all month? Maybe make some cupcakes.

Image from Columbia Archives via HoCo Connect blog

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Teacher Gifts

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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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