The Best Day of the Year

Let’s talk about perspective. Have you ever seen this New Yorker magazine cover?

Original drawing for View of the World from 9th Avenue, Saul Steinberg, March 29, 1976

It’s a humorous look at how New Yorkers comprehend the world and their place in it. There’s what’s important, and then…there’s everything else. 

This is my way of saying that, while there are an impressive number of events going on in HoCo today, for me there’s really only one thing: the Oakland Mills Fall Festival. Or you could say there’s my Village Festival up close and in detail, and then there’s everything else. I confess to my skewed perspective.

It’s one of my favorite days of the year in Oakland Mills. The day kicks off at eleven am with the Oakland Mills High School Band. New this year: Poms! The Festival runs from 11 - 4 but for me it just isn’t festival day unless I hear the band. Warning: if you talk while the band is playing I just might give you my Teacher Look.

From OMCA:

The Oakland Mills Fall Festival is October 5th from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.! And this year, the weather is looking mighty fine, so we will be OUTSIDE! Come enjoy some great food, cOMmUnity, performers (including the OMHS Marching Band), vendors, and kids' activities. And if you want to bike to the festival, park your bike at the Bike HoCo Bike Corral for free (in the festival parking lot, near the bus stop and Interfaith Center). See you at the Festival!

If you like to scope out events in advance, here’s the Fall Festival website.

And yes, there will be live music throughout the day. Come enjoy the performances in our lovely courtyard. The Stevens Forest PTA will be back again this year selling their tasty hot dogs as well as chili, chips, and drinks. There will be other food vendors on site but I’m a sucker for chili dogs.

If you’ve never been to the Oakland Mills Village center, or perhaps have never made it to the Fall Festival, I hope you will stop by. I have found over the last twenty-odd years or so that many of the folks with confirmed opinions about my village have never actually been here. Of course, not every day can be a festival day, but, the essence of what makes a good community is here every day: the people. Come meet some today! 

In a spirit of giving a nod to “everything else” - - 

Markets: Clarksville Commons, Free Town Farm, Maple Lawn 

AACR Homecoming: A Celebration of Resilience, Resistance & Advancement!

Autism Society of Maryland Walk and 5K Run

Church of the Ressurection Community Fall Festival 

Navigating Freedom At Robinson Nature Center 

Saint Matthew’s Church Multicultural Festival 

Ellicott City Wizarding Weekend on Magical Main

And there may very well be more. You may even be the adventurous sort who hits up multiple events in one day! 

As for me, if I get to hear the OMHS Marching Band, have a chili dog, connect with neighbors, and enjoy a Fall Day…well, that will be just the right amount of fun for me. 

Have a great weekend!

Village Green/Town² Comments

F ³: Auto Matic

 

Some time in August the Check Engine light in my 2010 Mazda 5 came on. They really should call it the “I need ten thousand dollars worth of work” light. It was fourteen years old and had carried a lot of bins of rhythm instruments and dancing scarves in its day. It was the Mom-mobile and the teacher-mobile and the music-mobile. Sad to say, it ended its years sitting around a lot due to COVID and my early retirement.

Maybe it was just sad.

For a variety of reasons, we did not get around to replacing it until this week. It’s amazing how long that felt and kind of scary how thrilled I am to have my own car again. In theory two people should be able to get by on one car (especially if one of them is retired) but…it has been a l…o…n…g six weeks. 

I always seem to be the one who lags in the technology department when it comes to cars. My first car had no clock at all when everyone else’s did. My second car still had manual locks. My third car had a cd player - - oh, joy!  - - but no screen with a back-up camera, GPS, or Bluetooth capability.

Now, my friends, I have it all. I’m tickled but also convinced I’ll break something. If there is another level of fancy technology I still don’t have yet, please don’t tell me. I’m luxuriating in my new bells and whistles.

However, now I have an entirely new problem.

As soon as I announced the arrival of my new wheels, folks started asking what I was going to name it. I have named plenty of stuffed animals but a car is different. I’m just not ready yet. 

(To be honest, I have named all of my other cars but then promptly forgot all about it. I just don't anthropomorphize cars the way that I do teddy bears, for some reason.) 

It would be funny if people named cars the way that they do pleasure boats and race horses. I can see naming it Happy Errands (if a boat) or Julia’s Last Hurrah (if a racehorse.) But, as a car? I’m stumped. It didn’t help that a friend reached out to let me know that it was National Name Your Car Day. Sheesh. The pressure is on!

Aside from the great joy of having a sense of personal independence and autonomy restored, there’s one more thing that makes it different from any other car I’ve owned. It’s red. I never thought I’d be cool enough to own a red car.

Not my exact car. Example from a basic Google search.

So, for now, I’m going to call it Red. If another name eventually surfaces it can always be the auto “formerly known as Red.”

Do you have any good car stories? Let me know.

Village Green/Town² Comments 

No More HoCo Hidden Gems!

Have you noticed the recent fixation on the term “hidden gems”? It seems to be having a moment, as they say. I’d like to blame TikTok for this trend, but, it probably predates TikTok. Wiktionary defines “hidden gem as follows: 

Something possessing a value or beauty that is not immediately apparent, which therefore has received far less recognition than it deserves. 

TikTok is awash with home-grown content producers who assure us that they know the very best (but probably hidden to us) local places and they are going to reveal them. I object. Just because you didn’t know about something and now you do doesn’t make this a great discovery which qualifies for “hidden gem” status. Besides, if it had been that well hidden, how did you find it? 

“Hidden gem” seems to be the buzzword that will get people to click. It is the online equivalent of a child saying on the playground,  “I bet you don’t know what I have in my pocket…” But at this point it has devolved into something more like the cliché of that guy opening his trench coat to reveal a display of questionable wristwatches. 

This is not to say that all of these claims amount to nothing more than, say, obvious dreck. But it is simply not possible for the world to contain that many hidden gems! 

There’s another thing. Some places are doing perfectly well as they are and perhaps they’d rather be hidden gems. Opening the door to an onslaught from the general public may push an establishment to the breaking point, thus resulting in disappointed customers. Or perhaps their loyal customer base are content to enjoy this business in its unassuming state. They may not thank you for making their favorite little hole-in-the-wall a star on social media.

We all enjoy those feel good stories about how a business didn’t truly take off until they were the subject of positive notice in a review or on social media. I’m not saying that it never helps. Mostly I’m exhausted by the term and its current over-usage. 

Like other buzzwords before it - - think vibrant, open-concept, lifestyle plaza - - its popularity may be its undoing. 

If a friend tells me about a cool place they recently discovered, I’m all ears. But if the conversation of social media turns to “hidden gems” my eyes will be glazing over. 

What do you think?

Village Green/Town² Comments

Soccer, Columbia History, and the Presidential Election

Recommended reading: 

‘In the minutes before the spark was lit:’ The start of girls’ soccer in public high schools in Central Maryland, Angie Latham Kozlowski, Business Monthly 

Ms. Kozlowski, formerly of AngieKozBlogs, writes a comprehensive history of the creation of the Soccer Association of Columbia in 1971 and how its success eventually led to the push for girls’ soccer teams in Howard County public schools. This piece was eye opening for me. 

I was in middle and high school during the years this article covers, although I didn’t live here. It’s sobering that I really was oblivious to the issues that led to the passage of Title IX, largely because I was not even remotely a sporty person. During those same years I was singing in choirs and auditioning for plays and, let’s be honest, dreading gym class.

Since that time I have come to have great respect for the possibilities opened to young women because of Title IX even though it wasn’t something that applied to me directly when I was in school. It took a while for me to realize that Title IX doesn’t just apply to sports, either.

The law states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Most people think Title IX only applies to sports, but athletics is only one of ten key areas addressed by the law. These areas include: access to higher education, career education, education for pregnant and parenting students, employment, learning environment, math and science, sexual harassment, standardized testing, and technology. - - The Impact of Title IX, Barbara Winslow, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History 

It has been a powerful force for good in supporting both athletic and educational opportunities for women. You would think that, by 2024, Title IX would be fully accepted across the country. Not so. 

Winslow’s article, written in 2010, points out that:

Since 1975, there have been twenty court challenges to Title IX in an attempt to whittle down greater gender equity in all fields of education—mirroring the ups and downs of the women’s movement at large.

I wonder how many additional challenges have been made since then?

It’s worth pondering now that Project 2025 has come to the forefront in conversations about the Presidential election. Title IX has already been targeted by its creators at the Heritage Foundation as something that must be rewritten to suit their views. 

Reading Kozlowski’s article about soccer brought home to me that these opportunities for girls and young women didn’t come about all that long ago and that I shouldn’t assume they are safe from attacks from the far right. After all, I thought Roe was safe. Now we see birth control, no fault divorce, and same sex marriage targeted for similar fates.

I certainly didn’t expect that I, non-athlete to the core - - reading about girls’ soccer in Columbia - -  would feel such a visceral conviction to defend the freedoms that those young women fought for.

Yet another reason to say “We are not going back.” 

Village Green/Town² Comments 

Up Next: The First of October

Today is October 1st. I’d like to say that it’s going to bring “October’s bright blue weather” complete with  seasonally colorful trees and a hint of Fall coolness in the air. But, no. It’s rain all day with temperatures in the sixties. 

Friends, we will need to make our own fun. 

If you want to stay in and avoid the wet, check out the debut of DoodleHATCH show on YouTube. 

Starting today, episodes of the show, aimed at kids in grade 1 - 5, will be available here. They’re describing it as “edutainment” which is a fancy word for saying it is both educational and fun. If you’ve even been to DoodleHATCH in the Long Reach Village Center you will have an idea of the imagination and creative force of founder Lee Andersen and her team. It will be interesting to see how that translates into the world of children’s television.

The shows are based on the Maryland State Education curriculum and have been funded by a number of grants as well as individual contributions.

Edutainment for Grades 1-5. The DoodleHATCH Show is 130 funny, educational 30-minute episodes. It is available free each week on YouTube. Humans and puppets teach the Maryland Educational Curriculum of Math, Reading, Science, Phonics, Spelling. We have added Emotional Health, Physical Health, Music, Dance, Craft, Art, and a live Animal every week.

Marty Bass of WJZ television paid DoodleHATCH a visit recently and you can check out his experiences here. 

If you’re looking to get out of the house, Howard County SECAC and the Autism Society of Maryland are hosting a Board of Education Candidate Forum this evening at 6:45 at the East Columbia Branch Library.

Howard County SECAC and the Autism Society of Maryland will facilitate a Howard County Board of Education Candidate Forum. Come out to listen to the individuals that can make a huge impact on your student's experience in Howard County Public Schools!

This event is open to the public but will clearly have a special education focus. It will be interesting to see how many of the candidates are in attendance as some seem to have ducked out on some rather public forums recently. I do know that parents of children with special needs are, by necessity, some of the most well-informed parents in Howard County and I doubt they’ll think much of those kind of political shenanigans.

If you’re going to put your name on the ballot you need to show up and let people know who you are and what you stand for.

Ahem.

Also this evening is the County Executive’s State of the County address, beginning at six o’clock at Howard Community College.

Throughout the year, we have made impactful investments for innovative community progress. During my annual State of the County Address, I will provide a comprehensive update on our efforts to make Howard County the best place to live, work, play, grow, and thrive for all. - - County Executive Calvin Ball

There may be a few tickets left if you are interested in attending. They are free but you must reserve them in advance.

I personally feel that this event should be required for all the annoying trolls who spend their days and nights accusing the County Executive of doing nothing but attending “photo ops.” Oh, and they should have to pass a test on the content afterwards. 

If, by some chance, you have a date later today for something outside the county, I hope that the weather clears up, the pitching is strong and the bats are hot. 

Image from Baltimore Orioles social media 

Village Green/Town² Comments